Immortal Paladin-Chapter 142 – Inside the mist [7]

Although the curiosity about the origin of that smashed meat bothered me, I knew that, honestly, it wouldn't do any good trying to see anything with all that thick fog obscuring the surroundings.

Besides, staring at that scene for too long would probably make others sick, who were still watching from a distance. Naturally, I felt nothing—not even the slightest bit of nausea. To be honest, I didn’t even have a stomach to begin with.

Looking at that fact with an indifferent gaze, Laura's voice echoed through the camera again, filled with discomfort: “Ugh... I don’t feel good... I think I’m gonna...” The sentence was interrupted by a dry, abrupt sound: “Blearghh!”

I blinked a few times, trying to process exactly what was happening inside the facility. At that moment, Rupert's voice echoed through the speaker, full of disgust and indignation: “My God! That's disgusting! Why did you vomit on me?”

“Ugh... sorry, I swear it wasn’t on purpose...” Laura replied, her voice trembling and choked with tears. She looked like she was about to collapse, her face pale and hands shaking as if she were really feeling sick.

In the end, I decided to ignore the smashed meat. Honestly, it didn’t seem like Laura would be able to look at it for much longer without throwing up. I lifted my gaze and observed the surroundings.

Despite the thick fog, I could still make out some elements around me—like the metal structure ahead, clearly another warehouse. With slow, silent steps, I approached the building, while the soggy sound of meat being crushed echoed through the air, making the atmosphere even heavier.

As I got close enough to see the warehouse in full, the first thing I noticed was that, instead of the usual metal wall, what greeted me was a grotesque extension of the same smashed meat I had been walking on since entering. For precaution, I decided to use my special eyes.

Once they began to glow with rainbow colors, a new world unfolded before me. Just as I suspected, all that slimy, sticky mass emitted a profusion of vibrant colors, as if it were alive, pulsating in a silent dance under my attentive gaze.

As I analyzed the meat from different angles, Emily’s voice came through the camera attached to my chest, filled with concern: “It looks like it's spreading through the warehouse... maybe it's feeding?”

As I listened to Emily's words, I cast a careful glance at the meat spreading around the warehouse, watching as my eyes, once tinted with a variety of vibrant colors, gently returned to their usual golden hue. Just as Emily had pointed out, the meat really did seem to be feeding, pulsating almost imperceptibly as it absorbed everything around it.

However, witnessing that, a troubling doubt arose: why wasn’t this thing approaching the warehouse where the underground facility was located? I mean, if it were really hungry, wouldn’t it make sense to devour all the warehouses indiscriminately? Still, curiously, it seemed to ignore that specific one, as if something there kept it away.

My first thought about why that meat slime acted this way was simply the fact that Nekra and Althea were down there. However, as quickly as that idea came, I dismissed it.

Now, I had a much greater understanding of anomalies than before. It’s true that my memory was still quite fragmented, but even so, I had access to much more information than back then.

This allowed me to look beyond the obvious explanations. Anyway, anomalies, for the most part, don’t have their own consciousness. Therefore, they are incapable of feeling fear or even reflecting on what surrounds them.

Every now and then, rare exceptions arise—entities that display some rudimentary form of thought—but they are so uncommon that it's hard to say for sure they actually exist. Honestly, I doubted that the shapeless mass of meat fit into this rare exception.

In the end, besides not being able to understand exactly why that mass of meat seemed to avoid the warehouse where the facility was, I had no other reason to stay near the base.

Of course, it wasn’t like I had a specific destination in mind; I just figured that, if I kept walking around, something would eventually happen, as if the simple act of walking would bring some revelation or unexpected event.

With this thought, my steps led me toward the entrance of the base. I kept my eyes alert to the surroundings as I walked, but despite my vigilance, everything was obscured by the thick fog, which seemed to swallow every detail around me. Visibility was zero. After walking a few meters, the massive base gate began to materialize ghostly through the fog’s shadows.

As I got closer, the figure of the gate became clearer, slowly revealing itself as an imposing structure, almost as if the fog, for some whim, wanted to hide its grandeur. When I finally got close enough, I stopped, feeling the dense air around me and the weight of the moment.

I blinked my eyes, trying to adjust my vision while observing the surroundings, filled with a growing sense of doubt. From the moment I passed through the gate, a peculiar sound began to make its presence known.

It was as if something large was sliding over a metal surface, the creaks echoing intensely, reverberating in the air and making the environment feel even more silent and tense around me.

“What is that noise?” Laura asked, her voice echoing through the device attached to my chest, vibrating softly as her concern became clear.

“Sounds... like it’s coming from above?” Victor commented, his voice filled with doubt.

As soon as Victor’s words reached my ears, I blinked and my gaze, almost instinctively, turned upwards. The place was shrouded in thick fog, hanging like an impenetrable curtain.

The dense mist made any clear vision difficult, even as I got closer to the gate—all I could see was a fragile shadow of the structure. Looking to the sides or higher up, the only thing I saw was the continuation of the fog, swallowing everything around. That’s why I didn’t realize something was hanging from the gate.

When I turned my gaze upward, the first thing I noticed were the legs. Not one, but several. Four, maybe? Two on the left side, two on the right, all moving with an agility that seemed to contradict the grotesque nature of the creature supporting them.

I continued observing, taking my time, as the thing slowly descended down the gate, its claws sinking into the wood with a sickening snap with every movement. The air around began to thicken, the fog crawling along the ground, as if the very atmosphere was being distorted by the presence of that creature.

