Deep within the 'Noah's Cocoon' clinic, the lights emitted a sickly orange glow, reminiscent of the phosphorescence of a decaying creature. Standing on broken glass and slippery nutrient fluid, Karen Vance stared intently at the scene on the operating table with his distorted, double pupils. Due to the awakening of the 'Leviathan' gene, he could see twisted souls as well as flesh and blood.
On the operating table lay a middle-aged businessman in an expensive silk shirt, undergoing surgery by choice. Despite being a wealthy man from the 'Middle Class', he allowed the girl known as the 'Stabilizer' to cut open his spine: 'Hurry... reconnect that "thorn-like" spinal cord nerve.'
The businessman gasped greedily, his eyes filled with madness. 'I don't want to be a fragile human who can only live for sixty years anymore. I want power! I want the power to crush steel!' The expressionless girl pulled a barbed, dark red spinal cord, still wriggling, from a nearby refrigerated container.
It had been forcibly ripped from the body of a recently deceased Awakened being. When the alien spinal cord touched the wealthy merchant's nerve endings, he let out a grotesque scream. But within that scream was an almost orgasmic pleasure. His back muscles bulged morbidly and his skin was forcibly stretched open, revealing barbed spines that did not belong to him.
Karen felt a strong physical nausea.
As a 'deep-sea species', she craved human protein, but this was merely a survival instinct deep within her genes. Meanwhile, these 'pure' individuals, who usually shouted about 'purification' and viewed 'mutation' as 'filth', secretly sewed the limbs of the 'monsters' they despised into their own bodies like ghouls.
'Disgusting.' "
Karen's voice echoed in the oppressive clinic, creating subtle ripples.
'Disgusting?' The young stitcher sneered and pointed a blood-stained scalpel at Karen. 'Executor Vans, this is the truth of the Sanctuary. The poor sell their flesh for food and the rich buy it for power. We are all just cogs in this giant meat grinder.'
The wealthy businessman turned his head; half of his face had already collapsed due to nerve rejection, but the newly attached 'Awakened Eye' glowed with a greedy red light.
'This is... this is the taste of evolution!' The businessman laughed maniacally and waved his new barbed arm, trying to touch the obsidian scales on Karen's back. 'Look at you! You're top-tier material! Sell me your scales. Name your price. I can give you an entire mid-rise apartment building!' "
The blue light in Karen's eyes instantly turned into a deep, deadly stillness.
He didn't draw his gun.
The obsidian scales on his back suddenly began to vibrate rapidly, emitting a buzzing sound capable of tearing the air. With the crisp sound of fabric tearing, three tentacles made of shadow and keratin rapidly grew from both sides of his spine like black lightning bolts and instantly pierced the wealthy merchant's chest.
There was no mercy, only pure cleansing.
'You are not worthy to talk about evolution.'
Leaning close to the merchant's ear, Karen's voice was as deep and gritty as the sands of the deep sea.
The barbs at the tips of the tentacles snapped open and churned wildly within the greedy shell. The red light in the merchant's hybrid eyes quickly extinguished, replaced by fear. His prized 'illegal organ' was as fragile as paper in the face of the Leviathan's overwhelming power.
'Pfft.' "
Karen withdrew his tentacles. The wealthy merchant's corpse slumped onto the operating table like a rag doll. The sewn-on alien organs, deprived of power, were rapidly decaying and drying out.
The young stitcher stood frozen to the spot, her enormous, microscopic prosthetic eye spinning frantically as it tried to analyse Karren's current biological data.
'You... you actually refused assimilation?' she murmured. 'You're the only monster who still finds this power "disgusting" after possessing it.'
Karen looked down at his blood-stained hands.
He finally saw the skeleton of this city. The Sanctuary wasn't a fortress of human civilisation; it was a massive breeding ground built on the trade of flesh and blood. Silas, the pharmaceutical company, the black-market clinic — even he, the executive — were all links in this circular food chain.
'Leah doesn't belong here.' "
Karen turned and walked towards the clinic door.
Behind him, Hans's jar was still dripping blood and the wealthy merchant's corpse was rotting.
'Tell those swine who want to "evolve" that the Lord of the Deep Sea doesn't need buyers.' Karen stopped, his profile looking unusually cold in the pouring rain. 'Next time anyone dares to reach out, I'll send them to hell.'
He smashed the hatch and plunged into the thunderous, lightning-filled night.
At that moment, the turbidity suppressant in Karen's body wore off completely, but he no longer felt pain or craved the poison laced with bone marrow.
Instead, he felt the remaining blood from Hans's wound guiding him through the neon-lit fog towards the true abyss's exit — a place not even Silas could reach.
Behind him, the Sanctuary's alarm blared through the sky.
'Warning: Executor 00-Achilles confirmed as completely corrupted; defection initiated.'
The lower level was known as 'Broken Bones Alley'.
Less than two metres wide, this alley was surrounded by towering, rusty metal walls that were on the verge of collapse in the heavy rain. Cables overhead hung with sticky grease like nooses. Karen Vance hurried along the wall, the obsidian scales on his back rubbing nervously beneath his trench coat; the subtle sounds were amplified in the alley's deadly silence.
Suddenly, a chilling pressure poured down from the darkness ahead.
It wasn't murderous intent, but rather a bio-field of mutual repulsion.
'Don't go, Hound.'
A deep, thunderous voice came from the shadows and a giant over two and a half metres tall slowly emerged. He was shirtless, his dark red skin covered in keratinous protrusions like gnarled tree roots. His right hand had completely degenerated into a barbed battering ram.
He was the 'Scavenger' of the 'Ember' organisation, an Awakened One nicknamed 'Hammer'.
