Chapter 374 The Beast
After entering the opera house, you will see the marble stairs, the popular fables depicted on the ceiling, and the corridor above the stairs that looks like an ancient castle structure, as well as scattered stars on the corridor. The light under the reflection of the glass and mirror brings out a bit of darkness.
Eclecticism perfectly blends classical romance with the newly created realistic literary color.
Rick is a big fan of this style.
He was fascinated by all the decorative elements in this building.
But at this moment, he has no time to appreciate the beauty of these art works piled up with money, because in the direction of the nearly two thousand surrounding stages, there are melodious and melodious piano music climbing up the stairs to these surroundings. In the corridor of the hall, the rhythmic rhythm produced after the keys are struck is like the sound of footsteps, which makes Rick feel that someone is approaching him with irregular steps, and that at any time, there may be someone who is more than ten meters long. An outline appeared behind the heavy curtains...
Rick became very quiet. He quickened his pace and moved quickly in the corridor towards the part facing the stage, trying his best to Get a perspective corresponding to the stage, and want to see clearly whose hand the piano sound comes from.
However, the rain outside has made the sunlight that should have passed through the lighting dome become extremely weak. Indoors, there are only scattered kerosene lampstands hanging in front of the doors in the corridors and walkways. The light is not enough to support this. This is a grand opera house, and the audience seats below are like an abyss, filled with chaos and darkness.
Even if Rick walked to the corridor directly in front of the stage, he could not clearly see what was on the stage with a pure black background. He could only vaguely capture the outlines of some objects moving in the darkness. But he couldn't even tell whether it was a human being...
The sound of the piano never stopped from beginning to end.
What struck Rick most strangely was that the melody sounded very familiar.
It is the melody from the background track of the third act of "Sleepwalker".
The increasingly heavy and frustrating melody seemed a bit monotonous in this empty room, but the mood was extremely full. The scene on the stage last night even appeared in Rick's mind.
......
Rick was looking at the dark stage direction in a daze.
He couldn't help but ask:
"What is it that makes Amina sad...the indifference and determination of her fiancé..."
"Maybe it should be, no one knows What happened to her in her dream..."
"Why did she break into the room of a strange traveler in a panic late at night?"
...
These words came from Rick's mouth, but they were not his intentions.
The effect of the spell is still continuing.
But the tone of these words no longer belongs to Marty.
It was like an entangled ghost, chasing Rick relentlessly to discuss the plot of the unfinished opera.
Rick stood by the window sill in the corridor, his thoughts falling into chaos again.
...
At this time, the piano music lingering in the opera house came to an abrupt end.
Immediately afterwards, there was some sneaky movement on the stage, as if something was crawling in the darkness.
The movement had a sense of viscosity and tearing at the same time. However, just based on the sound, no one could imagine the picture hidden behind the darkness.
“No one knows, and no one has thought about, what happened to her in her dream...”
Rick spoke again.
This time, he seemed to be in Amina's perspective. He saw the scene of himself being chased by wild beasts in the dream. Those ferocious fangs and claws seemed to tear the entire night into pieces. fragments.
......
"Or perhaps, it was never Amina's subjective wish to marry her fiancé, and she never approved of all the arrangements."
"There was no wild beast chasing her in the dream. What forced her to flee was a more cruel reality."
...
“Perhaps, she herself is longing to become a beast.”
“She once prayed to the gods, hoping that she would have the power to fight against reality. She needed sharp claws, Need fangs."
"In the dream, she can express her true feelings without caring about etiquette, rules, or even order."
...
Rick's vision began to cloud.
A strange green light shone in his pupils, and his expression gradually changed from the original solemnity to confusion and sluggishness, as if something incomprehensible was placed in front of him.
He opened his mouth and opened and closed his upper and lower jaws repeatedly.
Driven by the effect of the spell, he said unconsciously:
“People who have a higher synchronization rate with the old gods in dreams will turn into beasts.”
…
At the same time, in the abyss-like darkness on the stage, the outline of a twisted and ferocious creature slowly emerged.
The first thing exposed to the kerosene light was the protruding face of the beast whose head was covered by a rusty metal cage. Its snout and mouth were squeezed out of the cage, and the cage was stained with rust. The chains and metal structure were completely distorted. What was squeezed out from the gap in the cage looked like a wild dog, but it also looked like the head of a horse, because exposed at the front of the mouth was a row of upper and lower incisors similar to humans. Teeth, but more ferocious and terrifying.
In addition, there was a pair of bloody eyes, looking at Rick in the corridor across the entire auditorium through the gap in the metal cage.
