Chapter 454
“Downstairs it is.” Jason took a long breath and headed first down the stairs.
“Okay, Mr. Lin, what do we expect to see down there? More of those monsters?” the detective asked: “Or different kinds of monsters or creatures?”
“I don’t know.” Jason shook his head as he walked over to the corner and slowly turned around - there were only further stairs down: “But keep your eyes open, and also, let me know if you even smell something weird. Because this limbo, in essence, is basically a realm of the mind and illusions, so there is a chance that you will see things from your personal nightmares and childhood trauma.”
“Okay.” the uniformed officer nodded: “Now - what kind of nightmare or trauma are we talking about? Clowns? Clowns with balloons?”
When this uniformed officer finished his sentence, a strange moving sound came from below as if there were some heavy things like desks or sofas being moved around.
“Oh god, did I just cause my fears to manifest?”
“Maybe, but no worries, it’s actually a thing.” Jason nodded at the uniformed officer and the detective wearing a canvas jacket: “Follow me, and don’t fall behind, call out to me if you see, hear or smell anything ...”
“I smell something.” before Jason finished his sentence, the detective wearing a canvas jacket raised her hand: “It’s like - like some kind of hazelnut coffee.”
“Shit, I smell it too.” the uniformed officer said with a frown: “It’s like the brew captain used to bring to the precinct.”
“Okay, something might be targeting you. ” Jason nodded: “Come closer.”
The tree continued down the stairs in a close formation with at least one person watching their back as they walked. Before long, they came down to the “floor” below - which turned out to be the same as the first floor of the precinct in terms of layout and positions of the furniture. The only difference was the dim lighting, as far as Jason could tell, as well as the emptiness and the tidiness - everything looked eerily well put together, not even one chair or one coffee was misplaced.
“Tell me again, what you see, what you hear and what you smell.” Jason narrowed his eyes and said.
“It’s the first floor of the precinct.” the uniformed officer said: “With nobody here - the lightings are kinda - ”
“Wait, say it to the walkie talkie. Tell me if anything stands out to you.”
“Sure.” the uniformed officer pressed the button on the silver walkie talkie and started speaking through it: “This is the first floor of the precinct, it’s a little dark. No one is here and the whole place is quite empty - the place is a bit of a mess though. Umm, I can still smell the hazelnut coffee, it seems to come from the captain’s office … and oh, the light seems to be flickering.”
“Okay. What about you, detective?”
“Is it my turn? Okay...” the detective wearing a canvas jacket took a strange look at the uniformed officer: “It’s the first floor of the precinct, the lighting is a little weird - parts of it are bright but parts of it are really dark but I can’t see the light bulbs lighting up - and I can still smell the hazelnut coffee.”
“Hazelnut coffee? The kind your captain used to bring to the precinct?” Jason asked.
“Yes.” “Yes.” the uniformed officer and detective answered.
Jason’s eyes lit up in silver as his left hand struck at the air in front of both the uniform officer and the detective in claw shape. When his fingers clenched tight, a small trace of light yellow air appeared in the space enclosed by his fingers.
“Found you, fucker!” Jason thrust his pen-spear at the direction of an office across the room and unleashed a beam of silver energy from the tip of the spear. Round cracks appeared out of thin air in front of all three of them, just like what would happen to a thick glass struck by a bullet. The sight of the precinct in each of their eyes also cracked up, just like the silver screen being torn apart while the movie was still projecting, none of the chairs, the desks, the coffee mugs seemed to be affected by the clash between the silver energy beam and the invisible “window” in the air, just that the vision of them was shattered.
“Boom!” the “window” was finally completely broken into pieces when Jason pushed the beam of silver energy forward and through the facade. An empty room appeared in front of them as the vision of the “precinct” crumbled around them. Inside the room standing in front of them, was a humanoid monster with a wide, asymmetrical face, long neck and an asymmetrical body with the right half with long limbs and the left half with much shorter ones. The face of the monster consisted of two different emotions: the half that was in a state of joy or euphoria was on the side of the body with short limbs, and the half in a state of sadness and despair was on the side of the longer limbs. The monster’s short left arm had a whip that seemed to be made of some kind of spiky spine in its hand, and the long arm had a heavy curved sword with five metal rings on its back and ridge.
Just when the illusion crumbled, the monster swung its short left arm at all three of them who came down the stairs. Jason pushed forward and raised his pen-spear to block the spine whip, and with an ear-piercing loud screech, he was pushed back a few steps by the sheer force in the whip strike.
The silver pen-spear, which was a manifestation of his actual weapon in the real world, was damaged for the first time - the part with which Jason used to block the whip attack was cracked by the impact of the whip. But before he could even examine the damage to his weapon, the monster lunged at Jason with the sword held high.
The five metal rings on the back of the sword made a tormenting sound as the monster swung the sword down. Jason raised his pen-spear once again at the sword, while also conjuring a silver bubble shield attempting to defend the two officers as well as himself from the attack. This time, it was him that wound up on the receiving end of a shadow attack - the monster’s sword split into three shadows as it cut through the air and struck the pen-spear as well as the silver bubble shield in three different angles.
“Crash!” the bubble shield burst, and the silver pen-spear was shattered with its broken shards shooting out in different directions like it was made of glass.
The detective wearing a canvas jacket and the uniformed officer were sent back by the shockwave from the bursted bubble shield as well as a spell cast by Jason at the last minute, their silver body armor blocked all of the silver shards from the shattered pen-spear. But Jason himself was not so lucky - the detective was horrified to see that a sharp shard was protruding from his right eye, and silver blood was running down from his face.
Hi Dear readers:
I will take a one week break when this arc wraps up - I will need to take some time to rest and plan the upcoming stories in details, and the finale.
Thank you very much for your support!
--Egao Chan