'Your cheap black skin can't hide that smell.' Hammer tilted his head, his single remaining eye flashing a sickly yellow light. 'It's the fishy smell of the deep sea, the nauseating sense of superiority that only high-ranking carnivores possess.' Karen stopped, slowly pulling down the hood of his raincoat.
His eyes had completely transformed into a deep blue abyss and the cracks in his cheeks opened and closed greedily, filtering oxygen into the damp air.
'Get out of the way.' His voice was so low that it was almost inaudible, yet it carried a frequency that caused the surrounding water to vibrate slightly.
'Get out of the way? You killed Hans, destroyed the black market's supply line, and now you want to see Leah?' Hammer slammed forward, the metal footrest beneath his feet shattering instantly. 'In this hell, only pure monsters can survive, and you — a pseudo-human who survives by drinking the marrow of your own kind while wearing a uniform — are the impurities that should be cleansed out!'
Whoosh! Without warning, Heavyhammer's massive, fleshy right arm slammed headlong into Karen's head, carrying a tearing force of air pressure.
In this extremely confined space, any ranged weapon would be a hindrance, so Karen didn't draw his bone spear. Instead, he ducked and stepped back, twisting his body at an angle that defied the logic of human joints.
His five fingers suddenly spread open, the deep blue claws at their tips tracing five arcs in the dim light.
Tear!
Five deep, bone-revealing gashes instantly appeared on Heavyhammer's thick, horny chest. However, the blood that flowed was a dark purple, highly corrosive fluid.
The two collided.
This wasn't a flashy fight from a movie, but the most primal abrasion of flesh. In the narrow alleyway, which was less than two metres wide, the sound of bone clashing against muscle was dull and relentless, like two wild beasts trapped in an iron cage, tearing each other apart. The hammer's strength was astonishing. He gripped Karen's neck tightly and slammed her against the barbed metal wall.
'Cough!'
Karen could feel the scales on the Hammer's back embedding themselves in the wall at the point of impact, while the Hammer's single eye stared intently at him. The hammer's fleshy arm slowly pressed into Karen's chest, seemingly trying to crush his still-beating heart.
'Look! Your blood is cold, too!' the hammer roared, spitting as it spoke. 'You frantically file your nails, frantically inject suppressants. But when you kill, that excited bio-current is impossible to hide! You're just like me, Karen Vanse! You're a bloodthirsty beast too!'
Karen felt the air being squeezed from his lungs and his vision began to black out intermittently.
Due to extreme oxygen deprivation, the 'Leviathan' gene within him roared in a desperate attempt to save itself in that instant:
Spontaneous Evolution – Echinoderm Release.
The black scales hidden beneath his skin stood erect like a startled guppy.
'Aaaaah—!'
Hammer screamed. His hands, which were gripping Karen's neck, were instantly pierced by thousands of obsidian scales, sharp as needles. The high-frequency vibrations from the scales shattered his finger bones.
Karen regained his freedom. Instead of retreating, he took a step forward and plunged the blade-like bony fin that had grown on his right elbow viciously into Hammer's single eye.
'Thud.'
There was no scream, only the dull thud of a heavy object falling. Hammer collapsed into the muddy water, his body convulsing violently as his life force rapidly drained away.
The limbs sewn onto him, which belonged to others, quickly turned ashen from the loss of their host's vitality.
Karen stood beside him, his chest heaving.
His trench coat was completely ruined and his bare back was covered in grotesque black fins and scales, making him look more like a demon king crawled out of the depths of hell than Hammer.
"You are…right."
Karen looked down at his hands; his voice was hoarse and almost unrecognisable.
'My blood is cold, my instincts are greedy, but I am more than that.'
He pulled a fragment of blue nail that he had worn down in the locker room from his pocket and tossed it beside Hammer's corpse. It was his last, futile attempt to remain human; now he was the sole sacrifice after this brutal hand-to-hand combat.
He looked up at the end of the alley.
At the far end, a girl with heterochromia stood silently, holding a tattered umbrella.
Leah.
She had witnessed the entire brutal massacre.
He wanted to hide his hideous scales and tuck his bloodstained claws into his pockets, but he couldn't. His spontaneous evolution had reached its limit — he could not revert to his ordinary form.
He could only drag this monstrous shell towards the 'miracle' step by step, under Leah's alternating gold and purple gaze.
'Karen,' Leah said, her voice as clear as a single string on a stormy night. 'Your scales... are crying.'
Karen stopped, tears mingling with the rain and blood streaming down his battered face.
The challenge to his identity no longer came from external thugs at this moment, but from the abyss within his own heart. Could he embrace the sacredness of this hideous body?
B.R.A., Central District, Bio-Quarantine Hall.
The lighting here transcends mere illumination. It is a high-frequency, cold ultraviolet light that is almost like an executioner's blade. It is capable of penetrating inferior bionic skin and revealing the most minute distortions in the underlying tissue. Not a speck of dust hangs in the air, only a dense, suffocating mist of liquid nitrogen flowing around the ankles.
The twelve shirtless hunters of the Third Scavenger Squad of the Execution Department are currently lined up like livestock awaiting slaughter.
Silas Morgan sits on the high observation platform, playing with a long, thin, barbed, silver sampling needle. His snow-white coat gleams with a sacred yet chilling sheen under the cold light.
"Recently, there's been an impurity in the air of the Sanctuary." Silas's cold, surgical voice echoes through the empty hall via loudspeaker. 'It's not the exhaust fumes from the lower levels, nor the stench of the Awakened, but the stench of a domesticated dog that has turned into that of a wild wolf.'
