Long-term salvation

"Should we go directly in through the tomb entrance, or take another route?"

"Meow."

Apparently, Pickman had his own ideas. The black cat suddenly transformed into a hooded cloak and covered Rhodes. As soon as Rhodes put on the hood, he saw the ground rapidly approaching him! Gravity seemed to have changed at this moment, but it didn't matter.

Rhodes melted into the ground like a falling water drop, without even a ripple.

[Pollution points in the other world increased by 1]

A slight chill made Rhodes open his eyes, and he found himself surrounded by a pile of bones. In front of him was a straight passage, which bent in other directions at the end. Brown human skeletons were embedded in the walls on both sides, and they had a greasy luster under the dim light. It was obvious that they had been stored here for many years.

With his weapon ready, Rhodes walked forward. After just a few turns, he saw the bodies of some tourists. They were shot dead, and shock, fear and a little confusion still remained on their dead faces.

"Rifle wounds, are they from Umbrella's security forces?"

Rhode glanced at the bodies and continued walking forward. Within a few minutes, he heard a commotion: a chaotic cacophony of footsteps, heavy treads, and the occasional burst of gunfire. It was a disturbing mess. Seizing an opportunity, Rhode pulled the central figure in the chaos into the corner he was standing at, then picked them up and turned down a side road.

"Mr. Rhodes!" Laura lowered her voice and shouted in surprise, and then she added a hint of complaint, "I almost shot you just now!"

"This is a small problem... Laura, let's lure Umbrella's people into the world rift there, including the tracker. The other world will help us with the rest."

"adventure!"

"Don't be so happy!"

As Rhodes spoke, he picked a human skull from the wall. He played with it in his hand for a few seconds, then threw it at the Umbrella soldier passing by from the distant passage.

"Hey, Sun Thief!"

After saying that, Rhode dragged Laura deeper into the catacombs, followed closely by the Umbrella soldiers and the tall figure. However, they didn't notice the strange words formed by the broken bones that had fallen down:

[Those who enter here must abandon all hope]

Chapter 199: Crossing the Styx

"Here all suspicion must be abandoned, here all cowardice must perish. We have reached the place I told you about, where you will find miserable souls who have lost the happiness of reason."

—Virgil to Dante, from The Divine Comedy.

"Follow me closely, Laura. You must not get lost here."

Rhodes and Laura walked through these terrifying passages, which were sometimes wide and sometimes narrow. Bullets flew from time to time to pierce the skeletons, causing the dust and bone powder accumulated inside to rise in the passage, obscuring the whereabouts of the fugitives. The Umbrella soldiers were fine, but the tall tracker was really inconvenient to move. Because of this, the operator controlled by the STEM Type 2 connection had to let it block from other places.

After running through several passages, Laura noticed that the surrounding scene seemed to have appeared before. Since the expansion of the urban area of ​​Paris in the 10th century, many people who died in disasters such as plague and war over the past few hundred years have been buried here. A rough estimate is that there are six million bodies.

Now, they are quietly watching a person who breaks into this place - into hell.

The temperature in the passage was getting lower and lower, and to make matters worse, the road ahead was covered with water.

Laura had no choice but to follow Rhodes into the puddle. The turbid water was very shallow, only a few centimeters above her knees, but the path was not easy to walk on. Unknown debris of varying sizes piled up layer upon layer - Laura knew what it was - human bones washed out by the slightly turbulent water, like pebbles.

The water churned and heaved, creating a dirty foam around Laura's legs.

"It's getting cold, Mr. Rhodes," Laura breathed, clutching the corner of the man's cloak in front of her. "Are we heading to the underground part?"

"We are walking in the 'other world', Miss Lara Croft."

Rhodes spoke calmly, his eyes sweeping over the prompt "You are in the shallow level of the Lost Dungeon" on the system interface. As they shuttled through the complex passages of the underground cemetery, they were already on the edge of the other world. Only after crossing that door did they officially step into this terrifying and strange supernatural dimension.

