mother of all races

"Our great and almighty Star God... I am here to pray to you..."

A vague and weird voice slowly came from the other side of the ventilation window.

It was obviously just a voice, but because of that strange accent, it even sounded like a solid sticky feeling.

Alisa curled up motionless in the ventilation duct.

She felt that her strength was losing along with her body temperature... She hoped that she could contact Bryce, but at this moment, the man was already too close, so close that Alisa would be spotted by the other party if she moved a little Degree.

So she could only stay where she was quietly, observing the rustling movement outside in fear.

I'm so fucking stupid-

Alisa cursed herself secretly in her heart.It wasn't Alisa's intention that things turned out the way they are now, but...

She did put herself in an extremely dangerous situation.

two hours ago -

Alisa found Robert's office, which is also the location of the emergency team.

Although she already had the answer in her heart, the secret revealed by the deputy was too terrifying. In any case, Alyssa needed to confirm the authenticity of the data in her hand again.

And if she wants to do this, there is no way to bypass Robert at all.

In Alisa's plan, she can find an excuse to fool the past. After all, it is just an assessment record. If Robert and the others did not participate in the disappearance of the crew, she could even consider cooperating with these bastards. Respond to the immediate crisis.

And if Robert and others also have problems...

At least Alisa was able to detect this in advance.

It's just that Alisa didn't know at that time that this was the first mistake she made.

When Alisa walked outside the office door, she heard a hazy voice.

That voice must have been extremely loud and clear to pass through the metal hatch to the outside world.

But standing at the door, Alisa could only hear some vague words.

"Dedicated to the great...God..."

She had to admit that it was the few words she caught that made her lose her composure.

She should have sensed at that point that things were spiraling out of control, but she was too probing for the truth.

Alisa called Robert and asked to come into the office.

She originally thought that she would wait outside the door for a long time, but the door was opened in a very short time.

A strong incense gushed out from the crack of the door, and Robert stood by the door in an awkward robe and looked at Alyssa.

It was as if he had known about Alisa's arrival early in the morning, so he had been waiting for her by the door.

Alyssa admits she was taken aback, and the thought gave her instant goosebumps.

"Alyssa, you're here." Robert grinned at Alyssa under the shadow of the robe hood, "Is there something?"

he asked, with a mysterious mocking tone.

Alyssa looked past him towards the door...

For a moment she was almost speechless with too many questions.

Robert's office changed drastically without her knowing it.

The shabby, Age of Exploration-style office was supposed to have bland metal walls and cold lighting, a levitating metal desk, and some video projectors that were added later.

But now all the office furniture is gone, replaced by an abundance of richly colored Sunu textiles, incense, and gigantic sculptures in every corner.

Those sculptures were all giant insects... mysterious, complicated, and lifelike, Alisa even remembered the frenzied resistance and cursing of those Sunu people when they moved these sculptures from the abandoned temples and loaded them into the spaceship.

Those sculptures should have been in the ship's warehouse, not in the officer's office.

Cooperating with the dim light and the strong incense of Sunu's specialty, Robert's office now looks a little like the Sunu Temple.

This made Alisa feel hairy.

She will never forget that when she walked into the temple with others, there were piles of Sunu corpses, layer upon layer, rotting corpses intertwined with fresh flesh and blood. The local Sunu people firmly I think that only by sacrificing life in this way can it be possible to stop the madness that permeates the crowd.

But actually, being able to do something like that is kind of crazy in itself.

After completing that material search plan, Alisa had nightmares for several days.

But now, her nightmare seems to have tailed from the distant Sunu planet, and finally took up residence in the interior of the Helios.

She watched the other members of the emergency team sitting scattered on the floor. They were disheveled and their eyes were dazed. Everyone lay down at the feet of the Sunu sculptures as if they were drunk.

howling unsentenced prayers—

That was exactly what Alyssa had heard before.

"How is this going……"

Alisa, who originally wanted to ask Robert to confirm the record, faced this situation and the only thing she could ask was this sentence.

The corners of Robert's mouth opened to both sides again, his smile seemed to be about to cut the upper half of his face and jaw, looking extremely weird.

"Ah, I've made a little prayer room."

"Prayer room?"

"That's right, prayer room, don't you think we really need this right now? The people on board have gone through too much, the spaceship's transition failed, ran aground, and now suddenly another Providence came aircraft... many of them have become abnormal... only religion can help them release this... pressure in their hearts."

"Yes, but..."

"Oh, dear Alicia, I can see that you must find our behavior utterly queer, but I can assure you that it's just a way to vent your feelings, and it's really Useful. You can come and join us if you want...you'll love it here...hehehehe..."

And just as Robert said these words to Alisa with a terrifying smile, Alisa clearly saw something rushing through the shadows of the fabric and the ground.

Alisa's face lost all color in an instant—she even bit her tongue to bleed, so she didn't scream when she saw those things.

"no no……"

Alyssa said reluctantly, and she took a few steps back calmly.

"I, I just... oh yeah... I just wanted to talk to Taran about something... that's all..."

She stammered back to Robert.

