Evan braced himself against the cold wall and struggled forward.
With every step, the fire in his abdomen burned fiercer.
Just then.
A figure appeared at the mouth of the alley, moving with eerie lightness.
It flickered in and out of sight, a silhouette seeping out of the darkness itself.
Tall and slender.
A finely tailored black cloak draped to its ankles.
The figure looked utterly out of place in the filthy alley, strewn with rubbish and reeking of damp mold.
As though a carefully retouched portrait had been pasted by mistake onto the crime page of a newspaper.
Pulis.
"When the Demon Hunter Characteristic reaches the final stage of digestion, every blood vessel, bone, and organ in your body will be rebuilt."
Pulis's voice remained composed and elegant, as though he were giving an ordinary anatomy lecture.
"Your liver will grow larger and begin producing black blood."
"Your ribs will expand outward, and your bones will thicken, making room for a larger chest cavity and more organs."
"The walls of your blood vessels will thicken. Your heart will beat faster. Your body temperature will rise. Your blood will boil from the sudden influx of excess Beyonder matter."
The faintest curve touched his lips.
"Those thirty minutes are quite difficult to endure."
With every sentence, his body slid a yard closer in a way that defied physics.
He took no steps and swung no arms. His figure merely blurred in place, then appeared closer the next instant.
Like a ghost. Like a projection. Like the darkness of the alley itself creeping toward him.
Evan knelt on the ground, drenched in cold sweat, his damp hair plastered to his cheeks.
He looked up and forced out a low, hoarse sentence.
"I thought there was... some affection between teacher and student."
Pulis lowered his head slightly to look at him.
"Do you remember how many pieces of bread you've eaten?"
His voice was as calm as if he were asking about something trivial.
"Do you grow attached to the bread you eat?"
Evan gave a rattling laugh.
Pain twisted the sound into something that hardly seemed to come from an eighteen-year-old.
He raised his face, a mischievous grin on his lips.
"Professor, I don't want to be human anymore."
"Do you think I still have a chance?"
Pulis spoke with arrogance and contempt. "A stray dog from the gutter like you really has... no limits."
He merely raised his right hand, clad in a black leather glove.
The next instant, the entire alley collapsed inward around his fingertips, becoming a living, tangible mass of crimson that surged toward Evan with a ravenous pull.
For that instant, Evan felt as though someone had shoved him to the bottom of a sea ten thousand meters deep.
An endless sea of blood surrounded him.
Light, sound, smell, temperature—all were stripped away.
Even his lungs filled with blood, and all he could see was red.
He was about to drown.
Against that crimson, strength, anger, and Physique were all useless.
There was no room to resist.
The blood was stripping away his senses and his thoughts.
Bang!
A dull impact rang out.
It was not a sound metal, bone, or anything else he knew could make.
It sounded more like... a living wall crashing into a living fog, setting off a shock wave.
The blood around him suddenly receded.
Evan sucked in a breath. Cold, real air filled his lungs again.
He propped himself up and opened his eyes.
Someone stood before him.
A burly man.
Nearly six foot three.
His shoulders were as broad as two oak doors, his chest strained against a cheap leather jacket, and his arms were thicker than Evan's thighs.
Except—
Below that bodybuilder's upper body were hips and legs no different from anyone else's.
A perfect comic-book inverted triangle of a body, but in reality, it looked bizarre and ridiculous.
Evan stared at the strange proportions for half a second, then found himself wondering whether the man would snap his waist if he tried to run.
The man wore an old leather jacket that looked as if he had pulled it at random from a secondhand shop, faded jeans, and mud-spattered work boots.
He reeked of cheap whiskey, tobacco, and something briny.
In the night, his short silver-white hair stood out sharply, every strand sticking up like metal wire swept by the wind.
"Pulis Kelin Batulus."
A deep, resonant voice rolled from his throat.
"You broke our agreement. You crossed the line."
Pulis frowned slightly. A rare trace of impatience appeared on his porcelain-pale face.
