novelraw Chapter 140: The Limb Collector
Chapter 140: The Limb Collector
Deep within the "Doll Making and Repair Workshop," permeated with the scent of fresh blood, William's tall figure blended with the heavy shadow cast by a wood sanding machine.
He held his breath, lowering his heart rate to its absolute minimum.
The "Administrator" before him, engrossed in its morbid creation, was most likely the true form of the UMA known as the Limb Collector, which had been entrenched here for centuries.
This point-blank reconnaissance was his best chance to discern this UMA's strength and weaknesses.
The creature had its back to him.
It seemed utterly immersed in its world of morbid aesthetic creation.
Its hand, stitched together from the bones of different races, was meticulously cutting a fresh human skin spread out on the workbench with a surgical scalpel that gleamed coldly.
Its movements were precise, elegant, and carried a rhythmic quality.
As William tried to shift deeper into the shadows for a better viewing angle, a loose floorboard beneath his foot, long softened by soaking liquid, let out a faint yet piercingly clear *creak* in the deathly silent workshop.
In that instant, William felt all the blood in his body freeze.The elegant cutting motions of the "Administrator," which had been facing away, halted abruptly.
With a *crack*, it turned the "stitched-together head" composed of different skin patches a full one hundred and eighty degrees.
William saw this face clearly, the same one he had glimpsed only briefly in the museum during the day.
It was not a "face" disfigured by burns at all, but a terrifying mask—a crude imitation stitched together from skin fragments of different races, ages, and even genders, crisscrossed with surgical sutures and metal staples.
The left brow bone came from a dark-skinned Black person, while the right cheek belonged to a freckled white girl.
Most horrifying of all were its two mismatched eyeballs.
One was a deep blue, the other a deep brown characteristic of Eastern features.
They were embedded together in the patchwork eye sockets, gleaming with an inhuman, eerie light that mixed foolishness with madness.
In its right hand, assembled from different "parts," it was "elegantly" pinching a fresh human eyeball, plucked from the bloody materials, its lens still carrying the residual warmth of life.
When those mismatched, disordered eyes precisely pierced through the shadows and locked onto William's disgusted face, the mouth on that "stitched face," formed from different lips, slowly stretched into a wide grin, revealing a row of uneven teeth.
It was smiling.
The way it looked at William was not like looking at an intruder, but more like looking at a collectible it was about to add to its collection.
"Oh... a... warrior..."
A strange, raspy synthesized voice, as if from several different vocal cords speaking simultaneously, issued from the "stitched face's" mouth.
"How... how strong the limbs... how tough the skin... and these eyes that have seen through life and death..."
"You shall become the most perfect among all my collectibles... that 'Judas'."
Before the words even faded, the monster attacked.
It did not rely on brute force from its large frame. Instead, its movements carried the elegance and lethality of a ballet dancer.
Its left hand, pieced together from countless finger bones, flicked forward.
"*Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh!!!*"
Ten strands of tough "thread," finer than hair and translucent in the dim light, shot from its ten fingertips like living venomous snakes.
These threads quickly dispersed and intertwined in mid-air at angles defying physical inertia, forming a vast, inescapable net that descended upon the shadows where William hid.
Their speed and tricky angles were such that any top-tier special forces soldier would be instantly sliced and bound into an immobile flesh-and-blood puppet.
However, what it faced was William Keane.
This legendary veteran's danger perception had long surpassed human limits, reaching the realm of beast-like intuition.
At the very moment the threads left its fingers, William's tensed body had already reacted.
His muscle memory drove him to fall backward in a supine position.
Dozens of sharp threads whistled past, narrowly missing the tip of his nose.
A few strands he couldn't dodge sliced cleanly through his tough black combat uniform, leaving several gashes.
Even the hard oak floorboards beneath his feet were cut by these soft threads, leaving several neat incisions half an inch deep.
William rolled on the spot. While evading the first wave of attack, he had already adjusted his posture, kneeling on one knee. The Winchester in his hands simultaneously completed the series of actions: raising, chambering a round, and aiming.
