Hunter of Mysterious Creature

"It seems like this guy crawled all the way here... there's a long trail of blood outside on the ground," the fisherman said.

The lights on the second basement level were all turned on, revealing the scene outside the elevator clearly.

"Did you see any mysterious creature?" Shino asked.

"No... but I can't be sure if those seemingly mundane things aren't mysterious creatures," the fisherman shook his head. "Should I go out and have a look?"

Just as he was about to step out of the elevator, Sun Hang pulled him back.

"What's the matter?" the fisherman turned and asked.

"I can sense a very faint presence, right outside," Sun Hang whispered.

"Right outside? Where?" the fisherman asked in shock.

"Above the elevator exit, in our blind spot."

"Hiss..." the fisherman instinctively covered his mouth and asked in a very low voice, "Will it rush into the elevator?"

"Hard to say, don't move yet, let me test it."

After Sun Hang finished speaking, he used liquid metal to form a chain, wrapped it around the Hunter's corpse that had fallen into the elevator, and forcefully flung it out.

The next second, a dark shadow flew out from the blind spot in the three people's field of vision and pounced onto the corpse.

"Damn, what is that monster?" the fisherman couldn't help but whisper after seeing the appearance of the dark shadow.

It looked like a large mass of intertwined, wriggling seaweed, seemingly possessing the ability to float in mid-air. It used four or five tentacle-like limbs to pierce the corpse and lift it into the air.

"How do you categorize this thing? Is it a biological mysterious creature? Animal? Plant? Or fungus?" the fisherman mumbled.

"Hard to say," Shino shook his head. "None of the known mysterious creatures resemble this thing, and I can't identify its type just by appearance."

Before he finished speaking, Sun Hang said, "Temporary code number X-95, spiritual body type mysterious creature. This mass of black 'seaweed' is a type of deep-sea worm... or rather, a group of deep-sea worm corpses, but they have now become the carrier of X-95."

"Huh? How do you know that?" Shino looked at Sun Hang in surprise.

"Those Angsa Hunters found some lost archives with records of this thing," Sun Hang said.

"Archives? I didn't see you find any archives on that guy just now," the fisherman asked.

"They recorded the information in a very special way, and it happens that I have the ability to decipher it," Sun Hang fibbed.

"I see! So you figured out the cause of death for that deranged female Hunter and the other guy with this ability too, right?" the fisherman realized.

Sun Hang nodded silently.

The ability to read memories is simply too overpowered; the fewer people who know about it, the better.

Besides, the information about X-95 wasn't found in the memories of those Angsa Hunters.

The archives on this thing exist deep in his mind... a part of Sun Hang's memory before his amnesia.

The deeper he went into the institute, the stronger the eerie feeling of familiarity... Sun Hang even experienced a peculiar sense of déjà vu, as if he'd returned to more than a hundred years ago, vaguely seeing the shadows of people living and working there back then, brushing past him.

He was like a ghost traveling through a time tunnel, standing atop the ruins a hundred years later, glimpsing the other side of the tunnel.

"Wait, that thing seems to have turned around!" the fisherman said nervously.

"How do you know which side is its front and which is its back?" Shino was recording the mysterious creature's features in a small notebook as he spoke, but upon hearing the fisherman, he immediately pocketed the notebook and pen and drew his handgun.

"I don't know, but I have a feeling of being watched, giving me goosebumps," the fisherman said. "You better trust me this once; my intuition is usually spot on!"

Before he finished speaking, X-95 had already dropped the corpse and charged toward the elevator!

"Crap, crap! It's really coming!" the fisherman hunkered down, holding a short knife in front of him, ready to strike.

Shino, on the other hand, pulled the trigger—however, the bullets, once entering X-95, disappeared without a trace.

"Physical attacks don't work on it," Sun Hang shouted fiercely. He suddenly kicked the fisherman and Shino out of the elevator car.

The next second, X-95 rushed into the car, its numerous worm-like bodies, coated in sticky, corrosive slime, wrapped around most of Sun Hang's body like tentacles.

"Ah?!" the fisherman, who fell, managed to get up, and when he tried to rush back into the car, he saw the car ascend directly, leaving only the safety cable dangling in the empty elevator shaft.

"Sun Hang!!" the fisherman shouted, "Hurry up and bring the elevator down!"

Sun Hang naturally heard the fisherman's call, but remained unmoved, jamming the elevator between the first and second floors, creating a simple "enclosed space."

Next up was "meal time"...

X-95's "tentacles" pierced into Sun Hang's body, but then more mycelium emerged from within Sun Hang, binding those "tentacles" tightly—the mycelium's surface grew many hair-thin branches that burrowed into the worm's body, greedily absorbing X-95's memetic template.

X-95 began to struggle wildly, its hundreds of worm bodies causing the car to rattle noisily, but no matter how they struggled, they couldn't escape the mycelium that clung like a bone-attached tumor.

They thought it would be a feast, but little did they know, they were the meal on this feast.

The relationship between predator and prey was instantly reversed.

The deep-sea worms, whose bodies were originally full of flesh and blood, were gradually shriveling—these deep-sea worms were also a type of mysterious creature, but they had fallen victim to X-95's memetic invasion, becoming mindless shells... akin to the parasitic fungus within caterpillar fungus controlling the worm's motions.

The only difference was that X-95 did not possess an entity that could be touched.

Sun Hang didn't have any effective means to deal with spiritual body type mysterious creatures, so he reluctantly devoured it.

The teeth of the deep-sea worms were incredibly sharp, allowing them to move easily through the hard seabed rock layers; using them to bite human flesh was a complete waste of such power.

Unfortunately, Sun Hang couldn't feel any pain now.