He slowly rose, his gaze fixed on Karen Vance at the end of the line like a hawk's, and commanded, "Sampling begins."
Two medics in exoskeletons approached the first hunter and, without administering anaesthesia, plunged a twenty-centimetre-long sampling needle into the hunter's thoracic vertebrae.
*Snap.*
That was the sound of the needle piercing the cortical bone.
"Ah—!!!"
A piercing scream echoed in the quarantine hall, only to be swallowed by the cold soundproofing. Silas stared at the real-time gene wavebands generated on the monitor screen, his fingers lightly tapping the table.
'Pure,' he announced coldly. 'Next.'
Karen stood at the back of the line, his back muscles spasming violently.
Although he had forced the obsidian scales back under his skin with a special bio-glue before entering the White Tower, the sensation of spontaneous evolution was still so intense that it nearly tore his nerves apart. Even worse, he could feel the 'Leviathan' gene reacting strongly to the ultraviolet light in the surroundings.
His bone marrow was no longer red blood-forming tissue.
Having absorbed Hans's blood, it had transformed into a translucent, active gel deep within him that shimmered with eerie blue electricity.
'If that needle were to be inserted, it wouldn't extract a human sample, but a deep-sea toxin powerful enough to paralyse the entire hall.' The medical officer stopped in front of Karen.
'Executor 00-Achilles, turn around.'
Karen didn't move. His bloodshot eyes bulged and the crack in his cheek heaved violently, making a heavy, bellows-like sound.
'What? My number one hound?' Silas descended the steps of the observation deck, his leather shoes tapping out a deadly rhythm on the metal floor. "Are you afraid of this needle, or the truth it reveals?"
He stopped behind Karen and extended his white-gloved hand, lightly tracing a red welt on her spine with his nails.
That was where an obsidian scale was trying to break through the skin.
'Your body temperature is abnormally high, Karen. Like a monster being forged in a furnace.' Silas whispered slowly in her ear. "I smell tobacco on you and the formaldehyde from that cheap clinic. You went where you shouldn't have gone and saw people you shouldn't have seen.'
Karen whirled around, her pale blue irises contracting wildly in the cold light.
"Inspector, what would you like to see?" Karen's voice was hoarse, as if a cassette tape were about to shatter. "Do you want to see me become the 'material' you're looking for?" Silas smiled. Swiftly raising the silver sampling needle in his hand, his movements as fast as lightning, he plunged it directly into Karen's spine.
[Leviathan – Local Mimicry]
In the fraction of a second it took for the needle to pierce the skin, Karen forcibly activated the bioelectric currents within his body, inducing the instantaneous hardening of local cells. Simultaneously, he pressed all the remaining inhibitors in his body onto the wound on his back in an attempt to simulate human physiological characteristics within that square centimetre.
Crunch!
The sampling needle bent.
Silas's eyes instantly became extremely dangerous.
'Abnormal bone density,' said the medical officer, looking at the dashboard. 'Sample acquisition failed. Extremely high intensity of calcium defence response detected.'
The entire room fell silent.
The surrounding bio-robots raised their electromagnetic rifles, their red sights densely packed and aimed at Karen's chest.
'Looks like my hound has evolved a very hard set of bones.' "But I don't need tough bones; I only need obedient flesh and blood," said Silas, rubbing the broken needle between his fingertips. There was a glint of madness in his eyes.
Just as conflict was about to erupt, the entire white tower suddenly began to shake violently.
Red alarm lights flashed instantly.
'Inspector! The oxygen station in the 'Halo Zone' has been attacked! It's the 'Ember' organisation! They've taken the experimental subject, Leah!"
Karen's heart skipped a beat. She knew this was Aris Thorne's doing. This madman had used her as bait to draw Silas's attention while secretly attacking the laboratory.
Silas abruptly turned to look at the screen, finally displaying an expression of concern.
He turned back to face Karen, a cruel smile playing on his lips as he stared intently at her.
'Very well, Karen. Since your bones are so hard, go and bring that girl back. If she's missing a single hair, I'll personally use this needle to pry open every scale on your body, inch by inch." "Get out! Go hunting!"
Karen put on his tattered uniform and stormed out of the quarantine hall.
The moment he pushed open the door, the obsidian scales on his back tore through his skin, staining the white floor crimson with blood. But he didn't turn back. In the pale ultraviolet light, his back resembled a dragon soaring between the clouds and the abyss.
He knew this wasn't the beginning of the hunt.
It was the prelude to the hounds breaking their chains and turning on their master.
The air in the quarantine hall was so cold that it could have frozen your lungs.
The crisp sound of the sampling needle snapping still echoed inside. Silas's serpentine eyes were fixed on Karen's hard, iron-like back. The bio-robot's infrared crosshairs pulsated on her chest like a swarm of hungry red beetles.
'Executor 00-Achilles, your defensive instincts are overreacting.' Silas's voice was soft yet carried a chilling intent to kill.
Karen's fingertips trembled wildly behind his back. He could feel the obsidian scales beneath his skin heating up due to extreme tension. Once this bio-thermal energy exceeded the threshold, the deep-sea toxins within his body would instantly vaporise, turning a ten-metre radius into a death zone.
At this critical moment, Barnes, who had been standing on the sidelines and had been temporarily ignored due to 'ageing', suddenly coughed violently.
"Cough! Cough! Inspector, I think his skin was burned by the acid rain on Fishbone Street that night." Barnes coughed and staggered forward, holding the sample tray that had been disturbed earlier. 'This kid's bones have always been harder than his brain. The needle didn't go in because you hit the bio-bone reinforcement layer he had just had implanted last week." Barnes seemed to stumble and bump into Karen.
