On a winter's night in 1984, the streets of London are thick with fog. The neon lights of the Old Oak Tavern were haloed in blood-colored patches of light in the fog, a stark contrast to the cold street outside the door. Inspector Logan sat paralyzed at the bar, his tenth glass of whiskey rippling cloudily in the glass.
"Congratulations to the youngest Superintendent! " some raspy voice cut through the din. At the crisp sound of glasses clinking together, Logan struggled to focus his eyes, but saw only the remnants of the visitor's dark black suit, the visitor's face blurred.
Mina, the new waitress at the bar, wiped her glass with downcast eyes, the silver bartending spoon reflecting cold light between her fingers.
"Mina, one more drink! I'll take the check!"
A low timbre rang out from the very person who had just arrived, perhaps so drunk that Logan couldn't even trace the person from his memory. The man in black's mouth opened and closed as if he was saying something to Mina.
Mina's chestnut curls glowed metallic in the gaslight as she poured the liquor with the grace of a mandarin dance. The dark brown goo churned in the glass, gradually turning dark green, and he was in a trance as he saw countless tiny tentacles peeking out from the rim of the glass, the bar's light strips flickering on and on as a glass of unreadable dark liquid pushed in front of him.
"'Echoes of the Abyss', enjoy!" Mina said softly, face expressionless as she wiped the utensil in her hand, the signature of their tavern, known externally as a cup of pouring good wine!
"Oh !!!!" The crowd around them continued to rise.
Strange! In the past, the signboards were not always red?
With no time to think about it, the half-hearted crowd and the strange aroma of the wine forced Logan to pour the "Echo of the Abyss" down his parched throat.
As the crowd and his female companion Shelly looked on, Logan didn't fall! The crowd erupted in loud pops and whistles, with countless people cheering and applauding!
"Just a little something..."
Before he could finish his sentence, Logan's stomach suddenly spasmed. The remaining viscous liquid in the cup was writhing strangely, the cup of "Echoes of the Abyss" that he had poured down on his head earlier was now transmitting some kind of burning sensation, and the hot air flow was spreading down his esophagus and into his respiratory tract, and his breathing was becoming heavy, as if a living creature was tearing at his abdominal cavity.
"Vom-"
Logan slumped woefully over the bar and vomited as the cacophony of laughter around him became clear.
"Better?" His female companion asked him softly from the sidelines.
"Well... Much better..." Logan's head slumped over the bar, his drunken eyes slowly becoming clear.
The drink had sobered up.
The entire tavern suddenly fell into absolute silence, as if everything that had just happened was just a dream.
"What's going on, my promotion banquet..." The delicate hand resting on his shoulder seemed to be undergoing some sort of mutation.
Turning his head in an instant, he witnessed the most horrifying image of his life - Shirley swelled into some sort of unnamable three-meter monster, her delicate body expanding into a mountain of flesh covered in scales, her twelve pairs of compound eyes opening in pink flesh, flowing with some sort of unknown asphalt-like secretion, the liquid viscous and emanating a pungent stench.
The man in the black suit who had bought him a drink earlier stood over the monster, some sort of metallic luster chain dangling from the hem of his trench coat, his face covered in vicissitudes, his entire aura of calm sophistication, the Tang sword in his hand lit up with a cloud patterned blade, the jewel embedded in its tsuba suddenly bursting with a blinding light, and at the moment was emitting a beeping sound that would have been heard if he had encountered a foreigner! The blade, one-tenth the size of the monster's, was pinning it in place.
Perhaps no superintendent of police in all of England had ever been able to achieve such a feat!
Logan gripped the pistol at his waist, a police gun that had accompanied him in life and death, inlaid with sandalwood and engraved with the words "Accompany the King".
His index finger kept tapping the trigger of the pistol, with the clear goal that no matter what, Sherry would never be the kind of monster in front of him!
A sparking bullet whistled out from the gun, roaring like an uncontrollable beast at his former lover, "Shirley", but unfortunately, with countless bullets tilted at him, the monster only hissed slightly, not even the basic skin and flesh were damaged.
"Need backup!"