In Rod's fragmented memories, in the original work of this afterlife mission, "As Above, So Below", the heroine Scarlett pierced into a hell similar to the story in "The Divine Comedy", and escaped after finding the Philosopher's Stone there... If we follow this line of thought, they still have a long way to go, but in the "afterlife", are there only those inner tortures and almost hilarious visions and ghosts?

After passing through the flooded passage, Rod and Laura walked onto dry ground and continued to move forward. It was still a dark passage, and every fork in the road looked exactly the same. They were interconnected and overlapped with each other, making the laws of time and space completely meaningless here, thus forming this hell as complex as the Minoan labyrinth.

Here, all they could hear were shadows trembling on the walls as they walked, the chaotic darkness illuminated by their headlamps, and the roar of the wind that seemed to come from the abyss. The sound was faint at first, but soon grew louder, and explosive explosions mixed with female screams and male roars exploded in all directions, rushing towards the humans standing here from every fork in the road.

"Mr. Rhodes!" Laura looked around nervously, her palm on Rhodes' shoulder and the other hand on the open pistol holster. "I don't see any living creature."

"Calm down," Rhode patted Laura's head. "The hurricane of hell is blowing relentlessly, whipping the souls with its violent power. This is the 'Hell of Debauchery', the first level of hell. Be firm in your heart, Laura. The real horror is yet to come."

"...Dante's Divine Comedy? You mean we have to continue down and across the entire Hell?!"

"That's true. But unfortunately, there are no two silver-haired demon brothers here. If they were here, our journey would be much easier."

Rhode made a joke that Laura didn't understand. Just as he was about to say something, he heard a rush of water and panicked shouts from above. The sound was transmitted through the solid rock layer, but the next second, the sound came from the left, right, below, front, and back, until the volume of the sound rose to its peak and exploded in the passage like thunder.

Four Umbrella security guards in black combat uniforms staggered out from a corner. The gas masks on their faces had long been removed due to running and other strenuous activities, and they were now gasping for breath... Only one person, who was obviously a woman, was different. She was still wearing a transparent mask-style gas mask.

The woman took a few breaths and just as she stood up, she saw Rhodes appeared in front of her!

"You are the one who—"

Rhodes suddenly grabbed the woman's wrist and threw her directly against the opposite wall. The latter turned over and quickly stood up, raised her gun, pulled the trigger... nothing happened.

It was not until then that the woman discovered that her magazine had been unloaded, and the bullet in the chamber had been ejected and was now spinning back and forth between the fingers of the man opposite her.

Not only themselves, but also the remaining three Umbrella soldiers were pointed at gunpoint. They had no choice but to put down their weapons and move to the other side, waiting anxiously for their future to be decided by the enemy.

"Someone from Umbrella, huh?"

Rhodes raised his eyebrows, and with a little force from his fingers, he crushed the bullet and threw it at the woman's feet.

"I don't understand what you're saying..."

"Lupo (Italian for wolf), real name Karina Lespru, former French special forces member, murderer—oh, you killed your abusive husband? Well done, ma'am, but I suggest you, for the sake of your children, not to engage in such useless little tricks."

Rhode spoke calmly. After seeing the information through his all-seeing eye mask, he immediately remembered that the person in front of him was from the game "Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City". However, it seemed that Lupo had not yet led the team to form Delta Squad/Wolf Pack Squad... This was interesting. He didn't mind poaching some people and selecting some members for the "Poison Dagger" that would definitely be used in the future.

This kind of mercenary who only cares about money is the most useful, especially the kind that needs to pay for their family.

Lupo didn't say anything else. She retreated cautiously and respectfully to the side of the Umbrella soldiers, and then heard Rhodes say:

"Ladies and gentlemen, could you please tell me about the orders Umbrella Corporation has given you? They're just to track me down and cooperate with that BOW (Bio Organic Weapon) to collect experimental data?"

"……Yes, it is."

"Interesting," Rhodes lowered his eyes and continued, "Now there's another question, where did that monster go?"

No one spoke. They all looked behind Rhodes in horror, as if there was something behind him.

Rod: "...Is this some classic horror movie plot?"

