In the southeast of the Moon Creek Plain lies an inconspicuous village. It's not much different from the hundreds of other villages on the plain. Simple, honest villagers, muddy paths, low-lying houses…
But deep beneath this village, few know that a huge, naturally formed sinkhole has existed here for thousands of years.
As you descend into the man-made shaft, the temperature gradually decreases and the space becomes more spacious. The headquarters of the "Relief Association" gradually reveals its full appearance deep within the pit.
"President, Subject Fifty-Six is dying." A man dressed in a gray robe and wearing a hood carefully approached Theodore and said respectfully.
The old man stopped what he was doing, put down his pen and paper, and gestured for the other person to take him to see it.
Walking through the damp, dark passageway, the torchlight on the walls flickered on and off. Even with a thick mask on, the man could still smell the stench that seemed to come from hell. He quickly glanced at the head of the relief association beside him; the man's expression was normal, showing no sign of anything amiss, which secretly surprised him.
The two arrived at a heavy iron gate, and Theodore gestured to the guard to push it open.
The creaking sound of the axle slowly rose, dull yet grating.
The man glanced at the scene inside the door, his heart skipped a beat, then he pinched his thigh hard before following the chairman in front of him inside.
Using the word "hell" to describe it here is the most compassionate way to put it.
Thick iron chains, enormous iron cages, terrifying howls—dozens of monsters, stitched together from dismembered limbs and body parts, were imprisoned in cages on either side of the cave. They scraped their limbs against the rocks beneath them and slammed their bodies against the sturdy iron cages, their blood and saliva spraying onto the ground, creating deadly bubbles like strong acid.
The members of the "Relief Society" responsible for guarding them were divided into several teams. One team was responsible for guarding and suppressing these "Necromancer Successors." They wore strange bone whistles around their necks, and if they found any monsters being overly active or engaging in self-harm, they would blow the whistles forcefully. The whistles had no effect on the human body, but they could make these terrifying monsters emit a sound similar to the swaying of a rattlesnake's tail from under the skin of their backs, thus calming them down or causing them to faint.
Another team worked as sorters at the other end of the room. Freshly processed materials from the "slaughterhouse" would occasionally fall into collection bins from the sloping chutes on the mountainside. The sorters' main workshop handled the human remains, selecting and classifying them. The limbs of high-value "inheritors" or "mutants" were tagged and sent to the "furnace," while the remaining, less valuable corpses were consumed as food for the "necromantic inheritors."
The last team placed the selected body parts together on a protruding rock that looked like an operating table, then used needle and thread to piece the remains together into a complete body. They then carried it into a strange stone coffin, which was filled with black liquid.
The man accompanied Theodore to an iron cage. Inside, the monster lay sprawled on the ground, its muscles and bones slowly dissolving. Red, green, and white liquids mingled and flowed everywhere through cracks in the ground.
The man flipped through the book in his hands, reading aloud word by word: "Test subject number fifty-six, it has been twenty-six days since the melting was completed. The bones of the inheritor and fourteen other corpses were used. The plan was to inject seven kinds of alien abilities, including 'poisonous blood,' 'regeneration,' 'speed,' 'limb sharpening,' and 'shriek,' but four were actually successful. Three days ago, symptoms of sluggishness and weakness appeared, and this morning, flesh dissolution occurred... um... Chairman?"
Theodore stared at the monster before him, as if in a trance, motionless.
After a long while, the old man suddenly asked, "Did the first person in the world who discovered fire ever imagine that humans would not only use it to cook food, but also to burn their own kind to death?"
"Huh?" The man listened to the other person's words and couldn't understand why the president, who was usually so engrossed in research, would suddenly ask such a question.
Theodore's face was full of doubt as he whispered, "Was it right or wrong for me to give up staying in the capital, part ways with those three, join the 'Elders' Council,' and try to end all the conflicts with the results of my research?"
Looking at Theodore's expression, the man cautiously asked, "President, what should we do with this test subject?"
The latter glanced at the cage, uttered a single sentence, and turned to leave the hall.
"Burn it."
Back in his underground laboratory, Theodore watched as the locked door was opened from the inside, his face grim as he looked at the figure inside.
"Who gave you the audacity to enter my room without my permission?!"
The man in the black robe ignored Theodore's roar, instead finding a chair to sit down and looking at the other man, saying, "Master, I think it's necessary for us to have a talk."
"Talk?" Theodore laughed angrily. "What makes you think you're qualified to talk to me?"
Throat Bone glanced at the manuscripts and manuals on the table and sighed: "Are you still planning to hand over the results of our decades of research to the Twilight Knights?"
Theodore slammed his fist on the table and roared, "We?! That's my research! You're just my assistant at best!"
Throatbone stood up from his seat, knocking over the chair, and raised his voice a third: "You should know! Many people in the relief association have lost their families and homes because of persecution by the church! What would people think if we told them that we wanted to join the church's Knights of Twilight?!"
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