In the fraction of a second that their bodies touched, she felt a cold tube being shoved into her palm. It was a pure blood sample from a fallen hunter that Barnes had collected after the melee in 'Broken Bone Alley'.
That hunter was named Hank, a fool who had maintained 98% human genetic purity until his death.
"Continue sampling." Silas waved his hand coldly, but his suspicions were not completely dispelled.
With his back to everyone and taking advantage of the blind spot provided by Barnes' towering figure, Karen suddenly exerted force with his left hand. The deep blue claws at his fingertips precisely pierced the vacuum membrane on the sampler, allowing the pure blood sample from his palm to flow back into the needle hole.
At the same time, he bit his tongue forcefully, spraying a mouthful of warm saliva carrying a strong interfering charge onto the sensor base of the sampler.
"Beep—"
'Sample successfully acquired, gene purity 97.4%, Adam cell activity within normal range.'
A synthesised mechanical voice echoed in the hall. The spiral structure displayed on the screen was stable and monotonous, without a trace of the eerie blue light belonging to 'Leviathan'.
Silas stared at the screen for a full five seconds, then slowly looked away. The oppressive killing intent that had hung over Karen receded like the tide.
'Looks like you're still a qualified "pure" dog.' Silas turned around and put his spotless white gloves back on. 'Barnes, take him to the maintenance room. I don't want him wasting precious samples on the next mission because of this 'over-defence'." Only the heavy footsteps of Karen and Barnes echoed in the corridor.
'Don't thank me,' said Barnes without turning around, the smell of tobacco emanating from his collar mixed with a faint hint of dead man's ash. 'That's Hank's blood. He didn't even have time to hand it over before 'Hammer' smashed his head in. I just thought a little blood would be better used to save your life than thrown into the incinerator.'
Karen leaned against the wall, the scales on his back retracting automatically due to the sudden reduction in pressure. The excruciating pain of his flesh separating from his bones almost made him collapse.
"Why did you help me?" Karen asked hoarsely. "Do you know what I've mutated into?" Barnes stopped and turned in the shadows. His scarred face appeared eerily pale in the dim emergency light.
'Because the way you looked at that whistleblower, Morton, reminded me of when I was still "human".' He pulled the last half of his cigarette from his pocket, but didn't light it. 'Karen, this sanctuary is beyond saving. Silas isn't looking for mutants; he's looking for the perfect 'shell'. Hank's blood might save you this time, but next time, these scales of yours will slice everyone to pieces."
Barnes reached out and pulled Karen's tattered executive coat tighter around her, covering her still-bleeding spine one last time.
"Run! Take advantage of the chaos when the 'Embers' attack the oxygen station." Just then, another rumbling sound came from the top of the White Tower.
It wasn't an ordinary explosion, but a high-frequency howl with bio-resonance.
Karen's obsidian scales suddenly began to vibrate violently. He looked up and, piercing through layers of steel, caught a faint signal of alternating gold and purple.
"Leah."
She hadn't been rescued. The signal was filled with desperate cries, as if she were being torn apart by an immense force.
'No... Thorne is lying, Silas is lying too.'
Karen pushed Barnes away, realising that this attack wasn't about rescuing Leah at all, but a two-way sacrifice. Aris Thorne intended to use Leah's blood to contaminate the Sanctuary's oxygen supply system, while Silas wanted to use this contamination to initiate his long-planned 'total purification', annihilating millions of 'red flesh' in the lower tiers.
'I can't leave.' Karen turned around; his eyes were completely engulfed by the eerie blue light.
He no longer suppressed or feigned his emotions.
With a piercing sound of tearing fabric, a pair of enormous, deep blue, keratinous biomembrane wings burst open on either side of his spine, sending up a cloud of black blood mist. His body had completed its final leap in evolution.
[Leviathan Form – Initial Release].
'Barnes, give me one more cigarette.'
Karen took the last cigarette from Barnes, lit it with bio-electricity from his fingertips, took a deep breath and suddenly accelerated. He transformed into a black lightning bolt, shattering the reinforced bio-glass of the quarantine hall and heading straight for the 'Observatory', the execution ground at the very top of the Sanctuary.
Behind him, Barnes watched the broken yet arrogant figure slowly raise the old-fashioned bone spear in his hand.
However, his spear wasn't aimed at Karen, but at the bio-robots surging out from the other end of the corridor.
'Go, monster boy.' Barnes spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva. 'Bring that clean girl back.'
Lower level: coordinates - depth -400 metres. This is the 'main artery' sewage trunk line.
Here, the air is no longer a simple gas, but a viscous fluid composed of high concentrations of methane, corrosive acid mist and human metabolic waste. Karen Vance walks alone on the rusty maintenance platform, her boots' soles creaking against the metal grilles.
Silas had temporarily eased her house arrest because she had previously used Hank's blood sample to slip through the quarantine hall, but in exchange, she had to conduct 72 hours of high-intensity solo patrols.
This was a form of exile and a test.
Karen ripped off the filter canister of her respirator, letting the exhaust gas — enough to cause lung ulcers in an ordinary person — pour into her throat. In the dim red light, her cheeks opened and closed violently like the gills of a thirsty fish, greedily analysing the residual biological information in the exhaust gas.
'Drip, drip.'
The sound of dripping water echoed eerily through the empty pipe corridor. Karen stopped.
On the wall of the drainpipe to her left, something that defied the sanctuary's logic appeared: a gigantic drainpipe, over five metres in diameter.
It was a massive totem, drawn in thick, blackened blood.