Sighing, Rhode turned his head and saw a sturdy, twisted monster crouching on the ground, tearing apart the corpse of an Umbrella soldier in the flickering light deep in the corridor. Its sudden appearance was like some force satisfying its pure desire.

track.

eat.

evolution.

The monster suddenly stopped eating, turned its head and roared at Rhodes.

+ + + + + + + + + + + +

[Goddess of Vengeance - Connection Disconnected! ]

[Emergency expel the connector... His body is mutating... Not mutating, but turning into a channel, a crack in the otherworld! The power of the otherworld is flowing back... We truly have found a naturally formed crack in the otherworld in the catacombs!]

[The human brain is capable of connecting to the other world—record this immediately! Report this news!]

[The human brain connected to STEM can open a rift in the other world... The rift disappeared... in just a few seconds... How could this happen... Go apply, go apply for more human brains!]

[Men, women, the elderly, children, and those with special qualifications, go and get their brains. The experiment must be carried out as soon as possible.]

[Also, I want to see all of this connector's physical information. Everything he eats, drinks, and does must be reported to me.]

[For the evolution of human civilization, we must find a way to stably open the rift in the inner world.]

Chapter 200: Fall into Hell (3.5K)

The wind was howling, and the tall and strong body created a clearly visible milky white airflow in this narrow passage.

Rhodes pulled out the dagger and spun the weapon in his palm, leaving an inconspicuous wound on the muscular wall. The skin on both sides of the wound squirmed slightly, and tiny, flesh-colored tentacles like white nematodes densely emerged from the wound, connecting and suturing the cut muscles, leaving no trace of the cut.

"Tsk... Stop running around! Don't do anything stupid!"

Just after dodging a heavy punch, Rhodes looked back and saw that the Umbrella soldiers had turned around and ran away without even taking their weapons - but Lupo remained where she was. She ignored Laura's hostility, but bent down to pick up her weapon, took the magazine thrown by Rhodes, and fired at the out-of-control pursuer.

The roar of the FAMAS assault rifles when they were fired echoed layer by layer in the corridor. After thousands of times of overlapping without attenuation, it turned into a deafening thunder, tormenting everyone's cochlea.

"Retreat, let's go to the narrow passage!"

"We can't hold it off for long," Lupo shouted back. She emptied a magazine, dodging the pursuer's charge while reloading. "Besides, this place is weird—the passages and forks are changing all the time!"

"Then you stay here and ballroom dance with it, ma'am."

"Tsk..."

Cursing inwardly, Lupo quickly followed Laura, rushing through the narrow passage in a somewhat awkward manner. But the next second, she saw Rhodes tumbling in, and the man's back was immediately blocked by a metal wall - that thing looked like a Hummer, and the metal body was squeezed by the surrounding rock walls, making a strange creaking sound.

"What are you standing there for?! Run!" Rhodes said as he got up from the ground. "There's still gasoline and two TOW anti-tank missiles in the car!"

"?!!!"

As the three of them turned the corner, a violent explosion erupted behind them. Orange-red flames burst forth from the tunnel, briefly dispelling the eternal darkness. But once the flames faded, darkness and fear returned, enveloping the faces of ordinary people who had never before faced the uncanny.

When the accumulated smoke slowly dissipated, Lupo carefully looked back at the passage he came from, only to find that it was now an uneven rock wall. There was no creaking of twisted metal, no heavy footsteps, no explosions or flames... only deathly darkness and silence.

Lupo looked back at Rhode, who was resting against the wall, and Laura, who was carefully examining the surrounding walls. Following Rhode's instructions, the girl began to search for a way to enter the next floor. After quietly examining the people in front of her for a few seconds, the resilient mother slowly sat down against the wall and sighed.

"It seems I have no other choice."

"You're smarter than those who escaped," Rhodes said calmly. He reached out and scratched his dark cloak. A faint cat meow rang in his ears. Then, he tossed Lupo an M16A2 rifle and several magazines.

"We don't have any M193 ammunition for the FAMAS rifles here. We only have two M4 rifles left. I'm going to stockpile them, so you can just use this for now... I just didn't expect you, Umbrella, wouldn't equip your soldiers with the FAMAS G2 model that uses the SS109 ammunition."

