One in 1,931 / Destroying Himself

Where his gaze could not reach, less than a few meters beneath his feet, the remaining black fluid slowly began to gather in his direction.

It was no illusion. From every direction, pairs of ghostly green snake eyes were silently watching him.

It was not in a hurry. It was merely waiting for an opportunity to strike.

Its forked tongue flicked out, licking its lips as it watched the weak human with nowhere left to run.

"Hiss..."

Just then, a syringe extended from Lin's armor, injecting another dose into his body.

In that fleeting instant, during the less than half-second when the drug had worn off and Lin lost focus, when the muscles gripping his blade relaxed for a moment, the thing hiding in the darkness seized its chance.

"Whoosh!"

The black fluid around his feet suddenly transformed into sharp spikes, piercing through the rain and shooting toward the back of Lin's head!

"You fell for it."

Lin's deliberately unfocused gaze abruptly sharpened. His luminous green pupils contracted to pinpoints as he spun around and thrust out his High-frequency Cutting Blade.

"Screech—"

A burst of sparks lit up Lin's helmet.

At the same time, it illuminated the serpentine shape lurking in the shadows.

Chapter 9: One in 1,931

The hideous, twisted serpent left an afterimage on his retina, and Lin's vision was instantly filled with scarlet warnings.

The moment it revealed itself and attacked, the detected Honkai Energy rose in steep steps. Its abnormal energy level surpassed every recorded source of Honkai Energy aside from Herrschers, even far exceeding the values of an Emperor-class Honkai Beast.

This was not an Emperor-class Honkai Beast! This Honkai Beast was even more dangerous!

The force transmitted through his hand left it numb. Lin had not clashed with it head-on; he had merely redirected the attack with his weapon. Even so, his arm had nearly been dislocated.

Without hesitation, he withdrew his blade and leaped back, firing his grappling hook to widen the distance. He drew his pistol, aimed at its most conspicuous, bizarre head, and pulled the trigger.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

The bullets could not penetrate its hide, but they clearly enraged it. Black fluid seeped from between its scales, twisting into needle-like spikes that shot back at Lin faster than the pistol rounds had come.

Every pore on Lin's body tightened. He watched helplessly as that black sludge flew toward his head with enough force to tear apart Powered Armor and human flesh alike, and then...

It stopped in midair as though someone had pressed pause.

Lin landed against the wall. The green glow brought by the drug in his eyes became even more vivid, identical to the scales of the giant serpent-like Honkai Beast before him.

The attack range of the Honkai Beast's black sludge was roughly ten to fifty meters. Its own high-speed movement likely relied on that sludge as well, so the best response was to maintain a safe distance and stay away from any sludge left on the ground.

"Roar—"

In the blink of an eye, the enormous unknown Honkai Beast twisted from the ground onto the wall at a speed completely at odds with its size, pursuing Lin above.

More black sludge emerged from between its scales. It seemed to have been granted life, chaotically yet orderly crowding together to form two gigantic hands that slapped toward the man hanging on the wall from both sides.

It was simply too fast. Even with Lin's dynamic vision, all he could see was a black blur charging at him, climbing up from beneath his feet. Then the two gigantic hands, nearly as large as the Honkai Beast itself, were already before him.

"Bang!"

The black sludge brushed past his face.

Under the combined force of those hands, a hollow was gouged out of the building. Like a finished sandcastle with half of it scooped away, it immediately began to collapse.

Before Lin, who had barely dodged the attack, could decide what to do next, the giant hands suddenly changed. Countless spikes erupted from between their closing palms.

Lin's pupils contracted as he twisted in midair—

"Whoosh!"

A splash of bright red bloomed in the rain.

His right abdomen, left calf, and left shoulder were pierced. The armor meant to protect him had been utterly useless. The black sludge began corroding his body almost the instant it penetrated, and a toxin flowed into him along with it, numbing most of his body.

"Cough—"

Even though the drug dulled the pain, the foreign sensation and his body's feedback still made Lin's eyes widen. The paralytic toxin invaded his brain as well, instantly blurring his vision.

Lin pulled out his blade and severed the black sludge. His entire body fell downward. He weakly fired his grappling hook, but this time it caught nothing. He plunged straight to the ground.

"Bang!"

The sound of his body twisting echoed out.

Blood stained the azure display dark red, mixed with traces of luminous green medicine.

The world before his eyes became bizarre and distorted. His body would not move no matter what he did. He did not know whether one of the joints in his limbs had failed, whether the cerebellum controlling his movements had been damaged, or whether his spine had been shattered in the fall.

The massive serpent silhouette coiled around the half-collapsed building, mockingly watching the life gradually drain from the human's body.

"..."

Was there any way out?

"..."

His clouded mind began to think, and the mocking serpent shadow slowed.

Every scene from his life flashed before him, passing by like a slideshow.

But this was not a life flashing before his eyes. This was not the end of Lin's life. It was his thinking.

Lin would never give up, no matter when.

Death? Wouldn't that mean that he, a human, had lost to Honkai?

"..."

No. Humanity would not lose.

Then there were only two options left: the Phase Transfer Device and...

"The first thing I'll entrust to you is testing these things for me. They can temporarily enhance your physical functions and reduce your pain..."

Mobius's words lingered by his ear. For some reason, Lin recalled the way she had said them in that meaningful tone.

Her eyes gradually overlapped with the serpent shadow's snake eyes.

Lin reached out and grabbed all four remaining doses in the active compartment, then pulled them out and drove every one of them into his neck.

The veins on his right hand, encased in armor, bulged as he clenched it into a fist and hammered it into the ground.

