OMAKE – NON-CANONICAL: Dimensional Group Chat (6).
·
Jul 15
52
Here's the OMAKE! It's a little late because I had to rewatch the movie and reread parts of the novel while writing it, which ended up taking much longer than I expected. Because of that, I couldn't finish everything as quickly as I'd hoped, so I took a short break.
The regular chapter will also be coming out a bit later than expected, on the 17th. Sorry about that.
Have a great night, everyone, and enjoy the chapter!
[...]---[...]
Title: After Reincarnating in a World Where Various TV Shows and Movies Are Real, I Was Invited to a Dimensional Group Chat, But One of the Other Members Is an Overpowered Protagonist Pretending to Be a Normal Guy for Some Unknown Reason!
POV: Eleonore Blanc Castle
It took me a few seconds to recover from the sprint.
I wasn't sedentary. Before I transmigrated, I wasn't exactly the most athletic person in the world, I'll admit.
I was even starting to get a little belly and a few love handles because of it, but in this world, I'd made a point of exercising more. I never lifted heavy at the gym—just enough to stay in shape without putting on too much muscle.
I didn't want to be muscular. I was much more of a cardio bunny than anything else.
But there was a world of difference between doing cardio at the gym, in a controlled environment with music playing through my earbuds, and suddenly running for your life out of nowhere, without warming up first, while knowing the devil himself was chasing you!
I swear my heart was trying to jump out of my chest just to say hi to everyone...
Those blaring sirens weren't helping either. It was a deafening sound I'd only ever heard in apocalypse and war movies. Just hearing them made me even more tense. The noise was so awful it somehow made the whole situation feel even worse...
I gasped for air, pressing my left hand against my chest while bracing myself against Devas with my right.
My nails were practically digging into his skin just to keep myself standing.
I was doubled over, staring at the supermarket's stained linoleum floor, desperately trying to force air back into my lungs, while Devas stood perfectly upright, rigid, looking over my head straight at the closed entrance behind us.
I could feel my stomach churning, threatening to make me throw up for the second time that day.
"Damn... those girls who... have a chasing fetish... they're messed up... seriously sick... fucking weird..." I muttered between ragged breaths, swallowing hard. God, this felt awful.
To my surprise, I heard a quiet snort from the man I was leaning on.
Yeah, asshole, laugh at my expense. Why not? Go ahead and laugh at my suffering!
I raised my head and shot him a flat look. Devas didn't seem to care. In fact, he wasn't even looking at me, nor did he have the slightest expression on his face. It was as if the amused snort I'd heard a moment ago had been nothing more than my imagination.
He was staring outside the store, looking straight into the white mist that had swallowed the entire landscape beyond the glass. He didn't even blink. His lone honey-brown eye almost seemed to begin changing color ever so slightly.
I blinked, shook my head, and took two more deep breaths before finally letting go of his arm and straightening up.
"Can you see anything out there?" I asked before turning to look around the store.
Food House Supermarket was exactly what you'd expect from a small-town grocery store. Long aisles, shelves packed to the brim, old-fashioned cash registers, and fluorescent lights humming softly overhead.
It was oddly nostalgic, in a way.
The place was packed. Dozens of people had stopped whatever they were doing, abandoning shopping carts and baskets, and were now staring toward the storefront with expressions ranging from confusion to shock to the first creeping hints of fear.
I recognized a few faces. Even if they didn't look exactly like the actors from the movie, there was still enough resemblance to make them instantly familiar.
Near the registers, David Drayton rested a protective hand on the shoulder of his young son, Billy.
Standing beside them, their smug lawyer neighbor, Brent Norton, wore an irritated expression, as though the mist were some personal inconvenience created solely to ruin his day.
Down one of the aisles, the short store manager, Ollie Weeks, was cleaning his glasses on his shirt, his face tense. And near the canned goods section, Mrs. Carmody already had her eyes closed, murmuring to herself, her posture as stiff as a fence post.
The rest of our crew was there too. Our girls were gathered a few steps away beside a display of fresh fruit, waiting for us.
I turned back to Devas.
"What was that back there?" I asked quietly. "You just froze in the parking lot."
He didn't answer right away. Instead, he lowered his gaze and silently pointed downward. Instinctively, I followed where he was looking.
