Chapter 189 - 186: Inside the Mirror
Brown’s frame swelled, his muscles bulging. Previously just considered sturdy, he was now a full size larger than even Baru.
The blood coursing through his veins felt as if it had mixed with Qin Xiaoxia’s Magic Power, providing the power of a high-yield explosive.
If his temperature were taken right now, it would be at least 60 degrees Celsius.
The mixture of blood and Magic Power flowed to every part of his body. Some of his blood even seeped through his pores, forming a faint red mist that clung to his skin.
His vision was tinted crimson, but far from being impaired, it was actually sharper. The traces of that bizarre entity now appeared as mottled specks in his line of sight.
BANG~
The doorframe to the Ruby Couple’s bedroom, as fragile as an egg roll, exploded into pieces the moment Brown brushed against it.
BOOM!
As the upstairs floorboards groaned under his weight, Brown came to a brief stop inside the room.
From the moment he had exploded into action in the living room, barely more than a second had passed.
Brown stopped, but the sheer air pressure from his movement was only just now catching up.
The gale he kicked up sent everything in the room into chaos. Cosmetics on the vanity scattered, glasses on the nightstand toppled over, and clothes on their hangers were sent flying.
He hadn’t even touched anything, yet the entire bedroom was in disarray, as if a typhoon had just passed through.
’Where are you? Where are you, you damn Demon!’
Brown’s stillness lasted less than half a second. Before the gale in the room had even subsided, his sweeping gaze locked onto the strangely shaped mirror on the vanity.
CRUNCH~
A huge crack appeared in the center of the Ruby Couple’s bedroom floor, unable to bear the strain. Brown used the reactive force from the stomp to launch himself directly toward the mirror.
In that instant, he discovered he had two forms of vision. One was his normal, colorful sight, and in this view, the mirror was perfectly intact.
But in his primary, crimson-tinted vision, he could see cracks on the mirror’s surface that were actively repairing themselves. He could even see a piece of Luna’s clothing through the fissures.
As his body hurtled forward, he shot out his right arm, which morphed into a claw. Blood seeped from his fingertips, instantly forming hard crystals.
He plunged his hand toward the cracks on the mirror’s surface, his arm shrieking through the air.
Everyone, including Brown himself, had been wrong. His evolution Ability wasn’t just about immense strength. It was about blood—fundamentally, it was an explosive burst of power derived from his blood!
His usual increase in strength was merely a side effect of his rapid blood circulation, massive nutrient absorption, and his Evolver physique.
SZZZZZZZZ...
A sensation shot up his arm, like plunging his hand into thick, searing-hot oil, but the resistance was far less than he had imagined.
His body lurched, but his fingertips brushed against the fabric of Luna’s clothing, and he instantly clenched his fist, grabbing hold.
"Hehehehe... Got you!"
The Magic Power-infused blood on his arm bloomed like a burning flower, holding open a gap between his arm and the mirror’s surface.
However, because of that stumble, his footing was still unstable; he had no leverage.
Just as Brown was about to pull Luna out, a powerful suction force erupted from his arm, and he found himself unable to resist being dragged into the mirror.
Despite his seemingly berserk state, Brown’s mind was incredibly clear.
’Are you kidding me! I’m not going in there!’
His left hand blurred, then with a BANG from the displaced air, he slammed a fist into the wall behind the vanity, punching straight through it.
Shattered brick and stone shot toward the neighbor’s wall, destroying their window and eliciting a fresh wave of screams from the family inside.
His palm found a grip on the other side of the wall. Brown used every ounce of his strength, trying to pull his right arm—and Luna—free.
But the continuous crumbling sound from the wall told him it wouldn’t hold for long. Yet, letting go of Luna was unthinkable!
In a split second, he made what was possibly a very foolish decision.
"Philier! If you guys don’t get your act together, I’m done for!"
His roar carried from upstairs down to the living room, where the rest of the team was snorting heavily through their noses, gritting their teeth as they struggled to break free from the bizarre paralysis.
Spurred on by the violent noises from upstairs and Brown’s roar, their flexing muscles wrung out sweat like a drenched cloth.
With a thunderous CRASH, a huge chunk of the wall was torn out. Brown, still gripping about a third of the masonry, was dragged into the mirror along with it.
The gloom in the room receded, and the space became bright again.
Philier and the others, gasping for breath, regained control of their bodies.
The instant they could move, all five of them charged up to the second floor and burst into the wrecked bedroom.
The room looked like it had been bombed. The floor was shattered, a wall had collapsed, and glass shards and cement dust were everywhere.
Brown and Luna were gone. The bizarre mirror still sat on the vanity, reflecting five ashen faces.
