Merka stood up from the ground, still trembling, but feeling completely free of weakness. He patted his body from top to bottom through his clothes and found nothing serious, letting out a small sigh of relief.

Looking around, Merka felt uneasy, reaching out to touch his frozen shoulders and sensing that the lights in the hall seemed dimmer. A strange, wicked, erratic, and corrupt atmosphere filled with the growth of flies and larvae in midsummer.

They swelled, surged, and wildly bred in Merka's mind, dilating his pupils, intensifying his breathing, letting in the cold, damp air, and viciously scraping at his scalp.

An indescribable horror wielded sickles and spade, wandering through the crevices of time and reveling in the darkness. Under the dim and seemingly faint lights, even the clear glass around the quiet hall seemed to blur, revealing eerie skeletons lethargically dancing.

Merka’s face turned pale with fear as he hurried towards the depths of the laboratory.

"Hehehe..."

"You certainly chose a creative way to die."

As Merka delved deeper into his hallucinations, the blood flowing backward completely vanished, and the owl's traces disappeared as well. A deep masculine voice resonated from the increasingly dark and quiet depths of the hall.

"I am called the Owl God."

"Patricide and filicide, harming kin, injuring friends and wives, subverting the natural order."

"Know that in the darkness and chaos, I am like a fish to water, seizing the opportunity while night falls."

"..........The heavier your hallucinations, the more you lose your clarity of mind, the more dreadful I become."

The crazed murmurs tormented Merka's will. They whispered from the ear, the crown, the back of the head, from the east, south, west, north, and from all the dark corners beyond sight.

A panicked Merka arrived at the end of the corridor, only to find the large door in front of him tightly locked, fused with the door lock made of molten metal as solid as a rock, seemingly requiring a researcher's ID verified by the laboratory for entry. While Merka could force his way through with magic, the thickening gloom in the corridor seemed to deny him that chance.

Frowning, Merka looked through the small window on the door, and it seemed like countless other doors were awaiting to be opened ahead. From the very beginning, it felt like a mistake to walk this path.

"It's over..."

"...This is a deadlock, isn't it?"

"No, wait."

"That snake woman... seemed to have knocked down a wall near the entrance of the hall before leaving."

Could it be that she meant for him to follow her?

"But... I've come this far, should I really go back now?"

Merka's mouth opened slightly, his face contorted in fear.

A terror-inducing, chilling, incomprehensible supernatural force descended upon this place, shrouded in darkness.

The voice of the Owl God, like a distorted sound from a broken radio, once again emanated from the darkness, crushing the last psychological defense line in Merka's mind.

"You do not know..."

"Every time on the brink of night."

"I shall come again like an avalanche."

Something, breaking through the constraints of space and time, silently arrived.

Suddenly, darkness enveloped the corridor like a waterfall, and a pair of golden eagle eyes pierced through, staring at Merka.

Swish.

In the silent darkness, a crisp sound of feathers cutting through the air suddenly echoed behind Merka.

"Descent of the Holy Son!"

Merka clenched his teeth, his face changing drastically as he quickly turned to attack behind him, wanting to strike first. But his fist engulfed in white flames landed empty.

In an instant, a tearing sound, the noise of claws sinking into flesh, and the gruesome sound of a hawk's beak ripping through food erupted in the air heavy with silence.

Merka, horrified, heard distinctly that the sound was coming from his heart!

A slender specter in a suit with a long, featureless face and several tentacles on its back suddenly appeared from the darkness, grabbing Merka’s neck viciously, lifting him from the ground.

"The Owl devours his meal."

"Enjoy."

The spectral figure ruthlessly plunged a hand into Merka's neck, causing his face to flush red. The tentacles behind him swayed wantonly, as if mocking Merka's foolishness.