Chapter 291: Posthumous Work (10)
“Plop!”
It was impossible to tell how long she had been falling when Everly’s body suddenly struck something thick, damp, and heavy.
It was like molten lava—a dense, viscous substance that enveloped her completely, restraining her body as it dragged her inward. Before long, a faint pop sounded, as though she had pierced an invisible membrane. The suffocating pressure of being tightly wrapped around instantly eased, and Everly felt herself being “spat out” by whatever had swallowed her.
Thud!
Her body slammed onto a hard surface.
Before the pain even registered, the first thing Everly noticed was the damp, salty smell of the sea breeze.
A torrential downpour raged around her. Lightning split the sky as thunder roared overhead, while fierce winds lashed the sea. Raindrops the size of beans pelted her face and body, cold enough to sting her skin. Within moments, her thin clothing was soaked through. The icy wind cut through the drenched fabric, making her shiver uncontrollably.
For some reason, the ground beneath her pitched and rolled violently.
Supporting her aching head, Everly struggled to her feet and looked around, only to discover that she had landed on the deck of a wooden ship.
The vessel was built in an ancient style. Several enormous sails hung from its towering masts, billowing under the force of the storm. A lone lantern swayed at the bow, casting its dim light over a gray-white figurehead carved in the likeness of the Sea God. Mounted on either side of the hull were two metal cannons, the kind seen only in historical films. Their brass surfaces, weathered by years of wind and sun, were tinged with a faint green patina.
Not a single person was aboard.
Looking more closely, she spotted several splashes of blood across the deck and along the outer walls of the cabin. Washed by the relentless rain, the stains had faded into an ominous pale crimson.
The raging storm at sea, the appearance of the wooden ship, even the bloodstains on the deck—all of it matched the painting “Encounter” that Everly had seen in the gallery.
Having already experienced the previous painting-world, Everly immediately realized that she had, in all likelihood, fallen into Shelly’s second painting.
“Seriously… does it ever end? One painting wasn’t enough, now there’s another…”
Don’t tell me I have to fall into every single painting before this is over. Even a novel wouldn’t dare write something like that!
Splash!
As if to confirm Everly’s suspicion, a gigantic dark purple-black tentacle suddenly burst from the sea beside the wooden ship.
Its surface was covered in wart-like protrusions, while its underside was lined with countless suction cups. Rising from the eerie green seawater, it coiled around one of the ship’s masts. The tremendous force made the entire vessel lurch violently to one side.
The rain-soaked deck was treacherously slippery. Caught off guard, Everly lost her footing and nearly fell.
Fortunately, another tentacle emerged from the opposite side of the ship moments later. It draped its enormous weight across the vessel, balancing the load on both sides. The wooden ship groaned and creaked before slowly righting itself.
Seizing the opportunity, Everly dashed into the cabin.
She had already tried calling upon the sea, but just as before, the ocean in this world was almost impossible to communicate with, barely responding to her summons.
With the storm raging and the freezing weather, if she accidentally fell into the sea, there were only a few possible outcomes awaiting her: drowning, freezing to death, or being eaten by the owner of those tentacles.
She had to save herself.
Based on what she had learned from the previous world, Everly suspected that the world inside “Encounter” also had a source of corruption. If she could eliminate that source, she should be able to destroy the painting and escape.
As for whether leaving this painting would simply drop her into another one…
She couldn’t afford to worry about that now.
Compared to the monstrous tentacles beneath the sea, the wooden ship was as fragile as a toy. It wouldn’t last much longer before being dragged under.
No matter how terrible the next world might be, it couldn’t possibly be worse than this one.
The wooden ship was the only man-made structure on the entire ocean. If there really was a source of corruption in this world, there was a ninety-percent chance it was somewhere aboard this vessel…
Of course, it was also possible that no such source existed.
If that was the case, Everly could only chalk it up to bad luck.
After all, she wasn’t a god. She couldn’t control everything.
Time was running out.
Using her phone as a flashlight, Everly hurriedly searched through the empty ship.
