Evan ignored the Female Assistant's contempt.
He kept his mouth wide open, his incisors tearing and grinding at the wound on the crimson tentacle.
Mouthful after mouthful of foul blood, mixed with the Blood-Burning Potion still in his mouth, flowed into the wound.
The Female Assistant paid it no mind.
Her stride never faltered. She moved with the ease of someone who had already won.
"I suggest you stop struggling."
Her voice came from ahead, cool and steady, without a trace of breathlessness.
"I've looked into your background."
"Your family is a branch of the Mason Family."
Evan's teeth paused for a moment.
"Your ancestry goes back to a witch in the seventeenth century."
The Female Assistant continued, sounding smug as she revealed the answer.
"You don't really think your grandparents and parents died for the reasons you were told, do you?"
Evan froze.
For a second, even the pain scrambling his thoughts seemed to stop.
The Female Assistant seemed to have a great deal she wanted to get off her chest.
"Arkham has many secrets. The Mason Family is one of them."
She paused, then gave a cold laugh.
"Keeping an immortal fed isn't easy."
"This year's Homecoming invitation went to you."
"You should know what that means."
Evan's fingers tightened sharply.
Fragments of memory surfaced.
Letters from his hometown sometimes appeared on the wooden dining table, sealed with the crest of a fallen family.
Whenever one was opened, his grandparents or his parents would turn pale.
It was more than unhappiness. It was the stifled fear of people with fate's hand around their throats.
The house would remain gloomy for days, and no one wanted to discuss what the letter said.
"Come with us quietly, and you'll live a little longer."
The Female Assistant's final words sounded like bait.
Evan was still struggling to piece the clues together through the pain when—
Thud.
His body rolled twice from a violent jolt.
Evan slammed into the damp earth.
He braced himself against the ground and struggled to raise his head.
The Female Assistant had carried him nearly two kilometers from Gooding Street.
He recognized the Southeastern Outskirts. The silhouette of the Abandoned Factory was faintly visible beneath the distant cliffs.
The Female Assistant, who had been running effortlessly moments ago, lay sprawled three meters away.
"What's happening?"
She pushed up her upper body, confusion flickering across her face.
"Why... won't my body obey me?"
Her pupils snapped into vertical slits, and her irises turned blood-red, as though she were rapidly examining herself from within.
The next second, her expression changed drastically.
"Damn it!"
She jerked her head up, fury blazing in her eyes.
"What did you do to me? How was I poisoned?"
She tried to stand, but her body would not obey.
Her limbs were weak, her muscles slack, and her head spun. She could not even push herself onto her knees.
The unknown poison was diluted. It isn't strong, she calculated rapidly.
These symptoms would not last.
With her Physique, she would begin to recover in thirty seconds at most.
But in that instant—
She saw Evan rise from the ground.
His face was covered in blood, with fresh streaks still clinging to the corners of his mouth.
One eye held a golden slit pupil. The other was an ordinary human eye, its pupil black.
The strange combination looked especially eerie in the moonlight.
He walked straight toward her.
The Female Assistant forced out a cold smile.
"Hmph. You can't kill me."
Then—
Evan stepped over her limp legs, swung himself astride her, pinned her shoulders, and bent down to kiss her.
What?!
The Female Assistant went rigid.
Her proud eyes went blank for an instant. Then a glimmer of near-ecstasy flashed through them.
Ha! The Demon Hunter's Characteristic must have fried his brain.
Or has he gone without sex for too long?
She instinctively mocked him in her mind.
Instead of killing me, he kisses me?
Good boy!
Just as she savored her absurd victory—
Hot, pungent liquid poured between her teeth and into her mouth.
Evan had come prepared.
With one hand, he held her jaw open. With the other, he struck the center of her chest.
The blow forced the liquid down her throat.
The Female Assistant's pupils widened abruptly.
She realized at once that he had been playing dumb!
The next second, her two upper canines lengthened into Fangs. She whipped her head aside and sank them deep into the side of Evan's neck.
Sensing that something was wrong, she switched to plan B.
Sanguine Tainted Blood was a lesser Characteristic used specifically to create Blood Slaves—a toxin all Bloodthirsty Species possessed by nature.
She gulped down two mouthfuls of blood while injecting the tainted blood stored in her body into Evan's wound.
If she could turn him into her Blood Slave, she still had a chance to turn things around.
Even if that meant all their earlier research might go to waste, and this test subject's Sunlight Resistance might drop straight to zero.
