“Huh what?”
“Hurry up and follow!”
Dunn turned around and gave Klein a strange look.
“Nothing…
nothing!”
Klein scratched his head awkwardly.
He naturally felt embarrassed to admit his misunderstanding at this moment, so he put away his little schemes and obediently followed.
Klein followed Dunn into the underground passage.
At a crossroads, Dunn turned back and said seriously to Klein:
“Watch my next movements carefully and do as I do.
This concerns your life safety.”
Dunn’s deep voice rang out.
Klein saw him bend his arm, then extend it, repeating the motion continuously.
Though confused, Klein still obediently began to extend and retract his arm, imitating Dunn.
Seeing this, Dunn nodded in satisfaction and led Klein into the duty room outside the Chanis Gate.
“Could it be the effect of that Sealed Artifact?”
A flash of inspiration crossed Klein’s mind.
Then his head suddenly went numb, and even his body, which had been continuously extending and retracting his arm, grew increasingly stiff.
It wasn’t until Dunn quickly walked over and pushed him that he finally recovered.
Only then did Klein truly understand the danger of a “2” level Sealed Artifact, and a wave of fear washed over him.
He looked at the other three people in the room besides Leonard—all colleagues who had come from the Backlund diocese.
Klein and his group took a carriage, carrying Sealed Artifact 2-049 to the dock district.
[2-049] The Antigonus family puppet, suspected to be a Sealed Artifact formed by fusing a Sequence 5 Beyonder characteristic of the Seer pathway.
It becomes agitated when encountering matters related to the Antigonus family’s descendants.
Its supernatural ability can control 1-2 people, causing their thoughts and movements to stagnate.
If no outsider intervenes to interrupt this process, the controlled person will completely become a puppet.
More than ten meters behind the Evernight Church group, Truman held an astrology crystal ball and maintained a steady pace in pursuit.
He was extremely careful to keep a safe distance, and as an Astrologer who regularly dealt with Demonesses, none of the Evernight Church members noticed his trail.
The three Evernight Church members quickly arrived at the entrance of a warehouse in the dock district.
They encountered an attack from a Sequence 7 Beyonder of the Seer pathway outside the warehouse.
Klein, as a rookie, was responsible for staying away from the battlefield to ensure the safety of Sealed Artifact 2-049.
Although they were all very experienced Beyonders, the Magician possessed many flashy and practical abilities such as Flame Jump, Air Bullet, Paper Substitution, and Illusion Creation, so the two sides fell into a stalemate for a time.
Dunn the Nightmare, Aiur Harson the Midnight Poet, and Lorotta the Gravedigger couldn’t stop the other party immediately.
The three guarding Sealed Artifact 2-049, including Klein, remained on alert for other dangers.
Klein and his group deliberately wounded the Clown’s companion to lure him into the unknown warehouse, testing the hidden dangers within.
Just as Dunn used his Nightmare ability combined with the Midnight Poet’s chanting to forcibly control the Clown, Lorotta raised her revolver and fired at the Magician dressed as a Clown.
Just as the bullet was about to hit the Clown, an unusually piercing scream suddenly came from the deepest part of the warehouse.
“Ah!”
The terror contained in that voice instantly awakened the Clown, who had been sinking into the dream.
The bullet Lorotta fired only managed to hit the Tuxedo Clown’s stomach.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
At this moment, the previously quiet “2-049,” sealed in the iron box, suddenly went berserk, as if sensing the presence of Antigonus bloodline.
Huff!
Huff!
Huff!
Heavy panting sounded from within the warehouse.
Klein and the others had confirmed through divination beforehand that the warehouse contained great danger, so none of them acted rashly for the time being.
Whoosh!
Severed arms, pale bones, torn intestines, a still-beating half-heart, intestines filled with yellowish-brown contents…
Various body parts that made one’s sanity plummet were thrown out of the warehouse.
Ugh~
Having never experienced anything like this before, Klein nearly couldn’t hold back and vomited his breakfast.
He forced himself to stay alert and replaced the spent bullet casings with specialized demon-hunting bullets.
Dunn stood in front of Klein, raised his pistol, and fired a volley into the warehouse.
Unfortunately, his bullets seemed to vanish into the deep sea without any echo.
Huff!
Huff!
Huff!
The heavy breathing grew closer and closer.
A gray color gradually enveloped the “open” doorway.
A humanoid creature over two meters tall walked out.
Pale broken bones protruded from beneath its skin, and grayish-white rotten viscous fluid flowed all over its body.
“This is…
Klein’s mouth twitched as he looked at the giant monster before him, his heart pounding uncontrollably.
“Beyonder power is out of control…”
Dunn saw through the situation at a glance.
He said to the Gravedigger Lorotta beside him in a deep voice:
“It should also be a type of undead.
Can you find its weakness?”
“I’ll try my best.”
Lorotta’s pupils turned gray as she used her spiritual vision to search for the opponent’s weakness.
Leonard raised his pistol for covering fire, but the bullets simply couldn’t penetrate the monster’s hide defense.
Seeing this, Leonard helplessly began chanting poetry with Aiur Harson.
Although he appeared focused on the out-of-control monster before him, from his slightly twitching ears and side-facing stance, it was clear he was also keeping considerable attention on the rear.
A sleep-inducing power spread out.
Under the Midnight Poet’s chanting, the twisted gray-white monster was also affected to some extent, and its movements began to slow.
Roar!
A piercing scream that struck directly at the soul came from the gray monster’s mouth, carrying a force that impacted the spirit bodies of the six Nighthawks around it.
Klein was forced out of his spiritual vision state, blood trickling from his nose.
Leonard and Aiur Harson fell backward, blood seeping from their seven orifices.
Borgia, Dunn, and Lorotta each stepped back two steps, their faces extremely pale.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Just as the six Nighthawks were nearly incapacitated by a single scream, Sealed Artifact 2-049 suddenly began to riot.
Buzz!
Klein, who was closest to Sealed Artifact 2-049, felt his thoughts begin to stagnate.
He glanced around with his peripheral vision—Dunn and the others were either unconscious or struggling to resist the monster’s attacks, with no time to lend a hand.
“No, I have to save myself.”
Klein quickly made up his mind.
The only thing that could help him now was that mysterious gray fog.
And so, as Truman approached the battlefield in his invisible state, he watched Klein walking backwards in a slow, distorted counterclockwise motion.
+++
T/N: Thanks for reading!