The agent was currently hiding on the beams of the church. Thanks to the designer's ingenious ideas during the construction of the church, the beams above were not covered but instead have been decorated with antique features. This made it easy for him to climb up.
The zombies chasing him were fast and strong, their claws harder and sharper than alloy. A scratch from them would cause either death or injury. However, they had a small problem: their balance was not very good.
These ghosts were living people before dying and will only use living bodies. Now, the corpses they use have long become decayed and weathered, who knows how long ago. The manipulation way must be different from before, and their weight and joint flexibility have also deteriorated a lot. It's equivalent to needing to adapt to a completely new body.
On the flat ground, due to some mystical powers, they explode with high burst power, but when it comes to details, they are lacking, like walking on a balance beam. The wood on the beams is slightly wider than an adult's sole, but just by a little. To walk on it, extreme balance is needed; anything less and one will fall down. The agent relied on this method to evade these zombies for several hours now.
The zombies had great jumping power, often they could jump up, but couldn't stand or catch the agent. The reason the agent was running them around was to buy time.
It was nighttime now, making it inconvenient to act. There were some lights in the church that could illuminate the ceiling. He stayed there until dawn to be able to act. Otherwise, tackling such dreadful monsters in the dark, he wouldn't even know how he died.
Another zombie jumped from beside the wall. The agent agilely jumped to another beam. The zombie tried to follow him but misjudged the distance, jumped hard upwards, not only knocking its head against the beam above but falling past it onto the beam behind the agent, barely holding on with its hand.
The agent certainly wouldn't be polite and rushed over to deliver a fierce kick. The zombie let out a scream and fell to the ground, where two of them were already broken into pieces. The church had a European structural style, very high domes. Gravity is equal for all; falling from such heights breaks everything into pieces.
At this moment, dawn had broken. Seeing the rays of the rising sun spread over the church through the windows, the agent sighed in relief in his heart. Once the night passes, everything is talkable. Unfortunately, he wasn't a hunter; without night vision goggles, he couldn't see anything at night, otherwise, he wouldn't have wasted so much time.
As he was preparing to find a way down, he suddenly saw a corpse wearing somewhat strange attire jumping up in a rather unusual manner. It first jumped onto a lower beam and then performed a backflip to land on top.
The agent looked at it in surprise, examining its attire, finally realizing that this seemed like a circus performer, the clothing style resembled the joker zombie he had seen before.
Soon, he determined the identity of this zombie from its shoes. It should be an acrobat, very skilled at riding unicycles, with corresponding wear marks on the shoes. Looking at its performance, balance beams and tightrope walking should also be no problem.
"This evil spirit is quite clever," the agent thought, realizing that it had immediately brought an acrobat to counteract his use of balance ability against the zombies. Such a person's balance was extremely good during life; even though it degraded in death, it was still better than other zombies.
The thing was still a bit distant, the best way was to shoot it down. But zombies are impervious to bullets; if shot down, it could return later. With it blocking there, the agent couldn't go down.
The agent didn't draw his gun, he just waited where he stood. When that zombie jumped closer, he suddenly lunged at it and his direction was towards the window. He used the zombie's body to break through the window, both crashing heavily to the ground.
Same old saying, gravity is fair; anyone falling from such a height would be thoroughly smashed. But having a cushion changes things; although this cushion was dry and thin, at least some of the impact was reduced. In mid-air, the agent curled up like a cannonball and smashed down with the zombie. None of his body parts touched the ground, but the zombie was in a sorry state, splitting open from the chest upon impact.
These ghosts have limited control over bodies. The way to kill them, aside from burning with fire, is to break them into enough fragments. If the body is directly shattered, there is no way for them to gather the body again.
The acrobat zombie's body was completely smashed, its remaining fragments twitched for a while before stopping completely. The agent seized the opportunity to evade the zombies guarding the church, successfully circling to the back of the church.
His purpose coming to the church wasn't just to buy time. He must find out where Kate Kane is.
If Peter had already fallen under the control of the evil spirit, then as Peter's teammate, Kate not showing up for so long may suggest he had unfortunately fallen victim to it. It's very likely that he had been kidnapped by that evil spirit.
But Kate surely hasn't died yet; otherwise the evil spirit would have sent them a message. He might be hidden somewhere. The agent couldn't determine the exact location, but earlier in the dialogue, when Peter was possessed, "church" and "waterfall" were mentioned. He could only try his luck at these two places.
The agent considered that the evil spirit must want Kate to do something, which might be why it hadn't killed him. But if the evil spirit succeeded, all would be lost. Therefore, even for the sake of striking the opponent, he must rescue Kate.