The vessel looked centuries old. The floors and walls were entirely made of wood, with no electric lights, wiring, or any other signs of modern technology. Wherever her light reached, the corridor’s floor was mottled with bloodstains that had yet to dry completely, and the air was thick with the metallic smell of fresh blood.
There was blood everywhere—but no bodies.
Nor were there any traces of monster slime, flesh, or other remains.
Everly crouched beside one of the larger pools of blood and lowered the flashlight for a closer look. It wasn’t long before she found a trail of fresh, dripping blood leading away across the floor.
Looking more carefully, she realized the same was true of every other bloodstain. Each one was surrounded by droplets stretching off in the same direction, as though some immensely powerful being had slaughtered everyone here and then carried the bodies away.
The ship was enormous, with far too many rooms to search one by one.
Everly decided to follow the blood trail straight to its source.
She sprinted down the deserted corridor, chasing the crimson droplets.
Halfway there, the tentacles outside apparently did something to the ship again. The vessel, which had been relatively steady until now, suddenly began pitching and rolling violently once more.
Caught completely off guard, Everly was tossed around as though she had been thrown into a washing machine on its spin cycle. Helplessly, she bounced with the ship’s violent motion, one moment being hurled hard against the cabin ceiling, the next crashing back down onto the grimy wooden floorboards.
By the time the ship finally steadied, she had been flung from one end of the corridor all the way to the other.
The good news was that the place where every trail of blood converged…
…was the cabin at the very end of the hallway.
When she had transitioned into this world, none of the equipment she had gathered in the previous one had come with her—not her protective firefighting suit, not the crossbody bag at her waist, nor any of her weapons.
As a result, Everly found herself suffering another bout of her “insufficient firepower syndrome.”
Before entering, she looked around, picked up a thick wooden club lying in the corridor, and held it across her body as a makeshift weapon.
Then she raised her leg and kicked the locked cabin door open with all her strength.
Bang!
With a dull crash, the door flew open.
By the light of her phone, Everly caught sight of a small figure whose back looked strangely familiar.
It was a little boy.
He had short, close-cropped blond curls and was dressed in a black children’s suit with polished black leather shoes. Everything about him carried the unmistakable air of the modern world, completely out of place in his surroundings.
Everly had seen someone dressed almost exactly like that only this morning—
Her half-brother, Thomas.
She remembered that when the tentacle had dragged her into the painted world, Thomas had been pulled in as well.
Ordinarily, encountering someone she knew in such a bizarre and desolate place should have been a relief.
Instead, the sight of the boy sent chills racing down her spine.
Because the way he was standing was deeply unnatural.
Battered by both the raging storm and the giant tentacles in the sea, the wooden ship had been rolling back and forth without pause. The deck tilted left, then right, rarely staying level for more than a moment.
Everly had excellent balance, yet even she couldn’t avoid swaying with the ship. Whenever it listed too sharply, she had to spread her feet apart and brace herself against the wall just to stay upright.
The boy in the room was different.
With his back to Everly, he stood perfectly still in the center of the cabin. No matter how violently the ship tilted, his legs remained perpendicular to the floor, and his small body stayed rigidly “upright.”
At first glance, he looked less like a living child than a plastic mannequin glued to the deck.
No normal human being could stand like that.
The flashlight on her phone wasn’t very bright, illuminating less than two meters ahead. From the doorway, aside from the obviously abnormal Thomas, all she could see beyond him was a vast expanse of oppressive darkness.
Everly took a deep breath.
Keeping close to the wall on her right, she tried to slip past Thomas and explore deeper into the room.
At that very moment, another loud crack rang out from the ship’s port side.
It sounded as though part of the hull had just been crushed.
A torrent of seawater surged into the ship, sending violent tremors through its interior as the vessel suddenly listed at an even steeper angle.
Loose objects went tumbling in every direction with a cacophony of clatters and crashes. A framed painting hanging on the wall came loose and slammed straight into Everly’s head with a heavy bang.
Fortunately, sensing danger an instant beforehand, Everly had dug her fingers deep into the gaps between the wooden wall planks while kicking desperately against the floor with both feet. Only then did she manage to avoid sliding away.
She kept herself from falling—
But not her phone.