"Talan, ah, yes, Taran." Robert's face changed after hearing Taran's name, and a ray of light burst out of his sunken eye sockets, "Talan is still praying. But you can pray Waiting for him outside, in fact, he has been talking about you...and your companions all this time."

"I can wait for him to finish his prayers before going to him."

Alyssa took a few steps back, and she has been watching Robert's every move nervously. For a moment, she even felt that Robert might be going to force her to the horrible and gloomy office (or according to what Robert said , prayer room).

But thankfully, Robert only took a step or two before stopping.

The bright lights in the hallway contrasted sharply with the dark shadows of the office behind him.Under the hood, Robert blinked his eyes uncomfortably as if he was not used to the light, and fine red bloodshots gradually appeared in his eye sockets.

Alyssa turned around and ran away quickly the moment he stopped.

Until this moment, Alisa's mistake had not been fatal.

She was keenly aware of something wrong with Robert and his colleagues, and she tried her best to escape——

She should have found a way to find Bryce, counted some people on the Helios who were still sane, and then conducted follow-up investigations.

However, she stopped suddenly in the corridor not far from her office.

That was the beginning of that fatal mistake.

She saw blood.

Although it was inconspicuous, she just saw it.Those bloodstains were located in the corner of the wall, stained on the edges of several brand new scratches.Not far from the bloodstains, Alisa picked up an identity badge.

It was the young man.

The one came to find her deputy with a panicked expression.

Alisa's mind went blank for a moment.

It was as if an invisible person raised a stick and slammed it heavily between her eyebrows.

Oh, next, Robert and Taran will probably be busy revising employee appraisal forms again.

She heard a voice speak from the bottom of her heart.

I don't know why, but at this moment, all the calm that Alisa squeezed out turned into fragments of nothingness.

In its place was a rage that she couldn't control.

And it was this fury that drove Alyssa down the intermittent trail of blood—like a foolish rabbit following a bait all the way into a trap.

When she came back to her senses, she found that she had unknowingly got on the elevator and came to the lower storage deck.

The last clue disappeared at the elevator entrance.

But Alisa walked out of the elevator resolutely.

As the old elevator doors closed behind her, she suddenly felt a little dazed... It seemed that his last trace of connection with the normal world had disappeared with the elevator leaving.

Reason gradually recovered in Alisa's body.

It's too late to leave now...

Alisa could almost hear the small voice whispering in her ear.

But she didn't move.

The entire b-3 floor is dimly lit, as only one-third of the lighting facilities are left on for energy saving reasons.

In the originally bright corridor, there are only a few clusters of light spots, extending evenly to the other end of the corridor.

At the same time, the air here also smells particularly stale and turbid, because the air replacement system was replaced to another deck after the spaceship ran aground.

But it was precisely because of this that in the air in the corridor, that distinct sweet smell stayed distinctly.

It was fresh, the smell of blood.

The smell is like an invisible guide, it guides Alisa to find where the poor young man is...

Just like that, Alisa stood there coldly, looking at the metal door not far away.

Taran's private warehouse is there.

All kinds of seemingly unconnected information kept popping up in Alisa's mind.

The disappearance of the crew.

Taran hid the most precious Sunu fossil sculpture in his private warehouse.

Robert said Taran was still praying.

For such a long period of time, Taran has been hiding in his cabin, rarely going out to meet people.

……

Taran must be right there.

Alisa was absolutely sure of this.

Perhaps, at this time, he was tearing apart the young man's body, burying his face in the still hot, even faintly throbbing human internal organs to feast on.

When this idea appeared in her mind, Alisa suddenly shivered, and she felt as if her body had been divided into two halves.

Half of it is reason, and it is telling Alyssa to leave quickly, not to linger here, and not to attract anyone's attention.

And the other half, is her ego.

The young crew member was in a trance, trying to overcome his fear to come to her as if it had only been seconds ago.

Then, that pale face gradually shattered into the breastplate in Alisa's hand, and the blood that made her eyes sting.

Alisa couldn't control her impulses.

She stared for a long time at Taran's private warehouse—it was as heavily guarded as a mobile vault.

However, that was before.

Alisa closed her eyes and took several deep breaths.

She doubts very much whether the supreme God is guiding her to continue the next thing, and everything has been prepared before today...

Oh yes.

This is the foreshadowing--

Since Robert had taken over most of the work, much of Alisa's work on the Helios had been menial and boring chores.Not too long ago, maintenance crews had to replace some of the lines from the relatively unimportant storage deck to the upper deck because of frequent plumbing problems.

It's not a wise decision, but they have to do it to keep the living and working area going.In order to avoid possible problems, Alisa had to dig out the original design of the Helios 300 years ago and carefully examine it for a long time.

Maybe it was her "little inspirations" that played a role. She studied Talan's private warehouse for a long time by accident - and then she discovered that Talan's impenetrable private warehouse did not exist 300 years ago, but It was refitted by the third owner of the Helios after 78 years.

The owner had re-fortified the floor and fitted thick metal walls... however, he had forgotten to fill and block the original ventilation ducts.

……

Alisa took off her shoes while thinking about those blueprints.

She walked lightly to the public warehouse furthest from Taran's warehouse with her bare feet, and then she opened the warehouse door with her mate's authority and slipped in.

