The next moment, as if to prove Albert's guess right, countless writhing tentacles burst out from deep inside the giant spider's mouth, lunging straight at his face.
It wasn't until they were right in front of him that he finally saw what they really looked like.
At the end of each tentacle grew a sucker-like maw. Inside the rim of that circular mouth were two full rows of sharp teeth, neat as steel needles—like some kind of high-powered flesh grinder.
A sudden, indescribable pain exploded in his chest. Albert looked down, only to see that one of the "tentacles" had effortlessly torn apart his clothes and stabbed deep into the left side of his chest—aiming directly at his heart.
No doubt about it—there was a bloody hole in him now.
When Albert raised his head, his gaze met the girl who was running toward the third floor. They looked at each other through the narrow gap at the corner of the stairs. He clearly saw her face turn bone-white, fear written all over her brows.
She stood frozen in place, unable to move.
Albert was speechless. Not running now? Planning to get stabbed like this too?
At least one of them had to survive, right?
The monster fed by using those sucker maws at the end of its tentacles to drain blood from its prey. Albert's breathing grew difficult—his whole body felt unbearably heavy.
The sensation of every drop of blood being squeezed, drained out of him was horrible. Albert couldn't manage any other expression, so he forced a pale smile at the girl.
"Why aren't you… running? Cough, cough—planning to just stand there and get eaten?"
He doubled over in violent coughs, a metallic taste rushing up his throat.
Am I… dying?
Albert blinked, surprisingly calm.
He had already died once. Death no longer terrified him the way it once might have. He only wondered—when Hayes came back and found him gone, how would he react?
A realization suddenly washed over him: here, in this world, he had absolutely nothing—no identity, no past, nothing to tie him down.
The only person who connected him to this world at all… was Hayes.
The man who had found him.
Thinking of that, Albert's fading consciousness pulled itself back together.
He shook his head hard, forcing himself out of the pain-induced haze. With one hand he held back the massive spider that seemed ready to swallow him whole; with the other, he fumbled into his jacket pocket until his fingers brushed something cold.
The scalpel.
With his heart pounding so fiercely it felt ready to burst from his chest, a surge of power flooded him—stronger than anything he'd ever felt before.
The hand that had been bracing against the spider's jaws suddenly shifted direction, plunging deeper into its throat and grabbing the thing lurking inside.
At the same time, Albert ripped out the scalpel and drove it straight toward the creature's head!
Caught off guard, the tentacled monster shrieked—a horrifying sound like a baby crying, shrill and skin-crawling.
Its slick, slimy body made Albert's skin crawl—wet, slippery, almost impossible to hold. When he plunged the scalpel in, a burst of blue fluid spurted out—apparently its blood.
The thing writhed desperately, trying to crawl deeper into the spider's throat, trying to retreat into its abdomen. But Albert had already made up his mind—he wasn't letting it escape.
He slashed at it again and again, stabbing the scalpel into its melting, putty-like flesh. In barely ten seconds, he turned half of its head into mush.
Finally, Albert tossed the scalpel aside, thrust his hand directly into the "sludge," grabbed something inside—he couldn't even see what it was—and clenched his fist.
Squish!
The creature that had been screeching like a boiling kettle just moments ago suddenly went limp, as if its soul had been sucked out. It collapsed into a heap—nothing more than a pile of dead, rotting flesh.
The six-eyed sand spider seemed to be one with the monster inside it; it clearly felt the other creature's agony.
Its massive body trembled, and the murderous glint in its eyes faded. Albert had assumed the enraged spider would tear him apart in retaliation, but instead, it hesitated… then slowly backed away from him.
The once-fierce, overwhelming spider simply retreated.
Albert had no capacity left to process this.
His vision was drenched in red—he couldn't tell whether it was a hallucination brought on by death, or if blood had filled his eyes entirely.
Thump… thump…
He heard the sound of his own heartbeat. Each beat was slower and heavier than the last, a grim reminder that every organ in his body was rapidly shutting down.
But why… was it so hot?
Albert felt as if he were being roasted alive—every inch of his skin, every capillary in his body burned.
He was burning up—feverish in the face of death.
The six-eyed spider had left. Everything returned to silence. Only the cold, whispering draft of air brushing through the building remained.
The girl glanced down the stairs—and her legs gave out completely.
The man's entire upper body was soaked in blood. The flesh on his chest had been shredded into a mangled blur by the monster's razor-like teeth; through the torn skin and ruined muscle, she could faintly see exposed bone and the outlines of his internal organs.
She sucked in a sharp breath, clutching the railing as she forced herself to descend a couple of steps. But she soon lost control and collapsed onto the stairs, letting out a small, broken sob.
And then—
A strange melody suddenly rang out.
Thump, thump… Thump, thump…
The girl's eyes widened in disbelief.
What was that sound?
And why… was it coming from downstairs?
Clutching the railing, she leaned forward with trembling caution and peered downward—only to be struck speechless by what she saw.
Albert's wounds were recovering.
The destroyed parts of his body were regenerating at a speed visible to the naked eye, restoring themselves to their original state. The torn passages connecting to his organs were being rebuilt layer by layer; muscle fibers regained their elasticity and strength, rhythmically pumping blood and forming a new circulation system.
A… living heart was beating inside Albert's chest.
The man's corpse had regained a heartbeat.
But that heartbeat didn't sound human—not to her. No normal person's heartbeat could be so loud that it resonated across two or three floors.
The eerie, impossible sight left the girl utterly shocked. She stared, frozen, forgetting to breathe for a long moment.
Because of that, she failed to notice a faint, glowing blue liquid creeping upward from Albert's open palm—slithering along his arm, crawling across his chest, and finally sinking into the wound over his heart.
It was the monster's blood.