"Actually, besides me, there is another patient here. After all, Silent Hill manifests the darkness in the hearts of all who enter."
"Mhm. That patient watched my entire memory and even used the sword I gave her to cut me down..."
"How about you guess who she is?"
Looking at Fran, who was so close, Haida pressed her lips together, her gray-chestnut gaze inexplicably evasive.
...
With the disappearance of the Withered Crown, Lytic Disease lost its terrifying vitality and near-directional transmutation ability... But as a plague, it did not simply vanish completely.
Originally, patients infected to the terminal stage would await summons as sacrificial offerings, so apart from lytic contagion, they didn't exhibit much aggression.
But now... these critically ill patients would begin to transform into evil spawn.
After all, the essence of evil spawn is sacrificial offerings that are no longer needed, and residue that has been utterly consumed.
But for the hunters of the Burial Court, this was also not entirely bad news.
Most of them had already been tormented to near madness by the intangible, formless plague. And now that these originally untouchable things suddenly had evil spawn as carriers... the remaining work fell back to the hunters' most familiar profession.
—Cleaning out the dirty things hiding in the shadows.
Ahern strolled through a spacious mansion, his footsteps heavy and steady, without a single sound. His eyes were hidden in the shadow of his tricorn hat, unclear.
"Sir, this is private property! You cannot enter without an invitation!"
"If you wish to see the master, please wait a moment; I'll go request permission..."
A servant-looking man, seeing the hunter walking straight through the corridor, was immediately startled and hurried to block his way.
Bang!
Seeing the servant approach, Ahern deftly raised his hand and shot, hitting the servant's left shoulder. The steel-core bullet instantly tore his shoulder blade apart.
Under intense pain, the ritual knife he had hidden behind his back clattered to the ground.
"Ah..." The servant knelt on the ground, tears and saliva flowing together.
"You... cough... The Secrets-Hunters intend to violate the commandments, harm ordinary civilians? You..."
Though pain twisted his face, this fellow seemed to retain his sanity.
Ahern frowned slightly, raised the scythe blade of the Decapitation Throne, and delivered a horizontal slash, severing his head.
What sprayed from this servant's carotid artery was not blood, but mottled, fungus-colored lytic slurry. The only difference between him and an evil spawn was that he still wore a skin not yet decayed.
The reason Ahern hadn't killed him immediately upon meeting was actually to keep a live prisoner for interrogation... but it wasn't absolutely necessary.
If he provoked, then replacing him with someone else didn't make much difference.
...
Deep within the mansion, in the hidden compartment of the master bedroom.
Alchemist Conan Royce shook the triangular vial in his hand, observing the algae-like life forms constantly spreading in the solution, his gaze fascinated.
The Royce family Conan belonged to was a newly risen nobility attached to the White Cup cult.
Therefore, coming from a well-off family, he was able to study in the Biology Department of Norlington Central Academy in his early years, majoring in paleo-genetics.
Though he loved this major, he always felt it wasn't enough, as if something was missing...
By chance, during an academic lecture by the Sun-Forgers cult, Conan came into contact with alchemy.
Although the artisan only explained basic theory, it still opened the door to a new world for him. After this, he threw himself into researching the Sun-Forgers system of alchemy...
But the result disappointed him greatly.
Sun-Forgers artisans actually wanted to replace wonderful flesh with precision machinery and synthetics? What blasphemy... Just imagining that disgusting patchwork made him unable to suppress the urge to vomit.
What Conan wanted was biological alchemy applied to pure life.
For this, he did not hesitate to seek forbidden texts, connect with heretical sects, even finally becoming a member himself.
Later, he received funding from a certain High Priest... the "Lytic Fungus" sample.
Lytic fungus was an inexhaustible biological alchemical material, showing infectivity and erosive properties towards any flesh and blood.
Using it as an alchemical medium, though leading to the experimental subject's rapid death, often produced pleasantly surprising discoveries.
