Dean looked at the shallow beach that had been waiting outside the tree hole.
"How's it going? Are Sean and Damien settled in?"
Yiantan jumped on his shoulder, "Don't worry, Master, I let them escape from the laboratory and hide."
"What's going on in the laboratory?"
"A group of soldiers are fighting the structure tenaciously, but conventional thermal weapons cannot kill it at all. Instead, it absorbs and fuses a large amount of fresh human flesh and blood, continuously transforming into monsters and occupying the building."
"A small number of surviving researchers were controlled by the black mist and restarted the collider."
Dean remembered the ridiculous scene he had seen before, where the flesh and blood construct actually transformed the security guard into a monster that turned the world upside down.
What is the principle?
From this, he thought of Jonathan, who after escaping back to the real world, the light of life was dyed black and vomited out a lot of parasites. At that time, Jonathan was also slowly transforming.
So there is a deep connection between humans and monsters that turn the world upside down...
Dean thought along this line, and the system progress jumped to 95%.
He looked at the watch on his wrist again. The hour hand pointed to one o'clock in the afternoon.
"The monster wants to occupy the entire laboratory, and there is no time to invade the outside world for the time being. Let's take this opportunity to slap its butt hard and solve the trouble at the source!"
He slowly twisted his body, his skin expanded outwards and turned into a smooth dark red, and he grew like a skeletal tree branch. His body grew horrifyingly to three and a half meters tall, and his limbs became slender and lean and hung down past his knees, with sickle-like holes drilled out from the top. Sharp nails.
The handsome cheeks split into five petals like a piranha.
Dean turned into a slit monster, and at the same time, there was an additional temporary skill list in the mimicry ability: swarm consciousness, spore injection, bioradar...
His deformed head looked around. The slit monster clearly had no eyes, but could clearly perceive everything around it. However, the vision was no longer dominated by colors, and there were only pictures outlined by different heats in his eyes. Small animals running through pine trees, snow, and bushes are displayed as low-brightness or high-brightness orange masses...
"What a strange sense."
In addition, the supernatural level of the rip monster transformed by Dean has reached level 3, the upper limit of the mimicry skill, which is higher than the level 2 of most rip monsters. It is considered the best among the rip monsters, and its sense of smell has also been greatly enhanced.
He can accurately smell the body odor of all living things within five kilometers, as well as the abundant vitality contained in the smell, and is especially sensitive to the smell of blood.
But this sensitivity also led to an increasingly intense bloodthirsty desire, allowing him to hear a voice full of magic, like a mother's call-devour flesh and blood, return to the nest, feed back the structure...
Dean turned and looked in the direction of the Hawkins Laboratory building in the distance. This was the eight-legged spider calling out to all lower life forms, but Dean ignored the call and grabbed Yard and put it on his shoulder.
"Let's go travel to the Upside Down World together!"
The Rift Monster Dean activated his skill, illuminated the unstable node in front of the tree hole, opened a gap with his blood claws... and crawled in.
In the sky covered with dark clouds, bloody lightning illuminated the vast and barren land.
Dean ran forward on all fours. Along the way, he encountered a few rift monsters wandering on the ground and magic bats soaring in the sky. None of them noticed anything unusual about him.
Even the eight-legged spider couldn't see through his monster skin that was hard to distinguish between real and fake.
But Dean didn't go straight to the underground eight-legged spider's lair. He had to investigate the secrets of this world.
"Master, this world is so rotten," Qian Tan suddenly fell to the ground from his back, rolled up a handful of soil with his mind and crushed it, with a solemn expression, "The earth's vitality has been severely depleted, and it is basically considered 'dead soil'. Even the toughest weeds can't grow."
"Didn't we discuss this? Spiders have robbed the life of this world." Dean found an old wooden villa beside a rock not far away, and ran over at a faster speed.
"The plundering method is very rough, it can be said to be eaten alive..." Qiantan's sixteen eyes were extremely serious, with a hint of pity, "This world is like a mineral deposit that is about to be mined out."
Dean's head twitched, "This world is about to be exhausted, so that's why the big spider wants to use all its strength to invade the real Hawkins?"
"Agree."
Dean opened the wooden door in front with his paw and got into the empty living room.
