Wizards: Starting with Fairy Crests

041: Experimental Abnormality

"What is that?!"

The group, who were engrossed in searching different areas of the castle, were startled by the inhuman, terrifying roar that came from the depths of the earth.

And soon, they experienced what true terror was...

The first victim was Black Stone.

He was in a weapons showroom, trying to pry open a locked cabinet of runic weapons.

After the roar, he immediately realized that the situation was bad, dropped the weapon cabinet he was holding, and prepared to leave.

however,

Before he could run out, the stone wall behind him cracked silently, like rotten cardboard!

A deformed giant hand covered in dark red scales and with fingers like hooks pierced through the wall and, before he could even react, grabbed his head and half of his shoulder.

"Huh?!" Black Stone only managed a short, surprised sound.

"Pfft—Crack!"

The giant hand closed. The sturdy helmet, along with the skull beneath it, was easily crushed like a ripe berry, and red and white matter mixed with shards of metal splattered from between its fingers.

His body was casually yanked out of the broken wall, leaving only half of his mangled corpse leaning against the wall, blood gushing from his broken neck, staining the ground and the weapons cabinet he had failed to open.

In another corridor not far away, Grey Falcon, who was inspecting a broken statue, heard the teeth-grinding cracking sound and the short, muffled thud.

Alarm bells rang in his mind, and he immediately went into stealth mode, gliding towards the source of the sound like a shadow.

When he cautiously peeked out from around the corner, what he saw was the final scene of Black Stone's headless remains being dragged away, and a fleeting glimpse of a three-meter-tall, twisted back behind the broken wall.

The gray falcon's blood was almost frozen.

What made his heart stop even more was that the monster seemed to have noticed him watching and suddenly turned around—

It was an indescribably ugly face, with dark red skin covered in bumps and cracks, and two murky, raging fires of the soul burning in its eye sockets. Its mouth was gaping open, revealing sharp, interlocking teeth like a shark's.

One of its arms was unusually thick and covered with bony armor, while the other was twisted like the limbs of a multi-segmented insect, with sharp bony spikes at the end.

The suffocating magical pressure emanating from the monster made Gray Falcon, an apprentice known for his agility and stealth, feel his legs go weak and he almost couldn't maintain his stealth state.

"escape!"

That was the only thought in his mind. He turned around and accelerated to his maximum speed, rushing madly towards the agreed meeting point in the hall.

His shriek and frantic running startled the old piper who was rummaging through cigarette rolls in a side room. "Grey Falcon? What's wrong?!"

Old Pipe, leaning on his cane, had just stepped out the door when he saw Gray Falcon rushing past, his face ashen, shouting, "Monster! Blackstone's dead! Run!"

Old Pipe's heart sank. Without hesitation, he followed, throwing several trigger-activated smoke and flashing runes behind him in an attempt to hinder anything that might be chasing after him.

However, their speed was meaningless in the face of absolute rank suppression.

Just as the two rushed into the central hall one after the other and met up with Shadow Raven, who had also rushed over in a panic, a dark figure appeared at the archway at the entrance of the hall as if by teleportation, blocking their way.

It was that aberration!

Its dark red body dripped with the blood of the black stone, and its turbid eyes swept over the three terrified people before letting out a fierce growl that was a mixture of painful howls and eerie screech.

"Magic element! It's a wizard-level monster!" Old Smoker shouted hoarsely, his face contorted with extreme fear.

The gray falcon's hand holding the knife trembled violently.

Shadow Raven's face was deathly pale, but he still retained a sliver of reason. He immediately took out a positioning crystal and tried to activate the coordinates that had been left behind to connect to the external light screen.

"The node... the node has been forcibly sealed! The space is being reinforced!" Shadow Raven cried out, despair appearing in his eyes for the first time.

"What?!"

In an instant, all the color drained from their faces, turning them as pale as paper.

"roar--!"

That terrifying roar, which shook the deepest recesses of the soul, resounded once more, shaking the entire gloomy and dilapidated castle.

...

Half an hour later.

Everything returned to deathly silence, with only the pungent, nauseating smell of blood lingering in the air.

Inside the dry well, Lin Qi held his breath and concentrated, suppressing all his aura and energy fluctuations to the maximum extent, like a lifeless stone at the bottom of the well.

He could clearly hear the agonizing screams, roars, and teeth-grinding sounds of destruction coming from above gradually subsiding.

After waiting patiently for a long time and confirming that there was no further unusual activity, he carefully climbed up the rope, climbed out of the pile of bones, returned to the dry well, and then cautiously returned to the central hall along the same path.

The scene before us was nothing short of a carnage.

Scattered throughout the hall were mangled, almost unrecognizable pieces of flesh and internal organs.

Black Stone's severed torso leaned against the distance, Gray Falcon was pinned to the ground, Old Pipe was huddled in the corner, and Shadow Raven was split in two, its face frozen in extreme terror.

Blood soaked through the ancient stone slabs, pooling into small blood pools.

In the center of the hall, the horrific aberration that had caused all of this lay sprawled on the ground.

Its body was crumbling at a visible speed. The dark red skin and scales quickly lost their luster, turning gray, dry, and cracked, peeling off piece by piece to reveal the muscles and bones underneath, which were also rapidly weathering and turning into powder.

The eyes that once burned with the fire of the soul have long since gone out, leaving only two empty holes. The deformed limbs lay limply outstretched, as if they had exhausted their last bit of strength.

The body structure of this thing was already extremely unstable due to the failed experiment, and after thousands of years, it was already on the verge of collapse.

It's just that being constantly immersed in the petri dish, along with the various modifications made to him by the wizard, has given him extraordinary vitality, allowing him to maintain a certain level of activity. However, this remaining energy will quickly disintegrate once he leaves the petri dish, lasting only ten minutes.

One way to solo this dungeon without going to the dry well is to survive for ten minutes against this mutant.

Of course, few players can do that against the power of a wizard.

Lynch approached cautiously, maintaining a safe distance to observe.

The mutated body is decaying and rotting at an alarming rate visible to the naked eye, a manifestation of the return of the time-rules that annihilate everything.

time,

This is the eternal truth that no one in this world can resist!

"Lily..."

Just then, the mutant's lips twitched, and it said haltingly, "Protect... Lily... I want to... protect Lily..."

Lin Qi sighed, "They're really persistent."

Lily is his sister.

In truth, his soul had long since vanished. What sustains him now is merely the soul imprinted within his body cells—the obsession with protecting his long-deceased sister.

After saying that, the mutant completely rotted and decayed into a pile of rotten flesh.