Chapter 131: Sweet Dreams

Time to Hunt[8]

Chapter 131: Sweet Dreams

Have you ever watched a horror movie?

Okay, that was a stupid question. I’m sure you’ve all watched at least one in your lives.

Ghosts, monsters, zombies, creatures you can’t even identify... Then there are the obligatory mad-science labs. Scientists wandering around in strange outfits, doing who knows what, and, of course, the clichéd villain behind all the madness.

Then along comes our idiot protagonist, who somehow manages to land right in the middle of it all.

That was exactly the kind of fucked-up situation I was in right now.

Actually, mine was even worse.

Why?

Because I’m an idiot with an unrivaled talent for getting myself into trouble!

All I’d had to do was kill this fucking guy back at that damn bar. That was it. A simple, clean job, over as quickly as possible.

So what had I done instead?

Now I was wandering around a laboratory that turned people into monsters, following one of the biggest psychopaths I’d ever met.

Wonderful, wasn’t it?

God, what am I doing...?

I turned my head slightly and looked at Oswald.

He stood in front of a closed room a few steps behind us. His hands were clasped behind his back, his usual expressionless face giving nothing away as he waited for Marven to finish.

There wasn’t the slightest sign of discomfort on his face.

But I wanted to believe that, deep down, even he was disturbed by what we were seeing.

At least one of us had to be a normal person, right?

I turned my attention back to Marven.

I’d been following him for about fifteen minutes, and I’d already lost count of how many rooms we’d passed.

Sometimes he stopped in front of a room, examined whatever was inside for a few seconds, then continued without a word. Other times, he didn’t even bother looking.

Almost nothing seemed to interest him.

Or perhaps he was simply used to all of it.

I couldn’t decide which was more frightening.

I didn’t know exactly what they were doing here, but I could make a guess from what I’d seen so far.

Nexus experiments on humans.

Maybe something involving monsters, too...

Actually, there didn’t seem to be much difference between the two anymore.

One of the rooms we’d just passed had contained a man who resembled a lizard. Or rather, something I assumed had once been human. White webs surrounded his body, stretching all the way to the ceiling. Liquid emerged from between his fingers in fine strands that dangled from his wrists.

At first, I’d thought spiders had wrapped him up.

Then I’d realized he was spinning the webs himself.

In another room, there was a young girl.

Apart from the small horns growing from either side of her head, she looked fairly normal. At least at first glance.

But the veins spreading from her neck across her entire body had turned dark purple. Some bulged beneath her skin. Others had already burst.

She was lying on the floor.

Blood flowed from her eyes, running down her cheeks to her chin before dripping into the small red pool beneath her.

Her chest wasn’t moving.

I stared at her for a while.

How old was she?

Sixteen? Seventeen?

I didn’t know.

And I didn’t want to find out.

"Hmm... Looks like she suffered an overload."

Marven’s voice made me flinch.

He’d approached the glass and was looking down at the girl. I couldn’t see any sadness or regret on his face. He seemed more disappointed that he hadn’t gotten the result he’d expected.

"If she’d been a little luckier, perhaps..."

He didn’t finish.

Instead, he suddenly turned toward me.

"Interesting, isn’t it?"

"Huh?"

Marven pointed at the girl behind the glass.

"How she gave in to despair when hope was so close."

For a moment, I had no idea what to say.

Did I understand what he meant?

No.

Did I want to?

Absolutely not.

Without waiting for my answer, Marven shrugged and started walking.

"Come on. There’s plenty more to see!"

I wished there wasn’t...

Reluctantly, I followed him.

The atmosphere changed when we entered the next corridor.

The doors here were much larger. Small screens stood beside each one, and symbols I didn’t recognize marked their surfaces. Armed guards waited outside some of them.

A sound from the first room made me slow down.

Tap... Tap... Tap...

It sounded like someone tapping their nails against the other side of the glass.

When I turned my head, I saw what it was.

A creature stood on all fours, its skin almost completely transparent. I could make out its internal organs beneath a pale blue glow. Where its head should have been was a round mouth fringed with small teeth, opening and closing like a flower.

The creature stopped in front of the glass.