The grandfather clock at the entrance pointed to 11:30 pm, and the calendar on the TV read December 27, 1981.
This is consistent with the information Damien revealed to Dean.
Dean let go of God's perspective and continued to scan, and found a family photo of a family of five on the wall of the hall.
Ted Weller, Karen Weller, Mike, Nancy, little Holly…
"This house is actually the home of Mike's little brat?"
Dean opened the refrigerator and saw that it was full of rotten and moldy food. The whole house had been without power for a long time.
He ran up to the second floor and entered a bedroom decorated in girlish pink. He opened the drawer with his mind and took out Nancy's diary to read through...
昘昘…
Starting from January 1, 1981, until December 27, there was at least one sentence summary every day.
It's full of a girl's unrestrained thoughts.
But the diary after the 27th is blank.
"Amazing!" Dean opened his five-petal face and exclaimed, "This upside-down world not only replicates the buildings in the real world, but even the diary of the owner of the house is copied in advance."
"But there's something wrong with the diary, and I have a feeling that I can't explain."
"You have mastered the skills, and you can also manipulate time in the future. It's not surprising to detect abnormalities..." Qiantan walked around the bedroom and returned his eyes to the diary, "And my hundreds of years of experience and intuition tell me that this book There are traces of erosion by the power of time on the diary.”
"What does the erosion of the power of time mean?" Dean asked in surprise.
"Any ability to manipulate time will leave such an imprint on the scene. For example, if I make a withered rose bloom again in this house, and make the swaddling baby grow into a teenager in an instant, the time will be left nearby. Traces of force.”
Dean nodded, "That means the time in this diary has been artificially adjusted."
"It's not just the diary, it's the whole house, and the degree of adjustment is very exaggerated... The power of time is so strong that it's terrifying." Qiantan opened his mouth to breathe and feel, "Look at the watch you have in your mouth, why does it stop? It's chaotic. The power of time affects.”
"So the time of this house was fast forwarded by half a year?" Dean guessed, "So, half a year ago, the Hawkins Laboratory's investigation team entered this world and found that the calendar was stuck at a future date?"
"It doesn't have to be fast forward," Shoal said meaningfully, "Maybe the time in the house has gone backwards?"
"Go back in time to today's date?" Dean fell into deep thought.
Qian Nian added, "In addition to the inside of the house, the power of time also remains in the vast space outside. It's just that the space is far away and boundless, diluting the power of time to the limit and making it less conspicuous."
"Whether it's fast forwarding or rewinding..." Dean put down the diary, and a dog-barking grunt came out of the throat of the Slit Monster, "Who is behind this? Who is manipulating time?"
"Who else could it be?" Qiantan shook his head, "Except for that eight-legged spider, I don't think there is any other monster in this world with such great power."
"But in my battle with it, it didn't show the power to manipulate time."
"Maybe it just hasn't been used yet."
…
Dean left Mike's house with deep doubts and visited more than fifty houses nearby.
It has been verified by the shallows that the strong power of time remains in all houses.
And these houses are not just superficial decorations. They are covered with water pipes, electric wires, natural gas pipelines underground... and are connected to the surrounding facilities.
What surprised Dean the most was that there were footprints, fingerprints, bloodstains and other traces of human activities in some houses, but they were blurry because they were so far apart.
Combining the above clues, Dean couldn't help but have the idea that the Upside Down World would not simply copy the buildings in Hawkins, but move the entire town of Hawkins in.
Shoal seemed to understand his master's thoughts and made a further guess, "There was originally a town of Hawkins in the Upside Down world, and Nancy, Mike and other townspeople lived here!"
The system was shaken, and the event progress jumped to 100%.
Dean realized that Shoal's inference was most likely correct, "So the upside-down world was once exactly the same as the real world? But how could there be two worlds so similar?"
"It's normal," said Shallows old-fashionedly. "In my impression, there are many adjacent worlds where the development of things is almost exactly the same, like two parallel lines. The Upside Down World and Hawkins should be such two worlds. "
"But at a certain moment, a special intruder disrupted this order. The two worlds developed and alienated in different directions, and the differences became even greater."
Dean thought, "Intruder? You mean the eight-legged spider?"