After preparing the lytic fungus and completing the drawing of the alchemical array, Conan finally turned his gaze to the few experimental subjects in the cage within the secret room. Mostly children around seven or eight years old, in tattered clothes, eyes full of terror.
"...Don't be afraid. Children, the knowledge produced from you will become my 'stepladder' towards perfect truth."
"Today's research begins with 'Cross-Species Conjugation.' I've newly ordered a batch of the highest-quality hunting dogs. Heh... Feel honored; they are worth much more than you."
"How magnificent a chimera using humans as material will be, truly something to look forward to... Hope today yields a successful individual..."
At this moment, Fran and Haida were crouching in the shadows of the secret room's corner.
She held the brass pocket watch, maximally reducing her own and the sister's presence. Under the influence of mental disturbance, the two in the corner were like two mushrooms, completely inconspicuous.
Conan naturally hadn't noticed.
Fran listened to this fellow's self-intoxicated muttering, couldn't help but narrow her eyes, her expression becoming somewhat strange.
Do alchemy fanatics researching biological fusion have some obsession with this kind of synthesis...
…
"Lytic fungus" carries infectivity and transmutative mystical properties.
When used as spiritual material, it can disrupt highly stable alchemical arrays, directing originally predetermined results towards unpredictable unknowns.
But because the crown itself carries twisted malice, the final product is generally more deformed, more bizarre, more out of control.
"Still-pulsing fresh meat, utterly still aged meat, rotted into mud meat..."
Conan sequentially placed slices of meat into the leaden alchemical array in the room, constantly adding other materials.
No sounds or light, only an increasingly thick putrid smell constantly spreading. To the point that Fran in the corner couldn't help but cover her mouth and nose. Oh... she even didn't forget to cover the nose of Haida beside her.
After all, a Secrets-Hunter's sense of smell is more sensitive than hers... it needed protection.
After completing the placement of the final set of materials, Conan took out a negative-pressure tube filled with blood, dripping his own blood along with the lytic fungus into the alchemical array.
The lytic fungus seemed activated. After devouring the blood, it began frantically searching for remaining food within the alchemical array. Soon it formed a thick green liquid flow in the array's grooves.
"First group experiment begins."
Full of excitement, Conan led out a hunting dog, then picked a thin-bodied boy from the cage.
"Woo—"
The hunting dog let out a fearful whimper; the boy also struggled violently. A strong will to live broke through the numbness; he turned and ran, almost reaching the door.
The boy had always noticed: the secret room's mechanism was the white falcon statue by the door.
Under the urgency of death, he even memorized the turning sequence. Clockwise four times, counterclockwise once, five times in total...
Just as the boy was about to reach the statue, he suddenly found the surrounding scene abruptly change. Somehow, he had directly walked near Conan... while the mechanism and secret door were clearly in the opposite direction.
"Child, do you know why I didn't leave restraints on you?"
"Such painstaking effort is precisely to let you hold onto hope..."
He chuckled lowly, pulled out a black iron spike, pierced the boy's palm, nailing his hands together.
A heart-rending scream instantly filled the entire secret room.
Fran did not step forward to lend aid; Haida was the same.
After all, this was just a memory fragment. No matter how vivid the people were, they were just phantoms of the past. Changing their long-settled outcome here had no meaning whatsoever.
The biological fusion process was cruel and twisted. At first the boy could still scream; by the end, even his vocal organs had completely mutated.
Soon, a "chimera" pieced together from human and hunting dog was born.
The flesh fusion points were crude and shoddy; severe rejection reactions occurred; swollen red rashes almost covered the experimental subject's entire body.
It made Fran shake her head repeatedly.
As a doctor deeply influenced by modern science, she truly found it hard to tolerate Conan's sloppy, backwater experimental concepts. From equipment, materials, to the experimental site, not a single place met standards...
Though Fran had little interest in this alchemical array that could most likely only create trash, if it were her, she could at least increase material reuse efficiency dozens of times.
