Hunter of Mysterious Creature

"Is that the name of the girl from earlier?" the fisherman couldn't help but ask.

"Girl? Where's a girl?" Shino was taken aback, instinctively glancing at the group of dazed Hunters.

There indeed were females in the group of Hunters, but they were all around thirty to forty years old. It wouldn't be appropriate to refer to women in this age range as "girls"...

"Look, over there." The fisherman pointed to the dried corpse lying on the pile of bones.

"Ah... this, this person must have been dead for a long time, right?" Shino questioned, puzzled, "Strange, why have the other corpses decayed to bones, yet this one's body tissue was preserved through desiccation? Does it have something special about it?"

"Just three minutes ago, this dried corpse was a living, breathing young woman." The fisherman pointed to the cracked container in the air, "She was immersed in that container, but for some reason, the container suddenly cracked, she fell out, and within seconds, she turned into this."

"This container... it's a CL-08 Life-support device!" Shino squinted his eyes, "No wait, it's a CL-06... The CL-08 model was still in the prototyping phase, and by the time it was mass-produced, the Nameless Island had already been abandoned... Her sudden death might be due to the life-support device malfunctioning..."

"Even so, she wouldn't turn from a lively human into a dried corpse in seconds, right?" The fisherman remarked in disbelief, "Besides, this life-support device seemed broken when we got here, the cables and pipes underneath were already severed."

"Actually, even if the life-support device was in good condition, it wouldn't be functional after a hundred years." Shino walked to the bone pile, scrutinizing the dried corpse with a heavy gaze, "This antique life-support device doesn't have self-filtering or self-cleansing capabilities, the filling liquid used inside was a substance called 'artificial serum,' which had to be replaced weekly to ensure normal operation... It's been over a hundred years..."

"Does this 'artificial serum' evaporate upon contact with air?" The fisherman asked again.

"Of course not, does your blood evaporate the moment it leaves your body?" Shino retorted.

"Then you might be mistaken, the liquid in the container shouldn't be artificial serum, because once the container broke, the liquid spilled out and evaporated completely within seconds, leaving no trace."

"Uh... it might be due to the long years, the artificial serum underwent an unknown mutation... or it might have been influenced by Mysterious Creatures—Speaking of which, since this 'girl' was previously submerged in a life-support device, she must have been an experimental subject, right?"

"Makes sense, since she's an infected one... then all the illogical parts make sense." The fisherman mumbled, "This lass probably survived for over a hundred years, considering her age, it wouldn't be wrong to call her our great-grandmother..."

Hearing what the fisherman said, Sun Hang couldn't resist murmuring to himself: "You're calling her great-grandmother... wouldn't that make me your great-great-grandmother... uh, great-great-grandfather?"

Although there was a sense of shared ancestry, Sun Hang did not feel much emotional connection to his fleeting daughter. The only regret he felt was that just when he could finally touch the truth of his origin, those damned monkeys ruined everything.

"It's not the right time yet... but when will it be the right time exactly?"

"By the way, what should we do with these people? Just leave them here?" The fisherman walked over and patted Sun Hang on the arm, looking at the dazed Mysterious Creature Hunters, "Not sure what's happening out at sea, if Yamata Orochi is still near the island..."

His words hadn't finished when a pile of bones shuddered twice, a half-crushed skull tumbled from the top, rolling towards Sun Hang's feet with a series of crisp knocking sounds.

"Is it just my imagination? I feel like the ground just shook a bit?" The fisherman looked up, seeing the only remaining metal top of the glass container swaying back and forth on the beam.

"It's not your imagination, I felt it too!" Shino had just finished speaking when a more violent tremor came from above, causing several bone mounds to collapse at once, scattering countless bone fragments!

"An earthquake?!" The fisherman widened his eyes, "This place isn't on a seismic zone, is it?!"

"It's not an earthquake!" Shino tensed up, "It's... it's the research facility's self-destruct mechanism! Back then, to ensure absolute secrecy, large amounts of explosives were pre-set within the load-bearing structures of the facility. Once an unavoidable invasion or insurmountable situation occurred, the defense forces of the research facility would immediately detonate these explosives... perishing along with the enemy while burying those confidential files completely... According to the Dubhe Tower records, the research facility's self-destruct mechanism was activated once, but those explosives were not successfully detonated..."

"So the explosion was delayed by a hundred years, just waiting for us?!" The fisherman turned and ran for the door, "What are you waiting for? Run! If we get out before it collapses completely, we might still survive!"

Shino glanced at the dazed Mysterious Creature Hunters with some reluctance, but without further ado, he too ran out.

Sun Hang followed closely behind.

"We can't run upward!" Shino shouted, "We won't make it to the surface in time; we'll get buried alive by the collapsing earth and stones!"

"Then where do we run?"

"To the third basement level!" Shino said, "There's an escape route leading outside there!"

"Leading outside? To where?" The fisherman hurriedly asked.

"The sea!"

"Can you dive?" The fisherman turned to glance at him, "I'm fine with it, but what about you two?"

The third basement level of the Nameless Island Research Institute is three hundred meters below sea level, while the exit of the underwater escape passage is about two hundred and seventy meters below sea level—yet human unassisted diving limit records barely exceed a hundred meters.

The sea area around the Nameless Island was once an average depth of only about twenty meters, but over a hundred years ago, during a battle against sea-beast-type mysterious creatures, the seabed here collapsed severely, turning this near-shore area just a few hundred kilometers from the mainland into a deep-sea zone over five hundred meters deep.

It is precisely for this reason that massive creatures like Yamata Orochi could slip into this sea area without being noticed.

"The escape passage should be equipped with deep-sea diving suits!" Shino said.

"Those things have been sitting there for over a hundred years, are you sure they still work?!"