Chapter 143 Strange Things
"..."
Blink.
Blink again.
I feel like something's wrong.
Let's go through the sequence of events in order.
First, just recently, a devastating shot from the Sword Demon successfully pierced the body of that wretched crow that was flying around and taunting, shattering its core—the final boss of the [Hidden Dungeon: Art Gallery]—and ending the hidden quest. The crow, after letting out a miserable cry, exploded into a shower of black liquid.
At the same time, our group also received the rewards for completing the level, including but not limited to: a large amount of [liquid life], branches of the golden tree, the wind-guiding flute, the arrow that arrives first after being shot later, the polarizing mirror... and the golden apple that Shengxin had been longing for.
As the guide to the final level, the demon [Mephisto] also reappears from where he previously disappeared, claiming to congratulate us on our success.
So far, there are no problems.
Then the Sword Demon suddenly started fighting with [Mephisto].
I have absolutely no idea what happened.
It was as if that guy had gone mad again, just like when we first met him. After quickly healing himself, he started shouting incomprehensible words like, "When are you going to stop messing with my life?" and "These damned guys, do they think they'll never taste defeat if they stay high and mighty?" He was wielding a straight sword wrapped in wind feather blades and slashing wildly at the demon who was still watching the show with amusement.
In short, to avoid being affected by man-made secondary disasters, we quickly gathered our completion rewards and withdrew from the constantly collapsing hidden city, then hurriedly moved towards the temporary safe zone where we had initially been.
But the danger doesn't end there.
As if by prior arrangement, the giant rats that had not yet been completely eradicated, along with the seemingly berserk cats and dogs that had wandered into the vicinity, were violently assaulting the last barrier separating the temporary safe zone from the outside world.
It was thanks to Sheng's prior instructions to Juncheng and Duheng to conduct some simple training with the survivors, block several entrances and exits, and set up barbed wire and scattered debris at both ends of the underground railway that they were able to hold out against the continuous onslaught until we arrived. Otherwise, they would have been breached much earlier.
However, the number of people remaining in the temporary safe zone is still nearly one-third less than when we left.
But only a small portion of them died from the bites and attacks of frenzied beasts; the other part...
"They were taken away by guys who called themselves [Doomsday Cultists]."
[Juncheng] also looked serious when he explained it to us.
"[Doomsday Cult]..."
He divided the medicine into several bottles and gave them to the seriously injured patients who urgently needed treatment. He thanked the two men again, who had been busy for almost a day and were already showing signs of fatigue, and told them to take a rest. When Sheng walked back, he kept staring at his feet, and his path was crooked and erratic, obviously thinking about some information.
"Did you think of something?" I said, reaching out to hand over a skewer of freshly grilled meat.
Ignoring the dust on his hands, Sheng took the food and put it directly into his mouth. He exhaled several mouthfuls of hot air before coming to his senses. He stuck out his tongue to cool it down for a while before finally resuming his reserved way of eating, taking small bites: "I do seem to have heard of those guys, but not in the game, but..." He bit his lower lip, "in my reality."
"Um?"
This piqued my curiosity, and I listened even more attentively to what Sheng would say next.
"Where should I begin..."
Sheng pondered for a while, and after drinking more than half of the bottled water in his hand, he finally looked up at me and said, "Brother Uriel, you should remember that I mentioned before that I used to be sick all the time, right?"
I nodded and met the gaze of those eyes, which were a slightly darker shade of green when memories surfaced.
Sheng continued calmly and without pause: "Because we hadn't seen any improvement, and the treatment was consistently ineffective and extremely expensive, almost emptying our family's savings, my parents, in desperation, sought out a group of strange people who claimed to be able to cure all diseases."
“Those guys are [doomsday cultists].
I questioned, "Such a strange name doesn't seem like that of a doctor who can cure diseases, does it?"
Sheng shook his head in denial: "No, when those guys contacted my parents, they didn't use this name. They just claimed to be doctors from a private medical institution, willing to provide all medical services from treatment to follow-up free of charge in order to test a new drug and observe its effects. Because it was such a rare opportunity, my parents agreed after thinking it over several times."
“Then they took you away for treatment,” I said.
"Yes, and they do seem to have cured my illness."
"You mean...it seems?"
Sheng paused for two seconds, avoiding the topic: "I also saw many children like me in their so-called medical institutions. They were also afflicted with strange diseases, were also brought here for treatment, and then their diseases were alleviated. Then, those guys started to act very strangely, always muttering strange words, like the end of the world or disasters, and always staring at the sky with fanatical eyes."
“I also found it strange at the time, but then I thought that there had been such rumors circulating in the shadows all along, so I didn’t pay attention to it and assumed that they just believed strange rumors. In addition, those guys didn’t seem to want to stop me from going home. I just heard that those guys seemed to have joined some strange underground religion, and then I didn’t pay attention to it anymore.”
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