spaceship?
crew?
A sacrifice?
These words grazed Elisa's ears like blades, as if they could cut bloody marks into her soul.
Elisa desperately tried to control her body from trembling.
Taran's cries continued, and even as a listener, Elisa could clearly feel his pain and despair.
“I have nothing left. I have given you the most precious things in my life... Great God of the Void... You have clearly changed me... But why... Why do you still refuse to show yourself before me?”
Gradually, Taran's tone became increasingly self-pitying.
"Is it that man? I smelled that scent... the scent of divine favor... No, no, no, it can't be... I know that guy... He's still in human form, he's been trapped in that disgusting, fragile shell all along... He can't... he can't be... No one on this ship has ever sensed the presence of a god except me... Wait, maybe I should go see him, or... I can give him to the great Star God first—No! Are you crazy?! That guy, that despicable thief, he touched the Star God first, but divine favor didn't fall on him, never..."
Taran's appearance became increasingly strange.
Sometimes he seems to be talking to himself, but other times it sounds like he has split off into another personality and is arguing with himself.
"No, I did nothing wrong. I didn't, I didn't. I did it for their own good. My crew are all good crew members... That's why I so generously allowed them to drink the nectar that God had given us... You see, they soon felt God's call... They are gradually shedding their lowly and clumsy monkey bodies and becoming more noble and perfect beings... No one can steal my credit, and no one can take away God's favor from me... Just look at how we are now to know that..."
Gradually, his voice became weaker.
Elisa heard a humble, pained voice.
“No, I am… I am the Queen of all insects… I am… the Mother of all… I heard your call, and without hesitation I brought my people here… I even… already have so many followers… Yes, I am the chosen one… I will form a dark womb in the void and give birth to my people through my Queen Insect… My body is ready for this… I am…”
Elisa wanted to rush out, grab Taran by the neck, and scream at him to stop that horrible, piercing sound.
But in reality, she remained huddled in the dilapidated ventilation duct left over from three hundred years ago, not daring to move an inch.
The twitching and writhing movements of Taran gradually subsided.
And the terrible screams stopped.
Elisa watched Taran's every move with immense fear.
She suspected that Taran had fainted (or fallen asleep?), which should have brought Elisa peace of mind, but in reality, it only intensified her torment.
The stench of blood from the young crew member's body mingled with the incense from Sunut, creating a nauseating, suffocating smell.
But at this critical moment, Elisa couldn't even catch her breath.
Her strength was waning rapidly, and it wouldn't be easy to slowly retreat silently through the three-hundred-year-old ventilation duct. Moreover, she couldn't be sure if Taran would remain in this erratic, incoherent state when he regained consciousness.
At least, when Elisa last saw Taran, he was very good at disguising himself as a human—if that was the case, his senses would only have become more acute.
They wanted to escape.
I want to escape, I want to escape, I want to escape from this damn place, I want to get away from that maddening monster in the warehouse...
Elisa could hear her "little inspirations" screaming inside her skull.
However, she was just as afraid to move her body as much as she wanted to escape from where she was now.
Elisa stared intently at Taran's body, unsure if he was truly asleep.
Damn it.
Elisa cursed all of this in her heart.
When she arrived, Taran must have been "dealing with" the young crew member, or he must have been in a daze, otherwise how could he not have noticed the commotion?
Elisa felt a crazy voice in her head constantly muttering and calculating.
No… perhaps there’s another possibility. Maybe Taran had already discovered her presence, and everything she saw here was just Taran putting on an act.
Now, Taranf lies on the fresh corpse, pretending to be asleep, but in reality, he is secretly and coldly observing her.
This thought terrified Elisa to the point of madness.
She bent her index finger and stuck it between her teeth to barely stop the clicking sound from her upper and lower teeth.
A metallic taste of blood emanated from the spot where her teeth and knuckles met. Only then did Elisa realize that she had unknowingly bitten herself, without even feeling the slightest pain.
The surroundings became very quiet.
There wasn't even the slightest bit of ordinary, minor noise.
There was no breathing sound, no rustling of fabric from small human movements, and not even the humming noise of the old equipment inside the Apollo.
The entire private warehouse was as if Taran had cut it off from the world and isolated it.
