BOOM!
The thunderous explosion rolled through the grand hall, and the massive fireball swallowed everything at the staircase in an instant. The crystal chandelier shattered under the shockwave, glass shards and thick smoke scattering through the air.
Ethan was shoved back two steps by the blast wave, but he clutched the still-smoking launcher tightly, eyes locked on the depths of the smoke without blinking.
The dust slowly cleared.
The once lavish solid-wood staircase was more than half gone, the walls scorched black.
Lady Dimitrescu and her three daughters lay sprawled across the rubble.
Her wide black hat was nowhere to be found, the white gown she took such pride in had been burned into tattered strips, and her body was covered in horrifying lacerations.
The fly swarms the three daughters had turned into were largely vaporized by the heat, and what remained of their human shells was charred and broken.
"Did we get them?" Ethan swallowed, feeling a little incredulous.
A second later, his pupils shrank.
The four figures lying in a pool of blood weren't dead. Bizarre black fibrous matter was spilling out of Lady Dimitrescu's wounds.
The Mold behaved like stitching thread with a mind of its own, dragging and splicing her shattered bones and charred flesh back together at a speed that defied every rule of biology.
"You've got to be kidding me..." Ethan tightened his grip on the launcher, his soaring confidence taking a small hit. "Point-blank hit with a rocket, and she's fine?"
"The Mold just broke through the ceiling of what carbon-based life can handle. Nothing to be that surprised about."
Ryan chuckled softly, unhurriedly bringing the RPG on his right shoulder up to firing position.
He watched Lady Dimitrescu writhing through the rubble, struggling to stand again. Her face was covered in blood, her once arrogant features twisted by pain and humiliation. She opened her mouth and let out a shrill, air-leaking shriek. "You... you two damned insects..."
"You talk too much."
Ryan didn't even bother with the sights, didn't even give her the courtesy of finishing her sentence. He pulled the trigger.
BOOM!
The second high-explosive round trailed a long tail of fire and slammed directly into the already-crumbling remains of the staircase beneath her feet.
Ryan hadn't aimed at the people at all. He'd gone straight for the structure.
With a deafening roar and a floor-shaking tremor, the grand hall's first floor couldn't take the sustained punishment any longer and collapsed outright. A huge black pit opened up before them.
Lady Dimitrescu and her three daughters didn't even have time to scream before they plunged straight down into the lightless depths, along with countless chunks of stone and splintered wood.
Ryan stepped to the edge of the pit and switched on his X-ray vision, sweeping his gaze downward.
Somewhere under the mountain of debris, the four of them had been crushed into several unidentifiable smears of bloody pulp.
The Mold in their bodies was still writhing frantically, trying to repair, but the damage was too widespread, and the burn effects of the high-explosive rounds had wrecked their cellular activity. At the moment they were taking in more breaths than they were putting out, and couldn't even manage to reassemble themselves.
"Rocket launchers really are handy." Ryan pulled his gaze back, satisfied. "Come on, leave them. We've got real business to take care of."
The two of them skirted the sunken pit, made their way through the ruined first-floor corridor of the castle, and followed a well-hidden set of stone steps down into a dank, shadowy underground passage.
The passage had clearly been here for some time. The walls were coated in moss and dried black blood.
Ethan went ahead to scout, touching the two spare rocket warheads at the small of his back and glancing back at the launcher still slung on Ryan's shoulder.
"Ryan, you already used up your ammo back there... huh?" Ethan pointed at the rocket launcher, puzzled. "You only brought one round with you, didn't you?"
Ryan bounced the launcher on his shoulder and glanced at Ethan, the corner of his mouth curling into a meaningful little smile. He gave a slight shake of his head and said nothing.
Seeing the smile and the silence, Ethan didn't press, even though he was completely lost. Too many things on this trip already refused to follow ordinary logic.
They walked through the passage for a few minutes, and then the space ahead suddenly opened up.
"Is that... a photograph?" Ethan leaned in.
On the stone table in the middle of the room sat a yellowed old photograph and a small box. The woman in the picture wore a plain black dress, cradling an infant tightly in her arms. The photo was a little blurred, but you could still make out the warmth and tenderness in her eyes.
Ethan opened the box and found a double-winged key inside, along with a yellow crystal block. Ryan took one look and smiled helplessly. "Damn puzzle mechanics."
Thankfully, whether or not he had the key made no difference to him at this point. There wasn't a door in this place that could stop him.
"Wait..."
Ethan stopped short, eyes locked on a large symbol on the side wall, his brow furrowing deeply. "That logo... I've definitely seen it somewhere before. That alternating umbrella pattern, it's too familiar."
As an engineer who'd grown up in the modern information age, a logo that had once saturated the news cycle clearly stirred up a memory buried deep in his mind.
"No need to second-guess yourself." Ryan stepped over beside him, looking calmly at the metal door. "Umbrella Corporation. The ones responsible for the Raccoon City disaster all those years ago."
"Umbrella?!" Ethan sucked in a sharp breath. "What are a multinational pharmaceutical giant's markings doing out here, in the deep woods of Eastern Europe?"
"Because this is the source." Ryan explained quietly. "Umbrella's founder, Spencer, met Miranda right here in his early years. This is where he got his inspiration, which is what sent him back to found Umbrella. In a way, this village is the ancestral grave of every bio-disaster that ever happened."
Ethan was left speechless by the sheer weight of that information. He'd thought he was just here to find his wife, and instead he'd stumbled, quite by accident, into the absolute heart of the world.
As the two of them were talking, an extremely faint rustling sound drifted up from the ground.
Ryan and Ethan looked down at the same time.
On the damp floor, the previously lifeless black Mold, as if drawn by some unseen pull, began to writhe and converge rapidly.
A few seconds later, the black fungal fibers arranged themselves on the bare ground in front of the metal door, forming a clearly legible line of text pointing the way: This way...
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