Prologue: The Regrets of a certain Karson James Blake (Researcher for UNION's Excavation and Post Crisis response Team)

To speak of Herbert West Hoffman, who was my acquaintance in the UNION and eventual enemy in my work as a Researcher, I can speak only with extreme terror and visceral disgust. This terror is not due completely or even mostly to the sinister manner of his and my own disappearance, but was engendered by the whole nature of his life-work that had first gained its acute form more than ten uncomfortable years ago, when we were in the first year of our course at the UNION department of Phase Force research in Germany.

While he was with me, the awe-striking diligence and perversity of his experiments fascinated me in a complete form to the extent that I couldn't begin to extricate myself from the hole I was quietly starting to dig for myself when working alongside him. However briefly it was, I was both his closest companion cum direst enemy sometime later on after the revealing of Michael Von Kiske's thorough betrayal of humanity itself. Now that he is gone, the fear is that much greater. Much much greater. For a Hoffman outside of sight is infinitely more dangerous than one in sight. My memories and his many possibilities are ever more hideous than any new realities that I could ever begin to find myself thrown unto.

The first horrible incident that shed suspicion upon Herbert was the greatest shock I had ever experienced up unto that moment, and it is only with reluctance that I repeat it. As I have said, it happened when we were in UNION's Phase Force outward research center no more than five miles from Wildhunter Castle, where West had already made himself notorious through his wild theories on the nature of Humanity and the possibility of overcoming it artificially.

It was the first card played upon the dark table of mine, and his futures. Having satisfied myself with a day of studying a peculiar case of a young post office worker that had been the victim of an ossified parasitic worm, I found myself curious as to the progress Herbert had been making. Naturally, a worm ossifying was nigh-impossible, however, Phase Force had thrown everything we knew about biology and science, turning even the most harmless of creatures into unrecognizable deadly killers. I take no pleasure in the knowledge that I hid from the public regarding him, but I was very much at the time convinced that his work was worth turning a blind eye to, if only for my own safety.

I had begun becoming subtly aware of Herbert's misdoings long before, but they came to head when I met him mid dissection of a corpse in a UNION lab. Now the corpse wasn't particularly mangled or desecrated in any outwardly visible way. Instead the context in which he was skillfully disassembling the body was horrifying.

You see, Several weeks ago, Munich was stormed by over nearly a hundred gates that spewed out hundreds of low rank dimensional monsters. What would only be found out much later was that Hoffman had himself generated those portals to gather more corpses.

The closers who arrived later at the scene had commented on the odd lack of civilian bodies. Without proof of him even being there, or any distinct human foul play, the Media had been forced to report that the monsters had kidnapped those poor victims to their external dimension.

So anomalous is the nature of the dimensional monsters and the phase force brought with them, that even geniuses like Herbert west, Jaeri kim, and Hildegarde had barely begun to unravel the secrets of the extradimensional power. Even the strange and queer researchers like Bona choi and Celine find themselves far out of their depth involving things like Phase Nucleic Acid, and the workings of dimensional monster minds.

Herbert West's work was odd and ever increasingly more gruesome. He had spoken in confidence with me about how he viewed the human body much like how one viewed a motherboard or a fleshy animated computer and if he could figure out the programming and specifics, he could resurrect anyone, anywhere, for any purpose amongst a trillion other things he was on the cusp of discovering.

His views, which were widely ridiculed by the faculty and the rank and file Closers, hinged on the essentially mechanistic nature of life; and concerned means for operating the organic machinery of mankind. In his experiments with various mechanical alterations he had killed and treated immense numbers of humans before he moved on to dimensional monsters, followed by Closers themselves, before eventually mixing the three in hideous amalgamations of flesh, bones and exposed nerves of what had been once many different living organisms.

I could never get used to the levity in which he preformed such acts. On the thin embryo of the surface, he was working under UNION's Disease, Phase Contamination, and Surgery divisions, working on Closers who had received debilitating conditions in the field ranging from complete evisceration, Mind destruction, and to having burned all their life out using restricted 666Cores and left shocked husks of bodies incapable of doing anything other than silently twitching their eyes.

It was a terrifying thing that West could do such under almost no supervision or audits.

