The cellar was surprisingly clean. Some basic living supplies and a few opened cans of food were scattered around, and a heavy alloy door sat directly across from the stairs. No stench down here.
The door was slightly ajar.
Soren pushed it open and stepped inside. Motion-sensor lights flickered on automatically.
The first thing he saw was the massive display wall at the far end. Most of the screens were completely black. The few still working showed live feeds of the area around the abandoned cabin directly above.
The largest central monitor displayed another wooden shack deep in the woods, surrounded by eight faintly glowing torches.
"So this is…"
"A monitoring station for the demon?"
Soren frowned and moved closer.
Most of the computer towers were powered down. The remaining active screens flickered with dense streams of data graphs.
On the edge of the console sat a dusty notebook.
[Month X, Day X]
[Cole and I moved in today. The higher-ups had the weirdest orders—we had to go kneel and worship at that cabin deep in the forest before we could even start working.]
...
[Month X, Day X]
[Delivering food to that cabin every week is fucking disgusting.]
[No one's ever seen what's actually inside. Nobody dares enter. All we know is that after we leave the food, a pair of small hands reaches out to take it. What the hell is living in there?]
...
[Month X]
[Cole's been acting strange lately… He always looks exhausted, like he can't sleep. There's this permanent smell of blood on him that won't wash off.]
[Are the canned rations from Logistics even real? They taste like cardboard!]
...
[Month X]
[Something's wrong! This is all wrong!]
[Cole's face looks different… his features are changing?!]
[No wonder he's always tired. He's been sneaking out at night!]
[I finally followed him once. God… I saw him eating a raw deer.]
...
[Month X]
[I… I don't feel right. It itches so bad… bugs crawling inside my bones…]
...
[Month X]
[Cole stopped breathing.]
[…I'm looking at him… he smells so good…]
[I'm so hungry.]
[But the meat smells so good.]
[I'm sorry, Cole. I'm just too hungry.]
The diary ended abruptly there.
The rest of the pages were covered in frantic black scribbles and incoherent rambling that made zero sense.
Soren's brows drew tight.
It was obvious—this place was a forward observation base used to monitor the demon deeper in the forest.
This was almost certainly the same organization that had been watching the ancient Creeper back in Poho County.
The researcher named Cole had slowly mutated, developing a taste for raw meat. The writer had eventually suffered the same fate.
Soren let out a cold laugh.
If a demon didn't actively suppress its aura, ordinary humans couldn't survive long in its territory. The constant exposure to demonic energy was like slow poison, eating away at both mind and body.
Over time human genes would twist toward demonic traits. But humans didn't have the energy to finish the transformation, so they ended up as the deformed freaks outside.
In their warped minds they had probably started worshipping the demon as their creator or "Mother Goddess."
To please it, they followed their new instincts and began hunting living things in the forest.
Soren set the notebook down and tapped the ESC key a few times.
The data windows minimized, revealing the desktop.
There was one last document.
He opened it. Aside from charts and metrics, there was a blurry photo attached at the bottom.
The creature in the image was massive and looked like a hulking, deformed moose.
Soren stared at the screen for a moment.
Yutun?
According to the myths, this was supposedly Loki's fourth illegitimate child, especially skilled in mental manipulation and illusions.
It also had an extreme obsession with being worshipped.
When Yutun cornered its prey, if the victim knelt and showed weakness or submission, it would spare them temporarily and leave five bloody finger holes in their chest—marking them as one of its chosen followers.
After reading the file, Soren tried checking the other computers.
Unfortunately, he found no more useful clues about the organization behind all this.
He destroyed the entire monitoring station, then left the cabin and continued deeper into the forest.
The farther he went, the thicker the demonic aura in the air became.
But now that he knew it was Yutun, he wasn't worried.
In the original story, Yutun leaned heavily toward mental and illusion-based abilities. Its physical body was relatively weak—even normal humans could hurt it.
Plus, the system's point reward was exactly the same as the one for the ancient Creeper back in Poho County.
That meant its overall combat strength was roughly on the same level.
Maybe even a little weaker. The only real difference would be how annoying it was to fight.