She had no other choice.
The Demon Hunters were short-handed, and her group of Bloodthirsty Species, continually exploited by capitalists, was hardly better off.
The unknown poison and whatever Evan had planned left her no time to think.
But after gulping down two mouthfuls, the Female Assistant sensed something was wrong.
Pfft.
She spat out the blood remaining in her mouth, her scarlet eyes widening to their limits.
"Damn it!"
Her voice turned shrill and hoarse.
"Why does your blood... reek of copper from the Healing Church? And... aaah!"
Before she could finish, her entire body began to convulse violently.
Evan sat astride her, looking down as the tables turned.
The two massive crimson tentacles visibly shrank and collapsed, like water balloons being drained of blood.
Raised red veins spread across the skin on both sides of her shoulders, forming a hideous web.
The distinctive scarlet color of the Vampire Race rapidly faded from her eyes.
Her exaggerated Fangs shortened at a speed that defied nature, returning to the length of normal teeth.
Every Beyonder trait that marked her as one of the Bloodthirsty Species was rapidly disappearing.
Three doses of Blood-Burning Potion.
One entered the Bloodstream directly through the wound he had bitten into her tentacle.
One went in through her mouth, delivered orally with a kiss.
And the third came from his blood, which was full of various medicinal compounds.
Three routes, one destination—and the effects hit her all at once!
To Evan's surprise, the Copper Pill seemed to have played a part too.
A notification appeared on his Panel.
[You have been injected with a large amount of Sanguine Tainted Blood. Effect duration: 10 hours.] [Effect: Beyonder Characteristic: Basic Sanguine +5%] [Reverse the Side Effect?]
"Reverse it."
Meanwhile, the Female Assistant felt as though she were going mad.
"Damn it! What is this stuff?"
It felt as if someone had dragged her out of a dark Laboratory and thrust her into the noonday sun.
Her blood was burning, from deep within her veins to her fingertips, from the walls of her stomach up through her esophagus.
Worse, she could feel her grip on her own thoughts rapidly weakening.
The corruption of the Healing Church Dungeon Curse was silently devouring her reason.
"Damn it! Cough, cough!"
She coughed violently, spitting up black, bloody foam each time.
"Who the hell are you?!"
Craving blood, she screamed hysterically and struggled with all her might.
But she was like a paralyzed patient pinned to the ground, able only to writhe uselessly in the dirt.
Evan said in a low, hoarse voice, "I am your father!"
He rolled off the Female Assistant, stood, and looked around.
His gaze settled on a large stone three steps away.
It was an angular piece of Blue Granite weighing roughly twenty kilograms, a chunk of roadbed overturned by a truck near the Abandoned Factory.
Evan went over, bent down, and picked it up with both hands.
With a Physique of 2.3, he lifted it almost effortlessly.
He returned to the Female Assistant.
She raised her already unfocused eyes. Watching him lift the stone, her lips trembled.
"You..."
Thud.
The stone came down.
It struck the center of the Female Assistant's forehead.
Bone cracked as sharply as a watermelon splitting underfoot.
"Ki—"
An unfinished syllable squeezed from her throat.
Thud.
A second blow.
Thud.
A third.
Evan lost count of how many times he struck her.
When he finally stopped, he looked down.
Dark red and black blood spattered his entire body. He could no longer tell which was his and which was hers.
The Female Assistant's head and most of her neck had been smashed into a slowly writhing pulp. Shattered bone, brain matter, and dirt mixed together, giving off a sickening, bloody stench.
"Hah!"
Evan sat on the ground, gasping hard.
Striking her over and over with the stone had taken far more out of him than he had imagined.
But he had not dared stop.
He had chosen such an absurd way to administer the potion because he feared the Female Assistant would clamp her mouth shut if she noticed something was wrong.
Then he would have had to find another opening to poison her, and the time wasted would have been enough for her to regain control of her body.
The moment Evan landed and regained his freedom, he slipped a second bottle of Blood-Burning Potion into his mouth and waited for her to lower her guard.
As it turned out, his gamble paid off.
The Female Assistant noticed nothing amiss. Instead, she thought the Demon Hunter Characteristic had fried his brain and left him sexually repressed.
Evan wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Seems Pulis isn't all that impressive."
He muttered to himself, mocking Pulis.
"To be at the same university and not even know Professor Byron is researching a potion to counter them."
Clearly, the Female Assistant knew nothing about the Blood-Burning Potion.