The gap beneath the supermarket's front doors was still open. There was more than enough space for the wind to pass through. The mist should've been able to seep inside, spreading across the floor like dry ice.
But it wasn't.
It simply stopped at the exact threshold, as though it were crashing into an invisible glass wall.
"That doesn't make any sense..." I muttered, frowning.
Devas looked up from the floor to meet my eyes and gave a faint shake of his head.
"I'll explain later. Not now."
He cast a quick glance toward the people gathered near the registers, many of whom were clearly listening to us, before turning and walking deeper into the supermarket.
I opened my mouth to protest, then closed it again and simply nodded as I followed him. This wasn't the place to discuss whatever had happened.
The store was already growing louder as people began asking what the hell that mist was and talking about the town's emergency siren still wailing faintly in the distance.
I caught snippets of conversations—people wondering if it was some kind of chemical attack, a gas leak, or some natural disaster.
We walked over to the fruit display where the rest of our group was waiting.
"Are you girls okay?" I asked, quickly checking each of them over.
"Other than the fact that some idiot tried to slam the door in our faces?" Ellie growled, crossing her arms. Her hand was still hovering dangerously close to the pocket where she kept her pocketknife. "I'm just peachy."
"We barely made it inside," Ashley said, her voice trembling as she rested her hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. "That white thing moved way too fast."
Bella simply nodded without saying a word. She was pale, clutching her backpack against her chest as if it were a shield.
MaoMao, on the other hand, was perfectly calm. She didn't even seem out of breath.
"That was adequate exercise," she remarked, looking around. "There are too many chemical compounds mixed into the air in here. The smell is confusing. And these strange lights hurt my eyes a little."
I honestly couldn't tell whether that was just MaoMao's coping mechanism or if there was genuinely something a little different going on inside that little green head of hers.
Maybe both?...
"Thanks for holding the door," Devas said, drawing Ellie's attention. His tone was calm and sincere. "Who was the guy? Did he try anything?"
Ellie blinked, clearly caught off guard.
She rubbed the tip of her nose with the back of her hand and looked away. The tough-girl shell she'd built around herself cracked for just a moment. Considering the world she came from, she probably wasn't used to receiving praise or having adults genuinely worry about her.
"It was nothing," she muttered with a shrug, trying to sound indifferent. She jerked her chin toward one of the registers. "That guy over there in the plaid cap. He tried to shove the glass door shut, but I pulled my knife, and he backed off real quick. Fucking asshole..."
Devas nodded slowly without saying another word. I glanced at the man Ellie had pointed out and committed his face to memory, just in case.
The atmosphere around us grew more restless with every passing second. The shock was wearing off.
Panic was beginning to take its place.
I stayed quiet, simply listening to the conversations spreading throughout the store.
"Was there an explosion at the power plant?" a heavyset woman with frizzy hair and thick glasses asked loudly, hysteria creeping into her voice. "Those emergency sirens won't stop! I've never seen anything like this before!"
"I didn't hear any explosion," replied a bald man in a denim jacket. His face was practically pressed against the storefront as he futilely tried to see through the white haze. "It looks like some kind of chemical leak. Gas. The town should've sounded the sirens before this happened... Is there something out there?"
"It's that damn Arrowhead Project," an elderly man wearing a military veteran's cap muttered conspiratorially to the people around him. "They're messing with things they shouldn't at that base up in the mountains. I've always said so."
Everyone ignored the last one, as though he were just another crazy old man. Funny... maybe I would've ignored him too before all this? How many so-called lunatics weren't actually crazy at all?...
The theories spread like wildfire. Nobody knew anything, yet everyone desperately wanted a logical explanation.
I licked my lips, tapping the pocket where the Seer Coin rested. I wasn't sure whether I should say something or not... I just didn't know what.
As the murmur of voices continued to grow, I noticed someone breaking away from the crowd and walking toward us.
It was David Drayton.
He looked to be around forty. Dark blond hair that was almost brown, slightly unkempt, a layer of stubble, and a face worn down by exhaustion. He wore a brown suede jacket over a dark shirt. His son Billy, a blond little boy with fear written all over his face, clung tightly to his father's leg, gripping the fabric of his pants with both hands.
He stopped a few steps away from us.
His gaze swept across our group—which, to be fair, was probably the strangest, most out-of-place sight in the entire supermarket.
