Chapter 304. 399
Weister gulped hard. He had a gun in his hand, but it failed to give him even the tiniest amount of confidence.
It couldn't be helped. Anyone else would have the same reaction as him before hundreds of hideous-looking humanoid monsters that looked like clumps of bloody flesh piling up before their doors.
Tobba coughed twice and put his hands before his back before stepping forward.
"Um—" Tobba started, but a loud noise echoed as the door finally collapsed, allowing the flesh monsters to rush in like a tide.
"Get out! We can't let them surround us in this house!" Charles roared. He showed no fear as he rushed at the oncoming tide of flesh monsters with his crew members following closely behind him.
Charles fired multiple shots, and his white bone bullets blossomed into bloody flowers on the bodies of the flesh monsters. The crew members whipped out their weapons and started a volley of indiscriminate firing at the monsters.
The silent forest became a bloody battlefield in the blink of an eye.
Charles and his crew members' weapons wreaked havoc upon the monsters; the creatures suffered heavy casualties, as their bodies were extremely fragile.
They fell one by one to the ground, but they seemed oblivious to the death of their fellow species as they continued ahead with their deformed mouths wide agape, making a beeline for their prey.
Their eyes showed no fear, only an intense craving for blood. Embark on a quest to the commencement at n0v#lbin★
Charles managed to get out of the house, but he was by no means safe. The seemingly endless wave of deformed, flesh monsters had created what looked like a boundless red sea. Charles and his group were like tiny boats on that same boundless red sea.
A cacophony of noises composed of curses, gunshots, and roars echoed incessantly.
An unfortunate sailor was slow and tailed behind the group. Eight deformed arms reached out for him; their fingernails dug deeply into his chest, and tore him into pieces in the blink of an eye.
Bzzz!
Charles brandished the chainsaw in his hand and swung it ahead of him. The flesh monsters before him collapsed to the ground, opening a path for them to escape.
The smell of blood and rot intensified the deeper they got into the woods. Soon, they found white strips of cloth painted with bizarre inscriptions wrapped around the trunks of the nearby trees. White strips of cloth had also covered the ground before them.
"This... prayers to God Fhtagn..." the quiet Bandages spoke at last. He had picked up a strip of cloth and examined it briefly before throwing it away.
Someone is worshiping God Fhtagn here? Who are they? Those monsters? Charles wondered.
Upon reaching a spot where the ground was completely covered in white strips of cloth, they found themselves before a circular area the size of a football field. Everyone's expression changed upon seeing what was inside the circular ground. The crew members with weaker stomachs covered their mouths and barely managed to stop themselves from throwing up.
Corpses... a myriad of rotten, mutilated corpses were arranged in a twisted and revolting pentagram on the circular ground. The pentagram was irregular; its points were all slightly slanted to the left.
Within the pentagram, parts devoid of corpses were replaced by incomprehensible texts written in blood. On the other hand, the corpses' bloodshot eyes were wide open, their faces frozen in fear, and their hair was caked with bloody dirt. Clearly, they had suffered tremendous pain before embracing death.
These corpses were the flesh monsters that Charles and his crew had encountered earlier.
Charles looked around but found nothing else. His gaze eventually turned to the Wailing Graffiti on the headless corpse.
"Where's 319?"
Crack!
A crisp noise akin to a tree branch getting crushed echoed, and Charles instantly pointed his gun at where the noise had come from.
Charles heard more noises, and they grew louder until a wave of flesh monsters rushed out. The flesh monsters were on all fours and were carrying a wooden frame on their backs; a man's head the size of a small house was on the frame.
Aside from the faint outline, the head's scalp was completely transparent, allowing Charles to see the brain inside the skull. He also didn't miss the black maggots squirming and drilling in and out of the rotting brain. Staring at the traces of decay on the new presence sent a shiver down the spine of the crew members.
However, Charles didn't pay that much attention to the head. His eyes were on the items surrounding the head. An antique-looking, rusty printer was one of the items surrounding the man's head, and Charles' intuition was telling him that he was staring at what he had been looking for in this voyage—319, the Soul Printer!
"399! It's me! Where did you get that big head? Weren't you only able to live in a pool before?" Tobba said excitedly. He was about to run toward 399, but Charles immediately pulled him back.
"You said it's friendly, right? Friendly to the point that the Foundation had even allowed it to go on a stroll?" Charles asked while staring at the massive head. It looked so grotesque that it couldn't be further from friendly.
"Yes, that really is 399," Tobba asserted. He then turned toward the head being carried over by the flesh monsters and shouted, "399, get me a serving of the sea urchin sushi from Canteen 3!"
The brain soaking in the crystal clear liquid inside the head quivered slightly. Soon, a plate of sea urchin sushi wrapped in seaweed appeared out of thin air right in front of Tobba.