Chapter 1795: Journey of the Madman (Part 8)

Eddie chose to rappel down the exterior wall not only because the building might be filled with monsters, but also because he had discovered that the patient ward where he landed was on the side of the inpatient building. Below it lay a small, secluded grove, devoid of zombies and quiet—the perfect landing spot.

As Eddie tied the rope, he couldn't help but recall the zombie that had continued to stumble toward him even after Venom had bitten its head off.

At the time, the zombie's body had still been able to follow its instincts and lunge at him; had Venom not thrown it aside, those sharp claws would surely have gotten him.

Eddie felt more and more that his choice was the right one. Engaging in a brawl with monsters that could still move even after being decapitated was a terrible idea, and Venom's symbiote factors weren't infinite.

More importantly, he knew that Venom wasn't immune to injury. The dense skin formed by rearranging his symbiote factors wasn't invincible; it only appeared unharmed because the symbiote factors were abundant enough to fill in the gaps as soon as they were destroyed.

To protect the host beneath the mask, Venom had to sacrifice a portion of his symbiote factors to negate the opponent's attacks.

When food was plentiful, symbiote factors were naturally produced, but if deprived of food for long periods, the consumed factors could not be replenished.

Venom had received several large bursts of energy, most of which were converted into symbiote factors. If the Gray Mist didn't count as a member of the symbiote species, then Venom was currently the most powerful symbiote in existence.

However, Eddie also knew another fact: symbiotes normally fed on the amine substances found in human brains. Energy was more like a potent nutritional supplement. They could taste and derive pleasure from amine substances, much like how humans might satisfy their nutritional needs with chemical concoctions, yet would never choose to do so unless in an emergency, because food was a source of enjoyment. Even a human on a diet could survive, but few would remain sane.

Eddie worried that the depletion of his power would increase Venom's hunger, and a symbiote that was starving but unable to consume large amounts of amine substances would suffer immensely. Eddie still hadn't figured out what had caused the portal explosion, and if they had to stay here for a long time, Venom would inevitably face that agony.

So, Eddie decided it was better to keep Venom in a semi-dormant state. After leaving the hospital, he would try to find a supermarket with remaining stock to see if he could hoard some chocolate.

While contemplating his next move, Eddie pulled the fire safety harness tight, securing it to the pole fixed inside the wall behind the bed curtain. Once secure, he draped the remaining length of the harness over one arm.

Using his other hand for support, he climbed onto the windowsill and glanced down. The grove was as quiet as ever, with the nearest zombies two streets away—a rare opportunity.

But as he looked down, a cold sweat broke out over Eddie. This was the eighth floor, and he was an acrophobe.

Even though he was well aware of Venom's power, he would still refuse if Venom asked him to jump from a high building. Humans were like that—physically weak and mentally fragile; some psychological barriers were simply impossible to overcome.

Eddie swallowed hard and took a few deep breaths. He thought, *No, that's not the reason. * He refused because Venom allowed him to. Venom would take him via the elevator or the stairs instead. They had even walked down fifteen flights of stairs once; Venom had grumbled the whole way, but he had accompanied him nonetheless.

If Venom were truly a cruel parasite, like Riot, the one who had possessed the Life Foundation leader, he would have said "jump" and wouldn't have cared if Eddie was scared to death.

Eddie recalled the lectures he gave at S. H. I. E. L. D. to agents preparing to bond with symbiotes.

He had keenly observed that most newborn symbiotes lacked empathy; they possessed only the instinct to devour. Experienced cosmic agents like Blue Spirit, when faced with such situations, would simply reinforce the host's defenses, adjust the host's brain structure to dampen fear, and then count "3, 2, 1" to make them jump.

They had no responsibility to understand human frailty, especially fear, since fear made the host uncomfortable and hindered efficiency. So, they simply eliminated it.

But Venom had never done that. Eddie was afraid to jump, so Venom accompanied him down the stairs or the elevator. Eddie was afraid of gunfire, so Venom bypassed firefights. Even when Eddie was afraid of cockroaches, Venom would rush him out of the room rather than simply swatting them.

Venom often mocked Eddie for being a coward, but he was the very reason Eddie remained a coward after half a lifetime.

Thinking of this, Eddie took a deep breath. He gripped the safety harness tightly, leaned his body out of the window, and placed one foot on the exterior of the building.

The sound of him swallowing was incredibly loud. Eddie tremblingly moved his feet, descending only a meter after a long while.

He kept his eyes squeezed shut, frowning and refusing to look down, but his reason told him this speed wouldn't do—there was no place where zombies wouldn't eventually appear.

Eddie summoned his courage, adjusted his breathing, and began to descend with larger steps. Under the full moon, his small black silhouette slowly slid downward like a drop of water melting from an icicle.