"Excuse me," David began. His voice was controlled, but the tension in it was obvious. "I saw you all come running in just now. You came from the parking lot. Did you happen to see where this came from... or what it is, before it covered everything?"
I noticed that, although David was addressing all of us, his eyes—and his words—were directed mainly at Devas.
Maybe because he was the only man in our group?
What year was this again? In the novel, the story took place in the eighties... or was it the late seventies?... But the movie was set in the late 2000s... damn it.
I needed to find a newspaper or magazine somewhere. Asking someone what year it was would be suspicious as hell.
Then again, maybe it wasn't outdated sexism at all. Maybe it was simply because Devas looked like a wall of muscle and was the oldest-looking person in our group.
Physically, at least. He looked like he was in his mid-twenties, maybe a little older. In reality, I was the oldest one here—but I definitely didn't look it.
Either way, I took a small step forward and opened my mouth to answer. The moment I did, something seemed to ripple within the mist outside.
A violent tremor slammed into the supermarket. The floor shook so hard my knees nearly buckled beneath me.
The noise was deafening. Shelves groaned violently along with the walls. The sound of shattering glass and metal cans crashing onto the floor echoed throughout the store, swallowed almost immediately by terrified screams.
A few feet away, David Drayton dropped to his knees, pulling his young son into his arms and curling his body over him like a human shield.
The lawyer, Brent Norton, slightly farther away but still nearby, stumbled and slammed backward into a magazine rack, letting out a pained grunt.
A man and a woman near the registers tripped over each other and collapsed into a tangled heap on the floor.
From our group, Ashley and Bella let out short screams and grabbed onto each other to keep from falling, crouching instinctively.
MaoMao simply lowered her center of gravity, bending her knees and placing her hands on the floor. Ellie staggered and cursed loudly, but managed to stay upright by catching herself against Devas's back.
As for me, my hands shot out and grabbed the closest solid thing I could find.
That thing happened to be Devas's arm.
I clutched it with both hands and leaned against him, expecting us to be knocked over together by the force of the quake.
It never happened.
Devas didn't sway or stumble. He didn't even seem affected by the earthquake. He simply stood there, rooted to the floor as though he were carved from solid stone.
...Seriously, what the hell was this guy?!
I looked up, still clinging to him, and stared at his face.
His honey-brown eye wasn't focused on the girls, or David, or the chaos unfolding around us.
It was fixed directly on the supermarket's glass doors, as though he were waiting for something. I followed his gaze.
A second later, the fluorescent lights flickered...
...and died.
The supermarket was plunged into darkness.
The screams grew louder, now filled with outright fear and panic. The darkness lasted only a few agonizing seconds before a deep mechanical hum echoed from the back of the store.
The emergency generators had kicked in.
A dim yellow light, far weaker and gloomier than before, illuminated the aisles. At the same time, the tremors gradually subsided until they disappeared completely.
I quickly let go of Devas's arm and took a step back, drawing in a deep breath as my heart pounded against my ribs.
I'd been so focused on the mist that I'd completely forgotten this earthquake happened...
I tore my eyes away from the entrance and looked around. The girls were okay. Nothing had fallen on them, and none of them had gone down. I forced myself to remember what came next.
After the quake came the panic, and then...
"What the hell was that? An earthquake?" someone shouted from the back of the store.
"The phones are dead!" someone else yelled from near the registers.
Chaos immediately took over.
Some people rushed toward the store's landline phones, desperately jabbing the receiver hooks.
A handful of others pulled phones from their pockets. Cell phones.
Flip phones and those old brick-like models with numeric keypads. They were ancient by my original standards, but not by my current ones. My own phone was pretty similar—just a slightly newer model.
Judging by the technology, I could estimate the date. It was around 2007 or 2008. Just like the movie.
That was both good and bad. Good because we'd watched the movie recently, so everything was still fresh in my mind. Bad because some things already felt... off.
The mist had rolled in much more gently. The earthquake had taken longer to happen, and the sirens hadn't started until after the mist arrived. Even the blackout had been delayed.
It wasn't exactly like the movie. Not entirely. A mixture of the movie and the book?...
Damn it! Fuck! That made things a whole lot more complicated...
My brief moment of thought didn't last long.
The sound of rapid, heavy footsteps pounding against the wet pavement outside snapped my attention toward the entrance.
