Falling into the Abyss

Thank you Papercrane for your kofis—Bonus Chapter (3/5)

The two soldiers tried to contact the headquarters but received no response no matter how many times they tried. The nightmare that had happened before descended again. The chief security officer silently held the soldier, who was panicking as he kept trying to restart the communication device. He whispered, “Let’s get out of here first. Be careful of anything above your heads.”

“Above my head?”

“Those worms came down from the trees. We have to put our backpacks on top of our heads and get out of here quickly!” Schneider seemed to have taken over as leader from the sergeant Alpha. Still, the other party did not raise any objections.

However, Ethan had a feeling that they could not leave.

Everyone acted according to instructions and put their backpacks on their heads, before lowering their bodies and quickly walking through the woods. However, they had to stop not far away.

In front of them, about 20 steps away, the bushes were densely covered with fleshy worms as long as boa constrictors. Under the moonlight, they appeared like a white patch. They rubbed their soft and sticky bodies against each other, and the translucent mucus dripping from their bodies covered the grass and leaves with thin threads. From time to time, they raised the small mouths at the front of their bodies and shook them in the air randomly and occasionally grunted as if they were in pain. They didn’t seem to be aware of the arrival of the seven of them, but the red bloodstains dripping from their mouths served as a clear warning.

The seven men looked at each other. The sergeant said, “Try another direction!”

They panted heavily as they continuously changed their route, but they were still stopped by the sea of curly worms. No one knew when the sea of worms spreading all over the mountains and hills had appeared or why they didn’t show any signs when they arrived?

Could it be that the ground below this patch of woods was filled with these disgusting creatures?

Ethan’s ears were ringing from the low-frequency noise when suddenly he seemed to hear someone calling his name. The call came from the depths of the forest, from deep in the earth beneath their feet, and trembled along with every molecule of air. On the one hand, he was inexplicably attracted to the call. On the other hand, he felt a heavy aura of suppression rolling forth from the center of the woods.

It was the core of darkness on this planet……

When they wriggled, their bodies rubbed against the vegetation on the ground and made a sticky sound. Their mouths opened one after another, and they screamed at them. The seven people quickly backed away. One nonhuman tripped from a tree root, and a worm suddenly stretched out from an unknown direction. Its small mouth expanded several times larger than its original size. It covered the nonhuman’s head and swallowed it down immediately. The thin skin on the mouth was wriggling and sucking. The nonhuman’s scream of terror or pain stopped abruptly, leaving only the sound of bone and flesh being sucked and grinded. Gray brain matter and blood dripped from the person’s neck.

“Run!” Samuel yelled. He grabbed Ethan before turning and running. Schneider, the sergeant, and a nonhuman named Stan quickly followed after. They could see the worms everywhere and heard the shrill screams piercing straight through their skulls. They shot at the worms, but it was like hitting a layer of soft pudding, and the bullet holes healed quickly. The strange insects spit hot yellow acid at them. A few drops had splashed the sergeant’s arms, and immediately his uniform and weapons corroded, directly burning the skin on his hands. He cried out in pain, but he did not dare to stop and continued to run forward.

Ethan stumbled behind Samuel and looked back. The front end of the worms swayed slowly in the dark. He felt that these worms didn’t really want to eat them. If they wanted to fill their stomachs, then they would have already been gobbled down by these countless worms.

The worms were herding them, pushing them to run in a specific direction.

……The direction where they just came from.

Could it be that……these seemingly primitive and prehistoric creatures had a certain level of intelligence?

Not long later, they stood in front of the stairway that seemed to have been covered with dust for many centuries. It was a hidden entrance between the roots of the trees. The stairs went deep into the ground, and it was dark inside, where nothing could be clearly seen. Schneider turned on the laser gun’s flashlight, and the beam shone straightforwardly at the two door-like things that were actually stone.

The screams of the strange worms were still approaching from all sides, sounding like a hymn from hell. Samuel looked at Schneider and asked, “What should we do?”

“……Let’s go in before we talk about it!” Schneider said through gritted teeth.

