Why did she have to face such a nightmare?
Eileen felt as though, deep in her heart, there was an endless desert of yellow sand, with the blazing sun overhead.
The air was so dry it scraped her throat like sandpaper, and every breath carried the rusty taste of blood.
A fragile figure wept as it half-kneeled on the ground, crawling forward.
The burden nearly crushed the small girl.
Yet her inner strength drove her on.
Even when her fingernails cracked and tore, she dragged them across the ground, leaving bloody trails.
She kept moving, spilling blood across the endless desert, until everything behind her turned into a foul-smelling field of iron sand.
Looking back, Eileen suddenly felt a strange sensation sweep over her.
Deep within Harper’s azure pupils, it was as if whirlpools spun, and an invisible, sticky, icy force seeped into Eileen’s consciousness.
The words “child” and “be obedient” seemed to carry a hypnotic magic, instantly corroding the dam she had built with her taut nerves.
Hand it over?
Yes, hand it over.
What meaning was there?
She had struggled and drowned for so, so long.
So long that death itself had become mercy and peace.
Too tired.
Too much pain.
Too… dark.
Perhaps giving up here was a blessing.
In a daze, Eileen let the VSS droop weakly, and Harper smiled, reaching out to take it from her.
But then, behind her, atop the blood-soaked iron sand, a sudden change occurred.
A thick, dark substance, like oil, gushed from the blood-soaked sand, quickly pooling and swelling.
It greedily absorbed the blood dripping onto the ground, as though it had gained life and strength.
The iron sand sizzled horribly as it was corroded and consumed by the darkness, spreading outward into a foul, stinking swamp.
The dark mass had no definite shape.
It churned and twisted, filled with pure malice, hatred, a lust to kill, and utter despair toward the world.
At that moment, catalyzed by Harper’s strange mental power, the shadow of vengeance seemed to scent blood.
Sensing rational Eileen’s weakness and restraints, it roared silently, and a vast shadow loomed over the small, crawling figure ahead.
The shadow of vengeance did not crush her at once.
Instead, it extended countless sticky, dark tendrils of thought, like tentacles, wrapping tightly around Eileen.
They were icy to the bone, carrying paralyzing corrosion, ravenously draining her remaining willpower, cutting off her connection to reality.
“Why endure?
Why flee?”
“They stole everything from you!
They trampled your treasures!
They treated you like an insect!”
“Look at him!
Look at them!
Accept it!
The power is in your hands!
Destroy them!
Tear them apart!
Stain this filthy land red with their blood!
You were never of this world—why should you bow to its rules and chains?”
The whispers of the shadow pierced into her mind like countless steel needles.
They were full of temptation and deadly allure, each word stabbing directly into her deepest wounds, igniting the long-suppressed fury to burn everything down.
Yes… this damned world…
She hadn’t even wanted to come here.
Her original world wasn’t perfect, but at least she had food, clothing, and peace to live out her life quietly.
But here, everything had collapsed.
Even though she had found beauty in this world that her past life never had… now, whether from official order or underground rule, everything she held was being destroyed in inhuman ways.
If so… then she would not—should not—die quietly and unknown, like in her past life.
……
Harper’s hand tugged at the VSS, trying to pull it away.
But then he noticed Eileen’s purple pupils literally melting, replaced by pitch-black liquid flowing in their place.
He snapped his gaze to the Geiger counter in the corner.
From hell itself came a deafening sound…
A surge of radiation burst from Eileen’s body.
Electronics instantly failed, and thick black sludge oozed from her eyes and mouth.
“A paranormal carrier?”
Harper’s pupils contracted sharply, and he instinctively stepped back, his power halting.
“What’s wrong, Harper?
Weren’t you controlling her with your psychic power?
Don’t be afraid of trouble—this b*tch is yours.
I’ll handle the rest for you…”
Leighton staggered to his feet, shouting, not understanding why Harper suddenly retreated in fear.
“You don’t understand!
Leighton… damn it, why didn’t your file say she was a paranormal carrier?”
Harper’s voice was urgent.
He ignored Leighton entirely, backing away quickly.
“How would I know?
I’ve never dealt with this shit…”
Leighton’s voice trembled.
He had no implanted paranormal abilities, but seeing Eileen in this ghostlike state, he began to understand.
“My ability is hypnosis, using psychic radiation to suppress a person’s personality, making them obey my orders.
For ordinary people, it’s harmless—at worst they become like walking corpses.
But for paranormal carriers, prolonged exposure to psychic radiation induces irreversible extreme personality distortions.
Normally, these distortions are masked by social behavior.
But now… I suppressed her personality.”
“So now she’s fallen into the paranormal carriers’ unique mental state—the ‘Elephant’s Foot.’
Just like under intense radiation, a second shadow is formed.
This irreversible collapse of the psyche is called the Elephant’s Foot phenomenon.
Severe trauma and psychic radiation cause the paranormal body to rampage, unleashing uncontrolled radiation, spawning anomalies, and driving the host to indiscriminately attack everyone they’ve ever known in life.”
“Clearly, Miss Eileen has suffered immense trauma, and yet, miraculously, she managed to let her shattered heart contain the paranormal body.
But her collapse… is coming fast.
It’s intense.
It’s beautiful…”
The Elephant’s Foot—formed in the Chernobyl reactor meltdown—was a mass of molten concrete, bedrock, and uranium-235.
And now, that same composite of pitch-black matter poured endlessly from Eileen’s eyes and mouth.
Harper explained quickly, but for some reason, he had calmed.
He stretched out his hand, eyes closed, feeling the raging storm of radiation, the gamma particles punching through his DNA.
“Then stop her!
Kill her!
The radiation… why is the radiation count…”
Hearing the maddening, terrifying beeps of the Geiger counter, Leighton’s old-man voice rose into a shrill, girlish scream.
“She can’t be stopped.
This requires the military, which is why paranormal bodies are strictly controlled by the army.
Killing a carrier is one thing.
But when they collapse, they become the Elephant’s Foot—fuel for expanding radiation zones.
A walking natural disaster.
You won’t just kill yourself and me—you’ll doom millions of civilians in this city.”
“Tch… so this is what they call fate’s coincidence.”