It didn't take long, less than a dozen meters inside the darkening alley inbetween two large stone buildings, Alan noticed the first change, it was the air, the quality of it was dropping… and it was dropping fast, it was much more humid than before, and not in any way was it pleasant.
'This… is annoying.' Alan thought to himself, as he slowly started sweating all over, his back quickly becoming drenched from both the stress, the constant need to remain vigilant and the humid small passageway that was the dark alley.
A dozen meters further, the second change started, this time, it was the smell, that same utterly abhorrent smell that he had smelled before, right before finding the crimson slime for the first time. This time however, Alan… had come prepared.
Lifting his hand, it slowly vanished into thin air, before appearing into reality once more, and yet appearing with it was another item that he had pulled out of his inventory, it was something he had bought for this exact reason.
It was a gas mask, something he had bought with a whopping twenty silver coins, more expensive than even his combat spear, he hadn't bought it because the slimes released some kind of gases, he had bought it simply for this smell, whilst sure, he knew that he could get used to the smell, that if he was just strong enough, 'hard' enough as some said, he could push through and just fight.
'And I call those people dumbasses.' Alan thought to himself as he tightened the gas mask over his head securely, it apparently was called an active carbon gas mask or something of the sort, not that Alan had any idea what that actually meant, but it didn't matter much, what mattered to him was the fact that the thing worked, and it worked damn well.
As soon as the gas mask fit over his mouth and nose, completely covering the lower half of his face, he breathed in once deeply as he smelled nothing but smell-less air, and for once, that felt like smelling the best smelling flowers on earth, in comparison to the foul smell of rot, this was practically heaven.
Continuing down the path that kept darkening and darkening the further he went in, the more things started to change, it wasn't the extremely gradual change of the previous alleys, this was much quicker, much more abrupt, and in a way… much creepier.
The walls were deteriorating and being covered by some kind of rotting moss, the walls slowly starting to get littered with what he guessed were bullet holes, and a few dark patches started appearning here and there that he believed to be dried blood. Human blood.
'What the hell happened in this place?' Alan thought to himself as he pulled his spear slightly a bit more forwards as he raised his guard that slightly higher, the changes had increased more than enough… and by this point, he expected an enemy to jump at him at any moment.
However… much to his confusion, he kept walking, and walking and there was nothing in sight, finally after more than three minutes of walking, Alan stopped as he turned back and then towards the front again, and yet he saw nothing.
He had gone so deep inside the alley that at this point, he could barely see two meters infront of him from the darkness, it was practically pitch black.
'I can't keep going like this… good thing that I got this.' He thought as he lifted his hand and summoned the inventory window once more with a single thought, the holographic panel appearing before him in a flash as his hand disappeared inside the window and he pulled out a pair of nightvision goggles that he quickly put on with one hand, it had taken some getting used to, however he had practiced before going inside the alley, knowing that letting go of his weapon even for a moment inside an unknown alley, with enemies that he had yet to even use 'observe' on, was a foolish mistake that he wouldn't make unless he was begging for his own death.
As the nightvision goggles were secured over his head, his vision turned green as he looked around, unfortunately, a side effect of equipping the nightvision goggles was that he couldn't keep using his prescription glasses, that lowered his perception all the way down to a three, and yet that was still much better than complete blindness in the dark.
'They're quite big blobs… so I should be able to see them fine enough even without the glasses on.' Alan thought to himself as he slowly raised his head, he didn't do it to check above him intentionally, it was a simple unconscious gesture, a complete accident, something that could have never happened.
And there they were… the crimson slimes, but it wasnt just one… no, the sight before him, was not something he had expected, he had expected one, maybe two at most, not… not this. Not the monstrosity that was before him.
The sight was gruesome, the crimson bloody coloured slimes were on both sides of the alley, stuck on the walls, moving around slowly as if they were in some kind of sleepy state that slowed down all of their movements and speed. Yet that wasn't the gruesome part, no, that was just a fact, the gruesome part, was the fact that each and every single one, had some kind of human or animal body part inside of their bodies.
With his lowered perception, he couldn't tell exactly what each of them had, yet he could clearly tell even with his perception what some of them had, and he knew what a human head silhouette was even with a blurry vision.
Alan felt bile slowly rise up his throat before he quickly slammed it down, gulping as he gripped his spear tightly enough that he was sure the skin on his palms was about the get ripped apart, and yet this time, this time he didn't take a step back, he didn't bend over and vomit, even as he stood infront of what he counted to be around eight crimson slimes, five on one wall and three on the other.
Alan… Alan Walker didn't take a single step back.
'Observe… let's see exactly what the fuck you are.' Alan thought to himself as he gazed hard at one of the crimson slimes.
A split second later, the observe skill was used and the corresponding holographic screen appeared in his vision, floating there before him in the air, standing against the gruesome background.
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Here's the first chapter of the day.
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