radicalducati Chapter 18 An Outcast Among Monsters
Chapter 18 An Outcast Among Monsters
Little Green closed its deep blue eyes, focused its mind, and continued to sense the fleeting aura, walking in the direction it had sensed.
Xia Zhaozhao used the flower bed and the car roof for leverage, hopping and skipping along behind her.
"I said... you didn't need to provoke those monsters in the community garden." After leaving that battlefield, Xiao Lü turned to Xia Zhaozhao and said,
"The signal clearly comes from around the garden and extends out of the community."
"...But before I could even say it, you were already yelling something about Niten Ichiryu and charging up there with a roar."
"Oh well, it doesn't matter!" Xia Zhaozhao landed on the stone bench, turned around and stuck out her tongue.
"Consider it a quick cleanup of the area downstairs, so that people don't end up wandering around upstairs near our place one day."
The two quickly left the residential area and stepped onto the flooded streets. Xia Zhaozhao jumped between the still relatively sturdy streetlights on both sides of the road, having a great time.
"Hey! Can you come closer to me?" Little Green struggled to keep up with Xia Zhaozhao, who was darting around everywhere. "You're jumping so far, it takes up more magic power to maintain the ice cap to shield you from the rain!"
"Okay~ I got it~" Xia Zhaozhao replied reluctantly, toning down her tone a little.
The two continued walking along the street and stopped in front of a shop next to an intersection.
They found a life-sized plastic sign with the face of a washed-up celebrity printed on it, covered in crisscrossing, bitten marks.
"It feels like that guy stayed here for a long time," Little Green said speechlessly. "It seems that after it escaped, it mistook this for a human and gnawed on it for a while before giving up."
"Wow, how stupid."
The two continued to follow the scent, and soon they arrived at a fork in the road near a large supermarket. The supermarket doors were wide open, and the interior was pitch black, with the shadows of many monsters moving about inside.
Xia Zhaozhao immediately became alert. With a thought, the greatsword in her hand turned into specks of light and dissipated, and she instead gripped the woodcutter's knife tightly with both hands.
"There are so many monsters in the supermarket. Could that guy have hidden inside? The supermarket is so complicated. If we really have to go in and look for him... it will be a real hassle."
Xiao Lü sensed carefully, "No... the scent didn't enter the supermarket, it went into the park over there."
"That's good!" Xia Zhaozhao breathed a sigh of relief.
The two turned and entered the park. Here, the water was also severely accumulated; the lawns had turned into mud, and the trees were crooked, their branches and leaves all showing a withered yellow color from decay.
Xiao Lü kept adjusting her direction and finally reached the children's playground in the middle. Her gaze fell on the plastic slide, where there were obvious traces of slime that had not been washed away by the rain.
"You just finished catching someone and got beaten up, and you still have the mood to play on the slide?" Xia Zhaozhao's face showed an incredulous expression. "Are you really that childlike?"
Xiao Lü looked at the obvious crushed and deformed marks at the entrance of the slide, as well as the remaining grayish-black tissue fragments: "...I think it's just stuck."
They didn't encounter any monsters along the way, but that didn't mean the tracking was going smoothly.
"Hey, is the little green GPS malfunctioning? It keeps going in circles!" Xia Zhaozhao jumped onto the utility pole and complained to the little green GPS below.
"If you can't find that guy, I'm going to give you a bad review!"
"Shut up." Little Green raised her head irritably and glared at her. "How strange, this guy's aura seems to be lingering in these alleys?"
"Going around in circles?" Xia Zhaozhao asked, intrigued. "Like playing some kind of hide-and-seek puzzle game?"
"It's more like a stealth assassination game... its movement paths are very... deliberate? Like it's deliberately avoiding something."
As soon as she finished speaking, several blurry monster figures appeared at the alleyway ahead. Xiao Lü clearly felt that the aura suddenly veered off onto a side road as it approached the alleyway.
"By the way, Zhao Zhao, have we encountered any decent monster groups along the way?" Xiao Lü asked.
"Yes... I didn't cut down many people after leaving the residential area."
Xia Zhaozhao seemed to have a sudden realization: "Could it be that the guy who ran away... was hiding from these ordinary monsters? But... why? Was he socially awkward? Or was he being bullied?"
"...I don't think it can have such sophisticated emotions."