All original pipes are interconnected.

At least, that's how it looked from the drawings Alisa had seen before.

She found an inconspicuous ventilation duct in the corner of the public warehouse. Thanks to the previous owners who had never repaired the spaceship in the past 300 years, the railings at the ventilation duct opening had long since corroded.Alisa took those railings down without much trouble.

Then she walked along the dusty ventilation ducts, and finally arrived at the interior of Talan's closed private warehouse.

The breath of human blood instantly became extremely vivid.

At the same time, Alisa's senses were filled with Talan's extremely weird prayers.

"The great god who descended into the world from the void... I implore your coming, your favor, your favor... I have prepared fresh blood food for you, based on the warm blood, with the beating blood Supplemented by my heart, my main food is my love and reverence for you..."

That ominous prayer made Alisa involuntarily look down at the gap in the ventilation window.

Taran's warehouse was darker than Robert's eerie office.Looking over suddenly, it was almost pitch black there.

However, after acclimating to the environment, Alisa was still able to barely see something—thanks to the incense in every corner of the room.

The most primitive and faint firelight provided a glimmer of light.

But in those rays of light, the fossil sculpture of Sunu exudes a kind of white light like the luminous stone on the earth.

Against the backdrop of this light, the shadow standing in front of the statue was as dark as an abyss.

Alisa didn't realize that the shadow was Taran himself at first, and felt as if she saw some monster.After all, human beings will never have such a terrifying appearance.

And Alisa still remembers the last time she saw Talan, even though Talan was very wrong at that time, at least he still had a human shape at that time...

But now, look at that man.

Alisa could hardly believe her eyes.

Taran's upper body barely maintained its human form, but his lower body swelled up in an unimaginable way.

Like the queen of termites that has been magnified countless times, the worm is pale and the body in the abdomen is directly connected to the lower half of Taran's body.

His legs had degenerated into two slender branches, the muscles had shrunk, and the wrinkled skin was attached to the leg bones, just hanging on the sides of his waist.

And in front of Taran, the corpse of a young man lay silently in front of the statue of the star god.

All of his internal organs have been pulled out, his chest is wide open, and the pattering blood is still flowing down.

And Talan's deformed hands were covered with the hot blood of the young man.

Looking down from Alisa's perspective, the young man's eyes were like two small holes, bottomless and dark.

The corpse tilted its head to one side of the shoulder, its face was blue.

Coincidentally, the dead eyes of the corpse looked as if they were staring straight at Alisa who was hiding in the vent.

Arisa felt her throat tighten the moment she met the corpse's gaze.

She almost spit it out.

But she forced herself to hold back.

However, just such an almost completely motionless movement actually made Ta Lan's figure pause slightly.

"who is it?"

Alyssa watched in horror as Taran turned his upper body, his swollen, heavy lower half still glued to the floor as if dead.

And Taran's face has undergone a marked change.

The thin, pale, nervous man was long gone, and the face that now hung on his skull looked more buggy than human.

His two eyeballs had completely squeezed out from the eye sockets, and the surface was uneven like mulberries.

Sensing the faint movement, those clustered brown eyeballs rolled around in different directions.

"It's you, isn't it? You're here?"

Immediately afterwards, Taran said with a smile.

Just a few minutes ago Alisa felt that Robert's weird smile was terrifying, but at this moment Alisa realized that she might have wronged Robert. Compared with Taran, Luo Guote's smile was sweet and gentle.

Yes, it's me.

After hearing Taran's inquiry, he met that terrifying smile again.

Alyssa even wanted to give up for a moment.

Just a little bit, she was about to say to Taran in such a self-defeating way.

Maybe for the sake of several years of colleagues, Taran can make her death less horrific?

It's just that Alisa was too frightened, so even though she had already planned to admit her arrival, the tightness of her muscles still bound her tightly.

She couldn't relax at all, and naturally it was impossible to make any movements.

But in the process of waiting, Talan turned around again and again in doubt, and then went back to the bottom of the fossil sculpture.

damn—

Only then did Alisa realize that Taran might have noticed something, but he didn't find himself now.

And Alisa didn't even know if it was lucky or not.

Unfortunately, she had escaped the present-day Taran, whose senses were so acute.

But if you're lucky...

Her hiding made her witness what happened next.

Taran was dancing.

Numerous fine, maggot-like things wriggled under the translucent skin of his swollen worm body.

"...I pray to you, great star god...May your favor be bestowed on me...I volunteer my body to you, I wish to be the gestator of thousands of your sons and daughters...I wish to be the billionaire The container of the people..."

A singing sound that could almost be described as piercing sounded.

Alisa listened to the twisted prayer in horror, and soon, Taran's crying made the singing a little staccato.

"I don't know."

Taran suddenly threw himself at the sculpture's feet.

His body was twitching constantly, and the cry sounded more like some kind of out-of-control cry.

"I have done so much, I sacrificed everything I have, my life, my spaceship, and my crew to you...Why, you have to treat me so cruelly...Why...I I still haven't been able to feel your call to give birth to my king worm... woo woo woo woo..."