A strand of sticky spider silk shot from the muzzle, wrapping precisely around the "Sharron" before him.
Yet just before the silk touched her, "Sharron" suddenly turned illusory, transforming into a thin, eerie sheet of human skin. With a cold rush of wind, it lunged straight at Lorne, trying to envelop him!
"What the hell is this thing?" Lorne quickly stepped back and pulled the trigger again.
Bang!
This time, frost sprayed out.
The attack visibly slowed the human skin.
Without giving the monster any chance to recover, Lorne summoned the Rune Steel Sword into his hand. A faintly glowing slash sliced through the eerie skin like a hot knife through butter. It let out a silent shriek, then ceased to move.
The fight was over in a flash. Fewer than ten seconds passed between the skin monster's appearance and its complete destruction.
"Did something happen?"
Sharron appeared in the doorway again.
The real one this time... Sensing her familiar spirituality, Lorne breathed a sigh of relief.
He briefly recounted what had happened to Sharron, then turned his gaze to the skin monster's "corpse."
By now, the skin's characteristic had finished condensing. It resembled an enormous, irregular diamond with countless facets, reflecting an eerie light in the dim surroundings. Every facet displayed different faces, twisted in agony. They were so densely packed that a single glance was enough to make him uneasy.
"A Human-Skin Shadow," Sharron concluded. "A monster that can imitate other people's appearances."
"A very straightforward name," Lorne commented.
After confirming there were no other dangers, the two began gathering their spoils. Besides the Human-Skin Shadow's characteristic and the Beyonder characteristic on the corpse, Lorne unexpectedly found a metal badge on the slain explorer's body. About the size of an eyeball, it was engraved with intricate, unusual patterns.