"——"

The rapidly flickering damaged sections of his armor in the display window stopped, and the countdown that had ended was replaced by a fresh ten minutes.

This time, the countdown turned blood-red.

Lin struggled to his feet. He could feel the lingering pain in his body rapidly vanishing, while the toxin's effects were being suppressed by another toxin.

Lin did not adjust his breathing. Instead, he raised his head and locked onto the enemy through the interface in his display window.

This time, he did not widen the distance. He raised his blade and charged at the monster.

"Boom!"

The serpent shadow roared as well, waves of surging lightning flickering from the black sludge.

"Doctor, where are those Artificial Toxins you synthesized before?"

While organizing documents in the laboratory, Bianca noticed that something that had originally been placed there was missing. After searching everywhere and failing to find it, she turned to ask Mobius, who was sitting in a chair, drinking coffee while reviewing Lin's records.

Mobius frowned at a line in Lin's file. When she heard Bianca's question, her brows relaxed again. "Artificial Toxins? Oh... those. I had that naturally defective Lab Rat take them away."

"Take them away? That young man?" Bianca froze. "What did he take those things for?"

"Obviously, to use them."

"..."

Bianca was stunned.

"What are you standing around for?" Mobius looked up, a sinister smile appearing on her pretty face. "Isn't that exactly what they're for?"

"But don't those toxins damage the pain nerves?"

That Artificial Toxin had been formulated long before Mobius joined MOTH. Its original purpose had been to enhance humans, but its side effects were too severe, so it had never been approved for use.

"Damage nerves? That is nothing more than an insignificant aspect of the drug. It can even be regarded as one of its beneficial effects." The doctor lightly touched her earring, and the excitement in her green eyes grew brighter. "Lin. I examined him three times, and all three times he disappointed me. But the only two recent surgeries made me realize that this person's extraordinary endurance was the reason his combat ability surpassed what others could achieve even with Honkai Energy Adaptability."

From memories so distant that she was nearly forgetting that person's face, drugs had hijacked human nerves, emotions, and bodies, making humans appear ugly in her eyes.

The ideal of evolving humanity had been carved into her future from that moment onward.

"Do you know, Bianca? What is that toxin's greatest side effect?"

"It amplifies the user's emotions, making them violent, combative, and addicted. There were a full 1,931 test cases for this toxin, yet not a single organism escaped its control. After the effects ended, there were 923 cases of brain death, while only one subject survived after receiving six doses."

"But I believe in that human. He is the kind of 'human' I have always hoped for."

She believed in humanity more than she believed in the one-in-1,931 chance.

Chapter 10: Destroying Himself

Everything he could see slowed down.

He could clearly see every stage of a raindrop shattering across his helmet.

The tidal black sludge surged down from above. Perhaps to kill this troublesome human once and for all, the sludge spread across the entire width of the building this time. The serpent shadow followed closely behind as it descended. One could imagine that when it hit the ground, the spreading black sludge would flood the entire street and crush everything nearby.

Teal lightning gathered atop the black-and-green serpent head, poised to strike under the control of those glowing green snake eyes.

After pausing for a third of a second, Lin pulled out a Honkai Energy Split Grenade, pulled the pin, and threw it into the black tide right before him.

"Boom—"

The explosion's smoke and dust, along with the black sludge that instantly closed again, swallowed Lin's figure.

"Roar!"

The serpent shadow roared, its cunning snake eyes glaring viciously at the smoke that vanished into the rain almost immediately.

Though it had only lasted an instant, its attack had indeed been blasted open. It was certain that the human was not dead.

"Whoosh!"

An azure blade cut through the white smoke. Lin emerged from it, crossed over the black tide, and surged upward toward the roof of the building. The Jetpack's overloaded operation allowed him to run across the wall as though it were level ground, while his still-bleeding wounds did not affect his speed.

He was even faster than before.

Every part of Lin's body diagram on the display screen glowed red with danger. His heartbeat had exceeded the limit, his breathing was so rapid that the internal circulation system could not keep up with his ventilation, two bulges rose at his temples, and ominous luminous green flowed through his thick blood vessels.

Even Mobius herself probably had not expected Lin to inject all the toxins into his body so soon. Rather than taking one dose at a time, he had used all four doses at once.

The consequences were still unknown, but the effects were obvious.

With his pain nerves burned out, Lin could only determine where his body was injured through the panel. But after losing his sense of pain, his other senses became sharper, and his thought speed increased as well. It allowed him to make movements that were nearly unimaginable.

"Crackle—"

The snake eyes locked onto the approaching black speck, then suddenly flared. The teal lightning around the serpent head split into three bolts and struck down at the reckless human.

The terrifying lightning blasted three enormous craters into the ground, but the serpent shadow stiffened when it saw the figure emerge from the lightning once more.

It had missed?

No, Lin had dodged.

The warning before it unleashed lightning—the glow in its snake eyes—lasted only a few dozen milliseconds. But to Lin, it was no different from a streetlamp suddenly lighting up on a pitch-black night. It might as well have been shouting in his ear to get out of the way.

So he merely shifted a short distance to the side. The lightning only lightly numbed his arm through the moisture in the air and did not affect him otherwise.

The enraged Honkai Beast let out a furious roar. This time, even more lightning gathered around its serpent head. Seeing this, Lin decisively cut open the wall above him with his blade and slipped into the building, making it lose its target.

After entering the building, Lin did not pause. He hurled grenades at several load-bearing pillars, then shot and detonated them before they hit the ground.

"Boom!!!"

Amid the violent explosions, the half-ruined building began to collapse as well, sending the Honkai Beast coiled around its upper section falling downward.

"Roar—"