Chapter 15: The Nightmare in the Shelter

Monica and her team cautiously advanced through the shelter, their visibility reduced to only five meters due to the thick fog.

"Stop!" the leading soldier suddenly shouted.

"What's wrong, Gaius?" Li Mingze asked, puzzled.

"Sir, come take a look at this!" Gaius, the lead soldier, pointed at a puddle of thick, unknown liquid. The team gathered around and noticed that the corridor ahead was covered in a reddish-brown viscous substance.

A field researcher pulled a probe from the armor on his shoulder and dipped it into the liquid. After analyzing the data on his display, he frowned. "This liquid contains a high concentration of nutrients, inorganic salts, albumin, and enzymes. In short, it's a thick form of blood. However, it's missing iron and fibrinogen."

"Whatever it is, we'll find out soon enough." The team nodded in agreement and moved forward.

They entered a room filled with hundreds of metal canisters. At first glance, these canisters seemed identical, but each had a thin tube connected to it, supplying an unknown liquid.

Monica stepped forward and kicked over one of the canisters.

With a sickening thud, an unidentifiable object fell to the floor. The team instinctively raised their weapons, only to freeze in shock—it was a limbless human torso.

A tube was inserted into its esophagus, likely delivering some kind of nutrient solution.

"No way… Are all these canisters the same?" Fighting their growing nausea, the team began opening each container one by one.

Their worst fears were confirmed. Inside every single one of them was a humanoid, stripped of limbs.

"Be vigilant! This is clearly done with a purpose. It may be related to the liquid we found in the hallway," the commander ordered grimly.

With heavy hearts, the team used their weapons to end the suffering of the humanoids. Death was the only mercy they could offer.

They continued deeper into the shelter, the eerie silence broken only by the occasional scuttling sound above. The noise came from the ventilation ducts, but as soon as the team raised their weapons, it stopped again.

Just as they began to relax, a dark shadow suddenly lunged from the vent—straight toward Monica at the rear of the group.

But Monica, trained in combat and wearing power armor, wasn't so easily caught off guard. In an instant, she caught the creature's head with her left hand and slammed it downward while drawing her high-frequency vibrating blade with her right.

With a wet crunch, the blade skewered the attacker's skull, and it collapsed lifelessly.

The team finally got a good look at the creature—it had once been human. Its eyes had turned gray, likely from prolonged darkness. Its pale skin was stretched tight over its bones, and its limbs were grotesquely twisted, as if it had been crawling on all fours for years. Its ears and antennae had grown abnormally large, and its canine teeth were disturbingly sharp.

This was no longer considered humanoid—it was something else.

The field researcher collected blood samples and scanned the body before the team pressed on.

They reached a massive alloy door, which was slightly ajar. A red liquid was slowly seeping from the gap.

Li Mingze signaled, and a soldier threw a grenade toward the door. The explosive stuck to the metal surface, and the team quickly took cover.

Seeing Monica still out in the open, Li Mingze yanked her into cover just before the explosion. She still had a lot to learn about imperial grenade protocols—mainly, that their blast radius was enormous.

As the explosion rang out, a chorus of inhuman shrieks followed, soon joined by deep, guttural roars.

"Deploy auto-rocket grenades! Stay in cover!" Li Mingze ordered. He tossed another spherical grenade into the blasted hole in the door.

Mid-air, the grenade split apart, releasing dozens of micro-guided missiles. Using infrared targeting, they honed in on the hostile entities inside.

After a series of deafening explosions, silence returned.

Only then did Li Mingze signal the team to move in, weapons ready.

The scene inside was a bloodbath. Limbs and remains were strewn across the hall. At the back of the chamber, a gaping hole led further underground. Fresh blood pooled around the edges—it seemed something had escaped.

"Sir, we found a hidden room," a soldier called out, standing before a section of the wall.

Li Mingze turned to Monica and nodded. She understood the signal and activated her vibrating blade, carving a passage through the metal.

Monica stepped inside first. The room was mostly empty, save for some moldy food supplies and a single corpse.

Beside the body lay a tablet.

The next day, the recovery team retrieved the damaged learning machine, while researchers worked to restore data from the tablet.

"Your Highness, you need to see this," one of the researchers said, handing Li Mingze a data drive linked to the empire's supercomputer.

Li Mingze played the only video file on the drive:

"Szzzzt—Everyone's gone insane! They're eating their own families! They're no longer their self! I knew this would happen! Every time I tried to warn my superiors, they called me crazy! They threw me into this secret research facility instead!"

The video showed a massive display screen behind the speaker. On the screen, naked, feral humanoids moved on all fours, tearing into unidentifiable flesh.

"We're doomed! I don't care about that damn confidentiality agreement anymore! We never should have studied it! It's not an experiment—it's a demon! We should never have opened Pandora's box! I'M NOT CRAZY! I'M NOT CRAZY! THEY CAN'T INFECT MY MIND! HAHAHAHA! THEY CAN'T INFECT MY MIND!"

The man's voice grew increasingly unhinged.

"It's back! The demon has returned to this world! Even the nuclear apocalypse couldn't kill them! And these idiot politicians—EVEN AFTER THE WORLD ENDED—they still insisted on continuing their research! You'll never find their weakness! They are the perfect lifeform!"

The man let out a final, hollow laugh before pressing a gun to his temple and pulling the trigger.

In the last moments of the video, a colossal shadow flickered across the screen behind him.

The recording ended.

Li Mingze's expression darkened.

He had stumbled upon a disaster far worse than he had anticipated.

This civilization hadn't been wiped out by war.

The nuclear weapons had been aimed at something else.

Something… that had survived.