Since this was an ecological core zone, the city had become a ruin, ravaged by the Mana ecology, many years ago.
Here, shattered walls and the remains of steel skyscrapers lay scattered at crooked angles, like the bones of monstrous beasts, jutting toward the gloomy sky.
Along the streets, across the ground, and even inside the buildings, Mana ecology plants ran rampant. Enormous vines twisted around the ruins, like grotesque blood vessels consuming the city's lifeblood.
The flowers of those Mana ecology plants glimmered with eerie light and bloomed without restraint. At night, they gave off a sinister, frightening glow, as if declaring to humanity that the land was now entirely under their control.
And as for the Prajna Beasts? There was even more to say about them!
Those terrifying monsters of the Mana apocalypse were everywhere in this ecological core zone. Their numbers and variety were both astonishing; some were even absent from the Lighthouse's database!
For example, the ones they'd encountered earlier, with eyeball-like Facehuggers growing on their backs?
In any case, a closer look would reveal Prajna Beasts roaming in groups of three or five among the ruined city's shattered walls and atop the skyscrapers that still stood. They wandered aimlessly through the ruins and between buildings like ghosts.
Most had six legs and long tails, their bodies twisted and bizarre. They resembled packs of hungry wolves, their pairs of scarlet eyes gleaming with greed and bloodlust, like the terrifying beings from a nightmare.
No...
Or, to the surviving humans, weren't they all living nightmares?
And besides the city ruins, Prajna Beasts, and Mana ecology plants, the most abundant things in the city were the countless human meat-soil bodies!
After their life essence had been drained, those humans, their faces and postures frozen in grotesque contortions, remained