Whoosh-
On the rooftop of a six-story apartment building, fierce winds blew as Lynn landed on the edge like a cheetah. He glanced back toward the bells ringing in the city center, then fixed his gaze on the factory a short distance from the building.
Although it was morning, the factory gates were shut tight. He could just make out assorted construction materials inside the grounds, along with the tightly closed, rust-covered doors of the workshop within.
"Are you sure this is the place?"
Lynn raised an eyebrow as he asked.
Eyes wide, Blood Doll held her large umbrella and hugged her Rag Doll, floating weightlessly beside his ear as she sniffed.
"I couldn't possibly remember wrong. There's a place next door where they cook meat, bubbling and bubbling. I remember that eerie smell very clearly-the smell of tiny tentacles and writhing brains being tortured in a scalding, blood-red iron pot! Exceptionally dark cuisine!"
"That's hot pot!"
Lynn put on his Plague Doctor Mask, quickly activated his detection vision, and looked toward the factory.
And faintly-
Through the factory's outer walls, he could clearly see one moving figure after another inside, along with the faint traces of darkness emanating from them.
That foul aura was something only creatures who had come into contact with the eerie and Hell would possess.
"Let's go!"
Lynn's eyes flashed. He leaped from the six-story building and slipped into the factory in a few swift movements.
Inside a dark corridor.
The windows and ventilation ducts had all been sealed shut without a gap. From one room came a faint succession of low, agonized moans.
They sounded like the brief, hoarse noises made in the throat of someone with terminal lung cancer, occasionally accompanied by dry coughs, as though the person were enduring immense pain.