Mad Dog

In the light, the figure with his back to the rescue team had his head buried so low that only his bent back was visible.

He wore no clothes, not a single stitch. That made it obvious how thin he was. His spine looked ready to pierce through his skin.

His skin was an unhealthy grayish white, making him look even more frail.

"Something's wrong."

Han Shu shouted, "Liang Sen, leave him alone. Get out of there. Something feels wrong. Very wrong!"

The holographic projection flickered, as if something were interfering with the signal. The Highland Eagle's captain seemed not to have heard Han Shu's warning.

On the projection, Liang Sen called to the figure beside the cabinet, "Which squad are you from? Where are your teammates? Are you the only one trapped here?"

The endlessly repeating voice stopped. The figure seemed to react, his body shifting slightly before he began to stand.

Several rifles swung toward him in unison as the Highland Eagle's privates took the necessary precautions.

On the projection, the figure slowly rose. Only when he stood did they realize how unnaturally tall he was. Before he even lifted his head, it nearly touched the ceiling.

"My God." Chen Liu cried out in terror. "What is that? What is that?"

This clearly wasn't human. Normal humans didn't reach two and a half meters in height, nor did their limbs have joints that bent backward.

Then he-no, it!

It turned around, finally revealing its head, if that trumpet-shaped thing could even be called a head.

Riiip-

A fissure suddenly split open in its chest, extending down to its abdomen. Then its torso sprang open to either side, from chest to lower belly. Beneath the flaps of flesh and skin, white bones served as supports.

Deep inside its body lay all manner of indescribably strange organs. A human face protruded from the surface of one of them.

As for that gaping body cavity, it looked exactly like a demon's mouth!

"...Can anyone hear me... trapped... requesting support. Coordinates are as follows..."

The same words burst from the human face inside that demonic maw, amplified more than a hundredfold. In an instant, severe interference disrupted the holographic projection, delaying the video feed by a full five seconds.

When the signal recovered, the unfamiliar Child of Darkness was already staggering backward under fire from seven or eight rifles, great sprays of blood bursting from its body.

Finally, Liang Sen stepped forward. As a War God Class Ascender, he cleaved the thing in half with a single sword stroke. A heartlike organ rolled out of its split body, glowing pale yellow. It was clearly the monster's will cage.

Liang Sen drove his sword down, shattering the cage. The two halves of the body had still been twitching on the floor, but the instant the cage broke, they stopped moving. The corpse rapidly dissolved.

Moments later, it had become a heap of rotting matter.

Han Shu shook his head. "Liang Sen, get back here. Now."

This time, Liang Sen heard him. At his command, the squad withdrew.

But when the view swung around, Han Shu sprang to his feet. Figures were moving at the far end of the building's corridor.

Wanderers!

Those cursed creatures staggered out from both branches of the T-shaped corridor. Their hideous silhouettes grew larger on the projection.

As if Liang Sen and his men weren't in enough trouble, the grille covering a vent farther along the corridor suddenly fell away. A Wanderer slid out and crashed to the floor.

Before it could get up, more Wanderers slid out of the vent, one after another. They climbed to their feet and lurched forward.

Meaningless cries spilled from their mouths as they stretched their twisted, grotesque limbs toward the camera!

Liang Sen shouted, "Fall back! Get into the room, now!"

There were plenty of Wanderers, but not enough to overwhelm a Nightwalkers squad. With Chen Liu's safety to consider, however, Liang Sen couldn't risk it. He had no choice but to retreat into the room, hold their ground, and wait for rescue.

"Fuck, I knew this would happen!" Han Shu roared. "Night Raider Squad, move out!"

Tianyang started to follow, but Han Shu pointed at him. "You stay!"

Then he turned to the Gray Pigeon Squad's captain, a woman with a shaved head. "Lida, you're in command here!"

With that, he hurriedly led his squad toward the spherical building.

Tianyang could still faintly hear Han Shu ordering someone to contact the Fifth-Generation Armament. With that machine's firepower, blasting an escape route for the Highland Eagle would be easy enough.

After the Raven Squad left, the bald woman who had temporarily taken command barked in a startlingly powerful voice that seemed at odds with her build, "Everyone, fall back into the plaza! Recovery Team and Medical Team, take the center. All other squads, form a defensive formation. Move!"

The convoy immediately moved according to Captain Lida's orders. The Recovery Team and Medical Team vehicles stopped in the middle of the plaza, while the combat vehicles belonging to the Nightwalkers squads formed a defensive perimeter around the noncombatants.

Next, they established defensive lines and set up temporary cover.

Even the Fifth-Generation Heavy-Duty Three-Dimensional Armament Chen Liu had brought took its position at the center of the formation, all its heavy weapons on standby and ready for battle.

There was good reason for such caution. Who could have imagined that the Children of Darkness included a monster like that? Despite being a biological organism, it could transmit a distress signal that electronic equipment could receive.

That was how it had laid this trap.

As for its human speech, that clearly had something to do with the human face!

Judging from past experience, there might be more to this trap.

Besides, there was no harm in being extra careful in the Inverse Realm. Better to find afterward that the precautions had been unnecessary than to be caught off guard.

As it turned out, Captain Lida's concerns were justified. Not long after the Raven Squad left, a red flare suddenly rose above the dim road ahead of the plaza.

It was an alarm from the troops on the perimeter: enemies sighted!

"Mad Dogs! A pack of them, at least a hundred!"

At the same moment, the sentry's breathless shout rang out over everyone's communications channel.

The bald woman immediately called, "Heavy energy cannons, stand by! War God Class Ascenders, form the vanguard. All other classes and soldiers, provide ranged support!"

Tianyang immediately ran to the front of the formation, joining seven or eight War God Class Ascenders to establish the forward defensive line.

A red light glowed in the boy's left eye, a sign that his Tactical Eye had activated infrared vision. Tianyang looked toward the red flare, zooming in.

Suddenly, a figure that should only have existed in nightmares appeared in Tianyang's field of vision.

At the sight of that demonic silhouette, Tianyang's stomach clenched. A surge of nausea nearly made him vomit everything he had eaten.

Mad Dogs were monsters that fused humans and dogs into a single creature. Their tall, pointed ears, eyes gleaming with bloodthirsty red light, and humanlike faces with protruding muzzles were enough to make anyone tremble and scream at a single glance.

Their hairless, almost smooth bodies raced across the ground on all fours like dogs.

Mad Dogs were gaunt. The males had curved, hooklike claws, while the females' ribs pierced through the sides of their bellies and closed together underneath, cradling a mass that resembled a fleshy tumor.

According to the records, when a female charged into a crowd, that tumor would swell and explode, spraying the highly toxic substances inside it in every direction under immense pressure. It was an indiscriminate weapon of mass destruction, and the reason they were called Mad Dogs.

Watching the pack approach the defensive line through his electronic eye, Tianyang remembered what Old Xu had said earlier.

If the Children of Darkness had once been the Inverse Realm's original inhabitants, were these forms of life the result of evolution or degeneration?

And what had happened in the Inverse Realm to turn its original life-forms into the monsters they were now?