I'm a Serious Student, I Only Drink Nine Potions a Day

And the bullet wound in its abdomen was healing at a visible rate.

The torn flesh wriggled toward the center as if alive, drawing together and sealing shut as blood flowed back into its body.

A few seconds later, the wound had vanished, leaving only a bullet hole in its shirt.

"What is this?! Who are you?!"

Zack's voice cracked, shrill as a rat whose tail had been stepped on.

A gust of wind answered him.

That thing moved.

It was so fast that the flashlight beam could not keep up with it at all.

In the blink of an eye, it appeared before the two thugs at the front, having crossed ten meters.

Both hands rose and came down.

There were no weapons, only ten fingers.

But those ten fingers were sharper than any blade.

Two heads separated from their necks at the same time.

The cuts were as clean as if made by a scalpel. Blood gushed from the neck stumps, tracing two dark-red arcs through the flashlight beams.

The two headless bodies remained standing for nearly a second before collapsing limply to the ground like puppets with their strings cut.

Zack let out a strangled scream.

It did not sound like something an adult man could make—thin, broken, filled with primal terror.

He raised his gun and pulled the trigger like a madman.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

All five bullets hit.

Chest, abdomen, shoulder—every shot pierced that thing's body, blasting clouds of brick dust from the wall behind it.

That thing did not even break stride.

The bullets passed through its body, leaving five bloody holes bubbling with froth.

Then those holes began to heal. Just like the gunshot wound in its abdomen, flesh wriggled, drew together, and sealed shut.

Five seconds later, all five bullet holes had disappeared.

It walked toward the crowd.

Its pace was calm and unhurried, like it was taking a stroll.

An iron pipe smashed into its shoulder, but it did not turn around.

A machete hacked into its arm, slicing open flesh and exposing pale bone beneath. Then the wound closed up completely within two seconds.

He was like an indestructible giant walking toward tiny ants on the ground.

The ants' screams, struggles, fear, and everything else...

Could not make this giant hesitate or slow down in the slightest.

The slaughter began.

Evan crouched behind a broken wall in the distance, his pupils dilated to their limit, sweat soaking through the back of his shirt.

He had not sensed the Monster at all when he entered.

"Regeneration, bloodsucking... He must be the Vampire Pulis sent to follow me!"

The Night Demon Potion's night vision allowed him to see every detail clearly.

Those gang thugs who usually threw their weight around and terrorized others were like a flock of chickens driven into a slaughterhouse before that thing.

They screamed, fled, and desperately swung their iron pipes and machetes, but every attack was like scratching an itch.

That thing moved so fast that even its afterimages could not be seen clearly.

Its fingers pierced human skulls as easily as poking through wet cardboard.

Its fangs bit through human necks as easily as biting through a sausage.

Every fatal wound rapidly healed within seconds.

Gunshots, slashes, beatings—none of it worked.

Despairing cries echoed through the empty factory, one after another, gradually becoming fewer and weaker.

Like candles being snuffed out one by one in the wind.

Evan crouched behind the broken wall, his back pressed against the cold bricks, his palms drenched in sweat.

The gap between the two sides was enough to drive anyone to despair.

It was not a difference of ten or twenty times, but a crushing disparity between two completely different levels.

Like an ordinary person trying to collide head-on with a fully loaded semi-truck speeding along at a hundred kilometers per hour.

You could see it, you could hear it, but there was nothing you could do.

At that moment, the boundary between mortals and the supernatural was so clear and cruel.

Evan swallowed.

As his Adam's apple bobbed, he realized his hands were trembling.

But it was not entirely fear.

Beneath the fear, something more primal and more burning was smoldering.

He stared at the figure harvesting lives in the darkness, at the fatal wounds healing within seconds, at that absolute power beyond all physical attacks.

He wanted to become like that too...

After the brief shock passed.

Evan turned and ran with all his strength, like a rabbit pursued by hunting dogs.

It was the instinctive reaction of a mortal.

He did not know how many eyes were watching him from the darkness.

But he knew perfectly well that in a situation like this, the more he acted like an ordinary man scared out of his wits, the safer he would be.

