Chapter 472 Deformed Mutant

layout-shifting, sudden changes in the environment came without warning.

One second, the group had been winding through increasingly dense architectural ruins; the next, they rounded a single corner, and the ornate domes looming in the tree canopy, the broken eaves embedded in stone walls, and the delicate flagstones dotting the ground all vanished into nothingness.

In their place stretched an exceptionally wide clearing at the deepest point of Twin Canyon, taking up an area roughly the size of two basketball courts.

The ground was a brownish-gray mix of soil and gravel that crunched subtly beneath their boots. On either side, the towering, claustrophobic cliffs widened slightly, letting in more sunlight while making the open ground feel even more expansive.

In truth, Xia Nan had no need to warn the group to stay alert.

As the party of six rounded the bend, a sudden gale surged through the canyon, carrying an overwhelming stench of decay. The seasoned Class Holders instantly readied themselves for battle.

Their formation tightened sharply, pulling into a protective circle around Hein, their primary Spellcaster.

Tense, watchful eyes swept across the clearing ahead.

The most striking sight was the vast number of sahuagin corpses littering the entire area.

Neon-blue blood soaked wide swaths of earth, and scattered teal scales covered the ground like the floor of a fish market after closing time.

Not a single creature had been spared.

Shredded flesh, severed limbs, twisted armor, and snapped harpoons lay strewn across the dirt.

It looked as though a tempest of blades had torn through the canyon. The gruesome, bloody scene was enough to make an ordinary person faint on the spot.

Even the battle-hardened members of the Blade of Vengeance Squad frowned in discomfort at the sight.

"What... happened here?"

Hein gripped her staff tightly with both hands, her gaze darting past the teammates guarding her to take in the massacre.

Her experiences on Hare Island and at the pier had led her to assume that their main enemies on this mission were the sahuagin and whatever conspiracy they were plotting.

Yet the corpses before her silently proved that the situation differed from her expectations.

"Some of them killed each other."

Lorraine led the group into the clearing at a slower, cautious pace.

Scanning the bodies at their feet, she pointed out harpoon wounds on a few of the more intact fishman corpses.

"But the vast majority were attacked by some powerful monster."

The scene was horrifying precisely because of the exaggerated wounds on the corpses—damage far beyond what a fishman's own claws or teeth could inflict.

Some had their chests completely flattened, bone shattered into fragments. Others had been bitten in half at the waist, leaving jagged stumps riddled with grisly tooth marks that pierced straight through. Some were missing their entire heads and half their upper torsos, exposing jagged white bone and pale, tender flesh.

Large, splattered bloodstains marked the ground, proving that whatever did this had no habit of cleaning up its kill site. Following the blood trails led to several more ruined fishman corpses lying nearby.

Though the wounds varied, anyone with combat experience could tell these fishmen had been struck at the exact same instant. A massive claw mark had swept diagonally across their upper bodies like a lawnmower, disemboweling them in a single pass.

"Whatever attacked them possessed immense physical Strength," Hein analyzed, her expression focused. "Judging by these wounds, the sahuagin didn't even have time to fight back before being torn to pieces."

"Mhm... perhaps it possesses some mind-control ability, which drove the fishmen to turn on each other in the first place."

Standing at the rear of the formation, Xia Nan stared at the sahuagin corpses, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu.

He had seen a scene like this before—equally horrific, yet entirely distinct in style from his own combat marks.

It was back on Cliff Rock Island, on the path to the cavern at the base of the cliff, where that Shark Beast had left a trail of butchered fishman bodies.

Here, however, the count of slaughtered sahuagin was far higher, and the wounds left on their remains were even larger and more brutal.

What did that mean?

Was this a monster of the same species, but far stronger than the Shark Beast he had slain before?

Without keeping the thought to himself, he immediately shared his suspicion with the team.

The warning was taken seriously at once, putting the squad further on edge.

As they moved deeper into the clearing, more alarming details came into view.

"No wonder the fishmen that attacked us at the pier were all grunts. The elites all died here," Aken said grimly. Instead of resting his anchor-shaped greataxe over his shoulder, he held it in both hands across his chest.

Just as they had suspected earlier, a force of ordinary sahuagin this large could not operate without powerful commanders.

The reason they hadn't found any commanders while clearing the battlefield at the pier was that every elite fishman had perished right here.

In fact, their numbers far exceeded expectations.

A conservative estimate put the dead four-armed elite sahuagin in the clearing at nearly thirty, including two fishman priests!

A force of that scale was practically an army. Even with the Blade of Vengeance Squad fully assembled, taking them on in open combat would have been a dangerous gamble.

Yet now, they were all reduced to cold, mangled corpses.

And the culprit... was nowhere to be seen.

Xia Nan turned abruptly, shooting his gaze toward the northernmost end of the clearing.

There, hugging the base of the cliff, sat a small pool of water.

It was by no means large, occupying barely a sixth of the clearing, yet its surface was unnaturally placid.

Unlike the violently crashing, distinct-colored seawater of the surrounding ocean, the pool remained completely still. From a distance, it looked like a sheet of black glass, its abyssal shade hinting at profound depth.

He had learned his lesson the hard way.

The Shark Beast he encountered on Cliff Rock Island had burst from a similar pool inside the cavern, ambushing and killing his half-elf teammate in a single stroke.

Facing a matching environment now, Xia Nan was not about to make the same mistake twice.

He immediately alerted the squad, marking the pool area as a high-risk zone and directing everyone to keep a careful distance.

Moving past the mass of shattered fishman corpses, the group finally found the missing islanders.

Or rather, their remains.

Just like at the fishing village on Hare Island, the fishermen who had lived in Twin Canyon for generations had all been slaughtered, their bodies dumped as sacrificial offerings into a massive, hastily dug pit.