"*BOOM!!*"
The gunshot exploded within the enclosed workshop.
Propelled by violent kinetic energy, the steel slug formed a death ray that struck the UMA, which remained in its "dancing" pose.
Yet, upon hitting the UMA's body, it only produced a dull *thud*, like striking thick, wet cowhide.
The bullet merely embedded itself in the UMA's "body," which was layered and stitched together from countless layers of different biological leathers and skins, leaving a shallow crater oozing green, viscous fluid, but failed to penetrate its defense to harm the core within.
Its unique physical construction granted it terrifying resistance to kinetic impact and piercing damage.
"Useless... warrior..." the mocking voice of the "stitched face" rang out.
It looked at the insignificant wound on its body as if admiring an interesting piece of art.
"Your rage will only soil this... new garment I am about to complete..."
William took a deep breath.
He realized the disparity in power between them was overwhelming.
His attacks could not inflict effective damage, while the opponent's omnipresent "thread" attacks were more than enough to dismember him.
This was the enemy's "home ground," with an unknown number of its controlled "doll army" likely hidden around.
Prolonging the fight meant certain death.
He made the correct choice immediately: retreat.
He did not launch another futile attack. Instead, he spun around abruptly, channeling his explosive strength to the limit, and charged madly toward the small side door of the workshop.
"Trying to flee?" The Limb Collector's raspy voice now carried a tone of offended anger.
It seemed not to have expected the perfect "collectible" in its eyes to give up resistance and choose escape.
For a being that fancied itself an artist, this was an insult.
"Leave behind a 'souvenir' before you go!"
Its assembled arm swept out again. This time, it was not a wide-area net attack, but ten threads coalesced into a single strand, transforming into a cutting whip as fast as lightning and invisible to the naked eye, lashing viciously at William's fleeing back.
William sensed a lethal gust of wind from behind.
At his maximum sprinting speed, he couldn't execute an effective evasion.
At this critical juncture, the veteran's rich battlefield experience saved him once more.
He didn't turn around or attempt to block. Instead, while diving forward, he swung the Winchester slung over his left shoulder backward, using the hard ironwood and steel gun body to parry the deadly cutting whip.
"*SCREEEEEEEEEEEE——————!!*"
A sharp metallic screech erupted.
The coalesced cutting whip lashed hard against the rifle's sturdy frame.
Accompanied by a shower of dazzling sparks, the ironwood stock of William's old companion of decades was instantly sliced open, revealing the solid steel barrel within.
William's left arm also suffered from the immense impact and cutting force;
the sleeve of his combat uniform shattered, and a deep, bone-exposing wound with a smooth cut ran from his shoulder down to his elbow.
Bizarrely, such a severe wound bled very little, as if the blood vessels at the wound site had been instantly severed and "cauterized" shut by the sharp force.
William let out a suppressed groan of pain, but he used the momentum from the impact to propel his body forward even further, finally crashing through the not-so-sturdy small door and successfully escaping the workshop.
When the injured William reunited with Lin Jie and the other waiting anxiously outside, a look of lingering fear surfaced on his face.
He relayed everything that had happened inside using the most concise language.
Lin Jie wasn't concerned with the UMA's appearance;
his gaze first fell on the gruesome, bizarre wound on William's left arm.
Looking at that wound, where the cross-section of muscle fibers was clearly visible and bleeding was minimal, his mind immediately connected it to the stitching seams on the dolls' bodies.
He understood the two core abilities of this UMA.
Precision "cutting" akin to surgical skill.
And the "threads" capable of manipulating everything.
At that moment, atop the bell towers of all the ancient churches in the entire town of Oberammergau, the long-silent bronze bells seemed to receive a command.
As midnight arrived, they were struck simultaneously.
"*Dong... Dong... Dong...*"
Long, solemn, and sacred bell tones reverberated under the silent night sky.
As the bells rang, within the darkened windows of the fairytale wooden houses throughout the town, one after another, swaying, dim candlelight began to flicker to life.