Someone violently shoved open the supermarket's double glass doors, throwing them wide, and a man stumbled inside, reeling as he nearly lost his footing.
The cold air and the rotten stench of the mist flooded into the store before the doors swung shut again.
The man was gasping for breath. He had to be around seventy, maybe older. He wore a filthy T-shirt and a pair of green work pants. The rest of him was flushed a deep red, and large beads of sweat covered his forehead.
Blood poured from his nose, running over his upper lip before splitting into two thin streams along either side of his mouth, like a narrow crimson mustache dripping onto his shirt, leaving bright red specks like drops of paint.
I... I didn't recognize him...
He wasn't like the others—David, Ollie, Brent Norton, and the rest—whose faces carried just enough resemblance for me to immediately know who they were.
This man was different. The one who was supposed to come through those doors was Dan Miller. But this wasn't Dan Miller.
With that, I was practically certain we weren't inside a scenario based solely on the movie. It was a blend of the movie and the book—a book I barely remembered anything about.
My stomach sank. As a cold feeling settled over me, the old man began to scream.
"There's something in the mist!" he shrieked, his high-pitched voice echoing through the dimly lit supermarket.
"Something in the mist got John Lee! Something—"
The old man staggered backward, tripping over his own feet. His back slammed into a stack of lawn fertilizer bags piled near the storefront, and he collapsed into a sitting position right there, completely drained.
"Something in the mist got John Lee, and I heard him screaming!"
The old man's arrival seemed to make the air inside the supermarket even heavier.
Two employees in white aprons rushed over to him. They helped the elderly man to his feet, stumbling all the way, and sat him down on an overturned crate.
"Are you okay? What happened out there?" one of them asked, his voice shaking.
The old man only shook his head, his eyes wide and unfocused.
"There's things out there! They got John Lee!" he repeated in a shrill, ragged voice. He sounded insane. "I heard him screaming! They got him! They got him! Those things got him!"
When he'd burst through the doors, the opening had allowed the smell of the mist to flood further into the store.
It reeked of decay.
The stench of rotten food hit me first, vaguely reminding me of a revolting mixture of sulfur and spoiled cabbage. I had to hold my breath and swallow hard to keep from gagging.
I felt a firm hand on my shoulder. I flinched.
Devas leaned down until his face was close to my ear.
"Watch the storefront windows," he whispered, his voice low enough that only I could hear. "Keep an eye on the girls too. I'll be back."
He stepped away before I could respond and headed toward the entrance.
I looked around. The supermarket was a complete mess after the earthquake. Merchandise was scattered all over the floor, shelves leaned at awkward angles, and frightened people murmured among themselves while trying—and apparently failing—to use the phones.
I cleared my head and focused on what he'd asked me to do.
My right hand rose to my chest, resting over my jacket exactly where my Taurus was hidden inside its concealed holster.
If Devas had told me to watch the storefront windows, then he'd seen something.
I already knew there were creatures in the mist, but if he was warning me now, then they had to be close already.
What was the first attack in the story again?...
I'd watched the movie not that long ago, and yet it felt like my memories were wrapped in fog. Was it because I was scared?
Fuck... I knew fear and panic made people think less clearly, but this was the first time I'd ever been in a situation like this, and nothing had actually happened yet besides the mist showing up...
After spending a few seconds replaying the movie's major events in my head, using them as landmarks, I finally remembered the first monster that actually appeared.
It was at the loading dock.
The employees went to check the generator's exhaust fan and opened the metal door.
Tentacles...
Grotesque, fleshy tentacles covered in suction cups lined with teeth that looked like tiny mouths. One of the employees opened the door to inspect the exhaust pipe and got grabbed...
Ugh... Shit... Where the hell was the loading dock in this place?!
From somewhere behind me, I heard Devas's voice.
He was talking to the employees and the people standing near the glass doors. He was telling them to lock the entrance and shove something heavy against it to block the way. He was also asking whether the building had any other entrances or exits.
I'd only been half-listening while keeping my eyes fixed on the long stretch of storefront glass, but I focused on them when the discussion grew louder.
"You're actually taking this old man seriously?" one of the men asked, sounding both incredulous and irritated. "There aren't any monsters out there, man. This is hysteria. He's like this because he breathed in whatever's in that weird mist!"