They were rotting and reeking in the open air.

Strangely, no swarms of flies or insects had been drawn by the stench of decay.

The group had no time to ponder the anomaly, however, as everyone's focus was drawn to the bizarre altar rising from the center of the clearing.

Unlike the previous two altars Xia Nan had seen—crude structures cobbled together from sea rocks—this build truly earned the title of an "altar."

Rising like a small hill from the flat ground, its base was tightly constructed from squared sea rocks carved with wave patterns, decorated with masses of shells, conches, and oysters, and dotted with gleaming pearls tucked between the stone layers.

Higher up, pale fish bones of various shapes were stacked into eerie, methodical lattice patterns, encircled by intertwined branches of colorful coral.

The entire structure tapered upward in a broad-based, conical pyramid.

Yet its most extraordinary feature lay at its summit.

Here, at what seemed to be the center of the Secret Realm, where all other otherworldly structures had been cleared away...

...the top of the altar displayed a single, glaring instance of clipping.

As if crossing over out of thin air, a physical structure had merged into the stone.

Half of an operating room was fused into the altar's peak.

The side with the entrance had completely vanished, exposing a floor paved in small green-and-white checkered tiles, with jagged fish bones and coral thrusting up through the stone from below.

The operating room's walls were painted white. A kerosene lamp with a shattered glass globe hung on one wall, and beside it, the door of a steel instrument cabinet swung wide open. The cabinet was completely empty, save for a few sea shells that had merged into its base from the altar.

In the very center of the room stood a marble operating table.

By its shape, it was the exact same model Xia Nan and the others had found in the cliff cave earlier. Now, however, the table was ruined—a massive crack ran through it from end to end. Heavy bloodstains covered its surface, and blood-soaked gauze and a Scalpel lay scattered across the floor nearby, as though a surgery had been underway at the exact moment of the crossover.

Yet no patient or corpse lay on the table; it was entirely empty.

What caught Xia Nan's attention most was a toppled sofa resting a short distance away.

Under normal circumstances, a sofa belonged in a waiting room for families or medical staff, not inside an operating room. Here, it sat wedged at an angle into the floor tile.

Resting on the cushions was a small, portable Briefcase.

Crafted from dark brown leather with an understated diamond pattern, the center of the case featured an dark-gold emblem embedded directly into the grain: a vertical stethoscope.

Flashing back to the information he had glimpsed from the Attribute Panel on the previous operating table, Xia Nan knew instantly where it came from.

This Briefcase belonged to the Secret Realm's "Medical Association."

It showed signs of long use, the leather at its corners worn white. Two spring-loaded metal clasps rested on the front, unlocked and sitting loose.

The narrow, dark gap between the upper and lower halves of the case seemed to invite anyone nearby to pry it open.

Having explored several Secret Realms, Xia Nan had gathered a few reliable rules about them.

For instance, structures that clashed wildly with their surroundings—brimming with otherworldly architecture while clipping into the terrain—often marked important locations, as did sudden open clearings at the realm's center.

More importantly, he knew that while some Secret Realms fully merged into the world, others retained pocket spaces, and nearly every realm possessed a central core object.

Like the gilded gourd in the Snake Den Secret Realm, the Flame Crystal staff in the Ash Valley Secret Realm, or the Sheep-Deer Figurine in the Evil God Secret Realm...

Through repeated exposure, Xia Nan had developed a subtle, instinctual sensitivity to these core objects.

Now, his past experience and high Perception flared with a sharp, unmistakable warning in his mind.

The core object of this Secret Realm was that very Briefcase bearing the Medical Association emblem.

Or rather, it was inside the Briefcase!

Xia Nan's heart stirred.

Just as he was considering how to explain this to his teammates, the dark pool nearby—silent as a mirror until now—suddenly broke into concentric ripples.

Glub.

Small bubbles broke the surface, and a massive silhouette, darker even than the deep water, began to rise slowly from below.

Thanks to Xia Nan's earlier warning, the squad had kept a watchful eye on the pool. The instant the water shifted, everyone snapped into combat stances.

Whether out of supreme confidence in its own power or simply because it sensed the party's readiness, the monster hiding in the deep did not burst from the water in a surprise leap like its kin on Cliff Rock Island.

Instead, it ascended with slow, almost leisurely deliberation, radiating an suffocating pressure.

Thud.

Water splashed in all directions as thick, stubby legs lifted the massive frame forward. Its webbed feet slammed onto the dry stone with a heavy, drum-like thump.

It was a humanoid Shark Beast.

Its disproportionate shark head—taking up nearly a quarter of its total body—and its heavily muscled, inverted-triangle torso confirmed it was of the same species as the one Xia Nan had slain.

However, standing upright at nearly twelve chi tall, with a burly, bloated frame packed with mass, it made the nine-chi Shark Beast from before look like a scaled-down prototype by comparison.

As veteran adventurers, the party was no stranger to bizarre monsters, and Xia Nan had already briefed them thoroughly on the Shark Beast's capabilities. Even given its immense size, its appearance alone would not have stunned them.

The shock came from what was fused to its body.

A pale human male torso, complete with visible surgical incisions, was merged directly into the Shark Beast's frame—clipping through its skin much like the displaced architecture throughout the valley.

Defying all natural anatomy, the human upper body had "grown" diagonally out of the right side of the beast's torso.

His head hung limp, hiding his face. His left arm dangled over the beast's abdomen, while his right arm and everything below his chest cavity were embedded fully inside the Shark Beast's body. His lower half protruded near the left rear of the beast's hip, two human legs dangling uselessly beside the monster's massive thigh.

Two distinct species, bound together in a single body.