Things in the Dark

The doctor's house was a bit remote, located on a high slope, surrounded by woods on three sides. After walking a distance along the bluestone path, Lu Yuan's view suddenly opened up.

The terrain in front of us is terraced, with each layer extending downwards to the sea.

Various Gothic buildings with rounded tops and pointed roofs stand separately, spreading downwards in layers, arranged neatly in a certain pattern.

Electric lamps stood on both sides of the bluestone street, their shades stained with a ring of gray dirt, but fortunately the light emitted from inside was still relatively stable.

The lights are very close together, so that almost every part of the cobblestone road is illuminated.

This left Lu Yuan somewhat puzzled.

"Aren't the lights here a bit too densely packed?"

Upon seeing this, a thought suddenly occurred to Lu Yuan.

"Could there still be something lurking in the darkness of this world?"

"perhaps?"

Lu Yuan wanted to go back, but the smell emanating from the fish and the so-called "strange dream" made him feel uneasy.

Looking up, the streets were deserted, and there seemed to be only a few scattered buildings nearby.

"Is nobody around?"

Lu Yuan looked around, made up his mind, and decided to act as quickly as possible.

Back in the small building, I pushed out the small bed and walked along the bluestone path towards the sea.

Although Lu Yuan had already torn the bed sheet and wrapped it around the rusty iron wheel, the small bed still made a dull vibration when it rolled over the gaps in the bluestone slabs.

"Gurgle... gurgle..."

In the stillness of the night, the sound was incredibly loud.

Lu Yuan could only hope for better luck, and then quickened his pace.

Fortunately, there was no one on this road at the moment, which saved Lu Yuan most of the trouble.

But after turning a corner, the light ahead became noticeably dimmer.

On the left side of the street, there was a light bulb with a crack in its glass cover. The filament flickered, barely casting a small, dim yellow light.

Beyond that, there was only darkness.

Lu Yuan stopped in his tracks.

Because he heard some noises coming from the darkness.

It was like something moving at an extremely slow speed in the darkness, making a sticky, slapping sound, like it was covered in seawater, carrying a strong, fishy stench, even more pungent than the 'doctor' on Lu Yuan's small bed.

Lu Yuan looked in the direction of the noise. Although it wasn't completely dark, he couldn't see anything clearly. The darkness seemed to have come alive, lurking in the places where the light couldn't reach, and eyeing Lu Yuan, who was in the light.

Looking at the seemingly writhing darkness, Lu Yuan fell into a brief silence.

Because in that darkness, a line of distorted small characters slowly emerged at the edge of his vision:

[Abyss Familiar - ?]

[Abyss Familiar - ?]

It has few words, but each word is like a ripple of ocean waves.

Those two or three lines of text still lingered in the darkness, like sharks in the deep sea that had caught the scent of prey, preparing to hunt something.

Lu Yuan didn't know what "Abyssal Familiars" were, but they were definitely not good things.

Suppressing his unease, Lu Yuan took a few small steps toward the lamp behind him, for only the light could give him a tiny bit of security.

But those things hidden in the darkness seemed to have sensed something.

The next moment, a pair of eerie green eyes appeared out of thin air in the darkness.

Lu Yuan and he locked eyes.

Suddenly, a strange string of syllables emerged from the darkness, like someone choking on water and about to drown, straining to speak.

"...I saw...I saw..."

Lu Yuan couldn't tell whether the strange syllables were language or the unconscious roars of the 'Abyss Kin'.

At this moment, all Lu Yuan knew was that a sentence inexplicably came to mind:

"Can you see us?"

Lu Yuan wasn't sure if it was them speaking from the darkness, but somehow he understood.

Moreover, Lu Yuan didn't need to answer, because the next moment, one after another, the green-glowing eyes lit up, turning the darkness in front of him into a morbid starry sky.

Lu Yuan could barely make out a few outlines; the distorted figure looked like it had been crumpled into a ball, its body hunched over.

Its body was covered with shimmering scales, and green eyes were embedded in various parts of its body, blinking as it looked at itself.

Lu Yuan looked at the almost continuous green starry sky in front of him, not knowing what was wrong with him.

The world before my eyes seemed to be distorted, the surrounding air was incredibly hot, and the oxygen in the air seemed to be constantly being drawn away.

"Water! I need water!"

Lu Yuan struggled to speak to himself.

But the next moment.

"clang--"

"clang--"

"clang--"

Three long, deep chimes came from the distant clock tower.

Lu Yuan's consciousness was suddenly awakened at this moment. He jolted awake, like a drowning diver gasping for fresh air.

At the same time, a small gray-white frame popped up in the corner of Lu Yuan's field of vision, jumped around a few times, and the numbers on it kept changing before finally settling down.

[Taboo Studies - Voyeur: 5/10]

"..."

Everything that just happened was not an illusion.

What was lurking in the surrounding darkness was getting closer, but to be precise, it was coming for the doctor on the bed.

Lu Yuan realized the intentions of those 'Abyssal Familiars'.

"Want them? Then you can have them."

Without any hesitation, Lu Yuan quickly untied the knots securing the body, braced his hands against the headboard, and used the downhill slope to exert force!

"Get out of here!"

The small bed carrying the corpse shot off like an arrow, hurtling into the thick darkness.

boom!

Hiss!

From the darkness came the crisp sound of tearing cloth and the chewing sound of some wet, slippery flesh.

The small bed suddenly felt light and almost tipped over, but Lu Yuan reacted quickly and grabbed the foot of the bed, forcefully pulling the empty iron bed back into the light from the edge of darkness.

The corpses on it simply vanished into the darkness.

After a long time, only the faint hum of electric lights remained on the street.

Out of the corner of my eye, the surrounding darkness was no longer distorted, and the outlines of those places that I could instinctively see gradually emerged in the darkness.

It was just ordinary flowers and grass, and a few scattered trees standing on the ground.

The words "[Abyss Kin-?]" no longer appear.

Lu Yuan was still leaning against the lamppost, his fingers stiff and his palms sweaty.

He stared at the darkness for a long time, and only after confirming that there was nothing else unusual did he relax his tense muscles.

At the same time, the distant clock tower chimed its fourth, somber tone.

Along with the chiming of the bell, a line of small print and a prompt appeared in sight.

[Rationality II: +10...1/50 (Experience)]

[Rationality: You gaze into the abyss, and the abyss gazes back at you. Increasing rationality increases mental resistance, allowing you to survive longer in this mad world.]

Lu Yuan was now certain that he seemed to have mastered quite a few skills in just one day.

"Does surviving a great calamity mean good fortune is on the horizon...?"

She made a slightly self-deprecating remark.