Chapter 86: Saint Hilarius Hospital (18)
"Sia, focus," Damian said, his voice dropping into a firm military tone, pushing past his shock to return to his field commander state.
"We can’t save them. Removing the tubes would mean their immediate death, and we won’t be able to carry them. We need to find a way down to the lower level or up. We’re completely exposed on this bridge. Where are the others?"
"No trace of their energy. The elevator shaft split. We’re alone, Damian—the tank and the doctor," Sia replied, her sharp eyes scanning the distant walls.
"Look there, about two hundred meters east. There’s a massive steel gate and a service elevator beside it. That’s the only possible exit."
"Then we move fast and quiet," Damian said, activating his helmet’s thermal lens to scan the path.
But silence in the blood farms was not an option.
As Damian took his first step... he suddenly stopped.
"Sia... take a step back," Damian whispered, tension stiffening his muscles like steel.
"What is it? Traps?" Sia asked, her daggers ready.
"The lake... it’s not boiling because of heat."
Sia looked down.
Damian was right.
The massive lake of blood beneath the mesh walkway had begun to move unnaturally.
It wasn’t just gas bubbles.
There were "things" swimming beneath the thick surface of blood.
Dark shadows moving at terrifying speed, intersecting and circling like blood-soaked sharks cutting long distances in seconds.
Suddenly, from the viscous surface, red hands burst forth!
They were not human hands.
They were hands made entirely of clotted blood and exposed muscle, devoid of solid bone or skin, ending in razor-sharp claws.
Dozens of these creatures—known in dark records as "Blood Ghouls"—began climbing the concrete pillars supporting the walkway at a nightmarish speed, like insects scaling a wall!
"Farm guardians. Corrupted white blood cells programmed to protect the host body," Sia analyzed instantly, her daggers beginning to glow with a toxic blue light.
"They sense heat and heartbeats. Combat is inevitable."
"Defensive formation! Behind me! Do not advance!" Damian roared, not waiting to be ambushed.
The Blood Ghouls lunged from all sides.
They were faceless creatures—mere masses of red muscle and coagulated blood shaped into distorted humanoid forms, with jagged gaps instead of mouths.
Damian raised his heavy dual-barreled rotary machine gun.
Tatatatatatatatata!
Supercharged Eitra bullets fired like a fiery storm through the narrow passage, lighting the darkness with yellow flashes.
The ghouls struck mid-air were torn into chunks of viscous blood, scattering everywhere, raining red onto the walkway.
But... the true horror of these creatures became clear immediately.
The torn pieces that fell onto the metal mesh did not die.
Instead, they seeped through the gaps, falling into the blood lake below—and the moment they touched it, they reformed and climbed the pillars again with greater ferocity!
"Physical rounds are useless! They’re liquid entities regenerating from the source!" Damian shouted, channeling lightning Eitra into his weapon.
Blue lightning-charged bullets erupted.
This time, when they struck a Blood Ghoul, the electromagnetic discharge electrocuted the cellular fluid and boiled it violently, causing it to evaporate instantly into black smoke with a foul ozone stench—
preventing regeneration!
But their numbers were overwhelming.
Hundreds of them climbed the bridges like an army of red ants, pouring in from every direction.
One of the Blood Ghouls managed to slip past Damian’s suppressive fire with its liquid flexibility and leapt at Sia from behind, aiming to stab her in the neck.
Sia, a professional assassin, didn’t even turn.
She bent with impossible acrobatic flexibility, slipping her body beneath the ghoul’s strike at the last moment. In the same motion, she slashed upward with her daggers, severing the ghoul’s liquid legs.
As it fell, she spun and drove her poison-coated dagger directly into its chest.
The blue Eitra poison Sia used was designed to destroy living cells at the DNA level.
The moment it spread through the Blood Ghoul, it triggered an opposing chemical reaction.
Its red body turned into a decayed black liquid, beginning to boil and dissolve on the metal mesh, losing its cohesion and its ability to return to the lake.
"Excellent! Keep poisoning them!" Damian shouted as he crushed another ghoul’s head with his lightning-charged heavy armor, causing it to evaporate into a red cloud.
"They’re annoying, but structurally weak," Sia said, dancing between the blood creatures. A stab here, a slash there.
She moved like a white phantom amid the red blood, not allowing a single drop to stain her elegant clothes.
She used her toxins intelligently, striking only the vital points in their viscous structures to accelerate their dissolution.
For ten continuous minutes, the massacre continued. Damian electrocuted and burned; Sia dissolved and poisoned.
The metal walkway became extremely slippery and dangerous due to the evaporated, acidic black blood, and every step required precise balance to avoid falling into the abyss.
Finally, the last Blood Ghoul fell—and evaporated at Damian’s hands.
Silence returned to the corridor, broken only by the patients’ moans and the heavy breathing of Damian and Sia.
"They’re finished..." Sia said, flicking the black blood off her daggers with an elegant motion, though she did not sheathe them.
Damian was breathing hard, but he did not lower his weapon.
His thermal lens continued scanning the lake below.
As a commander, his instincts told him it had been too easy.
"No... they’re not finished," Damian whispered, his pale face growing even paler until he looked like a corpse.
"The ghouls weren’t independent guards. They were just... sensory cells. Fingertips of something bigger."
"What do you mean?" Sia asked, her pupils shrinking as she raised her head and looked around with complete seriousness, abandoning her usual sadism.
As an A-rank doctor, she focused her Eitra senses on the entire lake—not just its surface. When she did... she felt it.
A single pulse.
A massive, synchronized pulse—as if the entire area of multiple football fields beneath them was beating with one heart.
"Damian... the entire lake..." Sia whispered, fear creeping into her voice for the first time.
"The lake isn’t an environment... it’s the organism itself."