The group quickly stepped on the slippery moss and rotten leaves and rushed towards the hidden stone doors they saw. Ethan walked at the end. A sour and rancid scent entered his nose and grew stronger and stronger. He covered his nose with his hand, and as he walked, he looked at the artificially built stone walls on both sides of the stairs. There were many twisted, mural-like carvings buried under the moss and vines.

Ethan reached to brush away the vines and saw that the mural had been worn away by the wind and frost. It seemed to show many people with horns on their heads standing in a row, kowtowing to several huge strip-like objects. And these strip-like objects were all kowtowing to a series of large balls stacked together.

“Ethan! What are you doing? Quick, come here!” Samuel urged him from further down.

There were two stone doors at the bottom of the stairs that looked very heavy. Both doors had the appearances of several men and women with pained expressions. Their hands were folded in front of their chests, but their eyes were wide open in a strange manner. Their mouths were wide open, and they seemed to be howling in extreme terror.

These two carvings made people feel very uncomfortable.

However, what made them more uncomfortable was that the stone door, which appeared difficult to push open using a human’s strength, had a gap that could accommodate a single person entering it by walking sideways. The thick darkness behind the crack carried an evil and tempting smile, quietly looking back at them.

“What if this place is the nest of the worms?” The sergeant pressed against his injured right arm and asked suspiciously.

“Do we have another choice?” Ethan suddenly said, “Listen, they’ve been leading us in here. If we don’t go in, then we’ll turn out like everyone else.”

Schneider’s sharp eyes snapped towards him, and he asked, “What? You understand what these things are saying?”

Schneider’s words caused Samuel to give Ethan a nervous glance. The latter knew what Ethan had become and probably wondered whether Ethan could actually understand the language of those worms.

After all……if he remembered correctly when Ethan was no longer Ethan, he had controlled the two huge worms to devour the horned people under the altar……

Ethan suddenly bent his mouth. With a slightly cold smile, he said, “Maybe I really can understand them……” When he finished speaking, he took the lead in entering the darkness.

Samuel couldn’t grab him in time. He harrumphed exasperatedly and turned back to look at Schneider. “We’ll die no matter which direction we head towards!” he said and then steeled himself and also headed inside.

In the darkness, the stench seemed to solidify, which made Ethan bend over and cough. However, Samuel couldn’t smell the choking scent. He just felt that the air here seemed to have been stagnant for a long time. It was very humid and might be full of all kinds of moldy scents. The Omega turned on the flashlight of his laser gun and swept it around.

After sweeping past the smooth ground, he saw another stairway that led further down. On the surrounding stone walls were some crooked characters in the horned peoples’ language.

Schneider and two others also came in. The first thing they did was to try to push the half-open stone door. However, the stone door stayed stubbornly in place, even with the combined might of the four people.

At this time, Ethan suddenly hissed and said, “Listen.”

The other four stopped moving and listened for a while but heard nothing. Schneider asked impatiently, “Listen to what? I can’t hear anything?”

“Yes, I can’t hear anything,” Ethan said, “Those worms aren’t calling out anymore.”

When he said this, the other four people finally understood. They were surrounded by silence. They could even hear the rustle of the wind blowing on the leaves.

“In that case, we……” Before Samuel finished speaking, he heard a bam.

The stone door, which would not budge even after the combined might of four people, had suddenly shut.

No one pushed it, and there was no external force at play. It just closed.

It was as though it was sentient.

No one spoke for a moment. They were only accompanied by the light in Samuel’s hand, which provided a bubble of golden light in the dark.

“It’s a trap!” The sergeant seemed to have given up. He slid down the stone doors and sat on the ground, with his corroded right hand still bleeding continuously.

Stan, who had not been very talkative, pointed to the words on the wall and asked, “What does it say?”

Schneider turned on the translation function of the portable capsule hanging around his neck. A beam of light shot out from the small mini smart computer, scanned the words on the wall, and quickly analyzed them. Within a brief moment, the words were translated into the Earthling’s language and re-projected.

The words blotting out the heavens and covering the earth were merely the same sentence being repeated.

“This is the resting place of the holy race and the starting point of your nightmares.”