Devas didn't lose his composure.
"Whether there are monsters or not doesn't matter," he replied, pointing at the solid wall of white pressed against the storefront windows. "Something is obviously wrong out there. Or do you honestly think that's normal? Locking the doors and blocking the entrances is the bare mini—"
Before the man could answer—or Devas could finish—a sharp, commanding voice cut across the supermarket.
"It's death!"
...That crazy bitch, wasn't it?...
I turned my head, just like everyone else.
Mrs. Carmody was standing near the canned goods aisle. She was a middle-aged woman with a severe, bony face untouched by makeup. She wore dark mustard-colored slacks and a faded turtleneck sweater.
I had never, in my entire life, seen anyone who looked more like a Karen than that woman.
In one hand, she gripped an old black Bible so tightly her knuckles had turned white.
"It's the end times!" she shouted, raising the holy book high for everyone to see. "The apocalypse has come to cleanse the sinners from the face of the Earth!"
"It's a sign from God! The end has come, and it's knocking at our door!" she continued, waving the black-covered Bible through the air. "The Lord demands that we bow befo—"
"Oh, shut the fuck up already, you crazy old bitch!"
The shout echoed through the supermarket with startling force.
The next second... The canned goods aisle fell into dead silence.
It wasn't until I noticed dozens of pairs of eyes—including David's, Brent Norton's, and even the store manager Ollie's—staring directly at me that it finally sank in.
That furious, hysterical voice had been mine.
I felt my face heat up instantly. I was pretty sure I was blushing at least a little. I wasn't the kind of person who made scenes in public.
But you know what? I didn't regret it one bit.
Yelling at that Karen had been unbelievably cathartic. I'd been bottling up that stress ever since the camp gate had made that weird metallic snap.
Mrs. Carmody puffed out her chest, her gaunt face flushing red with outrage. She pointed the Bible at me as though it were a loaded weapon.
"Blasphemy!" she hissed, her voice trembling with fury. "An insolent young woman! The Lord will show no mercy to the ignorant when Judgment comes knocking! You will be among the first to—"
"Oh, give it a rest, Carmody!" a man in a baseball cap shouted from the next aisle over, prompting murmurs of agreement from the surrounding shoppers. "Go preach in the parking lot if you want to!"
"He's right! Shut up already, you crazy old hag!" another woman yelled.
Before the argument could descend into a full-blown shouting match, Brent stepped forward, straightening his jacket with practiced arrogance.
"Please, everyone, calm down," Norton declared, his voice loud and steady enough to project an air of authority. "There is no apocalypse. That's absurd. What we're witnessing is obviously some sort of large-scale gas leak, a military test from that base in the mountains, or an industrial accident."
People actually started listening to him. Rational explanations always soothed the desperate.
"I recently read an article on geology," Norton continued, gesturing as he spoke. "It explained how underground seismic detonations—or explosions beneath deep lakes—can release pockets of dense, heavy gases while also causing localized earthquakes and power failures. The military is probably dealing with it as we speak. It'll dissipate within a few hours."
...What a load of complete bullshit.
He really was a lawyer, wasn't he?
The man didn't even blink or hesitate while spewing that mountain of made-up nonsense. And yet... It worked...
The panic inside the store visibly subsided. A few people even let out relieved sighs before returning to quieter conversations.
Even that annoying bitch had backed down, probably realizing she wasn't going to get very far for the moment.
Taking advantage of the distraction, I glanced over my shoulder to check on the girls.
Ashley and Bella were still keeping quiet, huddled beside a stack of watermelons while darting nervous glances around with wide eyes. Even so, I had the vague feeling Ashley wasn't nearly as frightened as she looked and was mostly acting that way to keep Bella company.
Ellie, on the other hand, had wandered off a little.
She was holding an enormous peach in both hands. Probably something she'd never seen before in that fucked-up post-apocalyptic town from The Last of Us, where everything was canned, moldy, or rotten.
She brought the fruit to her nose, took a long sniff, then bit into it. Juice ran down her chin. Ellie chewed thoughtfully for a few moments, gave a small nod to herself, and kept eating as if nothing at all was happening.
Priorities, I guess...
But when I looked for MaoMao, she wasn't with the others.
I held my breath for a second as panic crept back in. That little Chinese girl had moved far too quickly and quietly without me noticing.
