The first time, he had thought Mechanical City consisted only of the Core Area, the Inner City, and the Outer City.
The second time, he had learned there were still sealed areas.
This time, he saw those enormous shadows in the black mist.
He saw the things locked in the underground cages.
He saw another side of this city.
The side those elders were unwilling to mention.
But right now, Yang Yong had no time to dwell on it.
Because over at the passage...
Those things had already squeezed half their bodies through.
Blood-red.
Semitransparent.
Like a mass of congealed blood stretched into human form, but without features, only a face.
The face was flat, densely covered in holes.
Those holes were opening and closing, breathing.
With every breath, the thing squeezed a little farther out.
Unless he found a way to destroy the passage soon, the Eerie World really would invade in force.
Yang Yong began searching in earnest.
He searched for a way to activate Mechanical City and turn it into a giant axe.
But after searching for ages...
He still had no clue.
The memory fragments Sevian had left behind were a jumbled mess.
Like a book someone had torn to pieces and then haphazardly bound back together, with precisely those crucial pages missing.
And on the other side of the passage...
More and more of those blood-red things were gathering.
They seeped out of the void, one after another.
First a hand.
Then a leg.
Then the holes on that half-emerged face.
They were squeezing.
Squeezing through that rift.
Yang Yong could even hear a sticky sound, like someone peeling a wet rag off glass.
The sound was not in his ears, but inside his head.
He glanced at those blood-red things.
There were already so