Falling into the Abyss

“What……What is that……” Ethan didn’t realize that his voice had become much weaker than before. A chill surged through his body from his heels all the way towards his back.

He didn’t know why, but when he watched the video just moments ago, he had felt absolutely horrified, as though his entire body had descended into an abyss.

Tanisiel took the sphere back and rolled it between his fingers, saying, “You can feel it, too, the terror from seeing extreme evil and chaos. And you’re just a human being. We, Eves, perceive it several times stronger than you. When we first saw this video, many priests were so frightened that they couldn’t sleep for a month. We have never seen such a horrific sight.”

“None of you know what it is?” Ethan felt his chest clench, so much that he gasped for breath. “So, you’re going to use nonhumans for an experiment?”

“Don’t count us, Eves, as part of that ‘you’. It was the decision of the Earth Union.” Tanisiel’s revelation only fueled Ethan’s horror and anger. He gazed fiercely at the priest’s exquisite face with a cold and stoic expression. His cheeks were flushed, his fists were clenched, and his body, taller and leaner than other Betas, trembled. In the priest’s eyes, he looked a little like a rabbit who had been pushed to the brink of the edge.

Even a rabbit will bite if it’s scared enough. Tanisiel was very interested—how would this refined and gentle man appear while biting someone?

After a while, the man, who seemed to be teetering on the brink of collapse, gradually relaxed his body and unclenched his fists. Ethan stepped backward, taking a deep breath to regain his calm before looking back up at the priest again.

In actuality, he was just feigning his composure.

“To express your goodwill, you voluntarily told us these secrets. Therefore, you don’t want us, or at the very least, Samuel, to die? What do you want us to do?” Ethan asked.

The edge of Tanisiel’s eyes curved upwards. He had an extremely brilliant smile on his face as he proposed, “I do have a conjecture that, if you’re willing to trust it, you may survive.”

It was evening by the time Samuel came to his senses, and he was surrounded by darkness. The sweet and greasy scent from his pheromones had not yet dissipated, which made him feel nauseous. He felt a heavy, dull pain throbbing in one of his temples and thought it would have been better to stay in the coma.

Ethan had fallen asleep against a box to the side of the narrow space, curled up with his glasses tilted to a side. There was an obvious pair of dark circles under his eyes. Samuel thought that he had probably been exhausted from taking care of him for the past two days. Samuel sat up and groped around for a bottle of water in the dark before drinking it. He vaguely remembered seeing a golden-haired Eve male, whose alluring Alpha scent was still lingering in his mind.

The scent was totally different from that of the Alphas in the Forbidden City and on Earth. It wasn’t too aggressive but still radiated power and authority.

He checked all over his body to make sure that nothing had happened with that Alpha. He had not voluntarily thrown himself into the other party’s arms while he was in heat. In fact, it was a miracle that his strong Omega pheromones that had accumulated for three years didn’t cause that Alpha to lose his mind.

Samuel was very dissatisfied with this analogy. Taking into account the previous Alpha suddenly appearing out of nowhere, he approached Ethan. He leaned in close, forcing the other party to somewhat uncomfortably raise his head. Samuel’s voice was hoarse, and his voice carried a hard edge as he questioned, “Did you bring that Eve Alpha from before?”

Ethan swallowed his saliva, and hesitantly replied, “Yes……” He immediately explained, “But don’t worry, he won’t sell you out!”

“Is that so? Do you know him well?” Samuel’s tone grew increasingly dangerous, and he leaned in until the tips of their noses were almost touching. Ethan shook his head in a hurry, replying, “I’m not familiar with him, not familiar with him! I only recently became acquainted with him!”

“If you don’t know him well, then how can you trust him?! Maybe the entire ship now knows that an Omega is on board!”

His accusatory tone made Ethan uncomfortable. He inwardly thought, Laozi took care of you day and night, yet you act so domineering as soon as you wake up. Where’s your conscience? He closed his eyes and roared, “What other choice did I have! At that time, a nonhuman had smelled your scent on me and wanted to treat me as an Omega and mark me. If the priest had not saved me, I would not have been able to come back! Moreover, the other person is a noble priest. Why the hell would they stir up trouble with the entire ship for a nonhuman like you? The other person was kind enough to help you, so can you stop being paranoid!” With that, he picked up the small bottle of medicine and stuffed it into Samuel’s hand. He said angrily, “The other person brought you medicine to treat your side effects. Do you want them or not?”

Samuel had never heard the secretary speak so loudly before. He was so surprised that he could not find the words to rebuke him for a few seconds.

Ethan turned around and began to tidy up the sleeping bags on the ground, and continued, “It should be me who’s afraid. When the bearded man returns, the whole ship will think I’m an Omega. What should I do if some damned person sexually harasses me?”

Samuel looked at Beta in silence, watching as the Beta mumbled and busied himself cleaning up. Despite his bossy personality, he felt somewhat apologetic towards the other man.

It seemed that he had implicated the secretary rather badly this time.

He cleared his throat and pursed his lips, saying, “That……if you’re really worried, then it doesn’t matter if you tell everybody the truth about me. I have the ability to protect myself.”

