novelraw Chapter 338: The Catastrophe in the Real World
Chapter 338: The Catastrophe in the Real World
This left Alexander profoundly stunned and shocked.
"Lucy!"
Suddenly, Alexander thought of his desk-mate and swiftly rushed toward the neighboring villa.
During his high school years, Alexander rarely interacted with other students, to the point where he might not even remember all of their names. Yet Lucy was different. Despite their frequent banter and arguments, their relationship was extremely close.
In this world, he didn’t have much in the way of family; most of his friends and companions were from the graveyard community.
After the community transformed into a graveyard, Sophia briefly appeared as Selena but quickly vanished. Being a graveyard dweller, Alexander had faith that Sophia would be fine.
But Lucy was different! She was just an ordinary high school student. The only thing special about her was her good relationship with Dolly.
However, that was before Dolly regained her memories—before she became White Clothes, back when she was still a shy little girl.
With the drastic change in the real world, Alexander’s immediate concern was Lucy’s safety. The front door was tightly closed, and the whole neighborhood seemed to be submerged in an eerily unsettling silence.
Without a second thought, Alexander kicked the door open. The security door with its password lock flew into the villa due to the sheer force of his kick.
Alexander stormed inside. The room was remarkably neat, the floor free from clutter. Clearly, Lucy and her parents weren’t home when the upheaval occurred. Not sparing a moment for contemplation, Alexander swiftly exited the room and headed toward the school.
The surrounding white mist was incredibly dense, yet not so thick as to completely obscure his vision; he could still see clearly up to about a meter around him.
He chose to walk rather than run primarily because this mist was unnervingly mysterious. If the Mist World was invading, it had to be more complicated than just the mist.
What about the hell warriors? Could they appear? And White Clothes? Or other entities?
White Clothes had once warned him not to enter the Mist World, but did that prohibition apply to this reality? Fearing that a hell warrior in dark armor might suddenly emerge and strike him down, Alexander proceeded cautiously.
The surrounding quiet was unnerving. Not a sound could be heard—not even the chirping of insects or the calls of birds. It was as if everyone had mysteriously vanished, leaving an indescribable oddness hanging in the air.
Had he not just returned from the Horror World, and were he not empowered by his inherited Ghost Emperor abilities, Alexander might even have questioned whether he’d been transported to a world resembling those in apocalyptic movies.
Exiting the gates of the residential area, the streets remained eerily silent, yet a shiver ran down Alexander’s spine.
He finally realized what was so off—the absence wasn’t just of people or the chirping of insects and birds; even the greenery in the residential area had vanished. Flowers, holly, trees—all had disappeared without a trace.
Earlier, when he was still within the residential area, the dense mist had obstructed visibility. His attention had been solely focused on Lucy’s affairs, so he hadn’t noticed the missing greenery.
But stepping out of the residential confines, Alexander immediately sensed the anomaly. The plants that should have adorned both sides of the streets were missing; even the fallen leaves on the ground had disappeared.
Walking forward, Alexander bent down to inspect. The soil in the green strips beside the road looked as though it had been churned, its texture unusually loose. Even the old, fallen branches and rotting leaves from previous years were gone.
He stood up, his face solemn, taking in his surroundings even more cautiously.
Suddenly, he stopped; his gaze fell to the ground. Beneath his feet, the concrete surface looked as if it had been gnawed at, filled with uneven pits and small holes.
It wasn’t an isolated area either; every few steps, he discovered similar marks. Even more disturbing, he also found metallic buttons, buckles from belts, and pieces of chains.
A thought flashed through his mind. Hastening his pace, Alexander approached a car he could vaguely make out in the distant mist. As he got closer, he realized that this area wasn’t host to just one car.
A dozen or more cars seemed to have lost control, piled up at the intersection and even on the pedestrian green strips. Some had their doors tightly shut, while others were open, some to the extent of having shattered glass.
As he walked briskly toward these cars, the gnawing on the ground seemed even more severe, filled with pits and broken concrete.
When he arrived at the nearest van, the rubber coating the tires had vanished, leaving only the metal frames. The doors and windows were shut, but the door itself bore holes of varying sizes, evidently also due to gnawing.
Alexander cautiously moved closer for a better look. The upholstery covering the seats was missing, leaving behind only sharp bite marks. The driver’s seat, even the metal at his feet, all bore the traces of something gnawing at it.
"Just as I suspected, it looks like ants or similar insects are behind this, judging from the bite marks, significantly larger than your garden-variety ants," Alexander muttered to himself, his heart sinking.
Clearly, something dreadful lurked in this mist. Based on the current evidence, rubber tires, clothing, people, trees, fresh blood drops on the ground, even the leather and padding of car seats had all been devoured. Insurance and qualification stickers on the glass had been gnawed off.
Curiously, a plastic wrapper inside one car was torn but not entirely consumed. It seemed the target was organic matter; everything organic was subject to this gnawing.
What on earth could this be? The unknown is the most terrifying. Something that had never occurred even in a Horror World was manifesting in this real-world mist, making Alexander’s heart race with dread.
If this mist covered the globe, the Earth would undoubtedly become a barren wasteland.
Things that should have belonged to Horror World had suddenly manifested in reality, and what was even more shocking was the appearance of these entities that devour organic matter. These unprecedented events caught Alexander completely off guard.
Though these unknown entities were terrifying—capable of easily tearing through car doors just to get a taste of fresh blood, leaving the ground pockmarked with bite marks—Alexander ultimately decided to venture to the school.
He needed to ascertain if there were any survivors, whether Lucy was still alive, and understand what terrible events had unfolded in the real world.
Just as Alexander rose to leave, a buzzing sound of flapping wings reached his ears.
Inside the van, a black beetle, the size of a thumb, revved its wings and shot out toward him like a bolt of lightning. More horrifyingly, this beetle radiated an aura of Ghost Energy, comparable to that of the Ghost Emperor!
Astounded but unfaltering, Alexander drew his Underworld Sword with lightning speed, cutting the approaching beetle cleanly in two.
No blood oozed out; besides wings, eyes, and mouth, these beetles had no other organs. The cross-section of the cut was as smooth as obsidian, pitch black in color.
Picking up the bisected beetle, Alexander scrutinized it closely, his face increasingly grave. He suddenly threw the dead beetle into his mouth and began to chew. Crunchy, yet tasteless.
Alexander wasn’t influenced by any survivalist shows from his past life, nor was he looking for the taste of chicken. He realized that these beetle corpses were entirely composed of Ghost Energy.
As expected, upon swallowing, the beetle’s body immediately transformed into streams of incredibly pure Ghost Energy, fusing with his own. This Ghost Energy was no different from that in ghost crystals, perhaps even a bit more condensed.
The Ghost Energy content in a single thumb-sized beetle was nearly as much as that in a regular Emperor Crystal.