"Now this feels right. Like going back to my parents' place."
As everyone looked at one another in confusion, Han Su, in the crowd, relaxed his taut nerves with a little stretch. He let out a comfortable sigh, then turned his head slightly and looked around.
While everyone else was staring fixedly at the elevator without even blinking, Han Su paid more attention to his surroundings.
It was so familiar.
The inexplicable tension and sinister air filling this space seemed to permeate even the air itself, which appeared to be crisscrossed with countless invisible, nameless threads, stitching the entire space together.
Something was watching from the shadows. The darkness seemed to come alive, flowing and gathering, then dispersing.
Han Su knew this feeling. He had been to the Ancient Castle too many times; the sensation had practically seeped into his bones. It was a sign that something twisted was about to appear, and the eerie quality found only in monsters that had no place in reality.
He had experienced this feeling countless times in the Ancient Castle, but he had never expected to encounter it again inside a modern office building.
How to put it? It was like the nightmare he had every night had suddenly become real.
"Careful."
Less than a second had passed. The others were still reeling, and quite a few were looking toward the little fatty as if to ask him something. But it was Han Su who gave the warning.
At the same time, he had already drawn his gun.
"Riiip!"
In that brief moment of confusion, it felt as if something heavy had been torn open. The reason of reality was fading away.
The next instant, all four elevators—the ones they had watched all night without seeing so much as a flicker of movement—opened at once. Pale, human-shaped things inside tumbled outward like cargo piled in the elevators.
The people there barely had time to react before the things knocked them to the ground.
They were sticky. They clearly had human shapes, but felt far too soft to have human skin. One person suddenly caught a glimpse of one of their faces.
His heart nearly burst out of his chest. The thing had no human face at all, only a blank, dough-like surface that writhed and contorted strangely.
"Ahhh!"
Faced with such an unimaginable change, several people screamed at once.
Hearing about the mysterious and bizarre was one thing. But once it was right in front of you—or even pouncing on your face—you realized how fragile your sanity really was.
"Bang!"
Just then, a gunshot rang out. Han Su had already stepped back before the elevator doors opened, and now he fired without hesitation.
The bullets struck the things, and a sound like something shattering rang out.
The dough people's bodies were torn open, revealing vivid skin beneath, and bright red blood sprayed out. The one nearest Han Su staggered backward, as if it were a real person who had been shot.
"It works..."
"But it's not accurate..."
"..."
Han Su thought this as his wrist trembled slightly.
Black Hood had told him the gun's recoil would be strong, and taught him several ways to reduce it when firing. But he hadn't said it would be this strong...
It was only a damn handgun, not a machine gun. Why was the recoil so bad?
What were those researchers even doing?
"Clack!"
In that split second, before anyone else could react, the camouflage man suddenly charged into the crowd.
His exceptional reflexes had let him evade the dough people as they surged out of the elevators. But he immediately saw the trainees pinned beneath them.
All four elevators had opened at once, and what came out was so bizarre that only Han Su, the camouflage man, the little fatty, and one other trainee who had been standing farther out managed to notice the danger and dodge in time. Three trainees were pinned underneath.
The camouflage man had a gun in his hand, but after a moment's hesitation, he didn't use it.
He shoved the gun into his waistband, then charged at two pale, doughy faces rushing toward him. He took a sharp step, drew his elbow back, and coiled his body like a bow before slamming it into one of their faces.
The thing's face was soft, as if it had no bones, which absorbed some of the camouflage man's force.
But his elbow was hard, and his strike was powerful. The thing was soft, but had a waxy feel to it and could still take some impact. It was sent flying.
The next instant, the camouflage man pressed forward, raised his knee, and drove it straight into another dough person that had only just managed to get halfway up, sending it flying through the air.
Then he ducked sharply and rammed his head into the dough person that had leapt at him from above, knocking it aside.
With the space around him clear, he quickly pulled one of the trainees to his feet. Without even looking, he hurled him out toward the crowd behind him, then pushed off the wall with his foot and sprang into the air.
