Chapter 11: Gradual Awakening
This novel is translated and hosted on bcatranslation
The once-shadowed scene was now clearer to everyone. The silhouette of the infant, taking on an eerie blackish hue, was visible as it clung tightly to Coral in the feeble, dim light. Its pair of obsidian eyes fixated intently on the gathering of onlookers. The sight was so alarming that it sent waves of imminent panic attacks rippling through the crowd. They instinctively recoiled, scrambling away from Coral’s proximity.
“Damn it!” Miles swore, his fists clenched in helpless frustration. “Has this ghost baby given up on attacking me and instead started focusing its efforts on others?”
His heart ached with the desire to rescue Coral, but fear immobilized him, rendering him unable to come to her aid.
His own supernatural eye had the unique capability to penetrate the obscurity of the ghost domain, and his self-defense was largely an automatic reaction. However, he was ill-equipped to handle the ethereal infant.
With his teeth gritted and an overpowering instinctual urge to flee welling up within him, he muttered, “Let’s go.”
“Help… help me.” Coral’s plea sliced through the tension-filled air. Her face was a mask of intense pain. She gasped for air, flailing about like a fish on dry land. Her hand reached out towards Miles, her eyes filled with desperate hope. In her perception, Miles was her only savior, and she was able to muster up the strength to beg for his help.
Miles kept his gaze forward, yet his additional eye located on the back of his head saw everything.
His classmate Coral’s tormented cry for help caused him to halt his escape. The scene stirred up memories of a similar moment when Jing had forced him into the restroom.
Despite maintaining consciousness, Coral was consumed by an all-consuming terror. Her heart throbbed with a desperate need for someone to intervene and offer their assistance.
“If I abandon her now, how am I any different from Jing? Would I be willing to sacrifice a classmate’s life to buy myself more time to escape from this ghost child?” Miles found himself in a moral dilemma.
His mind wrestled with his thoughts: “Coral isn’t like Peng or Fei. They got what they deserved. They were ready to sacrifice my life to ensure their survival. And besides, now that I have embraced the role of a ghost tamer, harnessing the power of a vengeful spirit, I am no longer an ordinary human. Saving someone else’s life doesn’t have to spell my own doom.”
As these thoughts raced through his mind, the supernatural eye on the back of his head remained fixed on Coral. It bore witness to her desperate fight for survival, her despair, and her arm that gradually sagged in defeat. If he didn’t intervene now, the ghost baby would certainly strangle Coral to death.
“Damn it,” Miles swore under his breath. With a newfound resolve, he pivoted on his heels and charged towards Coral. Unhesitant and with full force, he landed a punch on the ghost baby’s head.
If this act of perceived violence against an infant was ever to make its way online, it was sure to invite a whirlwind of criticism.
The ghost baby took Miles’s punch with surprising resilience. A part of its head caved in upon impact, yet it remained unscathed. It returned Miles’s gaze with its own coal-black eyes, as if delivering a silent message to back off. A peculiar cry of provocation emitted from the infant in response to the attack. Abruptly, it released its grip on Coral and lunged at Miles. Its face opened wide, grotesquely surpassing the limits of a human jaw, and swallowed half of his arm.
The sensation was chilling and viscous, akin to being slowly absorbed into the gravitational pull of a black hole. Miles found himself unable to retrieve his arm. To his mounting horror, he was gradually being drawn further into the gaping black maw.
Meanwhile, Coral was close to collapsing, her breath ragged and labored from the ordeal.
“Am I going to be devoured?” Miles felt as though his body was disintegrating as if his flesh and blood were being drawn into the ghost baby’s insatiable mouth. The prospect of being consumed alive dawned on him.
Suddenly, a piercing pain erupted through his engulfed arm. It was akin to being physically torn apart or having one’s soul crushed, an excruciating sensation beyond description.
With a shriek of agony, the ghost baby regurgitated Miles’s arm. It hit the ground, devoid of vitality, and scuttled away hastily as if trying to flee. In a blink, it disappeared up the staircase.
“Damn it, not this sensation again!” A cold sweat coated Miles as his body convulsed under the onslaught of the intense pain. He couldn’t stifle his screams.
The portion of his arm that the ghost baby had swallowed was now bathed in a ghastly red light. His flesh was brutally torn open, revealing an unsettling sight – numerous crimson eyeballs protruding from the wound.
Before this incident, he had had only one eyeball on the back of his hand, and another had appeared on the back of his head following the ghost baby’s attack. Now, a single bite had given rise to four more.
The number of red eyes multiplied at an alarming rate. Perhaps it was this bizarre manifestation that had scared off the ghost baby.
“Miles, are you okay?” Having narrowly escaped death, although still shaking with fear, Coral acknowledged that Miles had been her savior.
Seeing him writhing in pain on the ground, she reached out with a trembling hand, her voice laced with worry.
Suddenly, Miles’s agonized thrashing stopped. One arm bent at a disturbingly unnatural angle, shot out to seize Coral’s outstretched hand. Such a move was beyond human capability, and no normal arm would have five eyeballs roving over it, each focused on Coral.
“Ah!” Overwhelmed by terror, Coral crumpled to the ground, her scream piercing the charged atmosphere.
But soon enough, the five eyes on Miles’s arm shut tight, and he found the strength to speak: “I’m okay. Playing the hero isn’t as easy as it seems; I nearly lost myself in the process of saving you. I’m realizing that it’s no simple task to emulate Jing’s cold-hearted nature.”
His intense agony began to recede quickly, allowing him to rise to his feet. He leaned against the wall, his muscles twitching from residual pain. He certainly didn’t wish to relive the soul-wrenching agony.
“Being bitten by that entity felt like being swallowed whole. Could this be the power of the ghost baby residing in Right’s stomach? It’s a terrifying thought… and it seems to be growing stronger,” Miles said, glancing at his arm. He could feel a peculiar movement beneath his skin, as though something was on the brink of erupting from within.
The existence of the eyeballs was becoming more pronounced, and they were seemingly regenerating.
“I’m sorry, I ended up slowing you down,” Coral murmured apologetically.
“No, it’s alright. Choosing to save you was my own decision. I don’t want to devolve into Jing, ready to resort to extreme measures to ensure survival. From the moment I was pushed into the bathroom, my life hung in the balance. I’m merely clinging on to life now, borrowing time from the ghost. Even without you, my time is running out,” Miles confessed, coming to terms with his grim reality.
“Don’t just stand there, let’s go. If that creature returns, we’re done for,” he said, gritting his teeth against the lingering pain.
“I… I don’t think I can… I don’t have any strength left,” Coral whimpered in response.
It was then that Miles noticed two distinct, dark handprints on the back of Coral’s neck.
The prints, seemingly imprinted by the ghost baby, were reminiscent of tattoos etched into her skin, providing a stark contrast. What’s more, the inky-blue color seemed to be radiating from the handprints, encircling her neck like a rapidly spreading infection.
A wave of dread washed over Miles at the implication, but he chose not to voice his concern. It wasn’t the appropriate time.
The ghost baby had only been repelled temporarily and could return with increased strength. If it decided to attack again, Miles feared he might end up like Right, losing his life to the ghost’s resurgence.
“I’ll help you. You can still walk, right?” He offered assistance to Coral, noting the violent trembling of her body.
Her quaking was the physical manifestation of overwhelming fear.
Though Coral didn’t voice her apprehensions, her body language spoke volumes.
“I… I can walk,” she responded, her body instinctively leaning towards Miles.
She wasn’t consciously doing this; it was merely a primal instinct of a woman seeking refuge from a stronger male in the face of imminent danger.
At this stage, Miles seemed to fill that role perfectly.