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The emergency light inside the elevator flickered to life in response.
The pale light illuminated every corner of the cramped metal cage.
With a tooth-grinding screech of metal friction, the elevator began its slow descent.
The clean scent of disinfectant mixed with climate-controlled air from the upper levels was rapidly being replaced by another, more primal and pungent odor.
At first, it was just a faint hint of rust.
But as the elevator continued to sink, the smell grew richer and heavier.
It was as if the doors to an ancient slaughterhouse, sealed for a century, had been thrown open.
Claire's brow furrowed deeply.
She instinctively covered her nose and mouth with the back of her hand.
But it was of no use.
The cloying, fishy stench seeped into her nasal passages through every pore, stimulating her nerves and making her stomach churn.
Noah stood by her side, his expression equally solemn.
His senses were even more acute than Claire's.
He could even discern an ominous, living aura of decay within that bloody stench.
The elevator's floor indicator light flickered with a crimson glow in the darkness.
With every floor they descended, the smell of blood intensified.
It felt as if they were sinking not into an underground base, but into an abyss filled with blood and corpses.
After the elevator had traveled for about half a minute, its descent finally began to slow.
Ultimately, with a dull 'clunk,' it came to a complete stop.
[DESTINATION REACHED: D-Block]
A cold, synthesized electronic voice echoed in the cramped space.
Noah and Claire raised their weapons almost simultaneously.
They pressed themselves against either side of the elevator doors, their bodies taut like two fully drawn bows.
Their muscles were primed, ready to react to a sudden attack at any moment.
The elevator doors slid open slowly into the dead silence.
The expected scene of monsters lunging or bullets flying did not occur.
Outside the door was a corridor, a metal hallway illuminated to a deathly, brilliant white by shadowless lamps.
The walls, floor, and ceiling were all made of polished, stainless steel.
Every inch reflected a bone-chilling light.
It was clean—excessively so.
This extreme cleanliness formed a bizarre and intense contrast with the thick, inescapable smell of blood in the air.
It was as if a thorough, pathologically meticulous cleaning had just taken place.
Yet no matter how much disinfectant was used, it could not wash away the blood of sin that had long since seeped into the crevices of the metal.
At the end of the corridor, the layout was no different from before.
Another locker room.
Beside the locker room was an automated mist disinfection chamber.
A white mist with a chemical odor was continuously spraying from the nozzles.
The other end of the disinfection chamber connected to an even heavier, sliding sensor door.
That door was dark gray.
On the electronic panel above it, a large, crimson, and unsettling warning sign flashed.
[BIOHAZARD LEVEL 4]
[RESTRICTED AREA]
As Noah and Claire stepped into the sensor range of the disinfection chamber,
the massive sliding door emitted the low 'hiss' of hydraulic pistons in motion.
It began to rise slowly.
As the gap opened,
a stench of blood so thick it was almost tangible, mixed with the foul odor of rot, surged toward them like a bursting dam.
"Urgh..."
Claire could no longer hold it back; she bent over and dry-heaved violently.
Noah's stomach also felt as if it were being squeezed hard by an invisible hand, twitching violently.
He forced down the nausea that shot straight to his head and gritted his teeth hard.
The two of them looked up and met each other's eyes.
Both their gazes were filled with an indescribable horror and dread.
Just how many people had to die, and how much blood had to be shed,
to create such a tangible bloody Hell?
The sliding door was now fully open, and the sight behind it caused their pupils to contract suddenly.
It was an incredibly vast circular hall.
Ranged neatly along both sides of the hall were hundreds of giant Cultivation Tanks.
They were completely different from the tanks filled with pale green nutrient solution they had seen in the 'Tyrant Exhibition Hall.'
Every Cultivation Tank here was filled with fresh, viscous, crimson blood.
That blood seemed to possess a life of its own, slowly bubbling within the tanks.
The light filtered through these blood-red liquids, staining the entire hall in an ominous and eerie dark red.
Even more hair-raising was that,
from time to time, a deformed, pale limb would suddenly thrust out from the viscous blood.
It might be an arm covered in eyeballs, or perhaps an arthropod-like long leg with its bones turned outward.
They slapped heavily against the thick, reinforced glass walls of the Cultivation Tanks.
Producing dull, wet'splat' sounds.
Then they would slide down weakly, sinking back into that crimson bed of sin.
Noah and Claire suppressed their urge to vomit, guns raised, as they stepped slowly into this blood-colored hall.
The metal floor beneath their feet was slippery.
It was covered in a thin layer of semi-dried, dark red plasma.
With every step, their soles made a sickening, sticky'squelch.'
Just then.
From a corner deep within the hall, a figure slowly emerged.
It was a man wearing an Umbrella security uniform.
He didn't emit the hungry growls of a zombie.
He just kept his head down, clutching his abdomen with both hands, stumbling forward.
His mouth let out 'he... he...' sounds—suppressed gasps filled with extreme agony.
His movements were deformed and twisted, every step appearing as if he were enduring the torture of a thousand cuts.
Noah and Claire immediately aimed their weapons at him.
"Halt! Don't move!" Claire warned sharply.
However, the security guard acted as if he hadn't heard.
He only managed to lift his head with difficulty, glancing at them with eyes bloodshot to the core.
