Chapter 54: At the edge of the cliff

Adam took a deep breath as he approached the first point that was his target. He would have to exit through one of the windows of the building and approach an interval in the center of the square. The problem was that he would have to pass very close to one of the monstrosity's bulbs.

From the window through which he had to exit, he could see the plaza in almost its entirety, and the monstrosity was in the spot where they had first seen it, circling the base of one of the trees in one of the corners of the Garden. The throbbing mass had grown disproportionately large and extended all the way up the trunk until it was almost half the height of the tree. It had also expanded sideways, crushing all the vegetation around it until it reached the railings in that corner of the park. The mass of flesh, as if it were liquid, had seeped through the bars and fallen to the floor of the square, where it began to fan out in various directions.

Luckily for Adam, the monstrosity had not expanded in all directions, giving him a chance to find a path.

Adam approached the window and melted the bars, which he found very easy with the fire from his flamethrower. After placing the remains of the grating on the ground, he pulled out the walkie talkie and spoke in a whisper.

"I'm going to start."

Without waiting for an answer, he hung it on his pants and took another deep breath. This was perhaps his last chance to retreat. At first he thought he was ready, but as the time drew nearer he could not help thinking that he was very likely to die.

However, he knew his decision was made. Not necessarily because of a sense of responsibility to the shelter, but rather for himself. It might sound stupid, arrogant and suicidal to some, but Adam had grown tired of being passive. If he had to die he would do it fighting against the current and not scared and helpless.

Once he thought of this, his fear disappeared without a trace, he held onto the window frame and propelled himself with a leap outside. His fall made more noise than he would have wished and alerted him, but he soon calmed down when he noticed that the monstrosity had not responded.

The square was completely empty, without the slightest trace of life or zombies. Which was a relief to Adam, but at the same time he found it disturbing.

"All right Adam?"

Miguel's voice sounded incredibly loud in that place, even though the volume was at minimum.

"Yes, so far so good, the square is clear and the monstrosity has not reacted to my presence."

"Well, you'd better move because I can see a lot of Windwalkers from here," Zack interjected.

"From here we can see some too, but there are no Breeder movements." Said Miguel.

Adam looked towards the buildings in block 3, Miguel should be on one of the rooftops, close enough to be able to see the superblock, home of the Breeder.

"I'm going to continue, change channels when you need to talk to each other. Contact me only in case of an emergency."

"Understood," they both replied almost in unison.

Adam put the walkie talkie back in his pants and then pulled out his new weapon. The nail gun was perfect for this occasion, as it was quiet enough not to attract attention. The flamethrower might also do the trick, but he didn't want to risk fire hitting the monstrosity in an oversight.

Step by step, Adam approached the center of the park, near which he placed the first point. This was exactly inside one of the gardens, whose fence had prevented the expansion of the monstrosity, which had preferred to surround it.

The garden fence was quite low, low enough for Adam to easily enter the garden, so it didn't take him long to approach the ancient statue that still rested intact in the garden. A few steps away from it, Adam sat down on the ground and channeled his ability.

[Geological Trap] was, without a doubt, Adam's most complicated skill. It could be used in so many ways that it was almost ridiculous. Adam placed a hand on the ground and concentrated. He felt his energy penetrate the underground and begin to build the trap. The first step was to weaken it enough for it to collapse with the activation of the ability, but not before that.

This process was complicated and took longer than Adam had thought it would. He looked around, relieved that there was nothing there and continued to concentrate on the ritual.

After 5 minutes, which seemed an eternity to him, this part of the trap was ready. The skill had opened two faults in the subsoil, which descended at an angle some 5 meters underground. These formed what at the end should be one of the corners of the rhombus Adam wanted to create to trap the monstrosity.

With some curiosity, Adam noticed that both fault blocks were held together by their own energy, like glue. Without it, the fault would activate and a landslide would occur that would break the floor of the plaza.

Finally, at the bottom of the 5 meters Adam's energy excavated the earth, removing all of the bottom support and leaving only thin pillars to support the weight. Adam ran into a serious snag when he realized that he had not considered the presence of pipes. Luckily, the ability completely ignored their existence and they were not damaged, in turn helping to support some of the weight. Adam only had to worry about them interfering with the activation of the trap, but considering the size of the trap, he doubted that would be a problem.

Satisfied with the trap, Adam began to move to the next point. This was near one of the tents in the square, so he moved with speed until he reached it.

However, just as he was about to duck, a growl sounded from inside the store and a Crawler broke the glass of the entrance and jumped on him.

The sound startled Adam, who raised the nail gun and fired. His aim was so bad that the zombie didn't need to dodge. Adam cursed in his mind and braced himself for the attack , but at that moment a shiver ran through his whole body and he turned to look at the monstrosity, which must have been less than 20 meters away.

"¡Adam, get out of there now!" Miguel spoke into the walkie talkie, but Adam had not listened. The monstrosity opened dozens of eyes simultaneously, all of them possessing a double red and black pupil and covered with pulsating purple veins. The thing's gaze fixed on him for an instant before it moved on to the Crawler, which was equally transfixed. Still, Adam couldn't tear his gaze away from those eyes, especially the second pupil, which drew him into its depths as if Adam had jumped off the edge of a cliff.

Luckily, he reacted in that instant. With great difficulty he closed his eyes and lay down on the ground. The monster wasn't even looking at him, but he could feel an ever-increasing urge to look up and admire those eyes again. Adam resisted this temptation and continued to press himself to the ground.

The Crawler died instantly moments later. It simply fell to the ground and stopped moving. Adam didn't notice, but he did feel dozens and dozens of eyes focus on him. For a horrifying instant he thought he would die, but, to his surprise, a shot rang out from the roof of one of the buildings. Immediately all eyes turned to look at that point, but Miguel had already dropped to the ground.

Adam jumped to his feet and rushed inside the store through the window that the Crawler had broken. Once there he stood still and stopped moving. Even ignoring a cut that had been made by the glass debris in the frame.

Seconds passed and Adam felt more and more tense. He could still feel the influence of the eyes, as if they were inviting him to step out and watch them once more. He only calmed down when that feeling disappeared and all was silent again.

"Adam? Can you hear me? Are you alive?"

Only then did Adam realize that Miguel was talking to him.

"Yes, I'm all right, I think. Your shot gave me a chance to escape."

"Okay. Everybody okay, Zack?"

"Yes, but it was close, when I saw those eyes I thought for a second I had fallen off the roof."

"I hear you, it's not a nice thing to do," Adam replied.

"Where are you?" asked Miguel.

"Inside the store, that thing can't see me here."

"Can you go ahead with the plan or do we abort?"

Adam thought about his answer for a moment.

"Let me check that thing is asleep again, otherwise we'll have to try something else."

"Okay."

Adam swallowed hard and mustered up enough courage to lean out the window. There he found that the monstrosity didn't seem to react to his presence, but to his surprise, a lump of flesh had already expanded to cover the Crawler's corpse completely. Adam ducked back into hiding and frowned.

"It doesn't seem to react, but that thing covered the Crawler in the blink of an eye. It looks like it can expand a lot faster than we thought. I don't know why it's going so slowly if it's capable of moving at that speed. Well, I'll wait a moment, just in case."

"Yeah, I saw it expand from here, it gave me chills. But there's a problem, Miguel's shot seems to have stirred up a hornet's nest, there's a large number of Windwalkers flying all over the place, I don't think we have much more time," said Zack.

Adam took another deep breath, trying to calm himself down, as his heart was still beating at top speed.

"In that case, wish me luck. I think I'll need it."