Then something black moved inside its body.

Tap!

It struck the glass again.

This time, I saw where the sound was coming from.

A human-shaped hand was pressing outward from inside its abdomen.

I immediately looked away.

Damn it, what is that thing?!

Looking elsewhere didn’t help much.

In the next room, a long-legged creature was walking upside down across the ceiling. Two extra arms protruded from its shoulders, gripping the walls as its head turned in an almost complete circle every few seconds.

Another room held a monster covered in black scales from the neck down, with a single large eye in the middle of its face. Chains secured it to the floor.

As we passed, its eye began following us.

Or rather...

It began following me.

I quickened my pace.

Marven, meanwhile, was as relaxed as a tourist strolling through a museum.

At one point, he even tried to buy a drink from a vending machine at the end of the corridor.

When it didn’t work, he sighed in disappointment.

"Unbelievable. My mother spends all that money building this place, but she can’t even get a working drinks machine installed."

I looked at him.

Then at the rooms we’d left behind.

Then back at him.

I was still trying to understand why there was a vending machine here in the first place. And the damn thing was coin-operated.

You son of a...

No.

I needed to stay calm.

I would get an opportunity to kill this man.

I just had to wait a little longer.

Unfortunately, keeping that promise to myself became much harder when we entered the next corridor.

There were no monsters here.

At least, none that I could see.

Instead, dozens of large capsules lined both sides of the corridor. Each was slightly taller than a person and filled with pale blue liquid.

There were people inside them.

Women, men, young people...

All of them had their eyes closed, their bodies motionless as though they’d drifted into a peaceful sleep. Thin tubes attached to their mouths and noses connected to machines at the tops of the capsules.

The silence here was far more unsettling than the noise in the previous corridors.

Only the steady hum of machinery could be heard.

I approached one of the capsules beside me.

The woman inside looked to be in her thirties. Her brown hair floated in the liquid. Her face was so peaceful that, for a moment, I thought she really was asleep.

What was she dreaming about?

Was she talking to someone she loved?

Perhaps she was having dinner with her family.

Or maybe she thought she was living an ordinary life, unaware of any of this.

What would I want to see if I were in her place?

"Ah, here we are!"

Marven’s cheerful voice interrupted my thoughts.

I turned to find him standing in front of another capsule.

With his palm pressed against the glass, he was smiling at the young man inside.

"Look at him. Doesn’t he seem peaceful?"

I didn’t answer.

Marven tilted his head slightly.

"I wonder if he’s really asleep."

"Huh?"

Before I could say anything else, he punched the glass.

CRACK!

I jumped.

"What—"

A large crack spread across the surface with the second blow.

On the third, the capsule shattered.

SPLAAASH!

Blue liquid burst out with a loud rush.

I jumped back to keep it away from my feet. As glass scattered across the floor, the young man suspended inside pitched forward and fell onto the wet ground.

THUD!

For a few seconds, the only sound was liquid draining from the broken capsule.

My eyes darted between it and Marven.

What is this lunatic doing?!

The tubes attached to the young man’s body had torn loose. His hair clung to his face, and his arms lay spread on either side of him.

He wasn’t moving.

Marven crouched and poked his shoulder with a finger.

"Hey?"

No response.

He poked him again.

"Is he dead?"

There was a hint of surprise in his voice.

"Hmm... Doesn’t look like it to me."

He picked up a shard of glass from the floor.

As soon as I realized what he was about to do, I opened my mouth.

"Marven, I think—"

He drove the glass into the man’s palm.

The words caught in my throat.

The sharp shard pierced his skin. A red line spread beneath his hand, followed by drops of blood mingling with the blue liquid on the floor.

The young man still didn’t move.

Marven frowned.

"What? Seriously?"

He brought a hand to his chin and thought for a moment.

"How boring."

Standing up, he brushed a few droplets off his clothes.

"I guess there’s nothing we can do."

Then he turned toward the capsule beside him.

"Maybe we’ll have better luck with this one."

Stop...

I couldn’t get the word out.

Please, just stop.

Marven was about to place his hand on the second capsule when—

"Cough! Cough!"