"Richard Tyson."
His tone carried the superiority of a scion of a great family addressing a street thug.
"You gutter trash really don't know when to leave someone alone."
It seemed the two had fought several times over the past couple of days.
At Pulis's words, Evan's pain-addled mind finally seized on the clue.
This hulking man, built like he had stepped out of a comic book, was the Eldest Senior Brother Hill had mentioned.
"Richard Tyson... Rich... too deep inside?"
The searing pain had turned his thoughts to mush.
The 13% nerve damage still showing on the Panel, compounded by the probing of that invisible hand, left him feeling as though something in his head had come loose.
Every nerve in his brain felt soaked in scalding brine. Nonsense spilled from his mouth, sentence after sentence, beyond his control.
"Heh-heh, get in there. Stick it to him."
"Hee-hee, I have to survive."
"Then what's the price? Dog balls..."
Richard glanced at Evan from the corner of his eye, and twisted resignation flashed across his rugged face.
He raised a hand the size of a palm-leaf fan and covered his face.
"Great. Another one who's lost his mind."
In that instant of distraction.
Pulis moved.
The elegant figure standing a dozen yards away seemed to have been put on fast-forward.
His entire body twisted, stretched, and blinked forward in defiance of physics. The next instant, he stood between Richard and Evan.
His left arm transformed.
Starting at the shoulder, the arm wrapped in a black silk sleeve split apart. Skin, muscle, and bone were kneaded anew like ground-up clay.
It became a tentacle of flesh glistening dark red. Its tip split into five petals like a blooming carnivorous flower and lashed toward Evan's neck.
"Yaua!"
A deep syllable rolled from Richard's throat.
It was neither English nor any language Evan had heard before.
Pulis jerked to a halt.
A milky-white mist instantly covered his pale blue eyes. He froze in place, as though someone had hit pause.
"Ierde!"
Richard uttered a second syllable.
Bang.
An invisible force tore through Pulis's chest like a runaway train.
Pulis was hurled into the mold-covered brick wall on the far side of the alley and vanished into the darkness.
The next instant, Richard's arm, thick as an oak post, seized Evan by the collar and tucked him behind his broad back like a hen sheltering a chick.
"Little Junior Brother, how are you holding up?"
His strikingly handsome face lowered close to Evan's.
"Still right in the head?"
He paused, then patted Evan's shoulder. His tone abruptly turned less than serious.
"Let's keep some dignity out here. No jerking off, no dropping your pants, and no grinding against my ass. Anything else, we can talk about."
Behind him, Evan stood with his brow furrowed.
He struck his temple hard with his fist, then scratched at his scalp.
He let out a ragged breath that tasted of blood and raised his head.
Richard saw the change in that instant.
The pupil of Evan's left eye had narrowed into the Golden Slit Pupils that marked a Demon Hunter.
A few stark silver-white strands had appeared among his black hair and were quietly spreading along his part.
Stranger still was his face.
The left half was cold and calm, its muscles taut and its gaze sharp enough to cut through the night wind.
The right half was like a shuffled deck of cards, shifting between joy, anger, sorrow, and delight every half second.
"Senior Brother."
Evan's voice was hoarse and fractured.
"I'm having trouble controlling my brain."
As he spoke, Richard watched the top of Evan's head grow visibly more pointed.
"Well, damn."
Richard scratched the back of his head.
"Aren't the side effects of Master's branch of the Demon Hunter Characteristic infertility and memory damage?"
"How come your head's gone pointy too?"
Evan clutched at his scalp with both hands. His nails had already torn several bleeding scratches across it.
"Senior Brother! It itches so much! I think I'm growing a brain!"
As his skin broke, a few beads of blood seeped out.
Richard's bulbous nose twitched.
The next instant, his expression changed completely.
"By the Master!"
He took half a step back and stared at Evan as though he were a monster.
"Little Junior Brother, is that even fucking blood?"
"No wonder the side effects of your digestion are so absurd! How much Beyonder matter did you fucking eat?"