People are scared in America, my uncle is Dante

On a forest highway in West Virginia.

A stylish convertible sports car sped past.

Kimberly, a locally well-known female celebrity, is here today as an invited guest to film a wilderness survival reality show in this remote mountainous area.

In fact, she looked down on this program from the bottom of her heart, which was full of cheapness.

What good stuff can a recent graduate, a grassroots director, and a few college students recruited from universities produce?

With her looks and talent, her future stage should be the star-studded Hollywood, not this poor, remote place where she has no signal and is eating dirt.

The pop music that was playing on the car radio suddenly turned into a shrill hissing sound.

"What a lousy place! There's not even a signal."

Kimberly looked disgusted and suddenly regretted spending money to have someone do such a nice makeup look.

She reached out and looked down at the center console, trying to turn off the annoying noise.

In that moment of distraction

"Bang!"

A dark shadow flew directly over the roof of the convertible.

Did you hit someone?!

Kimberly was terrified and slammed on the brakes.

She frantically pushed open the car door, instinctively wanting to dial 911.

But on this desolate road, far from any village or shop, there was absolutely no signal, and calls for help went unanswered.

Not far behind the car, the body that had been thrown into the air lay motionless in the middle of the road.

Kimberly forced herself to step forward, but when she saw the person's face, her stomach churned.

This person's eyes are up and down, his mouth is crooked, and even his nose seems to have its own ideas; it's hard to imagine that this is a human being.

Just looking at it made her feel incredibly disgusted, but the thought that her career would be completely ruined if the hit-and-run scandal were exposed made her even more resentful.

Kimberly still reached out his hand, trembling, to check the other person's pulse and see if there was any hope.

In that instant, the deformed man who had been unconscious suddenly opened his eyes.

He clung to Kimberly like a zombie, biting hard at her chin.

"ah!!!"

A pitiful cry shattered the deathly silence of the forest.

Kimberly struggled desperately, frantically scratching at the deformed man's skin with his hands.

"Rip—"

Her chin was ripped off by the roots.

Kimberly's mind went blank. Despite the excruciating pain, he staggered toward the sports car, wanting nothing more than to escape this place as quickly as possible.

To her surprise, there was also a person with a deformed appearance standing next to the car.

The other person was holding a fire axe stained with blood and stood quietly by the car door.

Kimberly stood there, his face filled with despair, his shadow split in two in the sunlight.

……

Los Santos, International Airport.

"No requests? Okay then, I'm hanging up."

Suren frowned and put her phone away.

He has already bought a plane ticket to West Virginia.

I just called to double-check if there's been any official reward for information regarding the missing person case in West Virginia.

If you have it, you can earn money from both ends.

He recalled Nicole's account of her experience in front of the agency yesterday—

The car's magic detector reacted when the other party was driving through a primeval forest in West Virginia.

Later, after learning that many backpackers and tourists had gone missing in that area, she deduced that there was a high probability that demons existed there.

Nicole hopes that Suren can make a trip and bring back the demon's corpse as research material.

In return, she not only promised to buy back the corpse at a high price, but also to personally craft a magical artifact exclusively for Suren.

Of course, Suren had to prepare the materials himself.

Meanwhile, the system tasks in her mind confirmed that Nicole's speculation was correct.

【Ding! 】

[Side Quest Triggered: The Priest of the Dark Forest]

[Mission Description: Deep within the forests of West Virginia, an ancient, dark force dwells. Here, the decay of the body is revered as a divine blessing; they fanatically breed deformed offspring, using mutilation and grotesqueness as a means to please the forest, in exchange for savage power.]

[Mission Objective: Search for and kill the demon in the forest.]

[Task Reward: 2000 points]

Bloodline Awakening Increased by 2%

What puzzled him was...

These issues have been hotly debated online for a long time.

Strangely, the official response has been completely silent. They haven't controlled the comments, deleted posts, or even issued a symbolic announcement.

The files he asked his friend at the police station to check also showed that there was no information about any operations in the area.