Channeling Magic Power to cover his palm, Philier paused in silence for a moment before stepping forward, grabbing the mirror, and heading downstairs with his companions.
Downstairs, the Ruby Couple was just regaining consciousness.
"What happened? What happened to the house? Where’s Luna? What did you do?"
"Where’s my daughter? She was standing right here a moment ago! What happened?"
The couple seemed to have no memory of the period when they were paralyzed. Or perhaps, for them, time had simply stopped in that moment.
"Against this kind of thing, ordinary people—even the Super Research Department—wouldn’t stand a chance."
Philier stared at the mirror in his hands, now wrapped in a fragment of a curtain, and felt a chill run down his spine.
Seeing the group descend from the trashed upper floor, the Ruby Couple rushed over and grabbed them.
"Where’s Luna? Where’s my daughter? Where did you take her?"
The five of them were anxious, exhausted, and extremely worried for Brown and Luna’s safety. They had no patience to deal with the two parents, whose crying faces were now even more horrifying than before.
"We will find a way to rescue your daughter. One of our own is with her."
Philier looked at the couple, who had been struck by this senseless disaster, his eyes bloodshot.
"Leaving this mirror here is a menace, so we must take it. We will compensate you in full for the financial losses to your home."
Seeing that the five were about to leave, the couple grabbed two of them in a death grip, refusing to let them go.
"You can’t just leave like this! You have to give us back our Luna! Waaah... At least tell us where she went!"
A girl named Jill and her twin brother helped the Ruby Couple into their chairs.
"Luna was taken into the mirror by a Demon. Our companion went in to protect her. The state of your house is the result of their battle just now."
"Alright, we can’t stay. You two should go to a hospital and get yourselves checked out."
After saying this, Philier and the others ignored the couple, rushed out of the house, swapped the car’s license plate for another, then jumped in and floored the accelerator.
After the paralysis and the terrifying chill, the Ruby Couple were even more frail. For a moment, they didn’t even have the strength to stand up and give chase.
...
More than ten minutes after Philier’s group left, the piercing wail of police sirens finally arrived, fashionably late.
However, it wasn’t the Ruby Couple who had called the police, but the neighbors.
Suspecting a terrorist attack, the police surrounded the house for a while. After a long wait with no movement from within, they cautiously sent officers inside.
The first thing they saw were the two people slumped in the living room.
Several officers warily pointed their guns at the couple, while two of them approached slowly.
"Sir, ma’am, please raise your hands and stand up slowly!"
But the two just sat there gasping, dazed from the excessive loss of both their spiritual and physical vitality.
"Sir, ma’am, please put your hands where we can see them!"
After a few more shouts, the couple finally registered that the police had arrived.
At first, the police just thought the pair looked unwell. But when they started talking about a haunted mirror, the officers suddenly realized the couple looked more like actual ghosts themselves.
One officer was so startled he almost opened fire.
...
Inside the mirror, the struggle was far from over. Brown, his left arm still gripping a four- or five-square-meter section of masonry, had adjusted his posture the instant he was pulled through.
Using the momentum of the pull, he faced forward and violently hurled the slab of wall like a weapon.
WHOOSH—
The masonry tore through the air with a piercing shriek, flying past Luna as Brown flung it toward the withered, shadowy monsters in his crimson vision.
With a thunderous BOOM, Brown’s forward momentum finally came to a halt.
His blood-red eyes looked down at Luna, whom he was still holding. That last impact seemed to have broken the connection with the suction force.
If he hadn’t been afraid the immense pulling force would tear the little girl apart, he might have found another way out back outside the mirror.
But Luna wasn’t the least bit afraid of the towering, blood-red figure, who now looked even more terrifying. She knew who he was.
"Mister, are we inside the mirror?"
Brown gently patted Luna’s head and pulled her behind him.
The withered monsters all around them wailed as they continued to converge. Their numbers were overwhelming, and aside from a few that were humanoid, many others had unidentifiable shapes.
Though as shriveled as mummies, they were as fast as phantoms.
The crucial thing was, Brown didn’t believe these cannon fodder were the big boss here. They didn’t have the power to absorb the Ruby Couple’s flesh and souls from the other side of the mirror.
Brown stared at a spot among the withered monsters, his blood-red eyes narrowing.
Ahead of him were two withered things that, amid their shrieks, bore a faint resemblance to the Ruby Couple. Their malice toward Luna was the most profound of all!
Although the air was thick with a nauseating stench, it didn’t seem to affect his breathing.
"Luna, I don’t think we’re ’inside the mirror.’ Or at least, not in the way you’d imagine. If this place isn’t a Secret Realm, then I’m afraid we’re not on Earth anymore!"
PS: Chapter 2 for Sunday.