Weeks after joining the Guardians, Lin received his first solo mission.
The mission was seemingly simple on the surface: Investigate a small village with which all communication had suddenly ceased.
But as he approached the village, he felt something strange in the air, as if the darkness itself was watching him.
He finally reached the entrance to the village, but found no life. There was no bird sound or wind movement, as if the place had frozen in a moment of time.
The houses were silent, their windows dark as if they were staring at him. Lin proceeded cautiously, all his senses ready for anything.
Halfway down the road, he stopped abruptly. There were footprints on the ground, but they weren't ordinary.
They were small, twisted, as if the creature that left them was not normal. He felt a chill run through his body, but his mission wouldn't let him back down.
Holding his breath, he decided to enter a house. The wooden door creaked unpleasantly as it slowly opened.
Lin entered, and the scene inside was nightmarish. The stench immediately hit his nose-a mixture of mold and decaying blood. When he looked inside, he froze.
In the center of the room, a hanged person was hanging from the ceiling, but his lower body was horribly severed, leaving streaks of blood running down the wall.
The right half of his head was completely flayed, the bones exposed and the skin torn. In front of him, there was another corpse of a man sitting on the floor, his hand holding a knife, but the lower half of his lower jaw was torn off as if something had eaten it.
The corpse's eyes were open, looking straight up at the ceiling in a lifeless expression.
He walked out of the house, trying to calm his breathing, but the scenes didn't stop.
In another house, he saw a body lying on the floor, but it was severed in the chest, its bones protruding, its heart missing.
The person was holding an unactivated grenade, as if it was his last attempt to stay alive. His eyes were wide open and filled with blood.
As Lin was advancing through the village, he heard a strange sound coming from one of the houses.
He cautiously entered, only to find a strange-looking person, with a huge mouth and closed eyes, standing in front of the mutilated body of a person with half of his face bitten off.
Lin didn't hesitate, and dashed off at full speed, delivering a Storm Blast blow that instantly destroyed the creature.
"What happened in this village?" Lin said to himself, trying to digest what was happening: "What happened in this village? There are mutants and mutilated corpses?"
He continued on until he reached a house, where he found a person sitting in the corner, his body shaking all over. He had his arms wrapped around himself, his eyes staring into nothingness.
As Lin approached, the man began to mutter: "It's a living hell... It's my fault, it's my fault..." His voice was filled with remorse and madness.
Lin stood in front of the trembling man, certain that this person had lived through an indescribable nightmare. His eyes were lost, as if searching for a way out of the memories that were trapping him.
He tried to calm him down, but the words didn't seem to reach him, as if fear had taken root in the deepest corners of his heart.
As Lin explored the room, a body lying next to the wall caught his eye. The uniformed policeman seemed to be frozen in an eternal moment of terror.
His rigid expression revealed a mixture of anger and fear, and next to him was a laptop with the screen still on.
The words that appeared on the screen were repeated incessantly: "You can't escape... You can't escape..."
Lin stared at the computer, sensing that behind this message lay something beyond logic. The constant voice seemed to speak directly to his mind, trying to instill fear.
He approached it slowly before picking up the computer and smashing it hard on the floor. He knew it wouldn't stop the real horror that surrounded him, but at least he wanted to silence the voice that was messing with his thoughts.
Lin turned back to the man and asked him in a firm voice: "Who are you and what are you doing here?"
The man slowly raised his head, his eyes empty as if they were windows to another world.
He said in a hoarse voice: "Who am I? What's the point of you knowing me? We're already in hell... This is all my fault... My fault..."
Lin again tried to calm him down, and said in a firm but reassuring tone: "I'm here on a mission. Tell me what happened in this village, I may be able to help."
The man looked at Lin for a moment, as if his words had restored some of his consciousness, before he slowly got up, as if a tremendous weight was weighing him down.
"You need to get out of here," he said in a trembling voice. "If the devil knows you're here, he'll send Julia, Osric, and Levi to kill you."
Lin felt a chill run through his body, but he kept his face still and asked: "Who are they, and who is this demon you speak of?"
The man began to speak in a broken voice, as if struggling against his memories: "We used to live in simple happiness, a small village where everyone knew each other. Then... Something unexpected happened. A mysterious energy suddenly appeared, coming from one of the villagers. This energy changed everything. The first person it hit was Osric."
He paused for a moment, as if the words were resisting coming out. Then he continued.
with deep fear in his voice: "Osric... He was a good-hearted young man. But he has changed. His mouth grew unnaturally large, his eyes became empty holes. Osric was no longer the same. He became a monster obsessed with violence. In a moment of madness, he killed one of our friends."
The picture began to become clearer in Lin's mind, and he remembered the monster he had encountered in the house.
He realized that it was Osric, and that he had narrowly escaped facing this living nightmare.
"Osric..." He said softly, as if the name triggered new memories. "I saw him here. He tried to kill me."
The man suddenly raised his head, his gaze filled with fear and surprise. "You confronted him? And survived?" His words sounded like he was believing an impossible miracle.
"If you survived Osric, Julia and Levi won't leave you. They are more monstrous than he is."
Suddenly, his words were interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps coming from outside. The ground shook slightly, and a foul odor spread through the air, like a mixture of blood and mold.
The man suddenly stood up, his gaze fixed on the door in horror: "It's Levi... He knew you were here!"