Chapter 2148: Chapter 2148
The moment the eye saw Jenkins, Jenkins saw it too. Without a moment's hesitation, he bent his knees and sprang upward, launching a fist toward the eye on the ceiling. But the eye vanished before his fist could connect, leaving him to strike the ceiling with a dull thud, showering his head with dust.
He landed, ignoring the dust, and immediately scanned his surroundings with the candle. The narrow circle of light revealed nothing. His ears twitched; he heard a faint rustling. He whirled around to face the wall behind him.
In the candle's suppressed glow, the wall looked normal—dirty, but not hiding the enemy Jenkins had imagined. Then his nose twitched. While his sense of smell wasn't as preternaturally sharp as Chocolate's, it was still better than that of most canines.
"Why does the wall smell of fresh blood?"
He ran a finger along the wall but felt nothing out of the ordinary. He continued forward, keeping his eyes on the walls beside him. The smell of fresh blood persisted, as if the area had been covered in thick gore just moments before his light touched it.
"If that's the case, this is terrible."
A suspicion formed in his mind. While appearing to study the wall, he suddenly manipulated the flame at the candle's core, causing it to flare out in all directions.
The Flame of Grace couldn't illuminate as much space as it would in the outside world, but it at least expanded the ring of light around him. And it was enough for Jenkins to see the truth. In the areas the light hadn't touched, the ceiling, walls, and floor were all coated in pulsating, blood-red flesh. As the light reached them, the masses of flesh rapidly receded from the illuminated area, revealing the grimy walls and floor beneath.
In other words, the entire third floor of the hospital was enveloped in this blood-red flesh. The flesh was merely retreating before Jenkins's light to create a semblance of normalcy. In reality, the darkness surrounding him was still teeming with it.
"What in the world is this?"
Flames enveloped Jenkins's entire body, banishing any fear of an attack from the gory flesh. He briefly dropped his backpack, drew the Star-Forged Magic Sword from its metal cocoon, and, holding the blade in one hand while maintaining the full-body inferno, shot down the corridor.
The deeper he went, the more profound the darkness and the thicker the stench of blood became. A twisted power lingered here. Even without reaching its core, Jenkins could already feel its warped and chaotic energy.
At the same time, because his speed far outstripped that of the receding flesh, he finally saw the true nature of the bloody corridor. He witnessed countless strange human organs differentiating from the writhing masses, hanging and squirming all around him. For more chapters visıt ⓝovelFire.net
It wasn't just eyes. Pairs of arms dared to reach for Jenkins, only to be instantly scorched to black charcoal. As they fell, the flesh on the floor absorbed them back into itself.
Guided by his instincts and his sensitivity to spirit, he eventually stopped outside a room with a doorplate that read [TREATMENT ROOM 3]. The plate, like the door, had been covered by the flesh, but it revealed itself the moment he stopped, as if deliberately presenting itself to him.
A gout of flame shot forward, burning a large hole in the door before him. As he stepped onto the floor, the flesh voluntarily parted, clearing a path for him to walk safely into the room.
The room was not dark. On the contrary, the interconnected masses of blood-red flesh and the dense network of blood vessels covering the walls like steam pipes all emitted a faint, unsettling, crimson glow.
In the center of the room hung a great, crimson cocoon, shaped like a heart. All the veins from the third floor converged on this room, then gathered at the ceiling, from which they suspended the heart-like structure.
It was vibrating slowly, the rhythm initially sluggish, with a beat only every few dozen seconds. But after Jenkins stepped inside, the pulse of the heart-shaped cocoon gradually began to synchronize with the beat of his own heart.
The thudding sound inevitably caused a tightness in his chest, though thankfully, it didn't affect his health.
The stench of blood was even thicker here, making Jenkins feel as if he had shoved his head into the freshly disemboweled belly of a wild boar.
The overwhelming smell of blood even induced a strange, faint sense of intoxication. At the sight of the heart-shaped cocoon, the very flesh and blood of his body began to tremble slightly. If not for the fact that his physical essence, influenced by his soul, was leaning more toward plant than animal, Jenkins was certain that blood-red buds of flesh would have already begun sprouting from his skin, transforming him into a hideous monster.
This was no joke; the thing before him absolutely had that kind of power.
