Control Bureau

My name was Baal, a professor of archaeology at Minerva University. My field of research was ancient history from before The Cataclysm.

There were rumors among the public that scholars who studied The Cataclysm often encountered strange things, witnessed unimaginable scenes, and suffered inconceivable attacks. Reports of my peers dying or disappearing only fanned those rumors.

In the past, I had always dismissed them with a scornful laugh.

The Cataclysm was an obscure field. People always draped unfamiliar things in a veil of mystery. Coupled with the hype from those unscrupulous tabloids, it had become a cursed discipline where whoever touched it died.

But today, I had no choice but to set aside the confidence instilled in me by my education and face a reality.

Perhaps the rumors about The Cataclysm were true.

"Haah... haah... haah..."

I panted heavily, hiding in a hollow at the base of a slope, doing my utmost to keep my body out of sight.

Dark clouds blanketed the sky. Thunder occasionally ripped across the heavens, and amid the booming peals, a strange, low-frequency shriek sounded especially terrifying.

"Damn it!"

The moment I heard that shriek, I knew the monster had caught up. But I no longer had the strength to keep running.

I looked at my left leg. Three neat wounds, as though carved by blades, ran across the Achilles tendon of my calf, constantly seeping pale blue blood. Similar wounds on the thigh of my other leg were bleeding as well.

Those wounds had all come from the same creature.

I clearly remembered that monster bursting from the ruins and pouncing on us like a snow wolf of the tundra. The guards had opened fire in time, but their small-caliber bullets striking its body had been a joke; all of them lost their momentum