No Other Choice

This was a city swallowed by the earth, buried deep beneath hundreds or thousands of meters of soil and rock. Looking up, the space overhead was pitch black, without a single sliver of light.

The megalithic structures were heavy and dilapidated, as if stepping out from ancient memory. Complex murals were carved onto their outer walls, depicting the history of a group of ghouls who kept Sons of the Formless and lived in this city under the protection of the Great Old Ones.

Yet, whatever transpired in the end, only countless mindless Sons of the Formless were left wandering the city. The ghouls were nowhere to be found, leaving behind only eerie stone statues along the narrow streets—statues carved in distinct, life-like postures.

Most of the buildings were intact. Inside and outside the rooms were lingering traces of life: overturned chairs, soiled dishes, and disheveled bedding, as if on one ordinary day, the lives of all its inhabitants had abruptly ground to a halt.

“Bang!”

A wooden door that had stood for ten thousand years looked intact, yet easily disintegrated into flying ash upon impact. Lynch, with his Torch of Light clamped in his mouth, smashed through the door and burst out of the stone house, firing a shot right next to him.

The impact of the bullet made the Son of the Formless lingering outside pause for a second. Seizing this opportunity, Miss Valente rushed out right behind him. Together with Lynch, she brushed past the Son of the Formless and sprinted back onto the city streets.

The squelching, writhing sound echoed behind them once more as a dozen Sons of the Formless squirmed together, surging out of the room after them.

“Something's wrong. Didn't the murals say that Sons of the Formless have no intelligence?”

Lynch stumbled a few steps before managing to catch his balance. Not daring to stop, he rapidly swept the beam of the Torch of Light around him, illuminating the cluttered rooms and statues standing in the middle of the road. Panicking, he flashed the light behind him to check on the growing mass of dark silhouettes, feeling his scalp go numb.

“Why are they chasing us like this? Is there something on us that's attracting them?”

“Throw another bottle, sir!” Miss Valente dropped the formal title, anxiously glancing back at their pursuers. “Another group has gathered!”

“Here it comes!”

Lynch pulled out another bottle of strong acid and hurled it above the massive swarm of Sons of the Formless behind them.

The bottle flew five or six meters, and just as it passed over the cluster of monsters, a gunshot rang out.

A flash of flame erupted from the folding fan along with a widespread spray of buckshot. Dense steel balls shattered the bottle in midair, sending acid raining down in a concentrated mist.

Thick white steam surged up immediately as a swarm of Sons of the Formless writhed and collapsed into sludge. But the two had no time to check the results of their attack, gasping frantically for air.

Although the Sons of the Formless writhed at a slow frequency, their massive size gave them a speed comparable to a full-grown man jogging. Moreover, lacking a fixed shape, they flowed over the ground like melted pitch; almost no obstacle could hold them back, and they could slide into any room as long as there was even a narrow gap.

Crucially, like sharks scenting blood, these monsters were drawn by something unknown and pursued them relentlessly. The pair couldn't shake off their pursuers at all; any slight delay would allow the vast horde to catch up.

The trouble was that one had lived a pampering life of nobility and the other was a natural homebody. After running frantically at top speed for more than ten minutes, even their transcendent bodies were showing signs of exhaustion. Having just wiped out the nearest pursuers, they seized every single second to catch their breath.

The beam of light from the temple was only a few hundred meters away now, but neither could run another step.

“Do... do you have any potions to recover stamina? Aren't you an apothecary?”

“What you're asking for might only appear if we pray to the gods.” Knowing better than to sit or lie down, Miss Valente leaned heavily against her knees, pulling out a handkerchief to wipe the sweat from her face. “Though I did notice something promising: there aren't many Sons of the Formless toward the temple. The pursuers are all closing in from the surroundings. As long as we keep heading toward the temple, we can avoid a lot of trouble. Could they be wary of the temple, Mr. Levive?”

“It's possible. After all, it's the temple of an evil god's avatar, but I can't be sure. However, I did notice something very odd here.” Lynch barely managed to even out his breathing as he turned the Torch of Light in all directions, remaining vigilant against eerie shadows pouncing from the dark. “Do you know what happened to the sacrifices of past generations after they were brought in here?”

“No. There are no records of that, nor has any sacrifice ever left alive.” Miss Valente asked, her brows furrowed in confusion. “Is there a problem?”

“Over thousands of years, there must have been hundreds of sacrifices, totaling at least several thousand people. They all died here. Statistically, after walking for ten minutes and entering so many rooms, we should have seen at least a few corpses. Yet along our way, aside from a tiny handful of indigenous ghoul remains, we haven't seen a single body of a human sacrifice.”

“Huh? You're right... why?” Miss Valente was stunned; she had never looked deeply into this issue before. “No one could be moving the corpses here, so they shouldn't just be gone. Could they have been eaten by the Sons of the Formless?”

“Judging by the remains of the indigenous ghouls, the Sons of the Formless don't seem to eat corpses.”

“Mhm.”

“Then I have no idea. Maybe those people gathered up and buried themselves. We can observe a bit more later.”

“Don't say such creepy things, Mr. Levive.” Miss Valente rubbed her arms, shooting him a scolding glare. Suddenly, her eyes froze. “Why are they here again? Let's go, quickly!”

Before her voice died away, a howling wind dropped from above.

As long as they were in the open air inside the city, they could be ambushed at any time by Sons of the Formless dropping from the ceiling earth layer, making it completely impossible to guard against. Most of the pursuers behind them had arrived this way, forcing the two to weave through buildings constantly just to temporarily escape air raids.

Lynch's face darkened as well. Cursing under his breath, he pulled Miss Valente sideways, dashing straight into another nearby building.

Kicking the door open, Lynch raised his hand and fired twice, his movements painfully practiced. Following the gunshots, two dull thuds echoed right in front of them as the bullets hit their target.

“I've got this.”

Following right behind, Miss Valente immediately stepped forward, nudging Lynch aside. Raising her folding fan, she blasted a shot into the room.

Buckshot burst from the muzzle, turning into a cloud of acid that suddenly dissolved into thin air halfway through its arc. Thick white smoke billowed from inside as a mass of darkness rapidly shriveled into a ball.

The wind overhead blew fiercer and fiercer. Without even waiting for the smoke to dissipate, the two plunged headlong into the room. A loud crash resounded right behind them, churning up clouds of dust and shaking the entire building to its foundation.

No—it wasn't just shaking.

“Go, don't stop! To the temple!”

Lynch shoved Miss Valente ahead, and both tumbled out through the window at top speed. Behind them, the tall, ancient building collapsed with a resounding crash, turning into the dust of history.

Amid the swirling dust, Miss Valente scrambled up off Lynch and reached back down to pull him to his feet. They exchanged a look, both sensing an unsettling weirdness in the air.

Stopping meant being caught; veering off course meant running into more enemies. It seemed they had nowhere left to go—if they wanted to avoid being swarmed by the Sons of the Formless, the temple was their only remaining path.

It felt as though they had no other choice. This realization filled Lynch with growing unease. Why did it feel as if an invisible force was guiding them toward the temple? Was this choice really the right one?

But with the temple right before their eyes, fighting to the death against a horde of Sons of the Formless made no sense. Lynch had no choice but to suppress his anxiety.

At least go inside and take a look—it wasn't his first time anyway.