"I'm so sorry, but this is just the Paris branch. The bulk of the funding is with that monster," Lupo replied indifferently. She stood up, checked her rifle, and put the magazine back into the pouch on her chest. After doing this, she hesitated for a few seconds and asked aloud, "How...how did you know my information? I'm just a nobody."

"The long river of fate will eventually converge into the vast ocean of time. It's just that some people can use a few tricks to glimpse a glimpse of destiny. Let's get down to business, Ms. Lespruce. I think you should know the style of Umbrella. If you make it out of here alive, you won't be greeted with flowers and banquets."

"..."

"Work for me," Rhodes said calmly, "I need a force to do those dark and despicable things."

"……treatment."

Hearing Lupo's words, Rhode immediately smiled sincerely. He pulled out a bunch of contract documents and stuffed them into Lupo's hands, then began a high-speed serial broadcast about the treatment of soldiers without borders. To ensure Lupo didn't understand, Rhode repeated it in French.

Patting Lupo's shoulder, who was standing there in a daze, holding a stack of documents in his arms and looking a little overwhelmed, Rhode turned his head to look at Laura who had already walked to the end of the corridor and asked loudly:

"Laura, what did you find?"

"There are...traces of human construction here," Laura said, frowning and looking troubled. She slowly stroked her palm along the wall. "And I'm very familiar with this place."

Of course she would be familiar with it - this was a corner of Crawford Manor. The corridor walls, flower pot racks, sculptures, paintings, everything that had appeared in Crawford Manor, everything that appeared in Laura's memory all appeared in this almost endless corridor, but they all seemed to have been covered with a layer of dirty dust after more than a hundred years, blurring the viewer's vision.

Laura walked forward in a daze. She took half a step when she suddenly woke up. She then took a few steps back and shone the flashlight into the darkness in front of her. A desk appeared in the darkness, piled with books and documents, and messy draft papers were rolled up and thrown on the ground.

But this desk is so tall, as if young Laura is looking up at it - this is the desk of Laura's father, Sir Richard Crawford.

"No... here..." Laura bit her lip. Even today, she could still recall her father's research theories that were neither understood nor accepted by the world, and his almost crazy resurrection of the dead and immortality. "Here..."

"Do not."

Laura exhaled slowly, and her eyes were no longer gleaming with doubt and hesitation, but with a glimmer of curiosity that stemmed from human nature:

"The other world and the supernatural world are real. They are right in front of me, displayed to me without reservation. You cannot deceive me, because your existence has already proved that I, my father, am right. Now, get out of my sight!"

Darkness suddenly surged in from all directions, reshaping the space and transforming it into a passage surrounded by rough stone walls. Although there were obvious signs of human excavation, it was obviously not from anyone's memory.

The smooth road to the unknown is unfolding before everyone.

"I thought I'd see your inner flaws and regrets revealed here," Rhodes said as he passed by Lupo, his voice filled with sincere praise. "You are strong and rational enough, and that is humanity's strongest weapon against the other world."

"That's not the case," Lupo replied calmly, his voice tinged with anger and a touch of awe.

"My only regret is that I didn't kill that scumbag before he could harm my child. Will 'it' allow him to show up here? It better be, otherwise, I'd be happy to show off my torture skills to my future employer."

"That is not necessary, ma'am."

Without wasting any more time, Rhodes and the other two continued to move forward. It was in this dark passage that they saw the fate of the Umbrella soldiers who had escaped earlier - there were only two of them here, their lower bodies embedded horizontally in the wall, while their upper bodies protruded from the opposite wall.

The pupils of these two people's eyes had dilated, and visible darkness was crawling out from them, spreading slowly under their skin. Perhaps if they waited a few more minutes, they would become "living" statues, just like the explorers who had accidentally stepped into this place.

Glancing at the two of them, Laura and Lupo felt a little relieved that they had escaped a disaster.

After walking forward for a few minutes, a narrow curved stone chamber appeared in front of them, with a rough stone pillar in the middle.

After confirming that the place was safe, Laura stepped in carefully and took in the surroundings. After Rhode and the others came over, she pointed to the ground ahead and said,