399 Collateral Damage, A Disadvantage at Fighting the Enemy on Its Homeground (1/2)

Day 67 - 9:20 PM - Maryhill Retreat House, Ortigas Avenue Extension, Dolores, Taytay, Rizal

The sun had already set hours ago. Since the apocalypse started, people would try to catch as much rest as possible. It was because they would need the energy from that sleep to survive the next day.

Inside the Retreat House, however, almost everyone was still awake. With the unknown danger looming around them, who would be able to sleep at all? Only a few managed to sleep despite the current situation. They were either the children of the soldiers and a few adults that desperately needed to rest.

Especially the soldiers that fought the whole day almost without pause to reach this place.

As for the other people, they would not be able to sleep even if they wanted to. They were sleepy. However, the anxiety of the incident of a ghost appearing hit their minds hard. Many of them were skeptical about ghosts before the outbreak. The appearance of Mutagen on Earth, however, turned the beliefs of many around.

***

On the third floor, Mark's group was engaged in a group discussion to pass time.

Most of the topics were about Mark though. From Rollan and the other's perspective when they were in high school.

In the middle of the talk, they suddenly fell silent. It was because the roof of the Retreat House started to make noises. The creaking sound of the roof felt unpleasant for some reason. Aside from the roof, they also noticed that the trees around the Retreat House were also reacting to the strong wind that suddenly blew.

The sounds caused by the strong wind blowing stopped shortly.

Nevertheless, things had gotten worse instead.

It was because everyone suddenly felt a heavy and dark feeling inside their hearts.

At the side, no one noticed that despite acting normal, Amihan was shivering.

As an elemental spirit herself, she was more sensitive to this feeling. She felt that a very strong evil spirit appeared nearby. That strong wind that made the whole building shake along with the trees outside was the evil spirit displaying its prowess.

Furthermore, it was not just wind. It carried an aura that would make unknowing creatures to feel negative emotions. Luckily, it seemed that most of that aura was filtered by the wall of Miasma her Master made. If not, it would not be surprising if some people that were affected started killing each other.

This aura was something almost all evil spirits possessed. Normally, this aura could only make people fear the evil spirit unconditionally. Stronger ones, however, could affect people's mentality and turn them into murdering psychopaths.

There were two more frequent stances of this. One was no matter how people were close to each other, once they were affected by this aura, they would run away while leaving everyone else behind. The second was when ”mentally disturbed” people go on a murder spree including their family members before committing suicide after the effect of the aura was gone.

Normal people would always think of those circumstances as normal events despite the dark secret behind it though.

While everyone felt the dark aura looming the area, they felt fear. However, that was not the end of it.

GRAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!

The high-pitched screech eerily composed of hundreds of voices entered everyone's ears. All of them could not help but cover their ears. However, it was not enough. The screech was it being heard through their minds instead of entering their ears. Many were not able to handle it and fell on their knees. Those that had the worse fell on the ground unconscious.

On the third floor, the members of Mark's group was not an exception. Amihan, being the most sensitive to this immediately lost consciousness. Aephelia who now dwelled in a Sylph's body was the same.

Most of the children were also not able to handle that screech. Both of Odelina's children, Siegfried and Odette fell down, unconscious. It was the same for Jester, Monique's son. Mikio also lost his consciousness while Emika was barely holding on.

Iola who had a mentality of an adult and memories of several years of fighting was able to endure without fall unto her knees.

Most of the adults though were not to endure it fully. Odelina who was worried about her children could not even sit straight as she tried to wake them up. The others were not doing any better.

Unexpectedly, there were five that managed to endure it. Some of them, it was questionable whether they were even affected.

Mei was not affected at all and tended to Iola immediately. Jaeya was the same as she worried about Theodore. The baby was not affected too though. Abbygale was able to endure it too and only clutched her ears with a frown.

And Miracle... She had no clue what in the world was going on. As almost everyone around her fell, she only looked around in confusion.

As what happened was rather serious, the first thing that came into Jaeya's mind was to contact their leader.

Before she was able to do so, loud sounds of destruction could already be heard north of the Retreat House.

***

At the steeply sloped area south of the seminary, Mark stood his ground as he endured the screech.

When the abomination in front of him started to release that long loud screech, he thought that it was just screeching out of anger or trying to intimidate Mark. However...

”Tsk!”

Mark clicked his tongue as his eyes turned red.

As he was directly in front of the monster, he faced the brunt of the invisible attack. He did not expect such an attack. Even despite his trait as a Mutator, having his emotions taken away, he still felt cold on his feet.

”To think that it's a mental attack.”

Mark murmured as he jumped back. The attack was similar to his [Emotion Induction] where he could afflict his target with a certain kind of emotion. The difference was that what this monster used was more powerful. An attack equivalent to the fear, anger, and grief of its hundreds of victims.

To endure it, Mark started using [Emotion Induction] on himself.

BOOM!

In the midst of its deafening screams, the monster stomped the ground causing quite a number of dead bodies in the heaps to splatter around disgustingly.

That stomp, however, was the start of its attack.

Since the aura it released did not make its target fall, it started on a full brunt attack.

As the huge monster charged forwards Mark, he felt really uncomfortable.

It was not because of the mental attack. The reason was something else. As a loner, he always felt that the stares of other people were rather uncomfortable. Now, hundreds of pairs of eyes were locked onto him. It felt disturbing in its own right.

This monster was one of Mark's banes. At least, mentally.

”Flam, get ready.”

Mark said which caused the sword sheathed on his lower back to tremble in excitement.

Flam was a sword made for bloodshed, battles like this were what made it the happiest.

Mark stood ran around as the monster approached. Along the way, it scattered more rotting corpses around while uprooting trees violently. The several-decades or probably older trees were snapped and destroyed like sticks from the hands of feet of this humongous monster.