At the centre of the totem was a simple yet twisted fish shape. It had no eyes, but it possessed countless fins that resembled human limbs, and its tail resembled a stretched spine. It was not any known deep-sea creature, but rather the result of human genes being forced to intermingle with ancient mythology.
'Dagon's followers...' Karen murmured.
He had seen this symbol in the forbidden files of the B.R.A.: the primal totem worshipped by those who had abandoned their humanity to embrace the utterly mutated 'Outcasts'.
He extended a blue-keratin-covered finger and gently touched the dried blood. *Buzz!*
A powerful bioelectric charge surged from his fingertips into his pons.
In that instant, Karen's vision collapsed. She was no longer in the dark sewers, but in the depths of the ocean, boiling and pitch-black. Countless mutilated limbs floated in the water, not crying out, but producing a unified, high-pitched chant.
The sound pierced his bones and resonated with every obsidian scale on his back.
'What are they chanting?'
Karen shook his head, trying to dispel the illusion, but the chanting grew clearer. It was no longer an illusion; it was a real sound emanating from the depths of the drainpipe.
He bent down and crawled into the pipe, which was covered in bloody totems.
The deeper he went, the more bizarre the scenery around him became. The once cold alloy walls of the pipe were now covered in a thick layer of fleshy mucus with countless tiny blood vessels pulsating beneath it. It was as if the entire pipe was transforming into the intestines of some gigantic creature.
At the end of the pipe, a massive sedimentation pool appeared.
Hundreds upon hundreds of 'carriers' knelt in the sludge. Most of them were no longer human: some had enormous air sacs growing from their backs, while others had fused their lower bodies into a tail covered in suction cups.
They formed a circle around a floating object in the centre of the pool, worshipping it.
It was a hymn.
Generated through chest resonance rather than vocal cords, its frequency miraculously cancelled out the suppressive wave of 'Dagon's Annihilation' released by the Sanctuary's higher-ups, granting these mutated beings, who were on the verge of collapse, a morbid calm.
'Come back, lost brother...'
The floating object in the centre of the pool turned.
It was Hans.
But he was no longer the civilian that Karen had personally sent to the recycling centre. His head had split open to reveal a glowing, translucent brain riddled with countless bio-cables that dangled from the top of the pipe.
He was at the core of this small resonance field, a living amplifier forcibly maintained by pain and hatred.
"Karen… Vans…"
Hans's voice resonated directly beneath Karen's feet, travelling through the vibrations of his mucous membranes.
'Look at us. There are no Silas's needles or murky potions here. We share each other's blood and mutations. We are complete; we are gods."
Karen looked at the mutants kneeling in the mud; their expressions were blank yet fanatical. They resembled fanatics.
He felt an unprecedented nausea.
What kind of redemption was this? It was just another form of consumption: Aris Thorne was using these people's despair to turn them into 'bio-batteries' against the Sanctuary.
'This isn't evolution.' Karen took a step forward and the obsidian scales on his back immediately unfurled to form an electric field around him, composed of eerie blue bio-currents. 'This is merely seeking solace in decay.'
'And what about you?' Hans's compound eyes stared intently at Karen. 'Beneath those expensive scales of yours, how much of your own blood is hidden? You feed on our marrow, yet you scorn our quagmire?"
The surrounding hymns suddenly rose in intensity.
The frequency of the infrasound instantly shifted from 'requiem' to 'destruction', and the kneeling mutants rose to their feet. Driven by the resonance, their bodies rapidly expanded and tore apart, transforming them into mindless monsters that lunged at Karen, ready for melee combat.
Karen took a deep breath.
She felt the sensors in her groin throbbing violently.
Lia was nearby.
Hans wasn't the core; he was merely a gatekeeper. The true 'miracle' lay hidden deep within the fleshy pipe created by Aris Thorne: an ultimate toxin capable of corrupting the entire sanctuary's water supply.
Karen let out a roar like a dragon's cry.
He held nothing back. Since this was a colossal tomb, he would use his deep-sea armour to give them a final, complete burial.
His claws slammed into the mucous membrane wall beside him.
[Leviathan – Great Flood Mode]
A surge of bioelectricity flowed from his fingertips into the pipe's power system, setting off a series of violent explosions along the entire length of the sewage main.
In the mid-level of the Sanctuary, in the Executive's single maintenance room.
Karen Vance was sitting in a cold alloy chair with a standard B.R.A. ration package in front of them. Codenamed 'M-grade High-Energy Gel', it was a grey cube made from soy protein isolate, synthetic fats and multivitamins — their energy source for countless high-intensity missions.
He mechanically cut off a small piece and put it in his mouth.
Ugh!
A strong, soul-deep sense of rejection instantly surged up his throat. The gel, which should have been broken down by salivary amylase, now tasted like hard, dry plastic in his mouth and had an alkaline, industrial machine oil taste.
His taste buds had completely 'rebelled'.
[Metabolic Abnormality – Protein Reorganisation]
Due to the deep awakening of the 'Leviathan' gene, Karen's digestive system was undergoing a complete reorganization. His stomach acid concentration had soared to a level sufficient to dissolve bones, and his abnormally short and thick intestines had lost the ability to absorb complex carbohydrates. His body had become a sophisticated meat grinder that only recognised 'primitive life energy'.
Karen slammed his lunchbox to the floor. The grey gel bounced a few times — a ridiculous and lifeless sight. Hunger, like a mad beast locked in a cage, pounded wildly against his stomach.
He staggered to a small refrigerator in the corner of the room, his bloodshot eyes glowing with a ghostly blue light in the darkness. He flung open the door and was hit by a blast of cold air.
On the bottom shelf were several unprocessed deep-sea cod that he had snatched from the illegal fish market in the lower district during his patrols.