From what the Wildhunter team had reported after invading the Corinthian labyrinth of his personal workspace, it was clear his genius had not gone unused. What remained of his works after the destruction of his lab were nameless monsters of conjoined steel and lumps of purple flesh wriggling in their glass tubes full of some unholy writhing and bubbling liquid that I wouldn't dare guess as to what it was.

During the excavation of the cellar beneath his first labyrinth, we found the first clone of himself, resting in some pool of brown sludge that spit and hissed as we approached like a menacing large cat attempting to scare off some unknown enemy.

It looked much like him, with a thin pale body of midland German descent with a cold dead look in it's lightless blue eyes. His silver hair almost unchanged in the following decade that had passed. One could imagine his state of mind whilst creating this clone, yet my shock was betrayed as a cold rotten wind blasted me against the wall to my back as I walked forward. My spine felt like it had folded in half whilst my head spun uncontrollably.

Bright flashes of prismatic lights blazed into my eyes, blinding me for quite a while. When I came to I saw the clone which had extracted itself from the putrid sludge that slid off it in slow relenting streaks back into the pool with sickening squelches.

Only then did I realize the horror that had befallen me. The blue eyes that had once been cold and dull were now blazing as this thing, for there was nothing else to call it than a thing, had extended it's already large triangular uncannily white jaw several feet down and three or so wide. It was akin to that of a snake about to swallow a large rat whole, and it's target was the young Irishman who had been working alongside me. I didn't dare try to fight this thing. I wasn't a Closer, and I barely had physical training in my life up to this horrifying moment of regret and terror.

I tried to get up but my legs wouldn't respond. Despite my best efforts, it seemed my body had been petrified by some foreign force. Herbert West had already been defeated, yet a mere clone in an unexplored basement of concrete and metal could terrify me thus. It was a mortifying experience that I doubted that I could find a way out of.

I looked around myself, trying to block out the sound of a man being eaten whole, clothes and all by some fundamentally wrong thing as I reclined against the cold concrete wall. There were a long line of computers and various machinery still present on the far right on an elevated platform overlooking the area that I was incapacitated in.

I couldn't move my legs one bit, but my arms slowly responded to me with much effort and repeating intense flashes of biting pain.

I could see my Ulna that had been snapped trying to poke it's way through the skin of my left arm, leaving what looked like a large boil that was exceptionally red and porous.

Just moving sent violent jolts of sharp biting agony down my spine and arm, but I had to do something. I would not just let myself die like this.

I had an emergency handgun that shot ten phase force enhanced bullets, but that wasn't an option. The recoil was too much and would likely break my arms even further, not to mention it would deafen me even if I by some miracle of God managed to hit the thing.

My radio that I had been holding had been flung halfway across the room. I would not be able to reach it.

That left one thing. A last resort weapon given to field researchers faced with overwhelming enemies. One singular Phase Grenade.

It was a weapon that could take out D to low end C tier Dimensional monsters. The problem was that if you were within ten meters of it, you would be completely evaporated by the heat and energy the grenade emitted in it's detonation.

Reaching into my jacket breast pocket with my right hand that only had minor fractures, I took out the grenade and forced the safety cap off the red square button that would arm it with my thumb.

It seemed the sounds had stopped and the clone was slowly limbering towards me, it's previously pristine face now wide and covered in blood and flesh from his meal earlier. It didn't even perceive me as a threat. Perhaps it's early awakening had made it less cunning and rational as the original Hoffman, but I wouldn't get another chance like this again.

As it slowly advanced the dozen or so feet towards me, it's mouth widened again, extending outwards in a expectation that it would feed on me.

"Not...Today...You...Fucker!" I grit through immense pain, arming the grenade and hurling it into it's mouth.

Well, it was much less impressive than a hurl. Instead of an Olympic shotput champion, it was more akin to a young boy throwing a baseball for the first time.

Slow, wobbly, and weak. However, it entered the thing's mouth and it swallowed it without a question as slowly the being continued advancing hungrily as flesh splattered the floor dripping from the clone's mouth.

I had a mere three seconds to say my last goodbyes and come to terms with my death.

3..

It leaned over me.

2...

"Fuck I don't wanna die" I grit through the pain as blood gushed from my teeth that I was gritting so hard that they were beginning to crack.

1...

I could feel it's rancid rotten breath wash over me.

BOOOM

With a flash and a blast of force and heat, everything was gone and I gave in to the searing white light.