“Protect your uncle. I’ve tried so hard to hide your identity. If I tell the truth now, wouldn’t I have done it all in vain?” Ethan took a deep breath, before turning to look at Samuel with a helpless expression and asking uncertainly, “Anyway, I’ll make sure that they know you are my Alpha. You have a good relationship with Otto and his gang, so no one should dare to touch me, right?”

Samuel reached over and squeezed his shoulder, replying, “Don’t worry. No one will dare to touch you with me around.”

Listening to his determined and deep tone and meeting his attentive gaze, he really looked like an Alpha swearing to protect their Omega. Ethan, who he was directing that earnest gaze at, felt a little uncomfortable and lowered his head, pushing his glasses up with a sigh, “I’ll thank the heavens so long as you don’t do something this stupid again.”

The two people took advantage of when everyone was asleep to return to the area where the nonhumans had gathered. There were just one or two nonhumans who had not slept and watched them walk back, but they did not say much. Ethan had saved all his food for Samuel, and his stomach ached from hunger. Samuel gave him their last piece of compressed bread and spoke in a low voice, “Bear with it for now. I’ll snatch some more food for you in a moment.”

Ethan chewed on the dry bread while dreaming of charcoal-grilled steak, French baked snails, seafood pasta, chocolate lava cake……Three months ago, his last meal before entering the Forbidden City was at a Greek restaurant near his home, where he had left without finishing half of the roasted lamb chop. Now, he really regretted it. Why hadn’t he eaten the meat down to the bone, and licked the plate clean?

With much difficulty, they made it to the morning, and the robot supplying food came down. Samuel, as expected, did not break his promise. Brimming with killing intent, he pushed his way towards the few large boxes containing food, and no one dared to stand in his way. When he squeezed his way out of the crowd with his arms full of compressed food, Otto stood beside him and laughed, asking, “I wondered where you went two days ago. Did you find somewhere to have fun with your new lover?”

Samuel glared at him as he replied, “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t pretend, Scott came back yesterday and told us that your secretary is actually an Omega? Tsk, tsk, tsk. He acted like a Beta so well that I couldn’t tell.”

Samuel suddenly grabbed Otto’s collar, and the wolf-like look in his eyes made the latter begin to cold-sweat.

“Like I said previously, don’t harbor any designs on him.”

Although Otto was a famous figure in the Forbidden City, he was also considered someone from Samuel’s faction. Everyone knew that you couldn’t provoke the iron-fisted Samuel, or else it was possible that he would beat you to death. Therefore, Otto immediately flashed him a weak smile and pacified him, “Relax, brother, I’m just joking with you. Why are you taking it so seriously?”

Samuel laughed in return. He let go of Otto’s collar and helped him to straighten the wrinkles as he said, “I’m also joking with you. Why are you taking it so seriously?”

With that, he turned and left. Just as Otto was about to heave a sigh of relief, he heard Samuel casually asking him, “You said it was Scott who tried to mark Eldridge yesterday?”

Otto shrugged and replied, “I don’t know. I’m not sure what he was doing. He just ran back here and told us about this matter in a hurry.”

Samuel finally walked away. Otto let out a heavy sigh and shot a sympathetic glance at Scott, who was sleeping in the distance.

Ethan didn’t know that it was possible for him to devour the compressed food so thoroughly, and he made a clean sweep of the food. While he was eating, he suddenly choked on a bite of food. Suddenly, a bottle of water appeared in front of him. His gaze traveled past the bottle, and he saw Samuel staring at him with a look of astonishment. He reminded him, “Don’t choke.”

It was only then that Ethan realized how poor his table manners were, and his face heated up a little. He took the bottle and gulped down a few mouthfuls of water, allowing him to swallow the food that he had stuffed his mouth to the brim with.

“I thought you cultured ones would be more elegant when eating,” Samuel teased.

“And I thought you Omegas would be gentler,” Ethan finished eating and sighed contentedly, before leaning against a machine with an unknown purpose, adding, “There are only two days before we enter the Red Earth’s orbit. The Eve priest who helped us yesterday told me something about the planet.”

“He did?” When Samuel thought of that alien, he felt inexplicably upset. Maybe he felt threatened due to his true gender being known by an Alpha. He continued, “He is really warm-hearted.”

“Listen, this will help determine whether we can return to Earth alive,” Ethan said solemnly, “Fifty of us will be transported to the Red Earth, while the other humans and Eves will stay on the mothership and conduct the search operation remotely. However, they don’t expect us to find anything. In fact, they are just waiting for a……thing to appear.”

Samuel frowned, unable to understand what he meant.

“That thing seems to appear on Red Earth once every three years, and every time it appeared, the people on the planet disappeared. In this manner, they lost contact with the developers’ team and the search and rescue team that had been sent after them. This time, they want to send us to Red Earth to act as bait while they stay safely in space for remote observation.”

“So, what exactly is that thing?”

“I don’t know……”

“You don’t know?”

“If they knew what it was, they wouldn’t have brought us here. But I know that……” Ethan recalled the black lumps that had blotted out the sky and the black flagella that had stretched towards the ground, causing him to feel disgusted and frightened. “But, I know that it is definitely not anything good.”

T/N: The various key characters have complicated relations in this story~

Thanks for reading, y’all