For a moment, he seemed to fly over the eaves and scale the walls. He took several quick steps, charged deeper in, and pulled another trainee free from the countless dough people swarming over him, hurling him far beyond their encirclement.
The moment he landed, he spun and hooked his leg around an approaching dough person, sending it into the air, then followed with a downward kick that slammed it onto the ground.
He moved like a raging bull, yet carried a chilling composure that was intensely oppressive.
When the camouflage man wasn't fighting, he seemed wooden and cold. But once he started, there was something frighteningly uncanny about him.
Wherever he went, the dough people standing around were knocked flying as if they were made of paper. A clear circle quickly opened up around him.
The third trainee was nearly dragged into an elevator by countless hands reaching out from within, but the camouflage man managed to hook an arm around his neck in time and pull hard, wrenching the trainee—who had nearly lost his soul with fright—free.
"This guy's that good?"
Even Han Su, watching from outside, couldn't help twitching his eyebrows.
"It's—it's a monster..."
A trainee the camouflage man had just rescued finally managed to cry out. Trembling, he raised his gun and fumbled with the safety.
"They're just monsters. Never seen one before?"
Han Su reacted in time, smacking the gun out of his hand and shouting, "There are people in there! Don't fire blindly!"
The trainee looked ready to cry. Who the hell had ever seen anything like this?
After knocking the trainee's gun away, Han Su glanced around at the others. Afraid they might panic and shoot the camouflage man, who was still trapped inside trying to rescue people, he shouted a warning toward the elevators:
"Are your fists harder than bullets? Why aren't you firing?"
"..."
The camouflage man saw Han Su's face and realized he was reminding him to shoot. But remembering what the little fatty had just said, he still seemed hesitant.
Just then, the little fatty also seemed to have finally made up his mind. He shouted, "Shoot! Shoot! Our mission is to stop them from coming out..."
"Wait..."
As soon as he'd shouted, he hurriedly added, "Be careful! Don't hit one of our own."
"..."
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
Amid the dough people, the camouflage man finally stopped hesitating. He smashed one of them back with his elbow, then drew his gun. It was as if he had just flipped the switch on a killing machine: with a shot to the head every time, he dropped several dough people around him to the ground.
Firing as he went, he fought his way out.
But just then, the elevator doors opened and closed, and countless more people surged out. This time, they were even stranger, barely resembling humans at all.
More than a dozen twisted arms, as if joined together by some bizarre surgery, flailed about and grabbed the camouflage man's shoulders, arms, and back. Some even reached for the gun in his hand.
The camouflage man twisted his body and swept his elbow around, breaking free of most of them as he desperately tried to fight his way out.
But more hands immediately reached out from inside the elevator, grabbing him and trying to drag him in.
At that instant, Han Su suddenly stepped forward. Still holding the gun in his right hand, he instinctively reached out with his left and grabbed the camouflage man's hand from a distance, then pulled with all his strength.
Only then did he realize just how heavy the camouflage man was. It was hard to imagine how strong those arms had to be. He couldn't pull the man free; in fact, he felt as if he were about to be dragged in himself.
But as his nerves tightened, Han Su's attention focused on the sudden pressure in his left hand.
Without warning, the scar on the back of his left hand began to throb with pain.
In the dim light, the Cross Scar flashed with a strange Copper Color, as if it were not made of accumulated flesh and blood, but cast from some uncanny copper.
Han Su felt the Mental Power he had focused on the scar being drained away.
At the same time, his left hand suddenly grew uncanny, stiff, and extraordinarily strong, as if it had changed from flesh and blood into a machine made of copper.
He grabbed the camouflage man's hand and squeezed so hard that the bones in it cracked. Then, planting his right foot on the ground, he gave a fierce tug. The camouflage man's two-hundred-pound body was wrenched out of the crowd, lifted over Han Su's head, and flung outside.
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