I scanned the aisles until I finally spotted her.
She was standing in the gardening supplies aisle, staring intently at a large bottle of rat poison and several boxes of chemical pesticides. She looked like she was trying to read the ingredients... or maybe analyze the smell.
I thought about going over there and dragging her back by her hanfu—or at least shouting at her to get away from that stuff—but I changed my mind when I turned my head.
Devas was gone.
I looked around quickly.
How the hell had a nearly two-meter wall of muscle just vanished into thin air?!
It wasn't until I focused on the supermarket's front entrance that I realized what he'd done.
The front doors had been barricaded.
He'd lined up three shopping carts filled to the brim, locking them together so they jammed the automatic sliding doors from the inside, then stacked several heavy bags of fertilizer and rock salt against the base of the glass where the gap was.
All of it done quietly while everyone else had been busy yelling at Carmody or listening to Norton's bullshit.
...Seriously, how could someone that huge move so fast and so quietly? How the hell had nobody noticed any of that?!
I searched for Devas for another few seconds before finally spotting him several yards away.
He was standing alone, staring through the long stretch of glass beside the barricaded front entrance.
I turned back toward the girls.
"I'll be right back," I said, jerking my chin toward him. "I'm going over to the front window to talk to him."
Ashley and Bella nodded.
"Be careful," Ashley murmured, her eyes still filled with unease.
Ellie simply gave me a thumbs-up with her free hand. In the other, she was holding a half-eaten mango. I noticed her backpack looked suspiciously fuller than before, but I decided not to comment.
MaoMao was still in the gardening aisle, studying the labels on the rat poison as if completely absorbed in the task.
I left her alone. I trusted that little green-haired girl to take very good care of herself.
...Or mostly, anyway.
I'd be back soon.
With that, I walked over to Devas and stopped beside him. I followed his gaze, staring out through the glass at the white mist beyond. We stood there in silence for a few seconds.
"You said you'd explain," I prompted quietly. "Why did you freeze like that in the parking lot?"
I knew it wasn't fear. Not after the way he'd acted back at the camp and afterward. Something had happened.
Devas never took his eyes off the mist.
"I felt something," he began. "Something watching me from inside the mist. From beyond the mist... from somewhere very far away."
He paused.
"It felt just like when we left the camp. The same feeling of being watched. But this time... it seemed focused on me. It felt... mocking, somehow..."
A cold shiver crawled up my spine. I rubbed my arms through my jacket.
Devas frowned, narrowing his lone honey-brown eye.
"Did you feel anything like that?" he asked.
"No," I answered immediately. Then I added, "Are you still feeling it now?"
He let out a quiet sigh.
"I figured you wouldn't," he said. "No, I'm not. Just... curiosity."
That was when I noticed.
Devas was smiling.
I hadn't noticed when he'd started smiling—or if he'd been smiling the whole time and I'd simply failed to see it.
It was a gentle, genuine smile. An impossibly soft smile.
And somehow...
That smile sent a far worse chill down my spine than the mist outside. Worse than what he'd just told me. Worse than that strange presence lurking beyond the camp...
He never once looked away from the mist. He didn't blink.
His eye was orange—
Then I blinked.
And his smile was gone. The orange vanished from his eye, as though the whole thing had been nothing more than a hallucination.
I had to be imagining things—
The fuck I was imagining things!!
I wasn't falling for that cliché bullshit! That wasn't my exhausted mind playing tricks on me! I'm not going crazy! He smiled! His eye glowed! There's something seriously wrong with this guy!
I opened my mouth to ask what the hell that demonic-looking thing had been, but a loud, tear-choked voice cut me off.
"Please! Somebody help me!"
I whipped my head toward the sound.
A woman stood in the middle of the central aisle, desperately searching the frightened faces around her. She looked to be in her early thirties, her face drenched in tears.
"I have two little children at home!" she pleaded, her voice breaking into a heart-wrenching sob. "They're all alone! Please... someone help me get to them... please!"
[...]---[...]
Things have finally started for real. I'd forgotten just how much fun it is to write Eleonore. My thought process when writing her is completely different from the one I use for Devas.
Speaking of him... what do you think was watching him?
Mini-spoiler: it has something to do with where the mist comes from.
I won't say much more than that.
Have a great night, everyone, and enjoy the chapter!