Within a minute, he had completely left the factory grounds and sprinted more than four hundred meters away.

The gravel road beneath his feet became a dirt path, with gentle hills covered in trees and wild grass on either side. The yellowed grass tips rustled in the night wind.

In the distance, Bolton City's outline was clearly visible beneath the night sky, countless lights scattered across black velvet like fragments of gold.

The silhouettes of tall concrete buildings and factory chimneys rose and fell unevenly.

A sharp pain forced him to stop.

When he had ambushed the thugs in the factory earlier, two clubs had landed solidly on his back.

His adrenaline had been running too high for him to feel much then, but now that he had stopped, the pain surfaced like reefs exposed after the tide receded.

Two swollen welts ran across his back. The bruised skin was soaked in sweat, throbbing painfully even while he stood still.

And when he ran, the swing of his arms tugged at the muscles and skin on his back, multiplying the tearing pain several times over.

He bent over with both hands braced on his knees, gulping down air.

"If he was sent by Pulis to watch me, then his purpose probably wasn't to kill me. At this distance, I should be safe."

Once he caught his breath, annoyance surged up inside him.

"Damn it, how am I supposed to clean this up now? More than twenty thugs are dead."

"And I openly clashed with Zack earlier. There were witnesses, and I had a motive."

"Logically speaking, that Vampire watching me shouldn't have wanted to make such a huge mess either."

"At most, he should have stepped in briefly when I was in danger and scared those people away."

"Then I could have naturally used Pulis's name as protection and live more peacefully on Gooding Street in the future."

"But why did this guy suddenly go crazy? Why did he start slaughtering people?"

Evan could not figure it out.

He had too little information. It was like being deep in a fog, able to see only the small patch of ground beneath his feet while everything around him remained unknown.

Thud.

Lost in thought, his right foot struck a stone protruding from the road.

His body pitched forward sharply. He hurriedly threw out his hands to brace himself, his palms scraping across rough dirt and gravel with a burning pain.

Lowering his head, he saw that directly beneath his neck...

A section of construction angle iron had apparently fallen from some carriage.

Half of it was buried in the dirt, while the other half jutted upward. The jagged edge was as sharp as a knife.

If his hands had not caught him, the force of his body and momentum would have driven his neck straight onto that piece of angle iron.

Evan's pupils shrank to pinpoints.

He slowly pushed himself up, and the bruises on his back sent out a sharp protest with the movement.

Tensed muscles pulled at the swollen, bloodshot skin. Sweat seeped into every pore, making him grimace in pain.

"Ow, ow, ow..."

After steadying himself, he looked down at the piece of angle iron with lingering fear.

Then his mind suddenly cleared.

"Wait. I've been unlucky all day."

"What if that Vampire isn't Pulis's subordinate?"

"Or rather, what if he was Pulis's subordinate, but suddenly lost control?"

The instant that thought surfaced, Evan's scalp went numb.

The Misfortune Curse was still in effect.

And a Vampire that had lost control was the deadliest coincidence misfortune could create.

His enhanced senses made him instinctively turn around.

Five meters away.

A dark figure stood there. It had appeared at some unknown moment, completely silent, like it had grown out of the ground.

Its bullet-riddled clothes hung from its body, strips of fabric fluttering lightly in the night wind.

Its ghastly pale skin carried a sickly, almost fluorescent pallor beneath the night light.

Its scarlet eyes had no pupils. Its entire irises seemed to be burning.

Its upper lip curled back, revealing two unnaturally long fangs. A drop of dark liquid still clung to one tip, slowly stretching into a thin thread beneath the moonlight.

It had come...

"Holy shit!"

The scene was like something straight out of a horror movie becoming reality.

Evan's legs instantly tensed.

Back on Earth, when Evan was seven or eight, an older kid from next door had dragged him into watching a horror movie, leaving him with childhood trauma.

The older kid had been excited by the sex scenes between the man and woman in the film.

But Evan had been scared pale by the flayed female ghost.

Even as an adult, he was still afraid of darkness and ghosts. He had to turn on the lights to use the bathroom at night, and he could only sleep after making sure the closet door was shut tight.

And the thing before him was ten thousand times more real than any horror movie.