At 8:49 p.m., eleven minutes remained until the countdown to total annihilation ended.
White Wolf faced the greatest life-or-death crisis of this mission, but he had also encountered a crucial opportunity to turn the situation around.
He had now retreated completely into the maintenance room and stood guard beside the access shaft, braced for what was coming.
Everything before him remained calm and undisturbed, but he knew that thing was coming—a ghost that could kill him, or save him.
Time passed agonizingly slowly, as though every second had been stretched to an enormous length.
His intense concentration brought bitter, salty beads of sweat to White Wolf's forehead. They slid into the corners of his eyes, making his eyelids sting, and he instinctively reached up to rub them.
Yet just as the back of his hand touched the corner of his eye, an extremely strange sense of panic suddenly rose inside him.
It came without reason or warning. He immediately raised his head and scanned his surroundings, but everything was normal. There was neither a ghost nor another person.
Yet that panic clung to him like a shadow. No matter how he moved or adjusted himself, it remained, impossible to shake.
A powerful unease welled up inside White Wolf. Gripping the shaft's iron ladder with one hand, his expression changed drastically, and he prepared to abandon everything and flee without a moment's hesitation.
This was an attack by supernatural power. Though he had seen no ghost and encountered nothing abnormal, that sudden unease told him he had already fallen victim to it.
White Wolf was not being cowardly. He understood all too well that if he could not even detect how the ghost had attacked, it was absolutely beyond his current ability to deal with. His only option was to run.