Ke-style law enforcement officers

Chapter 75 Hallucination
On the way back, Milo was wearing Emma's trench coat.

Because of the difference in shoulder width between men and women, after Milo put on the trench coat, the sleeves of the coat only covered two-thirds of Milo's forearms, and he had to keep holding up his waistband with his hands while walking, so he looked quite out of place.

But these are not the main points.

Emma remained calm throughout, not uttering any unnecessary words. It wasn't until the two returned to their home in the 23rd parish, locked the door, and Milo collapsed with a thud that she showed any sign of panic.

……

We really couldn't hold on any longer.

Since waking up, Milo has remained conscious, but the pain from the aftereffects has not disappeared.

Milo has been stubbornly holding on.

He couldn't let Grace realize the problem with his physical condition. Knowing that he held a trump card, Milo had to be assertive enough for Grace to be wary and restrain herself.

So no matter how terrifying the throbbing pain in his head was, Milo had to get out of the Sherman family's sight before he collapsed.

……

"How did you..."

Emma struggled to carry Milo's half-body and drag him toward the bedroom.

She had thought that the storm with the Sherman family had finally settled down after today, and her mood had eased a bit. However, when she realized that something was wrong with Milo, her breathing gradually became rapid.

After finally managing to drag Milo to bed, she hurriedly ran to the kitchen to pour a glass of hot water.

When they returned, they found that blood was seeping from Milo's mouth, nostrils, and eye sockets. His face was frighteningly pale, his eyes were staring blankly at the ceiling, his pupils were dilated, and his hands were gripping the sheets tightly. His trembling body proved that he was enduring some kind of extremely terrible pain.

Emma quickly ran upstairs and took out her usual painkillers from her personal medications.

But when she ran downstairs to her bedroom with the medication, she found that Milo on the bed had stopped trembling.

Emma's heart sank in that instant; she was terrified that Milo would die so mysteriously.

She stopped at the bedroom door, not daring to go any further, and stood there, her mind racing. She began to wonder if Milo had been injected with some kind of poison at Sherman Manor.

Just as Emma was contemplating how to blow up the entire Sherman Manor to avenge Milo, she heard Milo cough softly…

Because fresh blood flowed back into his trachea and mouth and nose, Milo, who was in a coma, coughed and choked.

Emma's brow finally relaxed upon hearing the cough.

……

She fed Milo painkillers, then brought hot water and gently wiped the blood off his face and body before covering him with a blanket.

Seeing Milo's still furrowed brows even in his unconscious state, Emma knew that his pain hadn't lessened much, but fortunately, the symptoms seemed to be gradually decreasing over time.

This continued until Milo's breathing rate gradually calmed down.

Emma sat blankly on the edge of the bed, looking somewhat lost and dejected.

……

Looking back on this period, she realized that she hadn't actually been preparing for the entrance exam at all. She locked herself up to extract that knowledge.

She didn't want to endure the humiliation of the Day of the Dead again; she wanted to repay everything tenfold. Several times she fainted amidst a pile of experimental equipment, only to be woken up by the cold floor.

After killing Edward Sherman, Emma felt that all her sacrifices had been worthwhile.

But Emma only learned today that Milo had done far more than she had.

If it weren't for Milo's series of pre-planned actions at the last moment, the entire Valrocan family would have died.

What she didn't know was what Milo had actually sacrificed.

Just a month ago, Milo was a listless and unambitious city guard, with no drive or ambition.

In such a short time, he seemed to have become a different person, as if no problem could stump him. Whether it was underhanded tactics or the cold muzzle of a gun, he could easily resolve all crises.

But with a woman's keen intuition, Emma knew that none of this was a coincidence. Behind the scenes, Milo must be silently enduring pressure and pain that others could not imagine.

No one knows why Milo developed these symptoms, and Milo has never mentioned it to anyone.

Emma stayed by Milo's bedside without leaving him for a moment.

I drifted off to sleep, slumped over the headboard...

……

Milo didn't know how long he had been unconscious.

Although his body was exhausted and he needed rest, his mind was not completely calm. In addition to the pain that kept stimulating his brain, other random images kept flashing through his mind, making it impossible for him to fall into a deep sleep.

Milo saw a room smeared with blood, where Robben was kneeling in a pool of blood, wailing over the body of his daughter whose head was caved in.

