As Roy turned his head, he spotted a bizarre monster crawling toward him from a distance.
The creature seemed to be a mutated human. Its head vaguely resembled a human face, but it was supported by eight long, spindly legs attached to a bloated body.
It looked like a person covered in tumors, then twisted into something resembling a stick insect.
The moment Roy locked eyes with the long-legged monster, it noticed him too. Without warning, it shot out something like a tongue.
"Stay away from me!" Roy yelled.
He drew his execution blade and sliced through the monster's tongue in one swift motion. Then, tapping into the explosive power of his ghost wolf form, he charged at the creature.
The long-legged monster didn't stand a chance. Before it could react, Roy hacked off all eight of its legs.
As it collapsed to the ground, the creature tried to spit its tongue at Roy again, but he dodged effortlessly. With one hand, he hoisted the monster up and executed it with a brutal waist-high slash.
"Die!"
The execution blade's lethal power finished the creature off instantly. Roy frowned as he examined its innards. There was no trace of anything human left—just a mess of vibrant, multicolored filaments.
As the monster died, those filaments quickly dulled, turning into a sticky black ooze.
At the same time, the creature's body began to shrivel and rot, releasing the same foul stench Roy had smelled earlier beneath the drilling platform.
So that's where the smell came from.
After studying the corpse for a moment, Roy activated the effect of his hound ring to continue tracking Jack.
Suddenly, gunfire and screams echoed from the direction of the drilling platform's main building.
Jack's two military company security guards were armed, so those shots were likely theirs.
Some of the people who'd entered the platform were still alive!
Roy immediately followed the sound of the gunfire. The chaotic layout of the platform slowed him down, and it took some time to locate the entrance to the main building.
As soon as he stepped inside, the stench hit him harder, so thick it was almost suffocating.
For the first time, Roy cursed his ghost wolf's heightened sense of smell. He had to hold his breath for long stretches to avoid gagging.
Inside the main building, strange fleshy growths were everywhere. Some still had human remains embedded in them, as if the flesh was absorbing and digesting the bodies.
Worse, some of the flesh held humans who weren't entirely dead yet.
"Help… me…"
A worker from the drilling platform, barely alive, pleaded. Roy tried to pull him free from the fleshy mass.
But half the man's body had already been digested. All Roy could pull out was a grotesque half-person.
The man writhed on the ground, screaming in agony. No matter what Roy asked, all he could say was, "Help me."
There was no time to waste.
With no other choice, Roy left the dying man behind and continued toward Jack.
The building's interior had been warped by the fleshy growths. Many passages were blocked, forcing Roy to carve his own path.
He used his execution blade to slice through walls, taking shortcuts to save time.
As he cut through several walls, the gunfire grew louder but more erratic.
He was close.
Suddenly, Roy came face-to-face with a wall and door covered in a repulsive, fleshy membrane. It looked fresh, newly grown.
The membrane was laced with colorful filaments, identical to the mysterious substance Roy had seen in the sea.
The filaments wove together into a net-like structure, beautiful in a haunting way.
But in nature, the most beautiful things are often the most dangerous.
Roy was certain that these vibrant, mysterious filaments were behind everything happening on the platform.
Without hesitation, he raised his execution blade to slice through the membrane and filaments.
But the moment he cut through, a blinding light erupted, turning his vision white.
When the light faded, Roy found himself inexplicably standing on a football field, dressed in a standard football uniform with a ball tucked under his arm.
What the hell?
"Roy, what are you doing? Run!"
A middle-aged white man shouted from the sidelines, but Roy was too busy scanning his surroundings.
Familiar teammates, familiar stands, and the familiar cheerleader captain at the edge of the field.
Wait… was this a memory from the original Roy?
It didn't feel like a memory. When Roy stood still, opposing players charged toward him.
Instinctively, he tried to dodge.
With his current physical abilities, evading ordinary players should've been easy. But his body didn't respond as expected—it felt sluggish, like when he first arrived in this world.
Dead memories were attacking him.
Roy had only been in this world for less than a year, but it felt like ages. The realization hit him with a strange sense of nostalgia.
Before he could dwell on it, several burly players tackled him to the ground, piling on top of him.
The game ended, and the man from the sidelines—his old football coach—stormed onto the field, cursing Roy out.
In the original Roy's memories, this coach loved to yell, teaching Roy a colorful array of English slang for insults.
Then, Jennifer, the cheerleader captain, approached, looking at Roy with cold disappointment.
"Roy, you let me down."
Seeing her like this sparked a pang of nostalgia. Back then, Jennifer had been distant with the original Roy, but she wouldn't have said something so harsh.