These fish had grown in the saltwater beneath the sanctuary's foundation; their scales shimmered with a sickly silver light due to slight contamination from Adam cells.
Karen didn't use a knife.
Blue grappling hooks sprang from his fingertips and easily tore open the fish's belly.
The bright red, slightly salty flesh of the fish was exposed to the air, and Karen could feel every cell in his body rejoicing in that instant. Even the obsidian scales on his back vibrated with a subtle, high-frequency resonance — the primal call of a predator to its prey.
He grabbed a piece of raw fish and stuffed it directly into his mouth.
'Crunch.'
That was the sound of teeth crushing a tiny fish bone.
He felt no nausea or repulsion; the cold, elastic fibres were efficiently converted into pure bioenergy the moment they came into contact with saliva, and the weakness caused by the inhibitor's failure quickly subsided in his bloodstream. Karen leaned against the refrigerator, swallowing large mouthfuls of bloody fish.
His movements were wild yet efficient, like a predator feeding among deep-sea reefs.
His lips were smeared with silver scales and red bloodstains in the mirror, and his cheeks were heaving violently at his neck as he greedily scrambled for the meagre moisture in the air.
"What have I become?"
Karen looked at the fishbone in his hand and murmured self-deprecatingly.
He had thought he was just an injured patient in need of injections. But now, he found himself completely eradicated from the "human" diet: he could no longer enjoy warm, cooked food or taste synthetic sweetness. He was retreating step by step into the primal abyss of survival of the fittest, where only blood and raw flesh could sustain life.
This metabolic change was a sign of the complete collapse of the genetic lock.
Silas's 'hounds' were disappearing, replaced by a new species that had evolved spontaneously and belonged to no level of the Sanctuary.
Just then, heavy footsteps sounded outside the door.
Karen nimbly swept the fishbone into the drain, rinsed the blood from his face with cold water and put his oversized executive coat back on, concealing his restless dorsal fin.
'Executive Vans, the inspector is waiting for you at the White Funeral office,' said a voice from behind the door. 'Mission: Final Cleanup
Target: The core of the Sewer Hymn."
Karen leaned against the sink, feeling the warm current surging through his abdomen.
The energy from the raw fish made him feel stronger than ever before, but this strength was accompanied by a terrifying silence. He found himself indifferent to the city's noise, the cries of humans and even death.
Only hunger was real.
He stepped out of the room. As he passed the robot, he could feel the electrolytes flowing through its internal bio-batteries beneath its metal shell.
To him, it looked like food.
'Let's go,' Karen said coldly.
He knew this might be his last mission as a 'hound'. When he encountered the Hymn followers again in the sewers, he wasn't sure whether he would save them or give in to his instincts and see his mutated kin as a lavish feast of flesh and blood.
The Order of the Sanctuary is collapsing, and Karen Vans is stepping on the shattered bones of evolution as she heads towards her own dark coronation.
The central hub of the Sanctuary is the 'Sacred Seat', a strategic demonstration hall.
The decor is minimalist and geometric, with a floor made of a single piece of translucent frosted glass. Beneath this, a complex network of condensate circulation pipes can be faintly seen. In the centre of the room is a raised circular platform, ten metres in diameter, surrounded by twelve high-ranking commissioners in silver-grey uniforms. Like senators in an ancient Roman arena, they survey the impending 'art exhibition' expressionlessly.
Karen Vance stands half a step behind Silas Morgan, gripping his pistol holster tightly.
Having just consumed raw fish, his metabolism was operating at an unusually high frequency. His stomach acid was boiling and the obsidian scales on his back were opening and closing slightly in the oppressive atmosphere. They rubbed against the lining of his executive trench coat, producing a crisp metallic sound like the drawing of a cold weapon — audible only to him.
'Gentlemen, the initial purpose of the "Adam Project" was evolution,' said Silas, walking to the edge of the platform. 'But evolution requires pruning. If those 'failures' cannot be completely eliminated, the purity of the Sanctuary will be meaningless." He pressed a silver button on the control panel and a cylindrical energy field rose from the centre of the platform.
A man was locked in the centre of the field.
It was Hank, the hunter that Barnes had used to switch blood samples. He had been declared dead long ago, but he hadn't actually died. Silas had transformed him into a living target by forcibly expanding his chest cavity and filling it with unstable Adam mutant tissue. Under the high-frequency vibrations of the field, this tissue glowed a morbid purplish-red colour.
"Karen, you know him." Silas turned his head, his moonlit eyes staring directly into Karen's deep blue irises. "He is your 'kin'. Look at him.'
Silas activated a satellite-focusing weapon called the 'Finger of Sodom'.
A thin, pure white beam of light, blindingly bright yet as thin as a hair, descended vertically from the dome and struck Hank precisely on the top of his head.
There was no violent explosion.
Through Karen's enhanced dynamic vision, she saw Hank's flesh rapidly carbonise as the moisture evaporated instantly under the beam. His eyes were fixed on Karen before they exploded. There was no hatred in his eyes; only a sense of absurd relief.
In just three seconds, a living, breathing life imbued with complex emotions was completely washed away before Karen's eyes, turning into a pile of greyish-white salt that dissipated in the wind.
'Look how neat,' said Silas, walking to the pile of ashes and picking up a grain with his fingertip, sniffing it lightly. 'No blood, no mutated stench; this is how red flesh should be handled.' Karen felt a salty, metallic liquid rise to her throat.
It was acid reflux caused by extreme rage; the 'Leviathan' genes within him were screaming wildly, demanding that he tear open the man's throat immediately. The hunger born of a lack of 'fresh energy' had transformed into a pure, destructive craving the moment Hank had turned to ash.
