Shrouded Seascape

Chapter 580: 068

The giant insect moved through the steamship and slowly advanced into the cluster of dense and orderly buildings.

"Captain… what was that?" Dipp asked with evident bewilderment on his fish face.

"Its physical body is underground. What we saw was just its shadow," Charles explained as his gaze was fixated on the ground below. Just as how a human's shadow was black, that enormous insect was the shadow of some entity underground.

The strange glow that was beyond the perception of the average human was slowly fading away, and only Charles could see it with his enhanced vision.

The immediate crisis had passed, so the crew let out sighs of relief. Cold sweat beaded on their foreheads as they patted their chest to soothe their anxiety.

As they laughed and jested at each other's frightened reactions earlier, the sudden appearance of several small dots in the distant skies immediately had everyone back on alert.

Taking the binoculars from the Second Mate, Charles peered through the lens and spotted a group of propeller planes flying in a V-formation. However, their wings weren't mechanical; instead, there were bird wings in their place.

"Quick! Overload the turbines! Follow them!" Charles commanded. He had seen these peculiar aircraft before. They existed in 068 and had even engaged in combat with the special forces there.

Charles swiftly transformed into a bat and hurried to keep up with the propeller aircraft, fearing that he might lose track of them. Following those existences on 068 was their best chance to locate 068 as soon as possible.

Flying at a low altitude, he managed to have a closer observation of the entire city sprawled beneath him. Compared to the barren semi-desert region, this city was bustling with activity.

From time to time, strange creatures beyond human imagination would emerge from the buildings. Most of them had towering heights, and fortunately, they showed no hostility toward Charles.

They didn't attack Charles or his crew.

Charles couldn't explain the feeling he had, but he felt that though he had called the place a city, it resembled more like a forest without trees.

The peculiar creatures he saw had formed their own unique ecosystem. He even witnessed an entity that had disguised itself as a building suddenly splitting open to swallow a giant snail that looked like a human's hand.

As the ship ventured deeper through the city, the path carved out by 068 became increasingly difficult to navigate. There were even some areas that had split open with several-meter-long fissures.

Thankfully, the steamship they were on used tracks and not wheels. If they had been using wheels, they wouldn't have been able to advance forward.

After weaving through the bizarre city for three hours, Charles and his crew finally found 068.

With a thunderous roar, 068 kicked up clouds of dust as they slowly ground the towering buildings ahead of it into rubble.

Their previous encounter with 068 had been underwater; now, on land, 068 appeared even more massive when viewed upward from the ground. It was a completely mobile city, and with its colossal size, it instantly crushed anything in its path into pieces.

Transforming into a bat once again, Charles made a wide circuit around 068 and studied it from a distance. At the central district of 068, he saw a semi-transparent octopus-like creature perched over several buildings, gnawing on something. Charles guessed that the entity spanned several hundred meters in width.

Charles' keen sense immediately alerted him that something was off. He wouldn't have been surprised by any bizarre monster on the surface, but the fact that the special forces on 068 hadn't launched an attack even now was unusual. After all, they hadn't behaved like this in their previous encounter.

After a quick survey of the surroundings, Charles landed back on the deck of his ship. Being pressed for time, he swiftly selected the team members for the infiltration mission.

"068 is very tall. We've been there before, so we roughly know the situation up there. Everyone doesn't have to go together this time. Bandages, me, Linda, Dipp, Audric, and Sniffler will go," Charles commanded.

He chose to bring along all vampires on the ship, not because of their combat strength, but because they could fly. Linda couldn't fly despite being a vampire, but she was their medic.

068 was still moving, and Charles wasted no more time. After a brief appointment of the Second Mate to take charge in his absence, Charles took off with his selected team, and they flew toward their target.

Using billowing clouds of dust as their cover, Charles and his group landed in a narrow alley on the edge of 068.

The moment their feet touched the ground, Charles' keen senses picked up the static noise of a television from a nearby room. There was someone inside.

To understand what was happening in a new place, the best method was to capture a local and interrogate them.

Charles quickly gestured to his team, and they crawled toward the adjacent window.

They entered through the window and found themselves in a living room. The room was empty but they could hear the static noise coming from the bedroom.

Charles' figure gradually vanished, and the bedroom door silently swung open.

The television in the corner of the room was turned on, and a high-backed sofa was positioned in front of it. Judging from the shadow on the wall, someone was seated on the sofa and was watching television.

Charles took a quick glance at the noisy, static-filled screen before pulling out a black spike and approaching the sofa.

As he leaned over from the back of the sofa to get a better look, he was stunned. Indeed, there were two people sitting there, but not of the appearance he had anticipated.

From their outfits, Charles could deduce that the two figures were a couple. However, their heads were those of birds, not humans. Putting their appearances aside, their behavior was equally unusual. Their bodies were overlapped and twitching rapidly in unison.

The only time Charles had even seen a glitch-like behavior like this was in a buggy game.

Just as Charles was hesitating whether he'd communicate with them or not, both glitching bird-heads looked upward; their eyes locked onto Charles despite his invisibility.

Their twitching suddenly accelerated.

Thump!

They stood up abruptly and began to divide right before Charles' eyes. However, they didn't just split into two separate entities. Like cell division, they split into four overlapping bird folks.

With each passing second, they multiplied. Two became four, and the four became sixteen. In no time, Charles was surrounded by a bunch of overlapping bird folks. The worst part of it all was that a part of his face pressed against one of them seemed to have melded into their forms.

"Fuck!" Charles cursed as he forcefully pulled his face out of their bodies, causing a splatter of blood and flesh. It was as though Charles had truly conjoined with them.

White electrical arcs crackled in the air and struck all the glitching figures around him.

"Captain! Let me help!" Clad in the red animal hide, Dipp kicked off against the crowd and dived into the room.

Chaos erupted in the bedroom as the sounds of crackling electricity and gunfire filled the air. Fortunately, despite their bizarre behavior and appearance, the bird folks were not immune to damage.

Under the relentless assault of the team, the bird folks fell one by one. They twitched a couple of times before vanishing into thin air as they died.

When all of the bird folks were slain, a new overlapped bird folk respawned on the sofa and watched the television with a static-filled screen.

This time, Charles didn't disturb the newly spawned entity and gestured for his crew to leave the bedroom quietly.

What happened to 068? It wasn't like this before, Charles thought to himself. It seemed like the surface held some sort of influence over the inhabitants of 068.