Autophagy

"Please be enough!" Song Lei shouted as he brought down his sword.

The world seemed like it had come to a standstill as the energy he had gathered inside the sword discharged.

The amalgamation of pain, grief, and blank souls was about to crash down on him like a wave. However, before that could happen, his energy discharge exploded like a bomb. Sending shockwaves throughout the whole apartment.

In an instant, the horde was split into two and obliterated. Song Lei was also swept away by the shockwave. He hit his back to Aston's door and crumbled down on the ground.

"Ugh... Fuck... This feels bad..." He commented. Fortunately, he was practically physically uninjured before this. If not, he would probably lose his consciousness with how tired his soul was.

Shortly after, the door behind him opened. Aston pulled Song Lei inside and started to check if there were any big wounds on Song Lei's body without saying anything.

"What were those?" Song Lei weakly asked. Aston sighed deeply before tapping Song Lei's back.

"Well, they work for the apartment manager. What were their species again..? Something like a haze?" Aston muttered. With his gesture, Song Lei laid down on one of the bunker beds.

"Yeah. My ability says so," Song Lei answered as he watched looked at Aston.

"I see. They directly work under the apartment manager," Aston said. "I think they are one of the higher-level beings amongst the apartment manager's subordinates."

"They have strong physical capabilities and are not ethereal. They also lack any kind of identity as they all look the exact same."

"Yeah, I realized that..." Song Lei commented as he closed his eyes to rest.

"I think there are a few more..." Aston muttered as he held his chin. "They must've sensed your Claim Flag and came here."

"Was it the apartment manager that ordered them to attack us or did they come here to attack us on their own? What do you think?"

"Assuming their psychology as a species, they must have come here as an order from the apartment manager," Aston said. "They are very subservient and don't really have the ability to live on their own."

"What do you think will happen to the apartment?" Song Lei asked.

"The apartment itself had already been hurt heavily from this fight," Aston said. "Now that you've gone ahead and full-on bombed a horde, which is a part of the apartment, it shouldn't be in a good state. If this keeps on going like this... It might die."

"'Die'? What do you mean 'die'?" Song Lei asked.

"You see, according to what I learned from my research, this place is technically alive," Aston started explaining as he took out a syringe. The syringe had an awkward design as it was as thick and big as Aston's arm. It was completely covered in a metallic substance and looked ominous. "Well, it's as alive as a clump of cells stuck together."

"What?" Song Lei asked confusedly. Aston's words made his head hurt a little bit.

"Just watch," Aston said. He had already guessed that Song Lei wouldn't be able to understand what he was saying without a demonstration.

Suddenly, the veins on Aston's arm bulged as he stabbed the syringe onto a wall. The wall was penetrated by the syringe almost instantly. Seeing Aston's actions, Song Lei was confused and relieved at the same time. He was confused because he couldn't understand why Aston would stab a wall and he was relieved because he wasn't the one on the receiving end of the stab.

"Look at this," Aston said as he pulled the syringe out. Because its outer shell wasn't transparent, Song Lei couldn't see the liquid inside it. For this reason, Aston poured it out into a watch glass.

From the syringe came out a red-greyish-colored liquid that was as thick as mercury. Not giving Song Lei the time to say anything, Aston pulled him and made him look at the liquid under a microscope.

Losing to his curiosity, Song Lei decided to see what Aston was showing to him before saying anything.

"Woah..." Song Lei exclaimed with wonder.

As he brought his eyes to the microscope he realized what Aston was trying to say. In the telescope, he could see a lot of triangle-shaped and gray-colored cells.

"This is so awkward..." Song Lei muttered. 

"These are like the blood cells of the apartment. I'm not joking," Aston said. "This whole place is alive and we are inside it."

"I don't know what to make of that..." Song Lei muttered. Now that he felt a little bit better, he decided to go back to the lower floors. He was hoping that he would be able to meet Damien before he was gone. "I have to go..."

"Are you sure you don't want to rest anymore? Well... Your body is fine but..." Aston muttered.

"No problem," Song Lei said. Shrugging Aston threw himself on his bed.

After seeing Aston's tired and wounded state, Song Lei left him alone. After all, Aston could deal with his wounds on his own much better than Song Lei could.

Quickly descending the stairs, Song Lei went back to the 7th floor.

He didn't waste any time and directly went to the meeting room. However, it was completely empty.

"Huh... He is already gone huh..?" Song Lei muttered with a bittersweet smile on his face. "Well, that's the best fo- What is that?" He suddenly froze as he felt an ominous feeling. Trusting his sixth sense, he tried to figure out what was going on and looked around.

*Bang

A faint noise of a muffled gunshot resounded throughout the apartment.

'Are we under attack again? No... I would've gotten a notification if that were the case...'

*Ding

This time, a noise of metal hitting metal echoed in his ears, finally letting him know where these noises were coming from.

'It's the first floor!' Song Lei shouted in his mind. Dashing out of the meeting room and the 7th floor, he jumped down from the stairwell to reach the lowest floor as quickly as possible. He knew that the apartment was in an injured state and wouldn't be able to swallow him. After free-falling for a few seconds, he hit the floor with a loud thud, sending clouds of dust flying in every direction.

A sharp sense of pain traveled all throughout his body. Fortunately, he hadn't broken any of his bones.

Turning his head to look towards the corridor, he noticed a corpse lifelessly lying on the floor. As Song Lei kept staring, he realized who this corpse belonged to.

"Old Wolf..."

As Song Lei muttered these two words, his face became ghastly white with grief. As he took another step, his feet hit something heavy, looking down, he saw a big shadow ball lying on the ground.

Instantly taking out his phone to use his flashlight, he realized that the shadow ball was actually He Lingxin's lifeless body.

'D- Damien!' Song Lei shouted in his mind. Dashing out into the corridor, he noticed two robed figures standing in front of Damien with swords in their hands.

Damien was wounded behind recognition with blood pouring out of every part of his body. He looked like he would fall if a gentle breeze were to hit him.

'He is alive!'

When he saw this, Song Lei's ghastly face flushed with anger. Not wasting a single second, he activated his last charge of bullet time and his adrenal rush skill as he took out the excommunicator from his soul storage.

Kicking the ground with all of the strength he had left in his body, he appeared in front of the two robed men.

These robed men were obviously from the Secret Blood Order. They had come here to destroy the branch that Heaven Alliance had established here and take over the control of the apartment. The last team they sent there wasn't strong enough so they had to send over two soul masters to deal with the branch members. According to them, they would quickly deal with a few non-soul users and quickly finish their job.

However, these two Secret Blood Order members had no idea that they would have to deal with someone like Song Lei. They were grossly unprepared.

*Swoosh!

In an instant, Song Lei decapitated the two soul masters with a swing of his sword. They weren't even able to realize what had happened before losing their lives in the hands of Song Lei.

[Congratulations! You've managed to beat Jin Huang of The Secret Blood Order! You've gained EXP!]

[Congratulations! You've managed to beat...]

Disregarding the notifications, Song Lei swung his sword and swept away the blood that had accumulated on top of it. He then put it into his soul storage and dashed towards Damien.

"A- Are you okay!?" Song Lei shouted with anxiety. Stopping in front of Damien, he looked into his eyes.

They were tired and empty. Song Lei could see a gentle smile on Damien's mouth. Seeing that Damien was motionless, Song Lei tapped his shoulder as he looked towards Damien's hands to see if they were moving.

"Dam-?"

*Thud

Coming to a horrifying realization, Song Lei turned his head to understand where the noise came from. Damien's head fell to the ground and rolled before hitting a wall and coming to a stop.

Song Lei's eyes widened....

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