Qiantan nodded and began to summarize everything he discovered after entering the world, "In my opinion, this god-like existence is not a native of the Upside Down World. It comes from outside the sky or other worlds. It is full of malice and has no sympathy for the Upside Down World. Love. So after it arrived, it began to plunder all the vitality and vitality of the upside-down world without restraint, and animals and plants became extinct."
"And humans..." Qiantan paused and looked at Dean with sixteen eyes, revealing a testing look.
Dean bent his claws and flicked its head, and then recalled the security guard who was transformed into a monster in the laboratory. Jonathan, who started to transform, added, "Humans were captured by the eight-legged spider and transformed into its minions - —Monsters like the Rift Monster, Demon Bat, etc... continue to help it plunder resources!"
The progress jumped to one hundred and fifteen percent.
"Yes," a glint flashed in Qiantan's eyes, "that's why this world has become so barren and desolate, with not a single person in sight."
"The life force on the ground has been robbed, and they sneak into the ground to rob the planet of its vitality."
Dean's eyes flashed with deep fear. A world was actually being plundered by an eight-legged spider and was about to be destroyed?
But this is a bit arbitrary. After all, he did not leave the town of Hawkins and go further to see if it was also so dilapidated and desolate.
I don’t have time to run that far either.
"So what's going on with the power of time that pervades this world? Is it one of the means it uses to devour the world?"
"Not sure." Shoal said, "We have to see its body to know the answer."
…
The event progress has met the minimum requirements.
Next, Dean no longer searched the house, but obeyed the call of the hive consciousness deep in his heart, rushed into the desolate land, passed over the groups of rift monsters and magic bats patrolling and sentrying around, and ran towards the north. The bottomless rift valley and the dense black caves appeared in front of my eyes.
He chose a hole based on his intuition and went into it.
Keep turning along the dark and deep corridor.
The tunnels extend in all directions like a maze, with endless forking paths.
But Dean only chooses the branch road that slopes downward.
Come down…
my child…
Digging…
Extract…
The lower the terrain goes, the stronger the hive consciousness becomes.
At the same time, the power of time in Qian Tan's mouth became more and more intense, and the watch hidden in Dean's mouth changed from static to turning counterclockwise.
Wisps of faint yellow light came out of the space that was originally so dark that one couldn't even see his fingers.
Dean's four claws swung faster and faster, and his body flew like lightning. Gradually, he discovered that more and more Rift Monsters were gathering in the tunnel. Some of them were waving their claws to dig into the side walls, and some were transporting soil and gravel to the ground. .
Whenever a new hole is dug around the tunnel, a dark vine stretches out from the ground, burrowing into the soil like a giant earthworm, expanding and contracting impatiently.
Streams of amber brilliance containing vitality were extracted by the vines and transported deep into the ground.
As soon as Dean let go of God's perspective.
Within two hundred meters of the soil on the side walls of the tunnels, tens of thousands of vines are squirming crazily, greedily sucking out the vitality of the earth like blood-drawing needles...
Dean could faintly hear a rustling sound, like countless overlapping, extremely suppressed screams, exuding deep and eternal sadness.
Like the earth crying.
Dean couldn't bear to listen.
Keep running.
I don’t know if it’s the reason why he turned into a monster.
His perception of the slit monsters he met along the way began to change, and he felt a sense of intimacy.
In fact, if his and Shoal's inferences were correct, these rip monsters were still human beings some time ago, but they were forced to undergo extremely painful transformation of flesh and blood before they became monsters.
Thinking this, Dean's eyes were not so sharp.
At the same time, an impulse welled up in my heart. After getting rid of the eight-legged spider, would it be possible for these transformed monsters to turn back into humans and live in a peaceful upside-down world?
Of course, this can only be a fantasy.
Their souls have also been alienated and cannot be reversed.
Dean eliminated the distracting thoughts in his mind and walked faster on his four feet.
Time flew by for three hours?
The tunnel exit ahead bloomed with vast amber light, and he reached the end and entered an extraordinary and huge space.
The whole thing is in the shape of a deep barrel, but it's magnified hundreds of millions of times.
