372: Chapter 373 The Disaster of Milthei

Mirthi opened her Smart Brain and went to the forum she frequented most. Most of the users there were young individuals from her city, chatting about everything under the sun, and she would often come across interesting things.

Just like this post that had just been published.

[Hello everyone, my name is Tainuonuoxinli. Can anyone decipher this strange information stream? I accidentally found it in my family's old-model Smart Brain, and I don't even know when it was downloaded. It looks so strange, and I'm very curious.]

The poster attached a segment of garbled code that couldn't be deciphered by conventional means; there was no text and no audio.

There were already many replies below. Some members of her race were saying the OP was being unreasonable and fooling everyone with a bunch of useless information, while others shared the same curiosity and were tagging other members to come and decode it to see what was hidden inside.

Wasn't this the "L-Language" she had studied in school? It was just relatively rare, and she happened to have encountered it before.

Mirthi's fourteen eyes lit up slightly, her bored mood instantly replaced by curiosity. She was just worried about not finding any new fun, and this abrupt post happened to strike her interest perfectly.

She could already imagine the compliments and worship others would give her after she unveiled this information.

No sooner said than done.

Mirthi immediately chose to download the strange information into her Smart Brain.

At this moment, something strange happened. Logically, even huge files could be downloaded in seconds by the Smart Brain, but downloading this information was exceptionally slow.

Mirthi waited for a good while before the download was complete, and a new folder appeared in her Smart Brain.

Just as Mirthi was about to open the folder, her tentacles suddenly paused, and a feeling of palpitations arose in her heart.

It felt as if she was being watched by something.

Panicked, Mirthi looked around with her fourteen eyes and found nothing; it was just her imagination.

Mirthi breathed a sigh of relief, while also feeling ashamed of her fear. It was just a string of code.

After opening the folder, Mirthi began to rearrange the strange code. The garbled characters seemed to have no logic, but under her dismantling, a regular outline gradually emerged.

"Done!"

Mirthi cheered and reopened the file. Upon seeing the content, she couldn't help but find it strange; the information in the garbled code was actually an image.

Mirthi stared fixedly at the loaded image.

She saw a very ugly oval face. This creature was too strange; it was bald, and with just a few strokes, she couldn't tell what was a mouth or a nose, but the most obvious part was its eyes...

Mirthi held her breath.

These eyes were ridiculously large, with no layered pupils, just a patch of pure darkness.

A stinging sensation emanated from Mirthi's mind, and the World was left in only black and white, as if she had lost all senses of her surroundings.

Mirthi cried out in alarm and withdrew from her previous state.

A moment later.

"This is so cool!" Mirthi's eyes shone with excitement as she looked at the eerie image, her heart faintly racing. She felt that this image had magical powers.

Let's call this image "The Face."

Immediately, Mirthi uploaded the image to the forum, causing many of her kin to cry out in surprise.

The original poster also sent a thank-you message...

Mirthi smiled smugly, putting the slight unease in her mind behind her.

"Mirthi, it's time for dinner," her mother's call came from outside. The voice traveled through the protective membrane of their dwelling, carrying the soft spiritual vibration characteristic of the maternal Polyphemus.

"Coming,"

Mirthi put down her Smart Brain and walked into the living room, finding the table already set with a sumptuous dinner.

Her mother stood behind the dining table, her shadow stretched long.

"Wow," Mirthi exclaimed at the food on the table, and unable to wait, she began to gorge herself.

"Eat slowly," her mother smiled gently.

"Mother, why aren't you eating..." Mirthi stuffed food into her mouth in large gulps with her tentacles.

"I'm not hungry."

"Mmm... Mother, what is this? It's too delicious,"

Mirthi said, grabbing a handful of brown meat paste. She had never tasted this flavor before.

"This is my flesh..."

Mirthi's tentacles paused, the pupils of her fourteen eyes dilated, and she murmured, "Mother, you... what kind of joke is this?"

"Dear Mirthi, I am not lying to you."

The mother slowly walked from behind the dining table to Mirthi's side. "If you don't believe me, take a look."

A bone-chilling cold permeated her entire body, and an indescribable terror appeared in Mirthi's eyes.

Because the mother standing before her slowly raised her tentacle. On that tentacle, which should have been smooth and delicate, a deep, bone-revealing wound had appeared. Brown meat paste was slowly seeping from the wound, looking exactly like the dish on the table that Mirthi had been praising.

A smile still hung on her face, but it was incredibly eerie, its curve wide beyond reason.

At the same time, the pupils in the twelve eyes on her body mysteriously disappeared, becoming lonely and deep, staring fixedly at her like black holes.

Just like that face in the image...

"Ah!"

Mirthi screamed, her tentacles flailing wildly, and she suddenly woke up from her bed.

Only then did she find her surroundings to be her familiar room.

"That scared me to death, so it was just a dream."

The bone-deep wound, the black-hole-like eyes, and that cold sentence "This is my flesh" from the dream still clung tightly to her mind, refusing to go away.

Mirthi patted her chest with her tentacles, thinking with lingering fear that the dream was so realistic it had terrified her.

Only then did she remember.

She had fallen asleep last night after uploading that image to the forum.

Just as Mirthi wanted to log into the forum to see what the situation was, a familiar voice came from outside the door.

"Mirthi, are you awake? Breakfast is ready, come out and eat."

Mirthi's heart warmed, and she felt completely at ease. This was her real mother—her voice was gentle and full of warmth, without a hint of the dream's eeriness. She immediately got up, shook her tentacles, and excitedly walked out of the room, heading straight for the living room.

On the dining table was an ordinary breakfast.

"Eat up. You've slept for so long, you must be starving," her mother said with a smile, reaching out to push the food toward her, her tone full of indulgence.

The last trace of doubt in Mirthi's heart vanished. It really was just a nightmare, and everything in reality was fine. Mirthi thought no more of it, reached out her tentacles, and began to eat in large gulps.

Mirthi was eating heartily when she suddenly felt something was wrong.

At first, she didn't pay it any mind, but as she ate, the taste of the food gradually changed from delicious to fishy and sweet. Later, it even turned into a thick, fishy, viscous sensation, slowly merging with the taste of the brown meat paste from her dream.

Mirthi stopped abruptly, her fourteen eyes widening instantly as she looked down at her tentacles. What she was holding in her hand was no longer her favorite food, but clearly a clump of slimy brown meat paste, exactly like the eerie dish she had seen in her dream!

And her mother's gentle smile also froze bit by bit, slowly stretching into an eerie curve.

...

"Aaaaaah!"

Mirthi sat up from her bed, her whole body weak from fright, unable to snap out of it as she looked around.

It was actually a dream within a dream!

Mirthi could no longer sit still and hurriedly logged into yesterday's forum with her Smart Brain, only to find that yesterday's post had already been viewed by a hundred thousand of her kin.

And there were over ten thousand replies under her image; clearly, the image had already spread far and wide.

The comments were all about having nightmares, being scared to death, and the like.

How could this happen...

Mirthi's tentacles felt ice-cold.

She felt she had done something wrong, but even deleting the image would be of no use now.

What Mirthi didn't notice was that her tentacles had begun to turn stiff, and a greyish-white substance was faintly emerging.

The true disaster had begun.