This wasn't real. It was an illusion, crafted from fragments of the original Roy's memories to stir feelings of failure.
It was only the body's memories, though. If they'd tapped into Roy's memories from his previous life, stored in his soul, it might've hit harder.
But Roy was no stranger to mental attacks. He knew what to do.
Transforming into his six-winged angel form, he unleashed pure holy light to shatter the mental world.
Even as the coach kept cursing and Jennifer stared with mechanical disappointment, Roy shook his head.
This attempt to manipulate his emotions was pathetic. Did anyone actually fall for this?
Then he remembered the people trapped in the fleshy growths. Were they ensnared by similar illusions, wrapped up and digested by the membranes?
Roy's high willpower and the fact that these were the original Roy's memories, not his own, made him immune. If they'd used his past life's memories, he might've been less certain.
Time to get out.
As the six-winged angel, Roy summoned a radiant light sword and swung it at the foul-mouthed coach. Even knowing it was fake, he couldn't resist.
Holy light flared, slicing the illusionary world in two. Blinding white light filled his vision again.
Back in reality, Roy found his body entangled in colorful, thread-like organisms. On closer inspection, they were alive, wriggling slowly.
Those thread-like creatures must've dragged him into the mental world.
Roy tore them apart and stepped through the sliced membrane.
Beyond it was the platform's cafeteria, now a grotesque banquet of flesh. Half-digested corpses were embedded in the growths, and the room felt cramped with the sheer volume of fleshy tissue.
"God, save me!"
Jack's desperate prayer came from the kitchen. He was down to one military company guard.
The others had either been lured by the thread-like creatures and digested or killed and turned into monsters.
Like the creature approaching them now—a mutated version of the other security guard. Its face was covered in tumors, unrecognizable, with arms morphed into writhing tentacles.
Jack's remaining guard fired at it, but the bullets barely slowed it down. Blood oozed from the wounds, yet it kept coming.
"Damn it! Why won't it die?"
The guard was losing hope. He'd thought this job would be simple—point a gun, make threats, done. He hadn't expected this nightmare.
Trapped in the kitchen with dwindling ammo, things looked grim.
Then, in a flash, a towering figure appeared behind the monster. Roy grabbed it with one hand, driving his execution blade through its body.
Guts and colorful mysterious substances spilled out, and the creature began to rot, releasing a foul stench.
Its organs hadn't fully dissolved yet, likely because it hadn't been transformed for long.
"Roy!"
Jack stared, a mix of disbelief and relief washing over him.
"Jack, just you two left?"
"When we got to the platform, a long-legged monster chased us, and we got separated. I think the others are… gone. Wait, Roy, you didn't run into that thing?"
Jack's voice trembled as he recalled the creature.
"I did. It's dead," Roy said casually.
His calm tone sent a shiver through Jack and the guard. People admire those slightly stronger than them, but someone overwhelmingly powerful—standing right in front of you—can be terrifying.
Jack forced a smile. "Let's get out of here."
With Jack found, Roy planned to get them back to the tanker.
But as they left the kitchen, the platform shook violently. More fleshy growths burst from the floor, blocking their path.
It was as if the flesh had a mind of its own, determined to keep them trapped.
"Hmph. Think this'll stop me?"
"Jack, brace yourself. I'm transforming."
"What? Transforming into what?"
Before Jack could process, Roy's body swelled, his skin turning dark red. Sharp horns sprouted from his head, and bat-like wings unfurled from his back.
"Demon!"
Jack nearly fainted. The guard steadied him, though his own legs wobbled. To devout Christians like them, a demon was the stuff of nightmares.
Everything tonight was too much for Jack to handle.
But Roy was already moving, wielding his hellfire-infused execution blade in one hand and an M870 shotgun in the other, carving a path forward.
The thick fleshy growths stood no chance against the hellfire, burning away like dry California forests.
Despite their fear, Jack and the guard knew their best bet was to stick close to demon-Roy. For now, he didn't seem hostile.
Wait… was Roy after Jack's young, beautiful wife?
Strange thoughts crept into Jack's mind, taking root uncontrollably.
Unaware of Jack's wild imagination, Roy focused on the growing flesh. It seemed to sense their escape attempt, spreading faster to confine them and herd them in a specific direction.
Roy wasn't about to be led around. If the path was blocked, he'd make his own.
"Hold on. I'm blasting a hole in the floor!"
"What?"
Before Jack could react, Roy transformed into his Nephilim form, gray light brewing in his eyes.
A chaotic beam carved a perfect circle through the platform's floor, cutting cleanly to the level below.
"Let's go!"