The ghoul lunged forward once more.
The icy Winter aspect condensed almost into a physical form, spreading outward with its movements. The temperature in the entire morgue plummeted instantly, and a thin layer of frost even formed on the surfaces of the gurney tables.
Ryan did not budge.
The Glory in his left eye swirled slowly, and the entire world instantly fell silent.
The hideous ghoul before him quickly lost its physical form. In the vision of The Glory, it was reduced to nothing but a massive clump of the Winter aspect—grayish-white, silent, and cold, like a tombstone that had been buried for countless years.
Those grayish-white lines intertwined with one another, supporting its long-dead body to keep moving.
Ryan let out a soft chuckle.
“You should have been dead long ago.”
The ghoul let out a furious roar, its razor-sharp claws already reaching his face.
Ryan merely took a single step to the side.
The claws brushed past the edge of his coat, tearing the gurney table behind him, along with the corpse resting on it, completely in half. Large chunks of cold, shredded flesh flew in every direction.
The attack missed.
The ghoul spun around instantly, its speed astonishingly fast.
But Ryan had already appeared by its side. Condensing The Glory at his fingertip, he lightly tapped its chest.
A tiny speck of white light slowly sank into that dense mass of the Winter aspect.
In the next instant, the ghoul's entire body stiffened violently.
It wasn't injured, but the Winter aspect supporting its movements began to vibrate violently. Grayish-white lines surfaced one after another under the illumination of The Glory. The structure that had been completely hidden from view was now fully exposed to Ryan's eyes.
The ghoul struggled frantically.
It swung its claws and lunged once more, but its movements grew increasingly sluggish.
This was because every strike Ryan made landed precisely on the most critical nodes of its Winter aspect.
The lines supporting its actions snapped one by one.
Finally, Ryan raised his right hand.
The Glory in his palm flared, and a beam of pure white light instantly pierced through the ghoul's head.
The entire world seemed to fall silent for a brief second.
In the next moment, the ghoul that had once chased Ryan and guarded the East Port warehouse slowly fell to its knees.
The aspect supporting the corpse's movements dissipated bit by bit. Its grayish-white body rapidly lost all strength, ultimately turning back into a genuine corpse.
Boom.
Its massive body collapsed heavily onto the floor.
Ryan slowly walked over.
Just then.
His left eye suddenly twitched slightly.
Deep within the ghoul's decaying brain, an extremely faint trace of spirituality was actually hidden.
It was more like the last remaining sliver of its self from before it had become a ghoul.
Ryan did not hesitate, sweeping a gentle wave of The Glory over it.
That tiny speck of spirituality slowly floated out and merged into his mind.
Instantly, his vision became even clearer.
Traces of lingering aspects within the hospital continued to surface.
Grail. Grail. And more Grail.
Several bright red traces stretched out from underground, ultimately converging at an office on the other side of the inpatient building.
Someone was there.
In fact, more than one.
Ryan closed his eyes, quickly recalling the scenes he had seen when absorbing the doctor's memories the night before.
The underground morgue was merely a place to store bodies.
The people truly in charge of contact, transport, and conducting rituals usually met in that office.
Today just happened to be their scheduled time to exchange information.
At this thought.
Ryan put his glasses back on and adjusted his hospital gown. As if nothing had happened, he slowly walked out of the morgue.
Along the way, he ran into two nurses pushing a medicine cart.
The two of them merely nodded politely.
Ryan also smiled in response.
No one realized that there was now a truly dead ghoul in the basement.
Walking through the long corridor.
Ryan stopped in front of that familiar office door.
The Glory in his left eye pierced through the wall, laying bare everything inside.
Four people.
Three of them wore doctor uniforms.
The other wore the clothes of a hospital orderly.
Several medical charts and a map of the East End were laid out on the desk.
They were discussing the doctor who had died the night before in hushed tones.
Someone suspected that someone was already investigating behind the scenes.
Someone believed they should immediately relocate the corpses in the morgue.
Yet another suggested that they should completely get rid of that clerk named Ryan tonight.
Ryan stood quietly outside the door.
The conversation in the office fell into his ears word for word.
Hearing this, Ryan couldn't help but smile.
“No need to discuss further. I've come myself.”
With those words, he gently pushed the door.
Creak—
The office door slowly swung inward.
The voices inside abruptly stopped, and the four people raised their heads almost simultaneously.
When they saw the young man standing at the doorway, the entire room fell into a dead silence.
Ryan was still wearing his hospital gown, with faint traces of white frost clinging to his clothes.
His forehead was wrapped in thick, white bandages, through which faint bloodstains could still be seen. No matter how one looked at him, he should have been a severely injured patient bedridden in a ward.
Yet, he was standing right here.
With a smile on his face.
Behind his glasses, a heart-palpitating white light faintly swirled in his left eye, resembling a lantern, or perhaps an eye watching its prey.
Ryan raised his right hand and waved with a smile.
“Hello. Hello, everyone. Are you... looking for me?”
No one answered, but the expressions of the four turned extremely unsightly in an instant. They looked as though they had just seen a ghost.
A young doctor's lips trembled, his voice shaking slightly.
“No... impossible... How could you be here?”
Another man stood up abruptly, staring dead at Ryan.
“Did you go downstairs? What about the morgue? And the ghoul?”
Ryan tilted his head.
“Dead. They're all dead.”
He spoke casually, as if he had merely stepped on a bug.
The air in the office instantly froze.
The four of them exchanged glances, their eyes filled with deep disbelief.
That was a ghoul, a monster that had truly completed its transformation into the Winter aspect.
And yet...
It was dead?
The middle-aged doctor suddenly bellowed.
“What on earth did you do!”
Ryan's smile remained unchanged.
“Just a bit of killing.”
As he spoke, he lightly patted his hospital gown, as if dusting off non-existent dirt.
“Last night, I killed one. Just now, I killed another.”
He slowly raised his head.
The Glory in his eyes grew brighter and brighter.
“Next, it's your turn.”
Their faces fell instantly.
One of them subconsciously reached into his pocket, clearly intending to pull something out.
But Ryan was no longer in the mood to waste his breath.
He took a slow step forward, and The Glory in his left eye suddenly flared.
Boom—
An invisible mental blast instantly swept through the entire office.
It felt as if a heavy sledgehammer had violently struck all four of their brains at once.
The world instantly lost all color.
Nothing remained but a sharp, high-pitched ringing in their ears.
A young doctor clutched his head and shrieked, falling to his knees on the spot as blood seeped from his nostrils and ears simultaneously.
The other two stumbled backward. Their vision went dark, and their stomachs churned so violently that they could barely stand.
The old man at the very front forced himself to stay upright, but veins bulged on his forehead, his eyes were bloodshot, and a trickle of bright red blood slowly dripped from the corner of his mouth.
The entire office was left in complete disarray.
Documents were scattered all over the floor.
The teacups on the desk were all shaken loose and shattered.
The wall clock even let out a sharp crack, a fine fissure splitting across its glass surface.
Rate on N.U.