He also saw countless patients in bizarre poses in the asylums during the Great Plague, bound to their beds with ropes and emitting low groans. He also witnessed the indifferent, repulsive faces of the townspeople in Merlin; in the dim light, everyone's eyes were shrouded in shadow, and he couldn't see them at all.

Milo saw countless emaciated people bowing their heads in worship before a deep and eerie altar in a dark and empty underground cave, silently reciting some obscure and difficult-to-understand prayers in an extremely devout tone.

The faint candlelight was no match for the darkness of the underground. Milo could only see bodies that looked like mummies repeating ritualistic actions. Their emaciated limbs trembled slightly, just like the dying patients in the asylum.

The scene appeared and disappeared intermittently, accompanied by low breathing sounds. The inner walls of the entire underground cave were like the mouth of some huge creature, slowly expanding and shrinking with each breath. The veins in the stone walls seemed to be twisting and writhing all the time, yet they seemed to remain unchanged.

The atmosphere was eerie and sinister.

Gradually, Milo felt an intense itching sensation in his limbs and torso.

He reached out to grab it, but was horrified to find that some grayish-white mushrooms had grown on his skin. They were not large, but they were densely packed. Some were just sprouting, and they gathered in patches on the skin of his limbs and joints like scales. Others had already sprouted to a height of about four or five centimeters. The intertwined stems were thin and twisted, and the caps were crowded and overlapping each other. All these strange fungi spread out from every fold of Milo's skin.

Milo felt a chill run down his spine and frantically ripped a handful of mushrooms off his left wrist, but this was followed by intense pain.

His skin seemed to have become incredibly fragile, even more so than the fungi that had grown from it. The torn ends of the fungal stems were attached to Milo's broken skin, and even the blood vessels and gruesome bits of flesh were pulled out by the roots.

The real, excruciating pain and the eerie, horrifying visuals made Milo unable to breathe.

Blood continued to flow, but soon countless fungi began to emerge from the broken wound, growing faster than in other parts of the body. It was as if countless small snakes wrapped in a bag had suddenly bitten a hole in the bag, scrambling and crowding each other to squeeze out of the hole.

Milo's terror was beyond words. He didn't know what was wrong with him. He felt as if something was trying to tear him to shreds from the inside out.

His body trembled, and he dropped the tuft of fungus that he had initially torn from his own body.

But when he came to his senses, he found that the emaciated worshippers in the empty altar had silently stood up, each with a hunched back, facing Milo.

Within their sunken eye sockets, faint bluish-green pupils were trembling irregularly.

The worshipper closest to Milo had already picked up the fungal substance that Milo had dropped and eagerly put it into his mouth, chewing it along with Milo's flesh and blood, making a chilling "crunch" sound.

……

Milo ran wildly in the opposite direction through the cave.

He couldn't see the end of the cave; all that lay ahead was deep darkness, without a single ray of light.

Despair and fear seemed to be crushing his soul, and no matter how fast he ran, the worshippers behind him followed at a leisurely pace.

They chanted some strange language and chased after Milo with uncoordinated limbs.

Milo didn't know how long he had been running.

All he knew was that as he ran, some of the "mature" fungi on his body would shed off his skin with a rustling sound. Sometimes, because of the dim light, he would accidentally bump into some hard stone walls at certain corners, and when the fungi on his body were torn off, they would also take some of Milo's skin with them, leaving large patches of blood and broken fungi on the stone walls.

……

Milo kept running and running.

Until they completely shook off those worshippers.

Overwhelmed by terror and despair, he drew the knife he carried with him, preparing to remove all the fungi from his body...

……

But in a daze, he heard a familiar voice.

The other person is shouting at you.

Then, everything in front of me vanished in an instant.

The surrounding light began to brighten.

He began to smell familiar scents and touch things that existed in his memory.

……

Inside the room, Milo knelt on the floor, shirtless, covered in cold sweat.

At this moment, his right hand was gripping the sharp Bowie knife, the blade close to his left forearm, having already cut a shallow gash in his arm, blood dripping down the blade to the end of the S-shaped guard and onto the ground.

He looked up, gazing blankly at everything around him.

This is my home.

Beside him, Emma was clinging tightly to his right arm, desperately trying to stop him from continuing to stab her.

Emma's face was streaked with tears.

Even after Milo regained consciousness, one of her hands was still tightly gripping the blade of the Bowie knife, and blood kept flowing from between her fingers.

Her voice, trembling with tears, reached Milo's ears:

"What's wrong with you?..."

(End of this chapter)