The two followed the swirling scent, turning and twisting until they finally arrived at a dead end in the alley, where there was only a half-covered manhole cover submerged in water.
"Oh no, we're doomed." Xia Zhaozhao was somewhat disheartened. "If it crawls into the sewer, we're completely out of luck! We can't exactly crawl in after it, can we?"
"...No, it didn't stay down there for long." Little Green flew into the sky and carefully sensed its surroundings.
She pointed to another half-open manhole cover not far away: "The scent is coming from this manhole cover. And I can sense something big moving deep in the sewer."
"Could it be that it was scared by that guy?" Xia Zhaozhao couldn't understand. "It doesn't make sense! It's so strong, it made us suffer so much, why would it be afraid of its own kind?"
"Perhaps they are not the same kind," Little Green shook her head and guessed.
"Its strength doesn't come from its physical form; it only became so terrifying after it devoured those people and monsters."
"Those monsters on the streets, they hunt hunters and other creatures, seemingly primarily to obtain biomass and grow larger."
"And this guy can not only devour humans, but also monsters... and then stitch their power and consciousness into his own body, making him completely different from ordinary monsters."
Xia Zhaozhao was a little confused: "Aren't they all made of those black threads? How can the same thing have so many different patterns?"
"Although they come from the same source, they really don't seem to be the same species at all," Xiao Lü added.
Little Green flew out of the alley. This time, the aura didn't take a detour, but pointed straight ahead to a tall building that had just been topped out and stood alone on the side of the street not far away.
The two cautiously entered the ground floor of the building, which was empty except for various kinds of construction debris. Breathing in the damp air, they climbed upwards along the dusty path.
When the two reached the fourth-floor landing, they discovered a dead body there.
"Eek—so much blood!" Xia Zhaozhao was startled by the sudden appearance of the corpse and instinctively took a half step back, almost bumping into Xiao Lü. But she quickly rallied and patted her chest:
"That startled me, but given the current situation, finding a corpse isn't unusual... wait, wait!"
She quickly noticed the anomaly: "Little Green! You said... the aura of that deformed child passed through here, right? Then why didn't it eat this corpse? It doesn't make sense!"
"I don't know either..." Xiao Lü frowned, feeling something was amiss. She cautiously approached the corpse, squatted down, and examined it carefully.
The body was dressed in a blue subway employee uniform stained with dirt and blood, lying on its back on the ground with a deep laceration on its neck, blood splattered on the wall, and a utility knife next to it.
"Suicide," Xiao Lü said softly, pointing to the deceased's exposed skin. Xia Zhaozhao noticed obvious tissue abnormalities on his arms and cheeks.
"His body has already mutated because of the rain... He may have witnessed the mutations of others beforehand, or he may have sensed his own abnormality and didn't want to become a monster, so..."
"How pitiful." Xia Zhaozhao sighed after hearing this. At least he left in a human way.
Xiao Lü didn't speak, but began to grope the corpse and its surroundings. Soon, she pulled a black, rather thick object from the inside pocket of the corpse.
"Huh? A walkie-talkie?" Xia Zhaozhao curiously took it and played with it, but suddenly something occurred to her, and her eyes lit up.
"The reason the monster didn't eat the corpse... is it possible that the walkie-talkie made some sound that scared it away?"
"..." Xiao Lü's lips twitched upon hearing this. "Although it's outrageous, I can't think of a more reasonable explanation."
"Hey hey~ CQCQCQ~!" Xia Zhaozhao put the walkie-talkie to her mouth and shouted loudly.
"What are you doing?" Xiao Lü couldn't stand it anymore. She took the walkie-talkie from her hand and pointed to a prominent button. "You have to press this talk button first to send your voice out. When you release it, you can only receive... Huh?"
Xiao Lü looked at the model number on the side of the walkie-talkie and was somewhat surprised: "This is a Storm brand? It has a high power output, a thick casing, and is waterproof and drop-resistant... Good stuff."
If they could find another walkie-talkie on the same frequency, they could communicate over long distances.
Xiao Lü was thinking to herself that she would put the walkie-talkie away first and study it carefully when she had the chance.
Xia Zhaozhao, however, was filled with curiosity about this new toy she had never seen before. She took it back, pressed the talk button, and then put the walkie-talkie to her mouth, tentatively letting out two strange noises:
"Ugh! Hmm!"