It slipped from her grasp, tumbled onto the floor face-down, and skidded away along the slanted deck.
The bright beam from its flashlight slid with it, sweeping across the room and driving away the darkness that had shrouded its center.
By the light of the moving phone, Everly finally saw what lay in the middle of the cabin.
It was a mountain of corpses.
Countless human bodies, still dressed in tattered medieval sailors’ uniforms, had been piled one atop another into a towering heap. Beneath it spread a massive magic circle covering the center of the room.
The corpses looked as though someone had first filleted every scrap of flesh from their bodies and then boiled them alive.
Only skeletal frames remained, with a few miserable shreds of meat clinging tightly to the bones. Hair, skin, muscle, internal organs—everything else had vanished.
As the flashlight beam shifted across the grisly mound, its surface glittered faintly.
Looking closer, Everly realized that every corpse was encased in a thin layer of translucent gelatinous material.
It resembled hardened syrup or peach gum. Once solidified, it had become remarkably tough, binding the entire heap firmly to the deck and forming a gigantic amber-like tomb of corpses.
Having only just escaped the previous world, Everly recognized the substance immediately.
It was a secretion produced by the monsters.
Both the surfaces of their bodies and their internal organs were capable of producing this sticky, viscous slime.
The corpses in the mound had been reduced to that horrific state.
There was no way the gelatinous substance could have been secreted by the bodies themselves.
Which meant…
Could it be… had they once been swallowed by a monster? Were these corpses vomited back out after being digested?
Before Everly could fully process the horrifying thought, the ship groaned once again under unbearable strain.
The floor tilted sharply.
She suddenly felt the ground vanish beneath her feet. By the time she frantically grabbed the frame of a painting hanging on the wall to steady herself again, her phone had already changed direction and slid across the floor, coming to rest at Thomas’s feet.
One of the boy’s polished black shoes stopped it in place.
The flashlight, now pointing upward, illuminated him from below.
He still stood exactly as he had when she first entered.
His body remained perfectly perpendicular to the deck, utterly motionless.
His clothes were immaculate. His neatly curled blond hair was perfectly in place. His fair, chubby cheeks were full of the youthful softness unique to children, and his innocent-looking face bore not a single bruise, scratch, or speck of dirt.
As Everly looked at him…
He slowly rolled his eyes to meet hers.
Staring straight at her.
Spread across the boy’s face was an exaggerated smile, the corners of his mouth stretched almost all the way to his ears.
The flashlight shining from below cast deep, shifting shadows across his features, making that smile appear even more sinister.
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
Maintaining eye contact with Everly, the boy slowly parted his lips.
His voice was low and hoarse, echoing throughout the cabin.
“Bzzzz…”
The next instant, a piercing ringing exploded inside Everly’s ears.
It was a language she had never heard before.
Yet those obscure, incomprehensible syllables seemed to possess a strange, unnatural power. They burrowed through her ears into her mind, transforming into countless venomous snakes that writhed through her brain, tearing it apart from within.
It felt as though her head had been struck by a massive hammer.
The world before her eyes began to twist and distort.
Through the haze, Everly saw the shadows on the boy’s face begin to move.
Like living ink, they slowly spread outward, devouring every trace of light around them.
Only one thing remained perfectly clear.
That smile.
That smile alone stayed etched into Everly’s vision, like a nail driven through her eyes, bringing with it an indescribable, searing pain.
The grin spread wider.
The corners of the boy’s mouth split farther and farther apart…
Until, at last, his jaws could no longer bear the strain.
Riiip!
With a sickening tearing sound, the flesh split apart. Deprived of all support, his bloodied lower jaw sagged limply downward.
Right before Everly’s eyes, the boy’s mouth stretched into a grotesquely elongated “O.”
It was a bottomless black abyss.
A faint rustling followed.
Several thick, reddish-black tentacles slowly emerged from the edges of the black void, prying it open even wider before crawling out into the real world.
Her younger brother, Thomas…
had become an incubator for the tentacles.
**TN
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.” The phrase is the famous fictional chant from H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos, commonly translated as: “In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.”