Then, two more pairs of legs appeared, as if they were emerging from some invisible nightmare. Two on the left, two on the right, their joints bending in ways that shouldn’t have been possible, and each step resonated like a threatening whisper in the midst of the silence.

“What the hell is that thing?” Victor commented, his voice muffled by the device attached to my body, clearly confused and unsettled.

Honestly, I had no idea what that thing was either, but when I looked at its multiple legs, there was no denying it: a spider, no doubt. Its grotesquely elongated body writhed in the shadows, as if waiting for the right moment to reveal itself.

I stood still, eyes fixed on the gate, waiting. The wait was a silent torture, as if the air itself had grown denser, compressed by the presence of whatever was hiding. It didn’t take long before it finally happened: the mist ahead distorted, and, with a slow and deliberate motion, the creature’s head emerged.

But instead of what I expected, a skull of human shape suddenly appeared before me. However, upon closer inspection, I quickly realized its resemblance to a human skull was merely superficial.

What should’ve been the eye sockets were divided into multiple pairs: eight, to be exact. Four pairs on the left side and another four on the right, arranged in an irregular and unnatural pattern.

Each of these pairs was surrounded by a network of dark veins, pulsing faintly, as if they still held some trace of life. The discomfort this might cause didn’t affect me, but the sight was disturbing, something you wouldn’t see in any natural being.

The eyes were completely black, and at first, I thought that was their natural color. But in the blink of an eye, the darkness was replaced by a reddish hue, as if they were igniting from the inside out.

In the center of this transformation, eight deep, dark pupils emerged, as if they were growing from the very orbits, locking onto me with a macabre precision. That gaze, filled with something impossible to decipher, stared at me almost predatorily, but I didn’t move.

Around me, the silence was oppressive, as if the air itself had condensed, immobilizing even the sounds. No noise was coming from the device on my chest, and I realized it wasn’t just them who were in shock. The scene, with its almost tangible monstrosity, seemed to paralyze even words.

By the way, the base gate was huge, about ten meters high. The creature, in turn, covered just over half of that enormous structure. Of course, this didn’t mean much beyond the obvious: if I were to be devoured, it certainly wouldn’t have any difficulty swallowing me, given its size.

***

(POV - Emily Parker)

Emily, Laura, Victor, and Rupert remained completely silent, their bodies tense and still as they fixed their eyes on the massive screen. They watched, apprehensive, as the anomaly known as [Angel of Death] saw. The air felt heavy, as if even the act of breathing was a transgression.

None of them dared to make a sound, fearing that even the slightest sign of life—a breath, an involuntary movement—would be detected by that terrifying presence. The feeling that that thing could hear them, sense their existence at all costs, hung in the air like an imminent threat.

Emily wasn’t sure why, but perhaps it was because they were watching everything from the [Angel of Death]’s point of view. Somehow, this made them feel tiny and vulnerable, as if their presence was irrelevant in the face of that imposing being. It was as if, suddenly, they were nothing but prey—helpless and at the mercy of being hunted without mercy.

“What the hell is that thing? It’s huge!” Laura commented, finally breaking the tense silence that had settled in the room, just after the anomaly appeared on the screen. Her voice trembled, a mix of disbelief and fear, as all eyes fixed on the monstrous image unfolding before them.

Emily had no answer to Laura’s question. She was as lost as she was, unable to comprehend what was unfolding before her eyes. It was the first time she had witnessed something so grotesque and disturbing.

Those eyes... unsettling, they seemed to be distorted mirrors of something human, and that only made the scene more unbearable. The creature, with its grotesque body and rigid exoskeleton, resembled an insect, but its head—a visceral distortion of what should have been human—made Emily’s blood run cold.

The features were humanoid, but cruelly twisted, as if the body had tried to forge a face but failed in a grotesque way. The contrast between the dark, hardened skin of the body and the human-like eyes, embedded and deep, caused a discomfort that seemed to fill the air, making it dense and heavy.

The creature moved, its steps dragging with an agonizing slowness, as if each movement was made under the pressure of something much greater—something impossible to understand. The sound of its steps echoed in the room, reverberating off the walls and creating a weight that seemed to suffocate any attempt at rationalization.

Each contortion of its body felt like a nightmare incarnate, and the sensation of being face to face with something that shouldn’t exist intensified with each passing second. Reality seemed to bend around that abomination, making time stretch, as if the air itself was intent on prolonging the agony.

As she got lost in her thoughts, Victor broke the silence beside her. His tone was unusually serious, as if every word was weighed: “I don’t know why, but my hair stood up the moment that thing appeared. I have this feeling that, no matter how advanced the technology we have might be, we’d be dead before we even got a chance to use it. In this mist, where seeing is nearly impossible, that creature has the total advantage, since it seems to be the type that waits for its prey—patient and relentless”

Emily listened to Victor’s words carefully, absorbing each syllable, when a strange noise cut through the silence, coming from the screen before her. Instantly, her eyes turned toward the source of the sound. Through the screen, she saw the [Angel of Death]’s body being lifted, a scene that put her on high alert. The camera attached to the [Angel of Death]’s body captured every detail vividly, as if it were right there, watching closely.

She followed the movement with a growing knot in her stomach, from the moment the spider-shaped anomaly lifted the [Angel of Death] into the air, to the moment it brought it near its face. Emily remained still, her breath held, eyes fixed on the screen.

The anomaly’s face drew closer, revealing its red eyes, nearly dilated, with thin veins crossing them as if they were about to burst. The black pupils moved frantically from side to side, restless and threatening, as if they were searching for something—or someone—to devour.