Falling into the Abyss

At three o’clock in the morning, a sharp alarm sounded in the Forbidden City. It reverberated under the gray sky, and the black windows lit up one after another. Thousands of robot policemen surrounded every block, repeating the prohibition—No one was allowed to leave their room. The guards were also recalled, all the sewage entrances were heavily guarded, and even military aircrafts appeared over the Forbidden City.

The nonhumans stood in front of their windows and watched the aircrafts roar in the air, leaving long and thin cloud tracks, but no one spoke. The tension grew as they heard the distant shouts from the guards.

No one knew what happened. Only a few small buildings nearest to the pipeline entrance in the southeast could vaguely see something black emerge from the ground, curling what appeared to be a person’s shadow into it. Their screams could be heard in the dark.

“What was that?” a young nonhuman who had probably just become an adult rubbed his eyes and asked, “Did I see it wrongly?”

The older nonhuman next to him knelt, continuously murmuring a prayer nervously, “The Great Evil God is coming……the Great Teacher was right……the end of Earth is coming, the end of the galaxy is coming!”

Vasilev waited in front of the gate, watching as several aircraft slowly landed on the open space in front of the guard hall. At this time, a burst of lightning rolled over the horizon and made the earth roar. The guards looked uneasily into the sky as if they were afraid of something approaching.

Several bodyguards took the lead in jumping off the aircraft, followed by the chairman of the Forbidden City Council, Stephen Hopkin, and his secretary general. The old man strode up the steps with a gloomy and cold expression. As he passed Vasilev, he did not stop at all but asked in a cold voice, “What’s the situation?”

“All the sewers are sealed. The escaped survivors have been isolated for observation, and there is no sign of any mutation at present.”

“How many survivors?”

“Thirty-five. Among them, five are guards.”

Hopkin paused, and his leopard-like gaze stared at Vasilev. “Guards? So you’re familiar with how many people are meeting in the sewers in the middle of the night?”

Vasilev had a very gentle smile on his face. “The assemblies were approved legally, and there has never been any trouble before. This time……according to the survivors, there was a nonhuman mutation.”

“What assembly! If people get together, there will always be trouble. Even outside the Forbidden City, we are not allowed to hold private gatherings of more than 20 people. In such a place, you even allowed these criminals to get together?! I wonder if it was the right decision to promote you.”

Vasilev showed a humble and submissive expression, which was different from his usual gloomy and domineering appearance. “You are right in lecturing me.”

The corners of Hopkin’s mouth twitched. It seemed that the matter was being blown out of proportion.

He just hoped it wouldn’t get to the president’s ears……

.

An hour ago.

The intricate pipelines reverberated with the shrill, hellish screams. A large amount of blood had poured into the originally black sewage, and the fishy scent diffused into the air. The headquarters of the Lord Grace’s Association was now a sea of blood, and the walls seemed to be covered with a crimson tapestry. The ground was covered with broken limbs and arms, and eyes stained with dirt and unwillingness gazed at the dark ceiling.

Ethan stood in the center of darkness, his eyes flickering with crazed satisfaction and charm. He pressed his hand on John’s head, and thin black barbed tentacles emerged from each of his fingertips and pierced his skin, wrapping around the screaming nonhuman’s head layer by layer. Suddenly, all the tentacles snapped shut at the same time. Only the crack of bones being crushed could be heard, and blood sprayed out from the gaps in the tentacles like a waterfall. Ethan seemed to be very satisfied, and he uttered a moan, similar to when he climaxed. His thin lips, which had always been pale and bloodless, were now stained with blood. His tongue quickly licked his lips, and his expression showed that he wasn’t done enjoying himself.

He felt a lot of vitality flowing into his body, along with the blood and internal organs. The unprecedented sense of fullness made him realize how tired and dry his body was and how he was on the verge of collapse. He needed blood, he needed food, and these people were his food. They would soon be a part of him.

The black lines on his face grew denser and denser, and Ethan’s thoughts retreated back to his subconscious. Now he was dominated by his desires, and his feelings of hunger and dissatisfaction burned in his body, urging him to plunder more and ask for more.

His legs weakening, Schneider fell to the ground and looked upon the scene before him in horror. He could not believe that Ethan, who was gentle and even a little cowardly, had turned into a demonic creature and appeared so terrifying in front of him…… No, demonic was not enough to describe what he saw. It was pure evil and chaos.

Samuel was also stunned. Even though he had seen it once, he intuitively felt that this time was different from before.

This time, Ethan voluntarily chose to become this way.

He chose to turn into this to save them.

Samuel didn’t know what kind of mutation happened to Ethan’s body, and he had wanted to selectively forget everything he saw on the altar in Pales. However, he couldn’t lie to himself any longer. He saw the cruelly satisfied smile on Ethan’s face that was half stained with blood and how he did not hesitate to lower his head and suck the blood from John’s neck. He felt that Ethan was strange yet familiar and superior to everyone, free from all the shackles that bound him.

