Hunter of Mysterious Creature-Chapter 645 - 172: Valkyrie 04_2

She could distinguish between Chinese and English, and even picked up some syllables unique to Dongying and French… Yet she couldn't make out what these people were saying. Whether it was arguing or singing, it all turned into meaningless murmurs when it reached her auditory center.

Valkyrie 04 felt like she was going crazy. Those voices seemed like countless fuzzy paws lightly scratching her cerebral cortex. That itchiness from the level of consciousness made her wish she could split her own skull open and smash the organ called the brain inside… Since birth, this was the first time she hated having the ability to think so much…

Precisely because she still had the ability to think, she felt annoyed, felt pain, felt fear and unease.

And far surpassing these emotions was that kind of overwhelming confusion.

She didn't know where she was, nor what she was doing. She suddenly felt like her existence seemed to have no meaning… No, it wasn't just that her existence had no meaning, but everything in this world seemed, at this moment, to lose the meaning of existence.

"I've had enough, I've had enough, I've had enough, I've had enough of all this."

Valkyrie 04 hysterically cried out in her consciousness, and soon, those murmuring voices disappeared, and her world returned to tranquility.

She found that she didn't know when she had come to be above the water.

The blood-red surface of the water spread to the boundless distance, and everywhere within sight was red.

Standing on the water surface, she seemed to have broken free from the shackles of gravity… She tried to step forward, and ripple after ripple spread beneath her feet, yet the surface of the water firmly supported her soles.

"What… is going on?"

She turned around and found the ejection seat and parachute had vanished without a trace, and it seemed that besides herself and this eerie red water surface, nothing else existed in the world.

A strong sense of emptiness surged in her heart, she squatted down and reached out to touch the water surface at her feet.

The blood-red liquid was no longer as piercing as before, the sensation transmitted from her fingertips was very peculiar, nearly impossible to describe in words.

Ripples gradually dispersed, and the water surface returned to calm, reflecting the silhouette of Valkyrie 04 like a shadow.

She felt her reflection looked very unfamiliar.

"Is this me…?"

Valkyrie 04 forgot how long it had been since she last looked in a mirror. For some reason, she always felt the figure mirrored on the water surface wasn't the familiar herself.

The helmet matching the flight suit was still on her head, the front of the helmet had a one-way coating, making it impossible for her to see the face beneath the visor clearly.

The liquid that had flooded into the inside of the helmet had disappeared along with this series of bizarre changes. Although the view before her was still all blood red, it was because the surroundings were all a blood-red water surface, not because her eyes were affected in any way leading to the result.

She struggled a bit to twist open the airtight valve on the side of her neck, she took off the helmet, and a cascade of pale golden long hair draped down.

Valkyrie 04 had Siberian Federation ancestry, but she was a native-born Xiazhou person—her ancestors were those early settlers who sought refuge in Xiazhou when the war against cryptids broke out. Though generations kept pure Siberian lineage, by her generation, she wasn't fluent in Russian anymore.

Looking at the pale face reflected on the water, she could confirm it was her own face… But for some reason, the features looked somewhat… unusual.

She couldn't quite pinpoint where the oddness lay… Suddenly, she remembered a word she had heard online called "fake person"… In a daze, Valkyrie 04 had this feeling—she felt her current self looked just like a fake person.

No matter from which angle, she looked very much human, but she didn't resemble a real human being.

This statement contradicts itself, but Valkyrie 04 found it incredibly fitting to describe herself now.

"Why?" Valkyrie 04 murmured.

"Why?" Her voice echoed in the empty space.

"Why?" Another voice suddenly asked.

Valkyrie 04 shivered, swiftly glancing around but finding no source of the other voice.

The next second, she suddenly looked up and discovered in the void of the sky, a woman's face vaguely condensed. She (it?) was staring at her intently, lips subtly moving, asking: "Why?"

"Who are you?" Valkyrie 04 asked vigilantly.

She could barely discern the female features on the opponent's face, but not only was the face not pretty, it was extremely ugly—the features looked like defective pieces discarded from a human manufacturing line pieced together, bloated… Or rather, the swollen cheeks squeezed all the already unappealing features together, and the problem was this face was also covered in various scars and sores, leaving almost no skin intact.

"Who are you?" The other one also asked.

Valkyrie 04 took a deep breath and suddenly realized something—she seemed to be suspended upside down in this space.

The blood-red water surface somehow switched places with the sky, Valkyrie 04's feet were propped on the water's surface, head down, gazing at the strange face sinking into the abyss of void.

She felt as if she had lost her sense of distance—that face looked both near and far.

"I am… I am a pilot in the Xiazhou Federation's special fighter squadron, codename Valkyrie 04… I…" Valkyrie 04 hesitated a bit, then said, "My name is Elizabeth…"

"No, that's incorrect." That face said, "Those are just codes given to you by others, not something you inherently possess."

"Then who are you? What are you?" Valkyrie 04, or rather, Elizabeth "gazed up" and asked.

"I am this world." That ugly face answered.

"Are you… a cryptid?"

...

...

For some reason, a sudden unease sprang up in Sun Hang's heart.

He instinctively turned back and looked towards the direction where Chimera 17 was located. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Seemingly sensing Sun Hang's thoughts, the vehicle turned cryptid suddenly stopped, its tires screeching against the road.

"Why did it stop?" Shinkata Misaki asked surprisedly, "Did this car… this cryptid malfunction?"

"No." Sun Hang opened the car door and jumped out, "You guys head back to the lab… I've got something to take care of."

"I'll go with you." Zhong Ling said and was about to get out, but the next second she found the rear door was locked.

"Zhong Ling, I entrust you with a task." Sun Hang turned to look at her.

"What?"

"Escort Shen… Escort Tang Jing, safely back to the lab."

"And you?"

Sun Hang paused for a few seconds, then smiled at Zhong Ling: "I don't know what I'm going to do… But there's a thought urging me to go take a look."

Zhong Ling frowned but ultimately said nothing.

Until the vehicle departed again, Sun Hang received a private message in his earphone from her: "Don't die."

"Die… shouldn't it come to that?" Sun Hang scratched his head and glanced back at the car that had already gone far.

The next second, his figure vanished from the spot.

...

After Sun Hang mastered the ability to utilize Kuilong's power for accelerated movement, it was his most satisfactory landing.

Sun Hang rubbed his rain-drenched hair and walked straight into the bunker's vehicle repository.