He stood with his sword, staring at the behemoth before him. But before he could act, a pale hand reached out from within the cocoon and began to tear it open. As a slit was parted in the outer skin of the heart-like structure, Jenkins saw the girl standing inside.
She was slightly shorter than Jenkins, with pale skin and black hair. Her features were beautiful. Her bare feet were hidden, as the cocoon wasn't fully open. Aside from the long hair that concealed certain crucial parts, her entire body was almost completely exposed to his view.
The crimson light from within the cocoon was even stronger, so much so that Jenkins could clearly see the texture of the muscles. Blood vessels crisscrossed the interior, yet strangely, none of them were wrapped around the girl.
The red light bathed the girl's pale skin, tinting it crimson and making her blood-red eyes seem all the more bewitching. She was not completely detached from the cocoon; although Jenkins couldn't see her back from his angle, the arrangement of veins inside suggested that at least six of them connected to her captivating shoulder blades.
Jenkins was taken aback, instinctively taking a step back. He was about to speak, to test the waters, but she raised her head and met his gaze.
The moment her blood-red eyes locked onto his, a purple light flashed within Jenkins's own.
In that instant, Jenkins saw a roiling sea of blood in her eyes. Influenced by the blood he had been injected with earlier, his entire body began to tremble uncontrollably, and he immediately looked away. The girl in the cocoon, however, saw something else in his eyes: a vision of the entire past and future. The incomprehensible images made her mind shudder, and a third of the veins inside the cocoon burst at that moment of contact. She, too, instinctively averted her gaze.
she said. Jenkins stood motionless and did not reply.
"Stranger, do you know what it is you see before you? I know you wish to leave this place. Are you willing to accept my help?"
Though she looked human, Jenkins knew the girl in the cocoon was anything but. To his senses, her life essence was far more similar to the blood demon spawn he had just seen on the church altar than to any person.
"I don't want your help. I want you to leave the third floor of this hospital. Otherwise, you're welcome to find out which of us is stronger."
He spoke with his head lowered, listening to the sound of blood flowing through the surrounding veins. He could feel the sound resonating with him.
"Don't you want to defeat that machine?"
So, she knew about the Difference Engine that had once invaded this Mysterious Realm.
"I only glimpsed it from a distance, but I could feel the essence of its power. I know it wants to convert everything in the world into pure metal and machinery. But we both know that is wrong. Absolutely wrong..."
Though she didn't dare meet his eyes again, it didn't stop the girl's gaze from drifting over Jenkins's body.
"Mechanical eternity is nothing but a fool's dream. Flesh and blood are the true foundations of life. To let crimson blood flow across the world, to let everything merge into a single whole, constructing an immortal being—that is the correct path of evolution. The weakness of the flesh? No, that is only one part of the picture. An ever-spreading flesh and a fused collective consciousness are far stronger than steel and machinery."
Jenkins fought to keep a sneer off his face. Of course, he didn't agree with the cocooned girl's ramblings.
In his view, she was just like the Difference Engine—one pursued mechanical eternity, the other, an eternity of flesh. The only difference was that the girl in the cocoon wasn't particularly strong, and she hadn't been born in an epoch suited for the power of "blood" to flourish. So, she was stuck in this dilapidated hospital, discussing her grand ambitions with a "stranger" who had stumbled in by chance, unable to stand on the final threshold as the Difference Engine could.
"I'll tell you how to leave this place if you do me a favor. Stranger, I can give you power—the power of blood. I can smell the power of blood on you. You know that this path goes far deeper than what you've seen."
Jenkins possessed the [Green Life] ability, [Bloodsource]. He rarely used it, so it took him a moment to realize what she was talking about.
"Well? Will you accept my help?"
The girl in the cocoon extended a hand toward Jenkins. Her pale hand was indeed quite alluring; even Jenkins, who considered himself strong-willed, found his gaze lingering on it for several seconds before he looked away. He made a mental note to play some games with the girls back home after he escaped this Mysterious Realm.
"The only help I need right now is for you to leave the third floor of this hospital."
Jenkins replied, his tone firm and normal. No one could have guessed what he had been thinking just a moment before.
Hearing this, the girl's face immediately darkened. Her very being was the third floor of the hospital. She hadn't stepped out of the cocoon to attack Jenkins directly because her gestation process was not yet complete. For that reason, there was no way she could leave this place.