While he was thinking—
A figure suddenly appeared ahead that Soren never expected.
White hair. A grotesque skull-shaped greatsword resting on one shoulder. A bright red coat standing out sharply against the colorless forest.
"Dante?"
Soren stopped, eyes wide with surprise.
Dante wore his usual cocky grin. He stabbed the massive sword into the ground with one hand.
"Not bad, kid. Handling all these messy jobs by yourself lately must've been rough."
Soren looked at him and sighed helplessly. "You've got some nerve saying that. You left a mountain of debt and problems, then just disappeared."
"Yeah, sorry about that," Dante said softly, opening his arms as he slowly walked toward Soren. "But it's okay now. Uncle's back. Leave the rest to me."
"Wow… that's almost touching," Soren said with a smile, walking forward to meet him.
The moment they were about to embrace—
Soren's smiling face turned ice-cold. His arm shot up and the barrel of the Devil May Cry shotgun jammed straight under the fake Dante's chin.
BOOM!
The gunshot cracked through the woods.
"Fuck. Even pretending to be him gave me the creeps," Soren sneered coldly as the creature's head exploded. "If you're gonna impersonate someone, at least do your homework first."
"That old bastard would never start with sweet talk. First thing out of his mouth would've been 'Did you bring pizza?' Second thing would be trying to make me pay the office bills."
"Him acting all warm and caring? Yeah, right. Way too fucking unrealistic."
The fake Dante's body shattered into black mist and dissolved.
A thick, nauseating stench hit Soren's face.
A massive dark shadow had already crept right in front of him.
Two small hands were reaching for his head, clearly trying to rip it off while he was distracted by the illusion.
Soren instantly jumped backward. The two small hands stretched like rubber, chasing after him.
BOOM!
Another shotgun blast forced the hands back.
Once he landed and created distance, Soren finally got a clear look at Yutun.
Its forelimbs were long and powerful, while its hind legs were thick and short. Sharp spine bones pierced through its back like jagged saw blades.
Where its head should have been was a headless human torso instead. The torso's arms were raised high, with bloody antlers growing from the palms.
Below that hung two long, swinging arms. Between them, two eerie green glowing dots locked onto Soren.
In the next instant, the two dangling arms stretched like noodles and shot toward him.
Soren didn't dodge. He charged straight at the incoming arms.
As he ran, purple demonic energy surged around his own arms. A pair of giant spectral hands formed.
This was a new application of the ghost-hand technique he had discovered while fighting the three-fingered freak earlier.
The two purple hands in mid-air grabbed Yutun's extending arms with perfect accuracy.
Soren pulled the trigger.
BOOM! BOOM!
Enchanted silver slugs tore the elongated limbs apart.
"Hisssss—!"
Yutun let out a piercing screech of pain.
Black mist immediately poured from the stumps, rapidly regenerating two brand new arms.
Now completely enraged, Yutun pawed the ground, lowered its body, and aimed the bloody antlers on its "head" straight at Soren. It charged like a freight train, smashing through thick trees like they were toothpicks.
Soren dropped his center of gravity and poured every ounce of demonic power into his arms. Four spectral hands reached out at once, clamping down hard on Yutun's antlers.
The tremendous impact pushed Soren backward, his feet carving two deep trenches in the dirt.
But after sliding only a few meters, he planted himself firmly.
"Struggling this hard? Why don't you just lie down and rest?"
Soren sneered. He twisted his arms violently to the side.
All of Yutun's power had been concentrated in its head. The sudden torque completely broke its balance, flipping the massive body onto its side.
Soren leaped onto its back.
One hand gripped the remaining antler while the other, wrapped in raging purple demonic energy, slammed down with terrifying force.
CRACK!
The antler snapped clean off.
Yutun thrashed desperately to get up, but Soren kept its head pinned to the ground with overwhelming power.
Four spectral arms rained down punch after punch onto its skull.
THUD! THUD!
The heavy impacts echoed through the silent forest.
Soren didn't stop until the creature beneath him finally stopped moving.
Its original "head" was now completely caved in and shapeless.