radicalducati Chapter 144 The Corpse Speaks
Chapter 144 The Corpse Speaks
Chapter 144 The Corpse Speaks
"No! Help me! I think I can still live!"
The man's voice trembled.
"I'm very useful! Really! I have—I have a lot of survival experience!"
The voice was intermittent, accompanied by a pale assurance mixed with a will to survive.
Little Green just looked at him.
On that face, which was almost unrecognizable due to the black flesh and blood covering it, the remaining muscles were twisting, squeezing out an expression that mixed pleading, fear, and a lingering cunning.
Just minutes ago, this guy was giving his final remarks about his life in a detached tone.
But now, without warning, he has switched back to this pitiful, survival-seeking state. Little Green doesn't know how to react.
"The corpse is talking."
Xia Zhaozhao's voice came from the side, her tone filled with undisguised disdain.
The man seemed completely oblivious to Xia Zhaozhao's sarcasm, frantically repeating those meaningless phrases.
"Only I can handle those barnacles! If I die, you won't have an easy time either! So—if you want to get rid of this puddles—"
He suddenly raised his head and scanned the crowd with his gaze.
"Just give me something to eat!"
Finally, his gaze swept past everyone and landed firmly on the two aggregates beside Sasha, Hagiwang and Hagi lizard.
In his eyes, there was an undisguised greed and desire.
Biomass.
He needs biomass to feed the insatiable monster inside his chest.
These humans in front of me are out of the question, but those two monsters—if I can devour them, if I can—
..
Sasha instantly took a step and moved sideways like a crab.
Then, she spread her arms wide, like a mother hen protecting her chicks, and stood angrily in front of the two monsters, glaring at the guy.
The man froze.
His gaze was fixed blankly on the figure blocking his way. He knew it was a monster too, and he couldn't understand this "food-guarding" behavior.
Could it be that this guy doesn't see it as food?
However, in that brief moment when his mind went blank, a strange feeling came from deep within his mutilated body.
It wasn't pain, nor numbness, but rather—a sense of loss of control that was difficult to describe in words.
A sense of loss of control.
He suddenly felt that even the remaining half of his body was no longer under his control.
No!
A piercing roar erupted from his throat.
Little Green looked at him calmly.
Did this guy only realize it now?
Previously, he had been like an ostrich, deliberately avoiding observing his physical condition, stubbornly believing that he was still the master of his body and that he still had bargaining chips.
It wasn't until he was overwhelmed by the undeniable backlash that he was forced to lift his head out of the sand.
He seemed to finally realize that his seemingly life-saving rhetoric was, from the very beginning, a complete joke.
In the distance, a few daring survivors exchanged glances and let out undisguised, snickering laughter, as if watching a spectacle.
Yes, everyone present probably saw the truth sooner than he did.
Only he himself remained immersed in the illusion that "I can still be saved."
The signs of being devoured from the inside out by the monster were already palpable. The surface of his body was visibly moving towards the shape of an aggregate.
boom--!
A loud bang came from the pistol in Bai Shuyuan's hand.
The bullet pierced precisely through the center of the man's chest cavity, where his heart had been, but which had long since been replaced by something else.
But in any case, since it was Bai Shuyuan who fired the shot, then it was clearly the core of the monster inside him.
Of course, this shot was not intended to execute, but rather to precisely end the monster's devouring process.
Incidentally, a huge hole appeared in the center of the man's mutilated body, so large that it would violate international law during wartime.
Immediately afterwards, centered on that void, the black matter that made up his body began to disintegrate irreversibly.
Silently, without a sound, his body began to lose all vitality, turning into a pitch-black, lifeless thing. Life was slipping away at a visible speed.
The man stared blankly at the large hole in his chest, seemingly finally realizing, with a belated dullness, that he was about to turn into a meaningless lump of mud.
The numbness I felt earlier seemed to have vanished completely.
When death was no longer far away, but close at hand, he realized that he had never truly let go of his fear of death; he was terrified of it.
"In fact, from the moment you were left with only your upper body, this process of being devoured became irreversible."
Bai Shuyuan's voice rang out calmly, her golden pupils staring blankly at the lump in front of her.
There was no pity, no mockery, no emotion; it was simply an explanation of a predetermined fact to him.
"Sigh, what are you thinking? You dare compare yourself to Sasa's Pokémon? They're much more obedient—"
Xia Zhaozhao muttered under her breath, making no attempt to hide the disdain in her tone.
However, the man seemed to have stopped hearing these things.
His consciousness was fading away along with his body.
But just before that disintegration reached his neck and he was about to completely vanish into nothingness, the corner of his mouth seemed to twitch.
With his last ounce of strength, he turned his gaze to the little green thing in front of him.
Then, he squeezed out a distorted syllable: "Salt————".
Little Green silently watched as the last trace of human form was completely replaced by the pitch-black slime.
Salt?
The word briefly crossed her mind.
It sounds like a rather bizarre solution, neither scientific nor magical, and even a bit like a strange folk remedy.
However—when a bird is about to die, its cry is mournful.
In his final moments, this guy probably wouldn't waste his precious energy telling a pointless lie, right?
Of course, even if he's lying, it won't cost me anything. At most, I'll just waste some time verifying it.
"Well, at least I didn't die from being eaten alive by that thing, so I guess I died a peaceful death."
Xia Zhaozhao's voice rang out again, breaking the silence.
"————This is hardly a peaceful end," Little Green grumbled. From any angle, it was anything but peaceful.
Xia Zhaozhao clearly didn't pay attention to her reaction and continued to express her own thoughts after watching the film.
"However, this guy acted like some kind of philosopher-king before—"
"They seemed to have seen through everything, but when they were really about to die, their true nature was revealed."
She pouted, then remembered something and snorted unhappily.
"And he even wants to eat Sasa's Pokémon, ugh!"
The two monsters were standing motionless at Sasha's feet.
"Look, they're much more loyal than that guy!"
"Actually—I think that he finally acted like a human being before he died."
Xiao Lü spoke up instinctively.
In that instant, the man's face no longer showed feigned numbness, nor was it astonishment at his failed scheme; rather, it revealed his fear of death.
That kind of fear belongs to humankind.
However, that's all.
Even if Bai Shuyuan hadn't fired that shot, and even if this guy could have been saved, I probably wouldn't have offered any help.
After all, the risk of being an accomplice to someone like that who acts on a whim is far too high; they're not even qualified to be one of those green-skinned bastards in the mall.