'Your heart rate has increased by 40%, Karen,' Silas said casually, glancing at the biomonitor on his wrist. 'Are you mourning him, or are you afraid of turning to ashes yourself?'
Suddenly, Silas leaned closer and forcibly smeared his ash-covered fingers on Karen's lips.
'Remember this taste. This is the consequence of your resistance to evolution.'
Karen's body jolted violently.
In that instant, the ash on his lips came into contact with his remaining saliva, creating an extremely faint electrical charge. In a corner unseen by Silas, Karen's pupils suddenly contracted into thin vertical slits and the obsidian scales on his back blazed with rage.
[Psychological Limits – Red Line Overload]
'Inspector,' Karen said, her voice forced out between clenched teeth in a chilling, low tremor. 'If I am ashes, then you are the wind. When the wind blows, nothing remains.'
Silas's hand froze. He saw an unprecedented divine indifference in Karen's eyes. The lights in the demonstration hall suddenly flickered.
'Report! A large-scale biological uprising has occurred in the lower district! The 'Hymn' organisation has breached the third gate!'
The alarm instantly shattered the elegant atmosphere of the meeting. The high-ranking committee members looked horrified, while Silas looked satisfied.
'Looks like the clean-up has started ahead of schedule.' Silas straightened his tie and looked at Karen. 'Take your weapons, Karen. Go and demonstrate your loyalty as a 'Hound'. I will activate the 'Finger of Sodom' myself in front of those peasant leaders.'
Karen turned away without a word.
He stepped onto the pile of ashes that Hank had left behind; his boots made a crisp scraping sound as he did so.
He could no longer suppress the abnormal metabolism within him; he could feel the deep-sea fish he had just eaten turning into molten lava and filling the spaces between the scales on his back.
He was no longer just a tool for carrying out a mission.
He was a black nuclear bomb with its fuse already lit. Silas thought he was merely demonstrating a weapon, unaware that he had personally sharpened the dagger that was originally meant to protect him, only to plunge it into his own chest.
'I will complete the mission, Silas.'
Karen walked out of the hall; the pile of ashes swirled in the air currents behind him like a pale ghost, ever-present.
The lower tiers of the Sanctuary were a slum known as the 'Rust Lung'.
Tonight, the rain wasn't transparent, but thick and greyish-black, as if the city's grime was pouring down from the sky. Karen Vans lay sprawled on a rickety metal scaffold, his fingers digging deep into rusty iron pipes. His fingertips were tipped with dark blue, horny claws that screeched as they scraped against the rust.
Fifty metres below him, Barnes was leading a team of enforcers through a narrow alleyway.
'Spread out! That 'carrier' can't have got far. He's badly wounded; his glands are overflowing!' Barnes roared hoarsely, the bone gun 'Thorn-MK2' in his hand gleaming eerily in the rain.
Karen's vision had completely transformed into a mixture of heat and bioelectricity.
To him, Barnes was no longer an old comrade, but a pulsating, high-energy life force radiating an alluring heat. "Gurgle."
A faint yet hungry growl escaped Karen's throat.
Seeing Hank turn to ash in the demonstration hall had triggered a physiological stress response, pushing the 'Leviathan' genes within him to the brink of an explosion. The energy from the raw fish had been depleted; now, every cell in his body was screaming frantically, craving a higher level of pure flesh and blood imbued with the aura of 'Sanctuary Central'.
That was the smell of Barnes.
[Biological Anatomy – Second Jaw]
Karen felt his lower jawbone undergoing a violent dislocation.
Beneath the camouflaged human skin, a row of fine, transparent, barbed teeth was slowly descending from the inside of his upper jaw — the special structure used by deep-sea predators to instantly lock the throat of their prey, known as the 'second jaw' or 'pharyngeal jaw'.
Once those massive jaws were fully open, his human face would split into four petals like a grotesquely blooming flower, revealing a bottomless abyss covered in barbs.
"Who's there?!"
The old hunter's instincts kicked in, and Barnes' gun was instantly aimed at the shadows where Karen was hiding.
The two men stared at each other through the torrential rain.
At that moment, Karen felt his upper jaw completely disengage. The urge to prey, like an unstoppable tsunami, breached the last dam of his reason. He could hear the rush of blood in Barnes' carotid artery; to him, it sounded like the most beautiful music in the world.
'Tear him apart... swallow him... he's your fuel...' A wet voice echoed in his mind.
"Karen? Is that you?' Barnes narrowed his eyes, his finger on the trigger, his voice trembling slightly.
He could see those strangely bright, eerie blue compound eyes in the darkness.
Karen felt the tip of his second jaw pierce the lining of her mouth and the highly acidic liquid secreted by his salivary glands began to corrode her gums.
Not here... not Barnes!
Before his sanity completely crumbled, Karen made a cruel choice.
Instead of closing his mouth, he violently contracted his jaw muscles, curling his tongue deep into the nook where his jaws met.
'Crack!'
The muffled sound of bone crushing soft tissue echoed in his mind.
The excruciating pain, like a thousand volts of electricity, instantly pierced Karen's nervous system.
A large amount of blood with a deep blue glow instantly filled his mouth. The extreme pain abruptly severed the transmission of predatory signals and Karen's body began to convulse violently. A suppressed, inhuman scream escaped his throat.
He clenched his mouth tightly and swallowed his own blood.
The salty, fishy and bitter taste exploded on his taste buds — it wasn't just blood, but the last remnant of his dignity as a 'human being'. "N-nothing... it's nothing."
