Chapter 849: Sanity Plummeting
Old P carefully turned a corner.
A faint, almost imperceptible background melody kept his heart pounding. Just then, he spotted bloodstains on the ground.
A lot of blood, already congealed into a dark red, spreading toward the street ahead beyond the corner.
"Is this really blood?!"
Old P even deliberately looked down, and the character automatically performed a touching motion.
Just then, the monster's roar echoed in his ears again!
Old P turned his head and saw, beside an abandoned car up ahead, a twisted figure flash by.
Old P found it hard to describe what he had just seen. It looked like a humanoid creature, but its walking posture was completely unlike a normal person.
There was no swinging of arms; it just swayed its body forward as it walked. This utterly bizarre figure quickly vanished into the thick fog.
"This..."
Old P was frozen in fear. He quickly retreated back to the corner and cautiously poked his head out to observe.
But the figure did not reappear.
"What was that thing?" Old P hadn't gotten a clear look, but based on the map and the earlier bloodstain clues, he knew he definitely had to head in the direction where the monster had disappeared.
Old P's heart was filled with dread, but he still slowly, slowly walked into the thick fog...
Another corner, and more bloodstains guided Old P forward.
Now, Old P arrived at a construction zone. There were chain-link fences on both sides, a bridge tunnel ahead, and various construction debris piled up inside. He didn't know what had happened, but after the town was abandoned, all the work here had been halted.
"Shhhh, shhhh, shhhh..."
Noise.
Harsh, grating noise came from ahead, impossible for Old P to ignore.
In front of the bridge tunnel was a wooden barrier meant to block the way, but it was already dilapidated. Old P tried to move forward, awkwardly climbing over the wooden frame to enter the tunnel.
Only then did Old P see clearly that the source of the constant rustling sound was a radio.
Actually, from the earlier scenes, Old P had already determined that the era in which this story took place was very old—at least thirty or forty years ago (considering the timeline of the parallel world). In the game's era, there probably weren't even smartphones.
After all, for players in the parallel world, radios were already relics from their grandparents' generation, yet they had become an important prop in this game.
But this didn't make Old P feel any better; instead, it made his skin crawl even more.
The radio kept broadcasting static, a rustling sound that not only interfered with Old P's hearing but also constantly grated on his nerves. Old P tried to adjust the radio, but it was useless. No matter how he changed the frequency, the static continued unabated.
Old P felt a surge of irritation, but just then...
He thought he heard another sound beyond the static, and it was coming from very close to him.
Old P had played "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" for so long that his skill at locating sounds was practically second nature. He quickly looked to the left and discovered that, hidden in the shadows of the bridge tunnel, there was actually... a monster!
"What the hell is this?!"
Old P stumbled backward in terror, but the wooden barrier was right behind him. His back slammed against it, the clear sensation making him jump again.
The monster in front of him, meanwhile, was emitting low growls and walking toward him in an extremely twisted posture...
On the surface, it looked like a humanoid monster, but its entire body seemed wrapped in a fleshy, skin-like membrane. It had no face, no features—as if it had been skinned from head to toe, and then the peeled skin had been sewn back on inside out.
It was covered in blood and grime. Even stranger, it had arms, but they seemed hidden beneath its own flesh. From the outside, only the outlines of the arms were visible, like a prisoner in a straitjacket from a movie... except its straitjacket was its own skin and flesh.
Old P recognized it—this was the figure he had encountered at the corner earlier. Their outlines and walking postures were exactly the same.
Old P kept trying to back away, but in his panic, the wooden barrier perfectly blocked him, making it impossible to retreat!
Watching the monster slowly approach him step by step, Old P looked around and spotted a crowbar in a nearby corner.
Old P grabbed the crowbar, gripped it tightly with both hands, and swung it hard at the monster's head!
"Thud!"
Blood and flesh splattered!
The tip of the crowbar deeply pierced the monster's head. The moment it was pulled out, the monster's head burst open like a rotten apple, spewing out gushes of filthy blood!
But the monster's movements didn't stop. Instead, it let out an even more ferocious roar and lunged at Old P again!
Although Old P was panicked, he had practiced pan-frying techniques in "PUBG." He dodged to the left, swung the crowbar again, and smashed through the monster's head once more!
After several strikes, the monster finally died.
The protagonist even used the crowbar to poke the monster's head, confirming that this thing was definitely not human.
Old P was terrified. He really didn't want to look at the monster anymore, because it was far too realistic. This kind of creature—almost human but not quite—seemed designed to awaken the deepest fears in a player's heart. Although this thing was very, very weak, its disgustingness far surpassed many of the beasts and monsters in "Dark Souls"!
Leaving the bridge tunnel, Old P realized that the radio had stopped its static. Instead, it was emitting a series of garbled voices that sounded like Mary's, intermittent and unclear.
"It seems this radio is broken, but... I'd better keep it on me." The protagonist stuffed the radio into his pocket.
Old P, crowbar in hand, searched the area. Finding it was a dead end, he had no choice but to retrace his steps and return to the town of Silent Hill.
But the moment he re-entered, the radio started crackling with static again...
Old P was annoyed. Just as he was thinking about whether he could throw the radio away, another monster appeared in the thick fog ahead!
No, not one—two. One was closer, the other farther away, only a vague outline visible in the mist.
Old P panicked instantly, but fortunately, the two monsters didn't seem to have noticed him. They were just wandering aimlessly...
"What's going on? Wasn't this town completely empty just now? Why are there suddenly monsters everywhere!"
The two monsters were very close to each other. Old P was afraid that rushing in recklessly would aggro both at once, so he could only shrink back cautiously and observe.
Then, the two monsters wandered aimlessly into the distance and disappeared into the thick fog. The radio's static also stopped.
"Phew... So, they can be avoided. Does this radio only make noise when there's a monster nearby?"
Old P knew that the next step was to venture deeper into the fog, search for more clues, and even turn the entire town upside down to find the protagonist's deceased wife, Mary.
But he felt he couldn't keep playing anymore.