He thought that Ethan must be unconscious and not in control of himself. However, when Ethan looked at him, he was no longer sure about his conjecture.

He saw Ethan slowly wipe the corner of his mouth, and a tentacle from the back of his neck skilfully twisted its way over. The sharp spines on the top cut the hemp rope that bound Samuel’s arms, and he moved to untie his feet before also untying Schneider. However, he didn’t expect that the knot was too complicated and tight. He couldn’t untie it, and there was no weapon nearby. He was about to ask Ethan to help him remove the rope from his feet, but he almost stopped breathing when he looked up.

Several laser beams suddenly burst out, and Ethan felt his chest burn hot and cold. He lowered his head and found that his heart had been burned through by the laser beam. He heard Samuel cry out in horror, “Ethan!!”

Ethan slowly looked up and saw the blond guard in the corner shooting him under the cover of the corpses. Seeing that he didn’t fall down immediately, the guard went all out, shouting and shooting at him several times. Ethan did not dodge, allowing those gorgeous laser beams to pass through his thin body, causing it to shake due to the force of the lasers puncturing his body.

However, Ethan didn’t fall, and the edges of his lips even turned up as he looked at the guard. He saw a lot of black threads suddenly appear in the bloody hole in his heart, which wove themselves together layer by layer like fibers, and his flesh and blood healed at a speed visible to the naked eye. He had more than one wound, but all of his wounds began to heal, and his black as velvet blood dried on his dirty and shabby nonhuman uniform.

Ethan calmly stretched out a tentacle and lifted up the blond guard until he was in front of him, his green eyes gazing at him.

“Spare my life…… Spare my life……” The blond guard was scared to death and held tightly onto the thick tentacles around his waist.

Ethan’s expression was calm. From behind him, another tentacle suddenly stabbed into the Alpha’s mouth. This tentacle was different from the other tentacles. There was no sharp spike, teeth, or acid, but it had a tube-like opening. The Alpha sobbed, his throat moving up and down as though something had been poured in.

Then, Ethan suddenly let go of him and allowed him to fall on the layers of corpses. He said coldly, “Scram.”

He didn’t know why he didn’t kill the guard, let alone what he made him drink. He did it all following his animalistic instincts.

He just felt that his body had already absorbed enough. He felt somewhat bloated, so he wanted to release some extra energy. And he intuitively felt that his energy remained in the body of this blond human, and this human had become a part of him. Therefore, he didn’t want to kill him.

However, while Ethan was focusing on dealing with the blond guard and Samuel was in a hurry to release the rope on his feet, no one noticed that one of the two masked Alpha executioners on the stage had not been completely killed by Ethan but had only been temporarily knocked unconscious. The man had just come to his senses, took off his mask, and showed an almost crazed expression. He quietly approached the motionless Schneider from the rear, with a strange smile on his face and as he murmured nervously.

“Kill them……the punishment will be over……the Great Evil God will go away……”

After hearing Schneider’s wail, Samuel and Ethan noticed that a fish who had escaped the net was holding onto Schneider, and his handmade glass dagger lay across Schneider’s neck.

“Stop it!!!” Even though his feet were not completely free from the confinement of the ropes, Samuel crawled over. Ethan also raised his hand, and his fingertip-like tentacles whipped forward. The nonhuman’s head was split in two, and he fell down in an instant.

However, he was a step too late. Schneider’s eyes widened, and blood gushed down his neck.

“No!!!!!” Samuel crawled to him and caught him as he fell back. Samuel pressed against the wound on Schneider’s neck with his hand in vain but found that he was unable to stop the bleeding. He didn’t notice that he was already sobbing. He just kept shouting, “No, no, no, hold on! Please!” It was as though if he did this, he would be able to stop the bleeding.

Schneider’s eyes were wide open, and he looked at Samuel almost greedily. Numerous emotions flickered in his eyes, such as disbelief, attachment, abandonment, sadness, and regret. His life was flowing away in front of him, but there were so many things he wanted to do and places he wanted to go. He hasn’t been home to visit his grandmother for two years, and there were still two books he had borrowed from Earth’s Central Library at his home. A month ago, he agreed with his comrades in arms to climb mountains in the summer. He promised to go to the sea with Samuel.

He didn’t have time to think about whether his life had been worth it or not. In his last moments, he saw Samuel’s eyes being blinded by tears. He wanted Samuel to kiss him, but he couldn’t speak.

Then, his heart trembled faintly before entering eternal silence.

Ethan looked numbly as Samuel held Schneider’s body and howled in despair like a sad beast. His brain, which was dominated by instinct, suddenly felt a tearing pain.

All the tentacles suddenly grew so heavy that they fell from the air, and the remaining nonhumans and guards who had not been dismembered took advantage of this opportunity to scream and escape. Ethan fell to his knees on the high platform as the black tentacles spread behind him like a cape, leading to the mountain of corpses.

The author has something to say:

So, I finally disseminated the first relatively proper bento……

T/N: This chapter was so hard to tl. Honestly, I really like Schneider. He’s the type of shou I would really want a gong to dote on T.T