His lips moved as if he wanted to say something.
But before he could make a sound,
"Puchi—!"
A dull sound, like a leather bag full of rotten meat being punctured.
A mass of black-red shredded meat burst from the security guard's back.
Bizarrely, not a single drop of blood splattered out.
It was as if all the essence within his body had been completely sucked dry.
Immediately following that,
a pitch-black, deformed parasite—shaped like a cross between a leech and a centipede magnified countless times—thrust its way out of the massive wound on his back.
The surface of the parasite's body was covered in an oily, constantly writhing membrane.
Its head had no eyes, only a circular mouth that opened and closed, lined with fine, sharp teeth.
It twisted its nauseatingly soft body a few times.
Then, it let out a screech toward Noah and Claire that was sharp enough to pierce eardrums.
The sound didn't seem like anything any known creature on Earth could produce.
It was full of evil and madness.
After the screech, the parasite didn't linger for even a moment.
It immediately turned, dragging the completely drained, shriveled corpse of the security guard, and crawled rapidly toward a door on the right side of the hall.
Its speed was astonishing.
"Thud!"
The security guard's corpse was tossed heavily onto the floor.
Like a tattered rag, it showed no further movement.
"After it!"
Noah barked and immediately gave chase.
Claire followed close behind.
They had to find out exactly what that thing was.
The door was not locked.
Inside was a room similar to a tiered academic lecture hall in a university.
Only, the scene here was even more tragic than the bloody hall outside.
All the tables and chairs in the room were overturned and scattered everywhere.
The metal podium was covered in deep scratches, as if gouged by some massive claws.
Bloodstains were splattered across the walls and ceiling, already dried.
The entire room looked as if it had been completely swept by a level-twelve blood-colored hurricane.
One could imagine that not long ago, this place must have been filled with Umbrella Researchers.
They might have been listening to a passionate speech from some high-ranking official.
Then disaster struck.
A one-sided massacre with no suspense.
The parasite was extremely fast, crawling rapidly along the blood-stained walls and soon crossing this lecture hall filled with the aura of death.
Noah and Claire didn't dare relax for a second, following closely behind it.
After passing through the lecture hall and turning past another secondary sterilization room that was also just for show,
they finally arrived at the source of this overwhelming bloody stench.
It was a circular hall even more vacant and massive than all the previous spaces.
On the floor of the hall, countless complex and grotesque mysterious symbols were painted using the dried blood of an unknown number of people.
These symbols were layered and intertwined, spreading from the center of the hall to every corner of the walls.
Forming a massive totem filled with a sinister beauty.
And on the massive metal wall directly in front of the hall,
a seemingly incredibly mysterious and ancient 'magic circle' was also drawn in blood.
The lines of the magic circle seemed to still be faintly emitting an ominous dark red glow.
The entire hall was shrouded in a religious, bizarre atmosphere that was so oppressive it made it hard to breathe.
The parasite that had fled all this way seemed to have fulfilled its mission upon reaching here.
It stopped in the center of the hall, and at that moment,
"Swoosh—!"
A sharp whistling sound came from the ceiling.
A long, slender black-red shadow, like a hunting viper, shot down from the darkness above with lightning speed.
"Puchi!"
The shadow precisely impaled the middle of the parasite's body.
It was a slender tentacle covered in hook-like fleshy barbs.
The parasite let out a short, shrill wail of extreme agony.
Then the tentacle whipped violently.
Tossing the parasite like trash into a giant cultivation pool filled with crimson liquid beside the hall.
"Sizzle, sizzle—"
A corrosive sound erupted, like a red-hot iron being plunged into strong acid.
The parasite, which had seemed incredibly tough, struggled frantically in the crimson pool for a few moments.
Then, it rapidly melted and decomposed at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Ultimately, it completely vanished into that roiling blood-colored liquid.
Noah and Claire instantly pressed their backs together.
Their gazes were locked onto the deep darkness above the hall.
Something was there.
An existence far more terrifying and powerful than any monster they had encountered before.
A faint, scalp-numbing writhing sound came from the darkness.
And then.
A man slowly descended from the ceiling.
He looked to be in his forties, wearing a well-tailored white research coat.
His blonde hair was combed impeccably.
He even wore a pair of refined gold-rimmed glasses on his face.
If not for the dozen or so thick, black-red tentacles dancing behind him like living things,
he would have looked like a polite university professor.
Some of the tentacles were like spider limbs, deeply embedded into the metal structure of the ceiling to support his body.
Others were like a group of restless vipers, slowly dancing and coiling behind his back.
The tip of every tentacle glinted with a cold, metallic luster.
His descent was light and slow.
Finally, his feet landed steadily on the ground.
He adjusted the gold-rimmed glasses on the bridge of his nose, and in his blue eyes behind the lenses, there was a fanatical, almost crazed smile.
He looked at the heavily armed Noah and Claire and gave a slight bow.
The movement was as elegant as a performer acknowledging the audience in an opera house.
"Welcome, welcome." His voice was warm and resonant, filled with a seductive power.
"The sacrificial ritual has been brought to Perfection."
"You are the final audience, here to witness the great miracle that is about to be born."
"Mother Miranda will surely be very happy."
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