"Do you want to know what your heart rate is right now?"

Venom's voice was too abrupt. Eddie gripped the harness so hard his knuckles turned white and roared, "Don't just pop up like that! Do you want to scare me to death?"

"You're already almost scared to death." Venom didn't use his usual mocking tone, but rather a hesitant one. "Tachycardia, muscle spasms, rapid breathing, and signs of neurological disorder. If you hadn't refused to let me carry you down, you'd be scaring yourself to death right now in the process of rappelling."

"Everything is going smoothly so far," Eddie said, trying to keep his voice from trembling. "I'm descending faster and faster. In seven or eight minutes at most, I'll be on the ground."

He ignored Venom and continued to pull the harness, descending step by step.

Things were indeed improving. Perhaps humans really could tap into infinite potential in a crisis, or perhaps because he was descending backward, burying his head and walking, the sense of fear was greatly reduced.

Eddie gathered his courage once more to glance between his feet. He was now between the fifth and sixth floors. The process was much faster than he had anticipated; he could be on the ground in five minutes.

At the thought, Eddie let out a sigh of relief, and the dizziness from his acrophobia subsided slightly.

But as he continued to pull the harness to descend, he felt his hands itch. Eddie looked up and saw something black on the back of his hands.

He lifted one hand, and the black things dangled from where his hand had been. He grabbed lower with the hand he had lifted, and as he lifted the other, he descended two more steps.

But again, black things appeared on the back of both hands. Eddie thought they might be shadows cast by the moonlight, but he didn't know what could be casting them. So, in the gap between switching hands, he touched them.

They were human hair.

Eddie looked up in disbelief to see the female ghost, her eyes hollow and bleeding, staring at him as she clung to the safety rope, the tips of her black hair brushing against his hands.

"AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

Eddie couldn't control his scream.

Several famous Japanese horror films had been popular in the West, and they were the childhood trauma of many Americans—including Eddie, who had been haunted by nightmares for a week after watching *Ju-On*.

Even worse, the female ghost was crawling down the safety rope toward him, head-first, getting closer and closer.

Eddie scrambled to switch hands, sliding down as fast as he could. In his panic, he had no time to check his footing or judge the direction of his movements.

The result was that Eddie drifted further and further off course, and when he reached the fifth-floor window, he missed his footing and plummeted.

Fortunately, Eddie had estimated the height of the eighth floor before starting and had tied the fire safety harness around his chest, back, waist, and crotch, leaving just enough slack to prevent a sudden, fatal drop.

This makeshift harness worked perfectly. Although the impact of the fall was significant, the fire safety harness had enough elasticity that Eddie essentially performed a bungee jump from the fifth floor.

Though it was a massive psychological shock for an acrophobe, he was relieved to find he hadn't sustained any serious injuries.

The moment he was caught by the harness, Eddie was too busy feeling lucky to be afraid.

He was glad he had vaguely remembered the structure of the safety harnesses used by window cleaners from his time working at the newspaper.

Had he tied it only around his waist like in the movies, the impact would have likely ruptured his internal organs.

Checking himself, he found no major injuries, but he realized his estimation of the floor distance hadn't been precise. He had tied it a bit too high, and he was now dangling below a second-floor window, still some distance from the ground.

Eddie calculated that he could continue descending if he loosened part of the harness, so he began to untie it. Just then, he heard a rustling sound from the ground.

Eddie looked down to see two zombies stumbling toward him.

Eddie recalled his scream from earlier. It seemed the setting was similar to zombie movies: zombies were attracted to sound. But unlike the movies, the zombies in this universe were much faster; they had covered two streets in less than a minute.

With them closing in rapidly, Eddie was stuck—he couldn't go up, with the female ghost glaring at him from above, and he couldn't jump down, as he wasn't sure he could outrun the zombies.

Eddie steeled himself, stretched out his hands, grabbed the edge of the second-floor window, and used all his strength to hoist himself up, hooking his knees onto the sill and sprawling onto the window surface.

Eddie pulled his keys from his pocket and smashed them against the corner of the window. He didn't care about attracting zombies from inside the building anymore, because the two monsters below were already preparing to leap.

With a *crash*, the glass shattered, and Eddie scrambled into the room.

Fortunately, the two zombies outside didn't seem to know how to use their arms; although they could jump high, they couldn't grip the windowsill, so they didn't follow him in.

Just as Eddie let out a sigh of relief, he saw a spider crawling out of the preparation room at the other end of the ward.

It looked like a normal spider, except for one thing: it was half the size of a human.

The appearance is basically an ordinary spider, the only problem is that this thing is half a person tall.