Mystery: Mr. Witch and Ms. Hunter

Chapter 81 Mom, I have a stomachache

"You and this gentleman's...?"

Altaïr asked in disbelief.

"Daughter, sir, daughter."

Lila showed a helpless smile on her face.

Altaïr had seen many smiles in his life, but even the most vicious and desperate lunatics he had killed, the negative emotions contained in their desperate smiles before they died were not as strong as the emotions revealed in the eyes of this family today.

"How is this going?"

Altaïr felt an invisible force pressing against his throat.

"Rand and I were both employees of the coal company. Although our salaries were not high at that time, we could barely make ends meet and bought this house."

"But later, we lost our job due to air pollution control. Rand's legs were in such a bad condition that we couldn't find a new job willing to hire him..."

"Have you not looked for the officials assigned by those bigwigs to handle the follow-up?"

Although he already knew the answer, Altaïr still asked with a sense of hope.

“This is the price of reform, they say.”

Mr. Rand, who had been silent all this time, spoke in a hoarse voice.

There was a moment of silence in the room. Altaïr lowered the brim of his hat slightly, as if to hide the expression on his face. After a moment, he broke the silence.

"…Back to our previous question. Have you noticed any guests leaving at night these days? Or, more frequently during the daytime working hours?"

Altaïr felt that if he continued to listen to these poor people's plight, he would not be able to complete his investigation today. Moreover, even if he listened patiently, it would not improve their situation in the slightest.

"Probably not. I'm already old, and I haven't been named that many times."

Lila spoke frankly about her situation. Altaïr could imagine that she would also pull open her rough clothes in front of the guests with an expressionless face, exposing her body that was gradually decaying in the same rough time. His husband sat outside the thin wooden wall, listening to the heavy breathing of his wife and daughter next door under the dim light, and carefully added a few sticks of firewood to the heating of the house...

Lila nudged her daughter who was leaning against her, "Lope, have you ever noticed?"

"…I think there hasn't been any recently, except for the particularly rude gentleman last Monday. When I woke up, it was already the next morning. I don't know if he left in the meantime."

Luo Pei rubbed his eyes and said, "Mom, are you done asking? I want to go back and lie down for a while. My stomach hurts. I might be injured..."

"Just wait a little longer, it will be fine. Mom will make you some brown sugar water later, and the pain will go away after you drink it..." Lila hugged her daughter in her arms, "Officer, do you have any other questions?"

"What does the gentleman look like? Does he have a lot of luggage? After answering these questions, you can go back and rest."

Altaïr leaned down and put his face close to the little girl. He controlled his expression and tried to make it look kind.

However, what happened in the next few seconds became Altaïr's nightmare for the next six months.

The little girl named Lope opened her mouth but no sound came out, as if she wanted to say something but couldn't.

The next second, her expression suddenly became distorted, and her abdomen suddenly swelled up like a balloon, soon reaching the size of a rubber ball, inflating her thin body like a wine bag that was about to overflow.

"Get out of the way!" Altaïr roared, grabbed Lope's wrist, and threw her out, using his body to separate Lope and the Rand couple, who had not yet recovered from the shock.

"Goddess, this is..." Before Lila's exclamation fell, a sound like a bursting balloon resounded throughout the room. At the same time, spreading from the little girl Lope's abdomen were splattered blood and flesh, a fishy smell, and some indescribable things.

It was a bloody monster cub of some kind, its face covered in blood, but just by its smell, Altaïr could tell that it had nothing to do with humans, more like a monster out of control. Its limbs twisted into strange angles, piercing through Lope's body and grabbing her internal organs - no, its hands had merged with Lope's intestines, hanging on Lope's exposed abdomen.

Before Altaïr could react, the intestine that had transformed into the monster's arm suddenly flew out of Lope's abdominal cavity, bringing with it a teeth-grinding sound of flesh being torn and Lope's screams - thanks to the monster's slight feeding, she had not yet died - and wrapped around Altaïr's neck.

Altaïr could have rolled away, but behind him were the terrified Rands, and there was no escape. So he suddenly stretched out his left hand to pad between his neck and the tentacle, and the tentacle made of intestines directly wrapped around his arm and lifted him up. Altaïr felt that his arm was about to be strangled.

"Mom, my stomach hurts, I'm so scared..." Little Lope, who still retained consciousness, had a trembling voice like an old gramophone. Faced with this situation, her big blue eyes were filled with tears.

"Lope? Lope!" Mr. Rand's voice finally had emotion at this time. He stood up anxiously, but because he forgot that his legs were inconvenient, he rolled into a ball behind the counter in embarrassment.

Altaïr used his other hand to pull out the revolver from the holster under his armpit. The current situation did not allow him to slowly change the bullets, so he drew his gun and aimed at Lopez, trying to empty the revolver as quickly as possible. The Assassin also had some enhancements in this regard. Altaïr tried it once and it only took him less than two seconds to empty six bullets.

However, there was a person blocking the trajectory between him and Lope.

The moment Liz found out something was wrong with her daughter, she rushed forward without any thought or consideration. Faced with the horrific phenomenon that she could not understand, this street girl, who was relatively weak among ordinary people, made an instinctive decision.

She rushed forward, tearing the monster apart in the most primitive way, trying to separate it from her daughter, even faster than Altaïr could draw his gun. At the same time, she was shouting some incomprehensible words, as if the emergency language system did not work properly, or because she had just bit off a piece of flesh where the monster and Lope were connected - the only thing that could be heard clearly was her daughter's name.

Altaïr hesitated. Faced with such a scene, even though he was a cold-blooded killer, he was unable to immediately pull the trigger on the poor mother, smashing her and the monster behind her into pieces.

Even the monster was startled by the woman's instinctive action, and even the force that bound Altaïr was loosened a little. However, it soon responded instinctively as well.

The sound of flesh and blood piercing through rang out again, and the splattering blood dyed the moldy walls red.

(End of this chapter)