For a moment, he was unsure whether it was because the location was too remote that the local state government simply didn't want to get involved.

Or is it... just to lure curious people to explore and die?

Just then, not far away...

A heated argument drew his attention.

"FUCK! Let me go!"

"I told you the plane would explode, why wouldn't you believe me?!"

A group of five or six people were forcibly pushed out of the check-in gate by the air marshals on the plane, attracting the attention of surrounding passengers.

The person surrounded in the middle is a young man wearing a plaid shirt.

He was covered in sweat, his eyes filled with fear: "I dreamt it! It was crystal clear!"

The man in the shirt gestured incoherently with his hands.

"After takeoff, the cabin will start to shake, the left wing will fall off, and finally the plane will explode..."

"I really dreamed about it!"

Beside him, an older woman was trying to calm him down. She appeared to be the group's teacher.

The other boy, who was wearing a white T-shirt, didn't have such a good temper.

He rushed forward, grabbed the man in the shirt by the collar, and roared, "Because of your stupid dream, we're going to be delayed by half a day before we arrive in Paris! Are you going to pay for the plane tickets?!"

As the two were shoving each other, several classmates and security personnel rushed over to break up the fight.

"boom!"

Just as the scene was in complete chaos, a deafening explosion suddenly rang out from above the airport.

The floor-to-ceiling windows of the waiting hall shattered instantly, and countless shards of glass shot into the room like a storm.

"ah!!!"

Panic ensued in the hall, with all passengers and staff instinctively crouching down and covering their heads.

Amidst the chaos, only Suren remained quietly seated in her chair.

He looked at the fireball in the sky outside the window, and his eyelids twitched.

Death has arrived?

This is really a mess.

If West Virginia weren't so far away, he wouldn't have even considered flying.

For someone who can't fly yet, taking his feet off the ground is tantamount to handing his life over to the makeshift airport crew.

If something happens while he's high in the air, he can only try to see if he can rely on an aerial dash and a double jump upon landing to reset the landing damage.

Forget it, I'll just rent a car and drive there for peace of mind.

Suren thought for a moment, then finally sighed.

……

Deep in the primeval forests of West Virginia.

Two deformed people, one dragging half a corpse, walked through the woods.

As they ventured deeper, the surrounding scenery began to undergo bizarre changes.

The once lush trees became withered, their bark peeled off, and their trunks turned black, as if they had been burned into charcoal.

They had been walking for a while when a small wooden house appeared ahead.

Around the wooden house, eight torches were burning.

The deformed man stopped and pieced together the corpse he had been dragging all the way, placing it respectfully at the entrance of the wooden house.

A moment later, the wooden door opened, and a pitch-black darkness slowly spilled out.

Even though it was daytime, and even though there were torches illuminating the area, not a single ray of light could penetrate this darkness.

A pair of pale little hands swiftly reached out from the darkness, grabbed the corpse on the ground, dragged it into the endless darkness, and made a gnawing sound.

Upon seeing the corpse disappear, the deformed man who had been kneeling on the ground excitedly stood up and began to dance a bizarre dance while shouting and yelling.

……

a few days later.

Suren gripped the steering wheel with one hand and held up his phone, which had completely lost signal, with the other, somewhat speechless.

"What rubbish infrastructure..."

In the United States, cell phone signals will completely disappear if you leave the city and walk a short distance into a sparsely populated area, and sometimes even the built-in navigation system will stop working.

He picked up the paper map from the passenger seat and carefully compared it to the surrounding contours.

It should be around here.

Although we cannot know the exact coordinates of the demon, as long as we run to places with a high disappearance rate, we can always find clues.

"call out!"

A faint whooshing sound suddenly came from a high place on the left side of the road.

"Sizzle—"

A hissing sound came from the left front tire, and the car body tilted accordingly.

Fortunately, in order to confirm the location on the map, Suren kept the car idling, so the car only bounced slightly before coming to a steady stop on the side of the road.

He got out of the car, looked at the flat tire without turning his head, caught another flying arrow, and looked annoyed.

"We're going to lose money again!"