"Failure. Tsk, clean it up."
Conan sighed lightly, summoned the already activated lytic fungus in the array, and devoured this swollen synthetic life completely.
"The ratio of lytic fungus in the array is a bit low, causing the spores to fail to suppress the rejection reaction. The fusion of organs and heterologous flesh is also not quite right; it looks like a patchwork..."
As he spoke, he scribbled records in a notebook beside him. The handwriting was like earthworm crawling, ordinary people could glean no information from it.
After finishing all this, Conan again turned his gaze to the cage, his voice also taking on a hint of gloom.
"Next one."
He pulled the hand of a child in the iron cage, preparing to drag him out, when another still-youthful hand grabbed his wrist.
"Hmm?"
Conan turned with displeasure towards the young girl who had grabbed her wrist.
"What, do you have something?"
"...Let me be the alchemical material first."
The girl's voice trembled slightly, as if suppressing some emotion.
The gloom on Conan's face then quickly dissipated, turning to a look of delight.
"Oh? A spirit of sacrifice, or another plan... This is quite interesting. Compared to others too scared to speak, your 'quality' is much better."
"I'm even a bit reluctant to directly consume you like this."
As he spoke, he threw a heavy punch at the girl's abdomen, forcing her to kneel on the ground, entering a semi-conscious, immobile state.
"Decided."
"I will use you last. Before that, you'll appreciate this experiment with me. This special guest seat is something ordinary people beg for but can't get... Do you like it?"
Conan chuckled lowly, then dragged out another experimental subject beside him who was nearly scared out of his wits, and again began biological alchemy.
In piercing screams, one experimental subject after another was consumed; one deformed, swollen "chimera" after another was created and then destroyed.
Soon, the alchemist's research notes were also filled with dozens of pages.
When Conan again turned back to look for new material, he found only one person left in the iron cage: the young girl he had just knocked down.
"Already used up?"
"Oh, happy times are always so brief. It's been so long since someone accompanied me like you... Really nostalgic."
He grinned, revealing a near-ferocious smile.
"Use you to draw a conclusion for today's experiment."
Beside them, Fran rather speechlessly curled her lip.
This sloppy experimental design belonged to the type that would lower one's alchemical level the more one looked at it... Alchemy itself is the art of pursuing material transformation; he made it seem like a cult sacrifice.
Haida showed no intention of intervening. This was not strange; after all, all this was just a phantom of the past.
But what was surprising was that her eyes didn't even hold anger. Merely complex and calm, as if she already knew everything that followed.
Heh, she indeed knew... Because this was her memory.
Conan pulled up the young girl who seemed somewhat limp, carefully examining her already vacant gray-chestnut eyes.
"Cheer up, girl."
"You're the lucky one who survived to the end; isn't that worth being happy about? It's not yet time for despair. I don't want that numb, blank emotion; I want to see the most vibrant you..."
Just as he was about to say more, he suddenly saw the girl's lips quiver, as if murmuring something softly.
This piqued Conan's interest; he slowly tilted his ear closer to the girl, wanting to eavesdrop a little.
"Hah..."
At this moment, this girl who originally seemed already resigned to death suddenly opened her mouth, biting with all her might into the carotid artery of the person before her!
Utterly different from a playful nip, this was tearing with the intent to die.
Clenching canine and molar teeth tightly into the other's neck, then using maximum strength to tear off flesh, like a predator in a fight to the death. For example, wolves, leopards, or hyenas...
Even a person with barely any clothes, empty-handed, has a final weapon born with them... teeth.
+++
T/N: Hey readers~! New Translator here! Before I say anything, I'd first like to thank the original author for creating this wonderful story. Without them, I wouldn't have the chance to share this adventure with you. I hope my translation does justice to their work, and that together, we can enjoy this story.
With that said, I'm happy to let you know I'll be uploading daily chapters. And for those who wish to support my work and gain early access, I've set up a Patreon where advanced chapters will be available.
[email protected]/PeakTL