Using the scaffolding for support, Karen stood up. His voice was distorted and muffled, sounding as though he had a mouthful of pebbles. 'It was... it was a stray cat.'
He didn't go downstairs. Instead, he leaped in the opposite direction, using the cover of darkness.
Barnes stood in the rain, staring blankly at the twisted figure swiftly disappearing over the rooftops. Then he looked down at the puddle at his feet.
In the dark rain, a piece of dark red, translucent tissue floated on the surface of the water.
He crouched down and picked up the piece of flesh with his fingertips. It was the small piece of tongue that Karen had bitten off.
'God...' Barnes murmured, his hands trembling slightly.
He had worked as a 'scavenger' for thirty years and witnessed countless mutations, but he had never seen a monster choose to kill itself so ruthlessly to avoid harming its own kind.
In the shadows further away, Karen leaned against the chimney, panting heavily.
The lining of his mouth was rapidly regenerating with the help of Adam cells, and the tingling sensation was more unbearable than pain. He gazed towards the White Tower, his eyes filled with an unprecedented resolve.
The disguise had cracked beyond repair.
This body had become a prison, ready to explode at any moment. He had to complete his own 'funeral' before he lost control again.
'Leah, I'll take you away.'
Karen wiped the blood from his mouth and disappeared into the depths of the slums.
The outermost perimeter of the sanctuary was the 'Guillotine' defensive line.
This remote area was untouched by the White Tower's radiance, and the hundred-metre-high nano-alloy walls were covered in dark red rust and mutated fungi. The fungi clung to the cold, mechanical structure like writhing viscera. At the foot of the walls lay the ruins of an abandoned supply depot. The air echoed with the distant howls of mutants in the wasteland and the hissing of the high-voltage electric grid within the walls.
Karen Vans dragged his heavy footsteps into a decontamination room half-buried in the rubble.
His tongue had regenerated, but the metallic taste of self-mutilation lingered between his teeth and his breathing was slow. With each swallow, he could feel his second jaw twitching uneasily deep in his throat.
He needed to confirm one thing.
He needed to find out how much of 'Karen' remained.
Karen trembled as he wiped the dust from the cracked mirror above the sink. At first, the mirror reflected only a blurry darkness.
As he slowly raised his head, the eyes he had deliberately avoided — concealed by camouflage — burst into flames in the darkness without warning.
[Visual Alienation – Deep-Sea Predator Iris]
The eyes in the mirror had completely lost the whites and rounded pupils of human eyes.
In their place was a horizontal rectangular structure, its edges covered with jagged blue light. The entire eyeball was filled with deep, translucent, eerie blue mucus designed to capture the faintest photons in the lightless depths of the ocean. At the centre of the pupil, a ring of dark golden bioluminescence pulsed in time with his breath, displaying a cold, absolutely rational geometric beauty.
This was no longer an organ for observing the world.
It was a biological radar, evolved to lock onto prey, analyse weaknesses and calculate the killing path.
In that instant, Karen saw through those eyes: the faint infrared radiation behind the mirror; the electrolytes flowing within the beetles in the wall's cracks; and the suspended microscopic sampling spores in the air, carrying Silas's scent.
Karen stared intently at his reflection in the mirror.
He tried to smile, but the muscles he tried to move were stiff and distorted by the hardening of the stratum corneum, making him look like a corpse sewn into human shape.
'This is what you wanted... the perfect hound.'
Karen extended a finger covered in black scales and gently touched the pupil in the mirror.
The feeling was peculiar — he felt no nausea or fear, but rather an unprecedented sense of 'wholeness'. The Leviathan genes within him transmitted a morbid sense of satisfaction to his cerebral cortex. 'Look,' they said. 'This is what you truly are. Why should you grind down your noble claws for those fragile fleas?'
The 'it' in the mirror stared back at him coldly.
There was no pity or pain in its eyes; only an almost divine indifference. It was waiting for Karen to surrender completely, waiting for him to see the girl named 'Lia' as the high-energy fuel needed to complete his final leap.
'No...'
Karen swung his fist, slamming it heavily against the mirror.
Clang!
The mirror shattered completely, countless silver fragments reflecting thousands of eerie blue predator eyes, each one mocking his hypocrisy and reflecting his descent into depravity.
Just then, Barnes pushed open the wooden door of the ruins.
The old hunter stood in the doorway, holding a kerosene lamp that emitted a faint yellow light. The flickering light illuminated Karen's enormous, ferocious, membranous wings, as well as his face, which was covered in gill slits and had eerie blue eyes.
Barnes didn't raise his gun, but stared silently at the monster before him.
'Aris Thorne is waiting for you, Karen.' Barnes's voice was hoarse yet calm, as though he were delivering his final instructions. 'Silas's Leviathan prototype is already firing. If you don't show up soon, Leia will be sent into the pseudo-Grail and become nourishment for the Sanctuary."
Karen turned around, her obsidian scales reflecting a cold, shimmering light under the kerosene lamp.
"Barnes, can you see my eyes?" She pointed to her face. 'I can't go back.
What I see isn't eyes, but a bastard who hasn't given up.' Barnes stepped forward and shoved a heavy pass engraved with the 'Ember' symbol into Karen's hand. 'Take her away, beyond the walls, to that wasteland where not even Silas dares to go. Dying there is better than dying like a cog in a machine on an operating table."
Karen gripped the pass tightly, a complex emotion flashing in her deep blue eyes.
Suddenly, he unfurled the membranous wings on his back, creating a gust of wind that smashed through the roof of the supply depot and headed straight for the distant red sky stained by the flames of war.
This was the direction of the secret laboratory and the battlefield where he would finally settle accounts with Silas and this hypocritical sanctuary.