A long, broken chain was dragged behind the metal cage.
As its huge body walked down the steps of the stage, the chain and the steps made a crisp sound...
"Ding bell...Ding bell..."
The sharp sound The ear-piercing movement made Rick suddenly come back to his senses on the corridor!
His thoughts seemed to be forcibly pulled back from the quagmire at that moment, with indescribable tearing pain.
And all this is just because of the sound of the chain dragging on the steps. That voice was all too familiar to Rick.
Since the moment Milo used the magic ritual on him, the crisp sound of the iron chains colliding has been surrounding Rick's mind and has never disappeared for a moment.
......
The moment he came back to his senses, only the outline of the piano remained on the dark stage in the distance.
The weak light outside the room passed through the glass of the lighting dome and fell slantingly onto the side auditorium. Rick's peripheral vision captured the moment of a huge body passing by in that area.
When he fixed his gaze on that area, there was no movement in the audience below.
The next second, the hair on Rick’s body stood up.
Because this time the crisp sound of the chains no longer came from the audience below.
It came from the end of the corridor where he is now...
In that corridor, there is only one kerosene lamp that is about to burn out every ten meters as a light source. At the end, a stretched shadow was slowly approaching.
The height of the kerosene lamp is about two meters from the wall to the floor.
The shadow of the creature was reflected on the ceiling of the corridor.
From Rick's perspective, he could only clearly see a large shadow at the end of the corridor swaying towards him, accompanied by the sound of chains dragging on the ground.
…
“Oh my god…it slipped away.”
Rick turned around and started running.
The huge creature lying on all fours at the end of the corridor held a metal cage on its head and let out a dull growl.
It has completely set its sights on Rick.
......
"This is not right. Those words I have been hearing all this time cannot be said by a monster."
Rick ran down the corridor as fast as he could.
These corridors are connected to each other, and there are many floors stacked up and down. This is a high-end audience seat when operas and other performances are performed.
It’s just that today’s good show was not performed on the stage, but appeared in the audience seats...
Although there was a huge and terrifying creature of unknown species behind it. , but Rick's emotions and thinking were still calm in all aspects, at least he didn't panic.
He knew that the entrances to many rooms in the opera house were locked, so the escape route he chose was basically towards the open space, and it was impossible to fall into a dead end.
...
In this way, a chase battle between man and beast was quietly staged under the mottled light and shadow effect of interlaced light and dark.
Rick is ridiculously fast.
As he continued to mobilize his body's functions, his heart rate increased rapidly, and the shapes on the surface of his body that were no different from normal humans were gradually disappearing. For example, his facial bones began to expand, and his legs began to expand. Growth, and the classic eyeball falling out of the socket, and Rick's response was to kick the eyeball violently while running, then catch up with the green eyeball and catch it Then stuff it into the eye socket again.
The picture is weird enough.
And I don’t know when, piano music came from the stage again.
And this time it is no longer the sad melody in the song "Sleepwalker", but a relatively light and active melody. The beating notes emitted every time the keys are touched seem to be related to Rick and the Beast. The chase battles between them are perfectly coordinated and complement each other.
Rick is getting faster and faster.
His potential has been stimulated to the greatest extent. The physical strength of the living corpse as a servant of Glaaki far exceeds that of ordinary humans, and the strange proteins that Rick has eaten over the past year have Coming from a variety of freaks such as the descendants of the Familia and priests, according to the Scarlet Witch, the way this guy lives is a blasphemy against the old gods. Sooner or later, he will become a being hated by the gods.
Gradually, Rick discovered that he could move freely in this huge horseshoe-shaped opera house. The monster could not touch him at all. He could even easily jump to the chandelier directly above the hall. Hang yourself more than ten meters in the air, and you can also shuttle back and forth between the corridors on different floors...
The roars and fear from the monster behind him disappeared as time went on.
Rick even enjoyed it a little bit.
......
But at a certain point in time, the sound of piano lingering in the opera house suddenly stopped.
The picture in front of Rick suddenly became brighter, even a bit dazzling.
…
When he came back to his senses, he found that he was hanging upside down on the edge of the corridor.
There were stunned audiences staring at him from almost everywhere, including the auditorium directly below the corridor, on the stage, and on the spiral staircase.
Yes.
Everything that appeared here before, including the beast wearing an iron cage, the piano music, and the thrilling chase, were all illusory.
At this time, the opera house was conducting daytime performances.
But obviously, the most frequent part has been performed by Rick in the past ten minutes.
......
At this moment, Rick realized that he had encountered the same experience as Amina.
(End of this chapter)