Height and radius at least several kilometers
He was standing in front of a hole in the cliff around the bucket. Looking around, the cliffs on all sides were inlaid with tens of thousands of similar holes. From the holes, vines that had just absorbed vigorous vitality stretched out, heading towards the center of the bucket. The space weaves a piece - a spider web.
Yes, Dean finally understood now that these so-called vines were not vines at all, but spider silk that was a hundred times thicker.
On top of their carefully woven spider webs, squatting is a huge monster as high as a mountain cliff - an eight-legged spider. Compared to the black mist-shrouded form that appears on the ground, one of its limbs is one kilometer long and swallows up the world.
At this time, it is much "petite", with seven legs curled inward to form a sphere with a radius of about one hundred meters, which is equivalent to the volume of several overlapping blue whales.
Its whole body showed a dark texture of flesh and blood, mixed with dark brown in some places. Those brown markings reminded Dean of age spots, and the surface of its skin was wrinkled, with wisps of it as if it had been soaked in water too much. The deep wrinkles that have been wrinkled over time are covered with black "fuzz" that is as thick as a normal human arm.
Its spindle-shaped head was still dark and empty, without the sea grape-like compound eyes of ordinary spiders.
Those spider webs are inserted into the raised part of the back of its head. As the life force is transported, it glows amber like the lava in the core of the earth.
This big spider shone like a giant fluorite.
Dean looked at it for a second. The part that belonged to the slit monster made Dean feel unparalleled worship and fanaticism, as if he saw his beloved mother goddess, for whom he could dedicate and sacrifice everything at any time and at any time.
It is a part of human beings, but it makes him feel unreasonable, unnatural, and weird. It is so dark and terrifying, so terrifying to the extreme that it has evolved into a wonderful beauty.
Completely beyond the experience of Dean, a supernatural explorer.
Even if the shoal is secretly hidden in Dean's flesh and blood, hundreds of years of experience can only make him dumbfounded.
"This is the true form of the eight-legged spider."
At this time, the mimicry skill also showed the incredible power of simulating the soul. Even at such a close distance, the big spider did not notice that there was a spy in disguise under its nose, and it was kept in the dark.
And Dean could observe it to his heart's content, and then he discovered that it only had seven limbs coiled around it, and one of them extended into a hole in the cliff. It seemed to have suffered some kind of trauma, and the part connected to the hole went downwards into the abyss of the barrel-shaped space. Drops of black, sticky blood dripped from the bottom.
Dean guessed that the hole should be the "passage" leading to Hawkins Laboratory, so this arthropod was injured by his own star arrow not long ago.
A few drops of blood slipped right in front of Dean's eyes, and he unconsciously reached out his paw to catch a drop.
Blood soaked into the slit monster's skin.
Instantly awakening some ancient memory buried deep in genes and soul.
A large piece of bizarre information suddenly appeared in Dean's mind, describing the existence in the vines and spider webs deep underground in front of him——
"Son of the Star Potala Spider Man".
Act in groups, pass through the wormhole door, and descend into the upside-down world.
Scatter and conquer the land, sea, and sky, plunder vitality, and transform the environment.
Transform humans and animals into dependents.
Places that have been devoured by the spider-man will be distorted by its force field, causing the phenomenon of time reversal.
Devour everything in this world, go to the new world, and continue to plunder.
"The Son of the Star, the Potala Spider Man, is a star race similar to the Phantom Snake, but more powerful."
"Swarm action means that besides this one in Hawkins Town, there must be other spider-men plundering life in other places."
"They act together to devour the upside-down world."
Dean felt a huge realization in his head, and at the same time, the system progress was increased by 14%.
"The places where the Spider-Man has devoured will be affected by the distortion force field, causing time to flow back. That's why Qiantan and I feel that there is a lot of chaotic time power left in the upside-down world."
"It can be seen that the time of the upside-down world should have been in the distant future of the real world."
"Because I was devoured by spider-men, time kept going backwards and backwards..."
"Until it reaches December 27, 1981, today."
"I am coming."
"I can't control the spider people in other areas."
"But Hawkins' monster is mine to punish."
"It's time to end everything with our own hands."
Dean took one last look at the deadly beauty of the Potala Spider-Man, his mental power sank into the fantasy space, and he quietly started the countdown to the W54 (improved) nuclear warhead.
(End of chapter)
