CHAPTER 35: CHAPTER 34: BUS 357 (3)

"We have lost all contact with Marcus," a voice spoke in a dark room. "The retrieved footage was corrupted, but we managed to catch a glimpse of the entity’s insides."

Just then, the final moments of Marcus on Bus 357 were shown to the mysterious group. However, instead of the insidious insides, their gaze was fixed on the second figure behind Marcus.

"Is that a human?" a masculine voice asked.

"Yes," the first voice replied. "According to Agent Eclipse, that individual is the one responsible for the sudden shift in the anomaly’s determined route."

As curious as the figures were about the person wrapped in bandages, they didn’t pay much attention to him. After all, Marcus was a trained individual, if the anomaly killed him, the stranger would also follow the same path.

"He must have been one of those fanatics."

"The cult?"

Everyone in the room silently nodded.

Just like the F.O.R.C.E. had multiple anomalies allied with humans to help them, the anomalies on the other side also had allied with some humans.

Their goal was simple. Just like F.O.R.C.E. wanted to get rid of all negative anomalies and end the hunter games once and for all, the anomalies wanted complete annihilation of humans and to merge their dimension.

Through the game, the integration progress of the two dimensions was boosted. The more humans were killed during the games, the higher the integration rate, and killing anomalies lowered the rate.

Since the late 1730s, the game had existed. At first, humans were winning, but after the great disaster, things flipped against humans.

As the Anomalies won more games, they slowly began invading the real world, harming ordinary civilians.

However, it wasn’t easy to invade a different dimension. That’s why the anomalies gave abilities to deranged individuals who went ahead and formed a cult to propagate the anomalies’ goals.

If the organization hadn’t found and ’tamed’ Marcus, he would have definitely joined the cult. But that was beside the point.

In that way, the organization was fighting a two-front war.

On one hand, they had to fight the anomalies head-on during the games, and on the other, they had to stop the cult in their dimension. Right now, everyone there suspected Zaen to be one of them.

"Could he be one of the ’injected’ ones?" suddenly, a feminine voice asked. "For someone in such a situation, the man doesn’t seem to be scared at all, unlike Marcus."

Contrary to popular belief, the Phoenix Project wasn’t the F.O.R.C.E.’s invention. They had merely tried reverse engineering a technology the cult already had, most likely given to them by the anomalies.

Just like the project would siphon and implant abilities on individuals, the cult could also give strange abilities to ordinary people. These people were known as the Injected Ones.

But instead of ’implanting’ abilities, the cult used something that allowed ordinary people to forcibly awaken abilities by overdrawing their life force. Essentially, giving them power in exchange for their life.

As one could infer, it often led to failures and death.

That’s why the organization took things like compatibility, exposure, etc., into account before selecting candidates for the ’Phoenix Project’. This strict procedure was the reason they had had little to no success, unlike the cult.

"Keep tracking the bus and prepare another team," a voice boomed in the room, silencing everyone else. "They’ll chase the bus, while we search for the bandaged person in the database. The meeting is adjourned."

***

[HP -22]

[HP -17]

[HP -39]

[HP: 3,122/4,900]

[You’ve been affected by Bleed.]

[You’re bleeding. You’ll lose 98 HP/second for the next 10 seconds.]

[Blood sealant used. Bleeding has stopped.]

Zaen dropped the third vial of blood sealant while panting crazily.

Slicing the one ’saw’ of the bus seemed to have hurt its ego as multiple saws were attacking him from all sides.

But that’s not the problem, the one before me is.

After breaking away dozens of ’saws’, something changed. Most of the fleshy outgrowths retracted and formed a humanoid figure on the other end of the bus.

Right now, Zaen was staring at the faceless anomaly while it sent more saws towards him. In counter, he threw the knives from his inventory.

The knives did their work and sent the saws flying in random directions, damaging the bus.

[Total damage dealt: 2,418]

[(Lvl 20) Bus 357’s HP: 7,902/15,000]

The few saws that made it through were destroyed by him. He had been using the same method to cause as much damage as he could to the bus, but he had only managed to reduce it by nearly half.

The problem is that I don’t have any more knives to throw.

The situation was looking grim. The bus had more than twice his HP, and he was running out of ways to deal damage to the anomaly.

"Forget about attacking, I need to heal first."

Saying so, Zaen grabbed the handrail above.

[Rotten Recovery activated.]

The next second, the remnants of flesh covering the handrail shifted towards Zaen. A dozen or so cuts formed on his forearm from where the rotten flesh entered his body. Surprisingly, he felt no pain, instead, it brought relief to him.

[Sanity -1]

[HP + 30]

The notifications appeared before him until there wasn’t a single molecule of rotten flesh left on the handrails.

[HP: 4,022/4,900]

[Sanity: 110/150]

It wasn’t that Zaen had absorbed all the rotten flesh, but that the bus realized what was happening and retracted the rot. But that wasn’t the only reason.

Zaen sliced the now metallic handrail and, as he thought, no damage was done to the entity.

"Tsk," he clicked his tongue, staring at the only rotten thing remaining on the bus.

Marcus’s body.

The entity seemed to have taken hold of his body and was using it as the base for its humanoid structure. Getting close to it was out of the question as it would encase Zaen in its rot the moment he tried, and killing it without getting close was also impossible.

Wait, what’s that?

In his static vision, there was a band around the anomaly’s neck, which was blank. The same band the other guy had around his neck.

"...collar around the neck. Was the guy... into pet play?"

As Zaen commented on it, the collar suddenly began blinking, and an electronic voice erupted from it.

"Self-destruct sequence initiated."

"The device will explode in... 10... 9..."

"SHIT!" Zaen yelled.