Kallen slid down against the cold, damp wall, gasping heavily. Every breath pulled at the burning pain in her chest and abdomen.
The final explosion impact and fall shock of Arahato, even cushioned by the emergency ejection system and supported by Kallen's robust Kaslana constitution, still caused considerable concussion injuries to her internal organs, and possibly cracked ribs.
Even more serious was the double overdraft brought by forcibly overloading the machine and mental high tension, causing waves of blackness before her eyes, her limbs heavy as if filled with lead.
Yae Rin, held tightly in her arms and simply wrapped in torn-off internal cushioning material from Arahato, had a pale face, eyes tightly closed, body still trembling slightly, but miraculously suffered no serious physical harm.
Or rather... injuries that should have appeared on Yae Rin were deliberately "transferred" by Kallen to herself.
Can't stop... can't stop here... Kallen gritted her teeth, trying to drive her almost striking body with willpower.
She identified the direction—this was a vague area mentioned in Joachim's plan as one of several backup rendezvous points.
She must move, leave the straight path that might be tracked, find cover as soon as possible, contact companions...
Forcing herself to stand up, staggering, almost dragging Yae Rin, she drilled into a narrower, darker alley.
Consciousness flickered between clear and blurry, supported entirely by a tenacious instinct to move forward.
Her ears buzzed, almost unable to hear external sounds, only focusing on the bumpy road under her feet and the increasingly heavy weight in her arms.
Unknown how long passed, maybe only a few minutes, but felt like a century.
Kallen felt as if she had passed through several alleys and bypassed some obstacles. The pursuers behind seemed not to appear immediately, and the surroundings were unusually... quiet?
A vague thought floated up on the edge of her consciousness about to be swallowed by darkness—
Maybe... it's enough?
I've already pulled away...
This thought, the moment it was born, sucked away the last breath she forcibly held. The string that had been tight all along snapped abruptly at this moment.
"Ugh..." With a short muffled groan, Kallen's legs went soft, darkness completely covered her vision, and she fell forward to the ground together with Yae Rin in her arms.
"Ah!" Yae Rin cried out in pain from the fall, rolling out of the wrapping cushioning material.
She crawled up in panic, seeing Kallen lying face down on the ground, motionless, with dark red blood stains faintly spreading on the dirty ground beneath her.
"Kallen... Sister Kallen!" Yae Rin's voice carried a crying tone. She threw herself beside Kallen, her small hands trembling wanting to push her, but afraid to use force.
She saw the wound on Kallen's back where the clothes were torn, blood still slowly oozing out.
"What to do... what to do..." The little girl panicked completely. Since she could remember, she had been in wards and sanitariums, seeing doctors and nurses treat wounds, but never did it herself.
She futilely used her sleeve to wipe the blood on Kallen's back, but the more she wiped, the larger the blood area became. Her clean small hands and cuffs were soon covered with sticky bright red.
"Blood... won't stop... Sister Kallen, wake up..." Helplessness and fear completely drowned her.
Tears gushed out, mixing with dust on her face and blood on her hands, turning into dirty tear stains.
Crying, she tried to press the wound harder but without method, as if this could stop the blood flow, mumbling broken words, "No... please... wake up... Rin is scared..."
...
The childish, despairing, fear-filled cry, like a weak firefly penetrating the mist, actually touched the depths of Kallen's consciousness about to sink into the abyss of darkness.
Who is crying... Rin...?
An indescribable force, like a spark miraculously rising from burnt ashes, forcibly grabbed Kallen's sliding consciousness.
Severe pain, fatigue, and dizziness still impacted her like a tide, but she actually... recovered a bit of thinking ability, and even, bit by bit, opened her incredibly heavy eyelids.
First blurred light and shadow, then gradually clear—it was Yae Rin's tear-stained small face, and the blood-stained ground beneath herself.
However, the first thought arising after Kallen regained consciousness was not to comfort the crying Rin, but a sudden, cold sense of violation.
Too quiet.
Not the quietness without sound, but... a "dead silence" lacking the proper background noise of a city.
No hum of distant vehicles, no vague human noise, no operation of air conditioner outdoor units, not even the howling of wind blowing through the alley entrance.
This was Sapphire City. Even in a remote back alley, it shouldn't be so... silent.
Just now she only cared about escaping and didn't notice. Now lying on the ground, this abnormal silence was like a cold needle piercing her temporary trance.
She subconsciously wanted to prop up her body to check the surroundings, but her arm transmitted an extremely weird touch—not hard rough concrete, nor wet mud, but...
Sticky.
Wet and slippery.
An extremely uncomfortable, seemingly living slight wriggling sensation.
Kallen stiffly, bit by bit turned her head, looking at where her arm supported, looking at the surrounding ground, walls...
Her breathing stopped.
Wherever her eyes reached, everything—ground, walls, piled garbage, rusty iron pipes—was covered with a thick layer of slowly wriggling and proliferating... "things."
Those things showed a morbid, semi-transparent gray-white color, texture like rotting bacterial colonies, or some weird biological tissue.
And on the surface of these wriggling "creep," countless eyeballs of different sizes and shapes were embedded, or rather... growing densely and irregularly.
Some eyeballs were turbid and dull, some bloodshot and rotating crazily, some pupils shrunk to pinpoints, some dilated and spiritless...
They had myriad forms, squeezing each other, trembling slightly, occasionally synchronously turning to a certain direction, then randomly turning on their own without rules.
Wherever the line of sight reached, up, down, left, right, all was this crazy, disorderly, dense staring. Even the air floated with tiny eyeball-shaped spores and an indescribable rotten sweet smell.
Then, at the moment Kallen saw clearly, all eyeballs within sight trembled slightly. The next moment, the eyeballs staring at the world suddenly flipped. Millions of pupils aimed at Kallen at this moment.
As if... no, not as if.
At this moment, the whole world was watching her!
Right at the peak where madness and dead silence intertwined, a huge twisted eyeball cracked from the pupil, precisely splitting that pitch-black pupil into two, spitting out a branched long tongue mixed with mucus.
A calm, slightly hoarse voice, without warning, from the direction of this eyeball hell, clearly drilled into Kallen and Yae Rin's ears—
"Ah... I found you..."