Kill the Sun

Nick slowly opened the plates again, and a couple minutes later, they once more looked into the sewers.

Just like the last time, the sun illuminated a big spot on the surface.

"Parasite, we're ready!" Wyntor shouted.

The two of them waited for nearly half a minute.

"You're ready?" a rat asked after popping its head out of the water.

Wyntor and Nick nodded. 

"We prepared a corpse to lure it out as well," Wyntor said.

The rat just snorted when it heard that. "One last meal in freedom, eh?" the rat commented to itself.

"Sure, that should work," the rat shouted. "The guy is currently roaming around the Dregs below the surface. If he feels a corpse, he will quickly come here."

"Good," Wyntor answered before turning to Nick. "Are you ready?"

Nick nodded and threw a rope down.

The rope unfurled until its end touched the liquid of the sewers.

Naturally, Nick needed a way back into the warehouse, and this rope would be his way out.

Then, Nick and Wyntor looked at the Parasite.

Silence.

"What?" the Parasite asked.

"With you here, I can't use my ability," Nick said. "You know that."

"Pfft, you don't need it," the rat said with a laugh. "The guy is a Possession Specter without a useful ability. Even more, the guy is only an Early Hatchling. Fighting him is like fighting an angry table. Trust me, I'm not going to ruin my future relationship with Dark Dream just to see you die."

Nick furrowed his brows and glanced at Wyntor.

Wyntor just shrugged casually.

"Alright," Nick said carefully.

The next moment, Nick went away from the hole and grabbed the corpse.

Splash!

Nick hurled it into the water, and just a bit later, he saw it float on the surface. 

Silence.

20 seconds passed.

"Is it coming?" Nick asked.

"No idea," the rat said. "I tend to keep my minions outside of the water. It's not very healthy for them. But he should be on his way. Give it a minute."

Silence.

The three of them just looked at the floating corpse.

"Oh, there he is!" the rat suddenly said.

The next moment, something white slowly rose out of the sewers beside the corpse.

It was a pristine white bandage!

A moment later, several more strings of bandages rose out from the sewers.

Slowly, they wound themselves around the corpse, and just a bit later, the corpse began to submerge.

Nick took a deep breath and narrowed his eyes.

Then, Nick jumped into the hole.

SPLASH!

Nick hit the water beside one of the bandages, and he immediately grabbed it.

As soon as Nick held it, he felt a strong pull, and he immediately got pulled below the surface.

Naturally, the water was just as disgusting as the last time, but Nick didn't have the luxury of feeling disgusted right now.

He had to capture the Screaming Coffin!

Nick didn't let go of the bandage, and he quickly got pulled more and more into the depths.

Suddenly, several more white bandages appeared, and they started to come towards him slowly.

Luckily, the bandages were very slow. It was almost like the Screaming Coffin didn't feel any urgency or anger.

Which was actually the case.

As a Possession Specter that possessed an object, the Screaming Coffin didn't even really have a consciousness.

It had the same level of consciousness as a cell.

It just followed the most basic instincts.

RIIIP!

Suddenly, one of the bandages was ripped off as Nick pulled on it.

'What?' Nick thought in shock. 'I ripped it already?!'

That was when Nick realized that he was a couple of meters below the surface, which meant that neither Wyntor nor the Parasite could perceive him.

At this moment, Nick's body was over 15 times as powerful as the body of an average adult male, and the Screaming Coffin was only an Early Hatchling.

As soon as Nick ripped the bandage off, the other bandages started to slowly retreat.

Even though the Screaming Coffin had a very basic consciousness, when one of its bandages was ripped off, it still decided to stop its attempt to consume Nick.

'That's problematic,' Nick thought. 'I don't know where it is!'

Nick moved forward and grabbed two of the retreating bandages, but he didn't pull on them.

Instead, he simply kept them in his grasp.

The bandages wanted to slowly retreat, but after a couple of seconds, they started to slowly encompass Nick's arms.

Nick didn't do anything.

Soon, more bandages appeared around his body, and they also started to encompass him.

To make sure that Nick wasn't bound in a problematic position, he kept his arms and legs apart while also keeping all of his muscles flexed.

Even if the Screaming Coffin managed to wrap him in several bandages, all the bandages were still attached at one end, and with a single pull, Nick could tear them off.

Some seconds later, ten different bandages had grabbed Nick's body, and he felt himself get pulled downward.

Luckily, Nick was carrying a bit of Arclight on his waist, which meant that the Nightmare wasn't an issue right now. 

10,000 credits was no longer something extremely expensive to Dark Dream.

After getting pulled down for a couple more meters, something appeared.

It was a luxurious black coffin.

At this moment, the coffin was closed, and twelve white bandages came out of the tiny gaps between the body and the lid of the coffin.

Nick looked at the coffin with narrowed eyes.

As Nick got closer, the coffin slowly slid open.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!

Immediately, Nick felt like he was looking at an eternal ocean of hate-filled ghosts!

It was like an army of furious and unwilling corpses was screaming at Nick to join them.

They hated being doomed to this eternal existence of suffering, and they had long since lost all of their rationality.

All of them were filled with nothing but pure hatred for anything that didn't share their pain.

Nick's body shook when he heard the hate-filled screams, but he quickly calmed down, and only one thought shot through his mind.

'So, that's why it's called the Screaming Coffin!'