She might be trapped here for millions of years, until she turns to bones and can no longer move.
Absurd thoughts popped into Elisa's mind again, and she felt herself on the verge of collapse...
"call……"
Then, she heard herself take a soft breath.
It was a completely unconscious act; she had been holding her breath for far too long… and when she did breathe, the sound was deafening in the otherwise silent pipes.
The next second, Taran moved.
He suddenly turned around, his prominent, mulberry-like eyes darting around a few times before fixing directly on the air vent.
Elisa let out a soft gasp.
She suddenly shrank back and used all her strength to run back the way she came.
Elisa was certain that she had never been so skillful or agile in her entire life, not even when she was working so hard to pass the vice-captain's test.
The force that drove her was not the fear of death, but... the fear of Taran.
She quickly distanced herself from Taran's warehouse.
But at that moment, the ventilation duct beneath her body began to vibrate violently.
"Who...is it..."
A slow, muffled, wet voice came from the other end of the dark pipe.
Then came that gurgling, wet, frictional sound.
That's Taran.
Taran has climbed into the pipe—
Even from this distance, Elisa could still clearly sense the other person's presence.
His constantly writhing body was struggling to squeeze into the narrow passage.
Elisa's mind went blank.
She didn't have time to think about it at all.
He climbed straight out of the nearest pipe opening.
"Bang--"
There wasn't time to dismantle the rusted railings one by one by hand. Elisa braced her elbows against the pipe wall, kicked the railings open, and then rolled down the drain with her head in her hands.
"I see you...I see you..."
Taran's screams still came through the vent with perfect clarity.
Elisa rushed frantically toward the warehouse door.
Thanks to her authority as vice-captain, the metal door slid open smoothly to both sides, and Elisa rushed out without looking back.
"Sizzle..."
But right behind her, the wet, tingling friction sound continued unabated.
Elisa didn’t know how Taran did it, but his swollen and deformed body didn’t seem as sluggish as it appeared.
What chilled her even more were the faint sounds emanating from behind the metal walls.
Elisa didn't even know if it was a hallucination born of extreme panic, but... her intuition was telling her that there was something behind the wall... something she never wanted to see in her life.
Elisa didn't stop; she gritted her teeth and sprinted toward the elevator.
She had to escape.
She can calmly face a spaceship accident; she can accept death.
However, she could never allow herself to be captured by that monster and then placed before the statue of that evil god like a lamb with its throat slit.
"Sizzle... sizzle..."
Just as Elisa rushed into the elevator, shrinking into a corner and trembling uncontrollably.
Taran's deformed body had already cast a heavy shadow at the other end of the corridor.
The wet feet, evenly distributed on the bottom of the taran's abdomen, trod on the ground, leaving a long trail of foul-smelling slime.
However, as Taran finally arrived, the metal doors of the elevator slid down very slowly.
"No……"
Elisa pounded on the button leading to the upper deck, but the elevator doors seemed stuck and wouldn't budge.
In the end, Elisa could only press her back against the elevator wall, wishing she could embed herself completely into it.
Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she could no longer hold back her sobs.
She will be caught—
She'll be caught by that monster—
She will—
"Snap—"
The sound of the elevator doors closing brought Elisa back to her senses, which was on the verge of losing control.
Elisa looked up abruptly and realized that the elevator was not malfunctioning at all. The doors closed, the mechanical hum of its operation filled the air, and the elevator car was gradually moving upwards.
Taran didn't have time to grab her before the elevator doors closed.
It wasn't until this moment that Elisa finally caught her breath.
She sat down softly on the floor, watching the elevator buttons change.
Then, when the elevator doors opened again, she gritted her teeth, stood up again, and rushed out.
"Vice-Captain Alyssa?"
"Hey, Alyssa?"
...
She encountered several people in the brightly lit office corridor, who all stared at her in shock.
Elisa didn't stop walking because she had no idea whether these people were the so-called "familiars" that Taran had mentioned. What she had heard in the ventilation ducts completely destroyed her sense of security about the spaceship and her trust in other people.
Just as she turned down a corridor to avoid other people.
A pair of cold hands reached out silently, grabbed her, and dragged her forcefully into the shadows.
Author's Note: My sister-in-law's sanity is almost depleted...
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