Discovery

[You discovered that with no obstructions, a Wailer's perception range was around ten meters. Ordinary noises would not wake them.]

[But you also realized that under no circumstances could you let them make a sound, or every Wailer on the Church's first floor would awaken at once.]

[In that situation, you would face attacks from dozens of Wailers in an instant, placing you in an extremely dangerous predicament.]

After Colin and the others entered, the main doors suddenly slammed shut on their own.

The "prompt" in Colin's mind dissipated the moment his attention was diverted.

"Lord."

The two Servants looked uncertain and alarmed.

"Don't make a fuss. This is just standard procedure. We can leave once the mission is done."

Colin's scalp tingled, but his tone remained calm.

He had seen the trope of doors automatically closing after entering a room many times in games, but experiencing it himself in this world was a completely different feeling.

Fortunately, the sound of the doors closing had not triggered the Weepers' mass awakening. Otherwise, Colin felt he would probably have died here.

As for the thick stench, Colin had more or less grown accustomed to it.

He raised the Hurricane Lamp ahead of him. The Church interior was pitch-black.

The only light came from the Hurricane Lamp in his hand. Beyond its glow, he could see almost nothing.

It was truly too dark inside the Church.

However, with the help of the "prompt," their advance continued in an orderly fashion.

As Colin and the others ventured deeper, the once-empty, deathly silent Church was repeatedly filled with the sound of bones grinding together.

Yet after several hurried footsteps rang out, followed by a heavy thud, everything returned to silence.

Still, even with the prompt's help, an accident happened.

A head that had been sent flying rolled several times after landing. It did not die immediately, instead letting out a strange wail.

Although Colin saw the kill notification appear less than three seconds after the sound began, it was already too late.

"Damn it, I got careless!"

Colin cursed inwardly. He had killed more than thirty of them with one slash each, and that had made him somewhat complacent.

But this was not the time for regret.

The next second, chilling sounds of bones scraping together emerged from every corner of the deep darkness. Colin could already feel countless sinister gazes turn toward him!

Some were behind stone pillars, some beneath pews, and others in shadowy corners.

Sharp, piercing, strange cries that sounded like wailing and shrieking rang out without end. This attack directly damaged the mind.

Even covering his ears could only lessen some of the physical burden.

There was no way to reduce the damage to his mind and soul. Every cry was like a thorn-covered whip lashing across his brain, bringing searing pain that felt as though it were tearing him apart.

"If someone else came here, got fooled by the few Wailers at the entrance into thinking these little things were weak, then walked inside, it would be a certain death trap."

Colin clenched his teeth. His eyes were bloodshot, and veins bulged at his temples.

He felt like someone who had finally boarded a train and wanted to rest, only to have a child beside him let out an earth-shattering, heart-rending, horrifying, utterly miserable, despair-inducing cry that could not be stopped.

The worst part was that there was not just one such "child." Every seat in the entire carriage had one.

Combined with the clattering of the train, it was maddening and infuriating enough to make one want to destroy the world.

But the good news was that Colin was here on a mission he could not shirk. With every swing of his blade, he sent another "child" peacefully to sleep.

Colin had realized that the true difficulty of this mission was not the large number of Aberrations, but the Church itself!

After the wails struck the Church walls, they bounced back and echoed endlessly. The enclosed yet spacious interior caused their cries to amplify amid the overlapping waves of sound.

In less than thirty seconds, Colin felt as though the entire Church was trembling.

Just as Colin had thought, for an ordinary person entering this place, once they triggered the chain reaction, it would almost certainly end in death.

Amid the sound waves in the darkness, almost no one could determine their exact positions by sound, much less mount an effective counterattack.

Fortunately, Colin had come to do this mission, not another Survivor.

Before the terrifying waves of sound had erupted, Colin had already cleared out a considerable portion of the Wailers inside the Church. Even when they attacked, it did not immediately reach an unbearable level.

Otherwise, even with the prompt, Colin would have died in this damned place.

With the prompt's help, Colin no longer crept forward inch by inch. Instead, he launched precise, swift counterattacks at the sources of the sounds.

As one Wailer after another died, the sounds in the hall rapidly weakened.

By then, Colin's eyes were thick with blood vessels, and he was filled with extreme irritation and rage.

He struggled to remain lucid and calm. One hand gripped his axe tightly as each step landed heavily. He quickly reached a deformed, twisted figure, then brought the axe down with all his strength, chopping the scrawny Aberration into pieces.

"The last one."

The tension in Colin's twisted expression finally eased considerably.

The sweep of the first-floor hall was finally over.

The effect of the Wailers' cries was similar to that of the "Aberration—Confessor Priest" Father Kadish had become. They stirred up extreme emotions within people and led them to lose their reason.

This time, the Wailers' voices reminded Colin of a train journey. The emotion they triggered was not fear, but extreme anger.

However, compared to Father Kadish's near-total control ability, the Wailers' power was much weaker.

It required quite a long time to take effect gradually.

But overall, the Wailers were far more difficult to deal with than killing a Confessor Priest.

"What a joke. I was worried someone might get here before me, but at this stage, no matter which Survivor came here, they'd be walking into certain death."

Colin casually found a pew and sat down, panting heavily without regard for appearances.

His sanity was slowly recovering, but his brain still throbbed in waves. It was as though tinnitus and buzzing still rang endlessly in his ears, making it impossible to hear clearly.

Beside him, the two Servants were not much better off. They too were drenched in sweat, their eyes bloodshot as they stood nearby with difficulty, remaining vigilant.

However, as Colin looked at the two Servants, neither tall nor particularly muscular, he suddenly noticed something very unusual.