Evan watched the flesh on the ground continue to writhe. He knew she wasn't dead.
At this stage, he had no way to kill her.
But at least he had beaten her!
With no Beyonder Characteristics of his own, he had defeated a Beyonder in the truest sense!
A sense of achievement unlike anything he had ever felt burst through his chest.
And at that very moment,
his body began to convulse violently.
The agony that had torn through every nerve began to fade at an almost unbelievable speed.
A successful hunt brought rapid digestion.
"Urghhh!!"
A strange growl rolled from his throat.
His jet-black hair visibly lost its color, turning flawless silver-white from root to tip.
His other eye, which had still retained a human pupil, contracted vertically beneath the moonlight into a golden slit pupil.
On his clenched fist, the veins that had once been blue-green turned deep black, one by one.
He grew taller again. His shoulders broadened, his chest thickened, and his entire body seemed to have been reshaped from within.
The pointed bulge atop his head, the one Richard had mocked, began to twist and pull under some invisible force.
A few seconds later,
Squelch.
A long, razor-sharp bone spike burst through the top of his head.
With a struggle, a monster crawled out.
It looked like a monstrous claw, its five fingers long, sharp bone spikes with a metallic sheen.
It resembled a skeletal spider, or perhaps a small facehugger made of bone.
Inside the translucent bone at the center of its palm sat a damaged piece of black brain tissue.
Then everything went still.
His earlier harsh, bellows-like panting had vanished.
In its place came a deep, unhurried rhythm of breathing.
With every inhale, his chest expanded slowly and powerfully.
With every exhale, it was as though he breathed a whole night's mist back into the sky.
Moonlight spilled through a gap in the clouds.
Evan stood and rolled his shoulders and neck.
He now stood 1.81 meters tall, straight-backed and strong.
The muscles beneath his skin were balanced and firm, each one packed with explosive power.
The cold wind of mid-November swept across his bare chest, but he felt no chill.
His silver-white hair drifted freely in the moonlight.
A pair of golden slit pupils glimmered faintly in the dark.
Those eyes could not only see everything in the darkness, but also catch things mortals would never see.
Around the Female Assistant's body on the ground, dark traces of light he had never seen before now stood out clearly.
"Finally."
Evan looked down at his hands, smeared with black-red blood, then raised his gaze to the distant outline of Bolton City's lights beneath the moon.
"Completely digested."
His mouth stretched into an exaggerated grin that nearly reached his ears.
On his face, half silver-white and half bloodred, that smile looked both crazed and exhilarated.
"Wryyyy!!"
"I'm... feeling freaking amazing right now!!"
He had never felt so exhilarated!
He had never felt so strong!
As Evan threw back his head and laughed, his chest began to itch.
He looked down. The little claw-shaped brain monster was climbing across his bare chest.
"Quite a distinctive little thing."
Evan knew what it was.
During the reshaping of his body, he had clearly sensed every change.
The instant he became a Beyonder, the Demon Hunter profession had automatically detected the remaining thirteen percent nerve damage in his brain and classified it as abnormal tissue.
The Beyonder Characteristic of this lineage had immediately begun removing it, peeling the diseased brain tissue from his skull.
A series of changes he could not understand had followed.
That diseased tissue had merged with the excess bone from his expanding skull, forming the strange little creature before him.
The little thing had no self-awareness, only animal instincts, but it possessed the processing power of a human brain.
Evan could control it directly with his thoughts, like someone piloting a small drone by remote control.
He reached out a finger and gently stroked one of the little monster's metallic-looking bone spikes.
It was sharp and sturdy, and felt like a finely polished ox horn.
"Seems it absorbed some of the Copper Pill's Copperization Characteristic, along with the tenacious vitality of the Bloodthirsty Species."
Evan murmured his analysis.
"So that feeling that I was growing another brain was my body separating this thing out."
He shook his head.
His whole skull felt wonderfully clear.
The mental sluggishness that had hung over his mind like a permanent storm cloud was completely gone.
And yet,
it still felt as though a wire was missing from his head.
This time, though, it wasn't dullness or numbness. It was a strange pleasure, a lightness that bordered on irresponsibility.
As though someone had cut the brake cables in his life.
The mentally ill think outside the box; dumb kids have all the fun.
Evan silently recalled an old internet saying. It seemed to suit him.
The little monster seemed to sense some kind of summons from its master.
It stopped climbing over Evan's chest and curled its bone spikes inward.
Then it sank straight into his skin.
A few seconds later, no trace remained on his chest.
Only a patch of faintly warm muscle told him the little creature was hiding in his flesh.
"So I've got three hands now, and one of them even comes with its own brain!?"
"Ha! Ha! Ha!"
Evan raised an eyebrow and laughed strangely.
Still laughing, he called up his Attribute Panel with a thought.
The familiar virtual panel unfolded in his vision, but its layout was completely different today.
Basic Panel:
[Profession: Demon Hunter] [Slots: None] [Characteristics: Basic Sanguine 20%; Copper Plague 0.21%] [Physique: 2.433→3.436] [Spirit: 1.477→3.077] [Spirit Vision: 0] [Talent: Power of the Nine Dragons]
Specialty Panel:
[Regeneration: 136%] [Blood Quality: 81.5% (maximum 131.5%)] [Blood Toxicity: 43% (click for details)] [Solar Affinity: 12% (click for details)]
Status Panel:
[Copper Pill: Active. Potent pain relief. 10 hours remaining.] [Blood-Burning Potion: Active. Reduces Regeneration and Blood Quality. 5 hours remaining.] [Sanguine Tainted Blood: Digesting. 10 hours remaining.]
Clean. Neat.
Liver Damage, Syphilis, nerve damage in his brain—all gone.
After becoming a Demon Hunter, his Physique and Spirit had both leaped upward.
From a little over twice a normal person's level, they had shot past three times that level.
It was a leap of an entirely different order.
"Blood Toxicity." Evan's gaze settled on the newly appeared entry.
"A new specialty."
He opened the details with a thought.
[Blood Toxicity: A state unique to you. Your fourth Demon Hunter Mark.] [After the Power of the Nine Dragons reverses a drug's side effects, the resulting toxicity cannot be metabolized. It permanently becomes part of your blood and increases Blood Quality at a ratio of twenty to one.] [It will not harm you. You can toggle the Demon Hunter Characteristic to control whether your Blood Toxicity affects others.] [Reach 5000% to unlock a new Talent.]
Evan stared at the explanation for a long time.
"Looks like becoming a Demon Hunter took me past some important thresholds."
"Attributes I couldn't see before are showing up on the panel now."
"As for a new Talent, that's a long way off."
His gaze returned to the first line.
A fourth Demon Hunter Mark.
Demon Hunters had three Beyonder Marks: white hair, golden slit pupils, and Black Blood.
But he had a fourth.
"A trump card that could turn the tide!"
Next, he opened Solar Affinity.
[Solar Affinity: You like the sun, and the sun likes you.] [You can replenish your energy by basking in sunlight. The higher the value, the faster the replenishment.] [Under sunlight, your Regeneration increases by 10%.] [Reach 100% to enter the next stage.]
"Great, great, great! Praise the sun!!"
Evan spread his arms and looked up, only to find a huge moon overhead.
"Whatever. Moonlight is reflected sunlight!!"
"Give the sun my regards!" Evan shouted at the moon.
With his brake cables cut, he was in an exceptionally good mood.
"Starting today, the Demon Hunter Circle—"
"Has a new young blood!"