Logan yelled angrily, why were his colleagues at the celebration party oblivious?
Looking around, one of the monster's pink-colored, twig-like tentacles was haunting and interpenetrating one of his colleagues, more or less sucking their flesh and blood.
"And that noise that was made earlier?"
"Come on, Superintendent Logan, let's both clink another glass."
In the gloom, a bloodied corpse closer to Logan was staring at him ghostly with bubbling green eyes.
There were no more questions.
The remaining survivors were looking over here with confused faces, as if a few clowns were just performing over here.
"Tsk!"
Pistol bullets have been depleted.
There was a need to ask for support from outside!
This was the scenario arrived at after a split second's thought in the brain.
While the man in black fought with the monster, Logan made a mad dash for the oak door, peculiarly the whole tavern seemed to be caught in some kind of spatial paradox. The rusted brass doorknob nevertheless remained three arms lengths away.
Damn it!
Logan cursed.
"It's the 'Mirror Threshold', an alien-created enclosed space." Mina appeared ghostly at his side, SOE's special black card spinning at her fingertips. "By way of introduction, I'm Mina from the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in the UK."
On the SOE ID card, the stamped, half-mortalized World Tree emblem was burning with an ethereal blue flame.
"The internal mirror threshold is almost gone." Her fingertips brushed the jade pin in her hair, and the object suddenly stretched into a three-foot blade, "When we entered ten minutes ago, your entire team of police inspectors had already been reduced to sacrifice. "
The flesh mountain monster let out a hiss, countless tentacles were chopped off by the man in black, and countless blood-stained debris fell from the ceiling.
"Rule number one: this domain is unobservable and unescapable. " Mina's jade pin pierced through the eyebrow of the mutant connected to the monster's tentacles, and the shadow of some kind of creature emerged from its dark red blood rain, "Rule 2: All sacrifices will fall along the path of sealing the gods, i.e., they will be reduced to some kind of mutant... "
The "survivors" scattered in the corners finally realized what was wrong and fled screaming.
They didn't realize that they no longer belonged to the category of humans. The gelatinous masses of liquid and rotten meat were writhing rapidly, the three translucent tentacles obviously could no longer support their own bodies, and their heads, which still retained human features, drooped helplessly on the ground, being dragged forward by the bodies in front of them.
"Rule number three: only single domains exist in the same region. "Her pupils glowed lavender, "Rule number four: domains can distort perception. "Before the words left her mouth, the "survivor" who tried to break out of the door had been run through the head by a hairpin, and the entire space was filled with a sweetness similar to the rotting of royal jelly, while silver particles floating amidst the stench drifted away in all directions.
Or rather, those "humans" whose perceptions had been modified were killed.
"We are God's favorites, or rather, God's enforcers."
Mina pulled out the jade pin that had been inserted into the mutant and stood with the man in black, swinging her hand faster and faster.
When the 39th slash cut down, the entire space began to collapse. Mina's pupils turned a thick dark purple color, and her chanting voice carried a certain kind of intimidation.
Under the chant, all the corpses or foams of flesh were suspended in the air, constructing a cage to suppress Shirley with the ghastly white bones inside their bodies.
As the bloody dawn fell, the Enforcer's blade finally severed the massive, heavy body of the sarcoma monster, which let out a horrifying, deathly whine, and the field called "Mirror Threshold" peeled away like a broken mirror. The last image seen through the window of a child passing by is the gentle smile of the Enforcer reflected in the candles on the floor - the after-effects of the cognitive distortion are still in effect.
As the morning mist returns to the streets, Mina presses the bloodstained SOE ID to Logan's chest, "Welcome to the real world, Superintendent Logan, where all encounters are the gears of fate. Fortunately, you don't seem to be infected either, perhaps you are a new Favored One." Mina stroked her hair, which was slightly dirty, and said softly, "As of this moment, you are the 73rd Witness, and you have only to join us or be eliminated by us, so your choice is?"
"I join."
There didn't seem to be a better choice.
"Remember, there is no mercy on the Enforcer battlefield, there is only-" she paused, her blade-like smile cutting through the morning mist, "life or death."