Heaven knows how much time had passed; the scenery above kept changing as rows of wooden racks flew past on both sides. John finally spotted Kim Jung-han in a corner between two mine shaft compartments, and the sight he saw made him feel sick to his stomach.
Kim Jung-han was tightly hugging a tall figure that looked like a haunted house staff member, dressed as a butcher; the three-meter-tall, burly fish-man looked like a small mountain from a distance.
"I’ve come for you."
"Don't be afraid, I'll take you out of here. I'm the captain of the Paranormal Explorers, after all."
"Say something, say something...."
Kim Jung-han's voice was blurry and sticky. John could only vaguely make out what the other man was saying through the fragmented sounds, and his scalp prickled with dread.
Was this guy crazy?
How could the girl from their team possibly be here?
Fortunately, they had finally found a living person; they could finally leave this suffocating place.
He moved to greet the staff member dressed as a butcher, but the figure slowly turned around, its fish-like eyes an abnormal crimson.
John's expression froze on his face before shifting into pure terror. He saw the fish-man butcher raise a chainsaw high in its hands and saw through Kim Jung-han's entire arm.
The roar of the chainsaw echoed violently deep in the mine shaft. Flesh and blood flew from the rapidly spinning chain, and dark green pus splattered across the entire stone wall.
Kim Jung-han let out a howl of agony, crawling back toward the fish-man butcher with a face full of snot and tears, his lips curled into a bizarre, unnatural arc.
John couldn't care about much else. He rushed forward, grabbed Kim Jung-han—who was still trying to embrace the fish-man butcher—and rescued him from beneath the chainsaw's blade before sprinting toward the mine exit.
Something was wrong, something was very wrong!
Alarm bells rang in John's mind. Behind him came heavy breathing and the sound of the blade spinning frantically. That fish-man butcher was chasing them!
That guy was completely wrong!
Wasn't he supposed to be a haunted house staff member?
Damn it, damn it!
John cursed the production crew from top to bottom. Why did they hire an extra with mental issues?
At a time like this, he couldn't even contact the crew. That lunatic wanted to kill them!
Suddenly, he heard movement in the tunnel to the right. His pupils shrunk violently as he slammed into Kim Jung-han to pull him to the side. A scalpel buried itself into the wall exactly where they had been standing.
Out of the darkness, a mermaid girl dressed as a nurse stepped forth. Her clothing was revealing, consisting of a nurse's shirt and nylon stockings; the corners of her filthy yellow shirt were stained red, and the severed head she held in her hand dripped blood onto the ground.
John was certain that the head was no prop. He had seen that man just before entering the haunted house. He suddenly remembered the screams he had heard earlier in the mine; at the time, he had thought it was just a recording played by the haunted house to build a terrifying atmosphere.
These people were all insane!
John's legs went weak. Just as the sharp scalpel was about to be driven into his eye socket, a coarse roar erupted from the side.
The fish-man butcher charged out, sawing the woman in half right before his eyes.
Red liquid splattered across his entire face, and John nearly screamed in terror. Yes, he was actually quite cowardly; every time he had rushed to the front of a paranormal investigation, it was just a persona packaged by the production team.
Now that he knew everything happening wasn't for the show, his psychological defenses completely collapsed.
He gagged and tried to get up, but his legs refused to obey him. The fish-man butcher walked up to him and swung the buzzing chainsaw in his direction.
He had already closed his eyes, yet the imagined death never came. When he opened them again, he dazedledly watched Kim Jung-han crawl up from the ground and tackle the fish-man butcher. As Kim Jung-han shoved his stump of an arm into the fish-man butcher's throat, he looked back.
Those clouded eyes seemed to clear for a moment, resembling the reliable captain the show had once portrayed. He let out a beastly roar. Even though the man's vocal cords had completely degenerated, John could still tell the guy was shouting for him to run.
John remembered the past. Back at the beginning, even though he knew everything was scripted and just the production crew's way of building atmosphere, his cowardly nature had still caused many retakes. Every single time, this guy had encouraged him, even though he knew it might have just been the man's persona.
Even though he knew the man was hypocritical and an irredeemable piece of trash.
But it was a guy like this who had pulled him out of his lowest point!
John's blood boiled. He rushed forward, picked up the chainsaw from the ground, and drove it directly into the fish-man butcher's chest. Splatters of blood sprayed across his face, and his intense sense of crisis overcame his fear of killing. Sanity-deprived fish-man staff members began to appear from all around the mine, all walking toward them with eerie smiles.
John panted heavily, erupting with unprecedented strength as he dragged the fallen Kim Jung-han and sprinted into the distance. Maddened people rushed out from both sides from time to time, and the sound of wind whistling past his head echoed frequently; a small knife buried itself in John's shoulder.
"Leave me behind and run," the silent Kim Jung-han suddenly said, his voice still a blur of indistinct notes.
"I don't know what's happening to me... I might be turning into a monster. Many vicious thoughts are bubbling up in my heart. I hate this version of myself. Perhaps from the very beginning, I shouldn't have existed."
"What kind of nonsense are you saying at a time like this?" John didn't notice that the hand he was holding was becoming ice-cold and being covered by a dense white silk web.
"I can't become ugly. No.... I can't become ugly. I absolutely cannot become ugly."
"Those girls will hate me... my fans will hate me," Kim Jung-han murmured.
John stopped paying attention to Kim Jung-han's crazed ramblings. As long as they could run out of this haunted house and get back to the cruise ship, he believed Life Daybreak's medical facilities could cure him.
"I heard it all.... I heard the singing. I heard the songs of countless people. No, those are their wails."
"The seal... I know where the seal is. I saw it with my own eyes!"
John's gaze swept across the nearby wall, and he noticed the mark he had made at the very beginning. A flame of hope ignited in his heart. The exit was not far away. Those lunatics hadn't caught up. They could leave this godforsaken place immediately!
Thinking this, he felt his entire body lighten up significantly, as if Kim Jung-han, whom he was dragging behind him, had also become lighter.
He ran to the exit, a heavy metal door. This was exactly where they had entered.
The joy of surviving a disaster made John look back, only to see a severed, greenish arm; at some point just now, Kim Jung-han's arm had been ripped off by him.
Not far away, Kim Jung-han's body was being wrapped in a thick white cocoon. The skin and muscle below his neck had almost entirely melted, contained within the white cocoon as a blood-red liquid. John could see the organs within the skeletal frame and the thumping heart, with thick muscle fibers connecting his face to the flesh inside the cocoon.
"Aaaaaaaaah!" John let out the most terrified scream of his life.
"Run..."
Kim Jung-han's facial skin began to melt, shifting toward the form of a siren cocoon. Before completely losing his sense of self, his lips trembled as he spoke his final words:
"John, tell them..."
"Tell everyone in the Paranormal Explorers...."
"The seal...... the Siren King."
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