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Looking at the heavy wooden door.
Noah and Leon S. Kennedy exchanged a glance. Without a word, they simultaneously raised their weapons, muzzles pointed at the door.
Leon used his free hand to slowly press down on the cold iron ring on the door. He took a deep breath and then pushed inward with force.
It didn't budge.
The door was bolted from the inside.
"Let me."
Noah's voice was low and calm.
Leon stepped aside to make room. Noah stepped forward and raised his right foot.
Bang!
A thunderous boom erupted in the narrow basement.
The bolt behind the wooden door was shattered by the kick! Countless wood splinters and dust blasted into the darkness behind the door!
A metallic smell of blood, thick enough to suffocate, mixed with the stench of decaying corpses, surged out from behind the door like a flood from a broken dam, hitting them full in the face.
Leon instinctively covered his nose and mouth with his arm, his brows furrowed tightly.
He was all too familiar with this smell.
The streets of Raccoon City, the rainforests of Operation Javier—every purgatory he had visited was permeated with this fragrance of death.
Noah's expression remained unchanged as he was the first to step into the darkness.
The beam of the flashlight pierced through the thick bloody mist, illuminating the scene behind the door inch by inch.
This was a much more spacious underground area.
The floor was completely covered in a layer of dark red, viscous plasma. Stepping on it produced a squelching sound.
In the center of the room, a crude and sinister altar had been constructed out of black stones.
A circle of white candles surrounded the altar, their flames flickering eerily, casting an ominous yellow glow over everything.
In the center of the altar lay a disemboweled body.
The body was bloated and massive, its skin an unnatural pinkish-white. At first glance, it looked like a slaughtered hog, but the twisted limbs and visible bone structure gave it a hair-raising human silhouette.
It looked more like a monster that had been forcibly fattened, distorted, and crossbred.
Behind the altar, a long wooden table was placed against the wall.
A few candles were also lit on the table, their dim yellow light clearly illuminating a large piece of parchment pinned to the wall.
It was a hand-drawn map.
The lines were crooked, yet they accurately outlined the layout of the entire village, from the suspension bridge they had just crossed to the location of every house, all marked clearly.
In the northwest corner of the map, at a location marked as a lake, next to a solitary church building, a large 'X' had been violently drawn with blood-red pigment.
And in the center of that red cross, a photograph was pinned with a rusty thumbtack.
In the photo, a blonde girl lay unconscious on a cold stone floor. Her hair was messy and her face was stained with dirt, but her delicate profile was still instantly recognizable to the two men.
It was Ashley Graham.
Around the photo, a dozen other photographs were densely pinned.
The people in the photos were male and female, old and young, of various ethnicities. They were all dressed as tourists, their faces filled with anticipation and excitement for their journey.
And on every single photo, a shocking red cross had been drawn with the same blood-red pigment.
The fate of those tourists who had gone missing in recent months was self-evident.
This village was not some isolated settlement at all.
It was a slaughterhouse.
A nest of Followers who used living people as sacrifices.
"It seems our final destination is very clear now." Noah withdrew his gaze.
Leon didn't speak; he just silently pulled an encrypted satellite terminal from his tactical vest.
After a brief electronic tone, the communication was connected.
"Roost, this is vulture one."
From the other end, a steady, calm, and professional female voice immediately came through.
"This is Hunnigan. What's the situation?"
A beautiful Black woman appeared on the screen.
She had neat short hair and was sitting in a bright office, with complex data streams flashing on the screen behind her.
Ingrid Hunnigan was the intelligence support for their mission.
"Target baby eagle, it's basically confirmed she's in this village." Leon's voice was low but fast.
"It seems the intel was correct. Very good." Hunnigan's voice remained steady, seemingly unsurprised by the result.
"I need the exact coordinates of that lake near the village. She's likely being held in a church there."
"Understood, let me see..." Hunnigan's fingers tapped rapidly on the keyboard. "Wait a moment, the satellite signal in the mountains is a bit..."
"The situation here isn't right. The Villager... they've all been infected by something. They're extremely aggressive."
Leon scanned the surrounding darkness alertly.
Just then!
Thump! Thump! Thump!
Heavy, hurried footsteps suddenly echoed from the direction of the stairs where they had come from!
"We have a situation here. Talk later."
Leon didn't hesitate and decisively cut the communication.
Before his voice had even faded, there was a deafening explosion!
The battered wooden door they had just entered through was blown apart from the outside by an indescribable force!
Wood splinters exploded, and stone fragments flew everywhere!
A giant axe gleaming with cold light, accompanied by a whistling sound that tore through the air, hacked in from outside the door, slamming hard into the stone wall beside the door frame!
Clang!
Sparks flew!
A burly young man with a shaved head, holding a giant axe nearly half as tall as he was, walked through the shattered doorway.
His eyes were exactly like those of the old man Noah had kicked to death—filled with fanaticism, violence, and emptiness.
Behind him followed two middle-aged men holding rusty machetes, their eyes equally dull and crazed.
The three of them blocked the only exit, staring fixedly at Noah and Leon by the bloodstained altar with the look of someone watching livestock about to be slaughtered.
Leon looked at these three uninvited guests, then at the cold weapons in their hands. A cold smile curled at the corner of his mouth.
"It seems we've interrupted your dinner time?" he mocked in fluent Spanish. "Your hospitality here is truly... unpretentious."
The bald youth didn't answer, only letting out a beast-like low growl from his throat as his hands tightened around the axe handle.
Noah slowly loosened his wrists and ankles, his joints letting out a series of crisp popping sounds.
He holstered his desert eagle and calmly met those three murderous gazes.
"Since the hosts are so enthusiastic," he looked at Leon, "then as guests, we must return the favor properly."
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