After rounding to the back of the church, he went from the cellar to the church's underground. When he first came to the church, he discovered that it was not built by Mormonism; they merely occupied it. Regarding the structure of Catholic and Protestant churches, the agent was familiar. Churches built during this era usually have basements, often connected to the cellar. In less developed eras, the underground of churches often served as shelters.
This church isn't big, and the underground isn't complex, there's just one passageway and several rooms around it. The agent cautiously walked over and soon heard movement in the last room.
He stood sideways at the door and opened it, and as soon as he pushed the door open, he saw Kate. Her head was covered in blood, and her face was also bleeding a lot. Judging from the flow of the blood, she should have been hit from behind on the head, knocked unconscious, and then brought here.
At this moment, Kate was already awake, and upon seeing the agent, she whimpered softly. The agent walked over, loosened the rope that was tying her up, and then tore off the tape from her mouth.
"Peter... Peter, he..."
"I know," the agent said, "He's been possessed by an evil spirit. But he didn't fool me. I temporarily repelled him, and now he's created a bunch of dried corpses wandering around the town. Are you alright?"
"I'm fine. But during the time I was unconscious, I entered a new world. It seemed to be a Psychic_Battlefield, and there, I saw that evil spirit," Kate said, "That guy tried to hypnotize me and said some bizarre things to me. At first, I didn't understand. But thinking about the clues before, I roughly figured out what's going on."
"What's going on?" the agent asked.
"Do you remember Linda? My aunt's daughter, the one who's a little crazy."
The agent nodded. He certainly had a deep impression of Linda; there was a kind of manic vitality about her.
"She had a child," Kate said, "A boy, named Binger Berg. This boy is officially her brother, but in reality, he's her son. He's the child of her and a Mormon elder."
"The Kane family has a hereditary disease, which is a curse for all of us. The women of this family have a high risk when giving birth; they easily miscarry during pregnancy and are prone to death during childbirth. The offspring often turn out unhealthy. My daughter left me exactly like that."
Kate showed a sad expression and then said, "However, in this generation, there's an exception, and that's my mother. She miraculously didn't get the hereditary disease, and nothing went wrong when giving birth to me. Everyone was happy for her, except Aunt Cain."
"Her first marriage was very unhappy because she had two miscarriages, and later couldn't conceive a child. She wasn't happy when my mother had me because she thought it was very unfair. They were obviously sisters, yet their fates were completely different. Later, she divorced her first husband and met her second husband, Borg, who came to New York to preach, marrying him in this remote town."
"Perhaps it's this mental knot related to fertility that led to her psychological problems. She began to channel her emotions into religion, started to devoutly believe in Mormon teachings, thinking that as long as she faithfully worships, God would grant her lovely children."
"Later, she really became pregnant and successfully gave birth to Linda. But unfortunately, the good luck was only this once, and it might have been because of this childbirth that she severely damaged her body and could never conceive again. But despite this, she wanted another child even more since her sister had two, and she wanted to surpass her."
"Aunt Cain's husband, Borg, was never a very faithful man. He even tried to escape when preaching in New York. He felt very afraid of his wife's state, and the couple's feelings gradually broke down. Meanwhile, the Mormon priest who constantly preached to Aunt Cain—what they called an elder—kept comforting her. Feelings developed between the two, and Aunt Cain wanted the elder's child."
"She was already unable to conceive, and by that time, Aunt Cain's daughter Linda was gradually growing up. So, they let Linda give birth to the elder's child."
"Aunt Cain was very satisfied and wanted to personally educate this child and capture the elder's attention. After all, Mormonism allows polygamy, and almost every woman in the town is the elder's wife, bearing many children for him. Aunt Cain was already old and knew she couldn't compete for the elder's attention with her looks anymore. So, she poured all her focus on the child. Just as she always wanted to compare with her sister, she also wanted Binger to be better than the elder's other children."
"But unfortunately, this child was not liked by the elder from birth. Because he was his 13th child, and 13 is an unlucky number. Devout believers don't like this number at all, so Binger was abandoned by the elder since his birth."
"Not only that, but as Binger grew up, he began to show extraordinary abilities. He had prophecy abilities, once accurately predicting disasters and the movement of animals, mastering many forbidden knowledge, even the black magic to curse and kill others. And he was precisely the culprit behind the town's downfall."
"Finished talking?" the agent looked at Kate and said. Without waiting for Kate to answer, he directly pulled out his gun.
"Goodbye."
BANG!