Chapter 383: Betty?

He shouldn’t have let Betty leave in the first place. He should have kept her within the squad’s sight line—even if she stayed a little farther back, she should never have been allowed to separate from the group alone.

That had been his failure as the only person responsible at that moment.

And he would be the one to make it right.

The assistant squad leader drew a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

“The squad leader’s not in good shape right now. That last hit may have rattled his brain. But judging by the external injuries, even if something’s wrong, it doesn’t look deep. Take care of him. I’m going to find Betty.”

Before anyone else could get a word in, he slid his backpack under the squad leader’s lower back, braced his still-recovering body, and staggered to his feet.

His knees went weak. He caught himself against the wall, steadied himself, then walked off in the direction Betty had disappeared.

Behind him, the remaining squad members exchanged uneasy glances.

The squad leader, still half-slumped on the ground, kept muttering something under his breath. His voice was faint and broken, his bearing utterly unlike the cautious, serious man they knew.

His eyes shifted restlessly, as if tracking something no one else could see.

There was reason enough to assume the head injury had caused temporary mental disturbance. But watching the usually steady squad leader act like this still made the others’ skin crawl.

Before any of them realized it, an indescribable chill crept back into their hearts.

………………

Meanwhile, the assistant squad leader was making his way down the corridor in the direction Betty had left.

His footsteps echoed through the empty hallway—one, then another.

By all logic, Betty shouldn’t have gone far.

She’d only said she was having trouble breathing and wanted to find a spot to rest for a bit.

That round-faced girl wasn’t the most talented, but she had always followed the squad’s arrangements. She would never wander off on her own.

He knew that better than anyone.

But this time…

“Betty?”

He pushed open a door. The hinges gave a dry, grating creak.

Empty.

Only walls of black fur.

The dark fibers writhed faintly in the gloom, like countless tiny tendrils slowly probing for something.

No one there.

“Betty?”

He opened the room opposite. Empty as well.

This room had less of the black fur, but heaps of shattered renovation debris piled in the corners, dust so thick it looked as though no one had set foot inside for years.

That strange sense of unease began rising in the assistant squad leader’s chest.

He clearly remembered Betty heading this way. Yet after circling through all the nearby rooms, he hadn’t caught so much as a glimpse of her.

His anxiety swelled.

He pressed onward, checking several more rooms. By now, he had put a fair distance between himself and the others.

Under normal circumstances, that distance would have meant nothing.

But now, he couldn’t hear the others at all.

His teammates’ voices, the squad leader’s murmuring, even their breathing—he could hear nothing.

Everything around him was utterly still.

The silence was so complete it felt wrong.

As if the entire world had been emptied of everyone but him.

No—not entirely silent, either.

When a person’s nerves are stretched to their absolute limit, sometimes they hear a faint, almost imperceptible sound. And right now, he seemed to hear exactly that.

A soft rustling.

Rustle… rustle…

The sound didn’t come from any particular direction. It drifted in from all sides at once, blurred and indistinct.

Like something squirming inside the walls.

Or black fur slowly rasping against concrete.

Or perhaps it was just his own breathing, warped, amplified, and thrown back at him through the empty corridor.

Maybe the battle had left him too exhausted, his senses overstimulated.

The assistant squad leader shook his head, trying to rattle the noise from his mind.

He checked a few more rooms and called out again.

“Betty!”

Still no answer.

The rooms remained as empty as before.

This time, he was certain.

Something had truly gone wrong.

Betty was not here.

A sense of foreboding crashed over him, like a cold hand pressing from the back of his skull all the way down his spine.

He didn’t dare delay any longer. He turned and hurried back.

One room.

Two rooms.

Three rooms…

Seven rooms.

At the seventh room, he stopped short.

A bead of cold sweat slid from his forehead, ran down his chin, and dripped onto the black fur covering the floor.

No.

Something was wrong.

Aside from that first circle of rooms, he had only explored seven rooms beyond them. By rights, after backtracking seven rooms, he should have returned to where his teammates were.

He should have seen his resting squad members, seen the squad leader just coming back to consciousness.

At the very least, he should have heard those guys idly chatting.

But…

Nothing.

There was nothing at all.

Only the empty corridor, the closed doors on either side, and the black fur slowly writhing across the walls and floor.

That meant they weren’t just not here—they were still a considerable distance away.

But how was that possible?

He had retraced his exact path!

Had he misremembered?

Had he somehow gotten the direction or distance confused without realizing it?

That had to be it.

The building’s layout was complex, and after the intense fight, a little mental fog was only natural.

If he just walked a bit farther, everything would be fine.

No matter how badly he misjudged things, he couldn’t have gotten the direction wrong.

Right…?

The cold sweat on his forehead grew finer, trickling down his temples. He didn’t have time to wipe it away.

His footsteps quickened.

Faster and faster.

He moved through the corridor with something close to desperation, his footsteps echoing hollowly through the empty passageway—rapid, erratic.

Until at last, he came to an abrupt halt.

Ahead of him lay a dead end.

No—not quite.

Ahead of him was a wall, and in that wall an unsealed window opening.

Because the building was still unfinished, no glass had been installed. The opening was packed full of dense black fur, like a black scab grown into the wall.

His heart hammered so violently that the sound boomed in his ears, driving him forward. He lunged at the window and tore the black fur aside.

The fibers snapped between his fingers with faint, papery hissing sounds—like the last gasping moans of something alive.

But then—

What he saw made his pupils contract to pinpricks.

The view beyond the window was not the sky outside the building.

There was no morning light, no wind, no outline of the building across the street.

Instead… it was just another room.

Dim, cramped, covered in black fur—almost identical to the one he stood in now.

And across from it, there was another window opening nearly the same, shrouded in black fur, like a malevolent pupil staring fixedly back at him.

In an instant, all those faint sounds around him erupted into a clamor.

Rustle…

Rustle-rustle-rustle…

There was clearly no one around him. As far as his eyes could see, there was nothing but black fur. Yet he felt as though he were standing in the middle of a jostling crowd.

Countless invisible presences seemed to brush past his body.

His shoulders, his arms, his back, his sides—

One point of contact after another, each carrying a suffocating, icy malice.

It was not the wind.

Not the writhing of the black fur.

They had no form, no sound—only that sense of presence.

Airtight and inescapable, they surged in from every direction.

A deep, bone-cold dread crept down his spine.