(This chapter is intensely gross. Read with caution!)
"Where am I?"
Shang-Chi clutched his dizzy head and stood up. The moment his senses returned, he caught a whiff of a foul stench. A shadow darted past the window, the source of the light, and Shang-Chi instinctively shuddered as he turned to look.
The window nearest him was huge, probably the display window of a corner Shop. Its delicate colored frame offered no sense of sturdy protection whatsoever. Just as Shang-Chi turned his head, there was a crash, and glass shattered across the floor. Several thick tentacles lashed down from above.
Shang-Chi, who had only just gotten to his feet and had not yet found his balance, pushed off with his left foot and awkwardly, stiffly dodged to one side. But the last tentacle that came through still struck him across the shoulder.
"Ah!!!"
Shang-Chi let out a scream, but he had no time to think. By the faint light filtering through the window, he scrambled toward a half-shattered counter, grabbed a chair that had fallen to the floor, and hurled it at the tentacles.
The chair struck the end of a tentacle, but it did no damage at all. Amid the sound of Slime shifting, a huge round mouth appeared outside the window. It grew from the center of the tentacles and, using them to wrap around the window frame, crawled into the Shop.
What terrified Shang-Chi most was that once the tentacles and giant mouth had fully crawled inside, their rear half was not some bloated bug covered in legs, but the upper body of a human.
The tentacles extended from the abdominal cavity of a middle-aged woman. Around that giant mouth, he could clearly see shriveled, rotting intestines. That horrifying stench was coming from them.
As the monster