?289 Chapter 289 – Terror
On top of one of the big buildings, Nick looked at the Dregs, which were slowly getting filled with red mist.
"What is this?" Nick said to himself in shock.
The people of the Dregs looked with confusion and concern at the red mist.
They had never seen anything like this before.
Was this some kind of new thing the city was doing?
"Ah, it burns!" a six-year-old child shouted as it scratched its arm.
When the child scratched its arm, a red paste seemed to appear on top of its arm.
Everyone looked over at the child…
And its bone sticking out from beneath the red paste that had once been its blood, skin, and muscles.
The next moment, everyone else started to feel a burning sensation, which spread all across their bodies.
Then, it started.
The hair of all the people started to get thinner, and several strands fell down.
Nails were getting discolored.
Clothing was turning black and becoming thinner.
Shoes were starting to smoke.
Skin was turning red.
Eyes were turning red.
"AAAAHHHH!"
The screaming began.
Panic.
Terror.
Thousands of people were running around in horror as they tried to escape from the red mist.
Some of them were climbing up buildings.
Some of them entered buildings.
Some of them hid behind other people.
Some were jumping into piles of rubble.
Many were running towards the Inner City.
Many more were running towards the city's exit.
Wailing filled the city.
One man was running away in a panic and accidentally collided with a malnourished boy.
SPLASH!
The boy's body split into clumps of flesh, covering the man, who just stopped running in shock and horror.
"Mommy! It hurts! Help me!"
Children were screaming as their mothers covered them with their bodies.
One of the mothers hugged her daughter tightly.
"It's going to be-"
She looked at her crying daughter but couldn't continue speaking.
Her daughter's cheeks had holes in them, and her mother could see her daughter's molars through the holes.
"Mommy. I'm sorry. It hurts," the daughter cried.
The mother watched in horror as the child's fingers were separating from her hands.
The skin on her face was vanishing.
Her eyes were filling with blood.
"Mommy!" the daughter cried before her jaw fell from her skull.
Her cries became incomprehensible.
The mother hugged her daughter tighter, but she felt almost no resistance.
Her daughter was turning into a viscous red liquid of blood, meat, skin, and bones.
In the end, the mother could only embrace a bloody stain of the outline of her daughter.
She only looked down in disbelief.
Her own skin was turning red, and she started to bleed all over her body.
Her vision became blurrier and blurrier as the indescribable sensation of burning reached deeper and deeper into her being.
At least the family wasn't separated for long.
The streets were covered in a viscous red film, which was slowly dripping into the sewers.
The middle of the Dregs had become silent.
The buildings and streets had been stained in red, complementing the spots of rust.
Meanwhile, things were very different for the edge of the Dregs.
Crimson Fungus City was surrounded by extremely tall walls, and a great number of people were trying to scale them.
Luckily, the sewers were in the form of a lake beneath the city, which meant that the edge of the city represented its shores.
The very edge didn't have metallic grates and plates as flooring but actual stone and dirt.
A couple of meters near the walls was free of the red mist, and all the people who had fled found shelter there.
BOOOOOOOM!
The sound of a humongous explosion thundered through the city, but the people near the walls didn't care.
Many of the people were trying to climb up the walls, but it was impossible.
The walls were made of extremely smooth steel, and there was no way to climb them.
They were trapped like insects in a glass jar.
Other people were trying to break through the doors leading into the insides of the walls, but there was no way to break them open.
Nearly a thousand people were banging on the city walls.
All of them were begging, pleading, and shouting.
Some lucky ones were uninjured.
Many of them were in various states of decay.
Some were missing limbs.
Some didn't have any skin on their face anymore.
Some were trying to keep their organs in their torso.
People were climbing over each other.
Children and weak people got trampled to death.
On top of the walls, the guards were nearly as nervous.
What were they supposed to do?
They were not allowed to open the doors.
But the people were dying!
Was it safe for the guards?
Many of the guards had already jumped over the wall into the outside world.
Some of the guards tried to reason with the mass of people, trying to calm them down.
One guard even opened one of the doors for the people.
Sadly, only about 10% of people could enter through that door.
The others couldn't reach this location due to the red mist.
BOOOOOOM!
The distant sounds of powerful explosions continued.
CRRRRRK!
The people on the edges of the walls heard the sound of a lot of metal straining under stress and creaking.
And then, many of the buildings began to shake.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
The buildings broke apart, and the streets collapsed.
The people watched as the place they had called home collapsed into the sewers.
Surprisingly, the debris fell for over 50 meters before touching anything.
Had the sewers always been this far away from the city?
Yet, before anyone could even think about this, they were confronted with an image of what could only be called hell.
A swirling red mass.
Over 50 meters lower than the ground was a swirling mass of liquid red faces.
They were smiling.
They were laughing.
Arms, over 20 meters long, stretched out from the swirling red mass, trying to claw at the survivors.
Thousands of arms.
Millions of faces.
The red mass of faces illuminated the darkness of the sewers.
Viscous red liquid was falling from the parts of the floor that still held.
The people wouldn't forget this image for their entire lives…
However short they might be.