I'm a Serious Student, I Only Take Nine Potions a Day - Chapter 48

It was like a red-hot steel needle, instantly piercing through the invisible shield Richard had just erected.

Richard's reaction was so fast it barely seemed human.

He shoved Evan far away, but the motion of pushing him made him miss the best chance to dodge.

That barbed tongue pierced straight through his chest, entering through the front and emerging from his back.

A large amount of black liquid sprayed from the wound, splattering across the cobblestones of the alley.

But Richard's face showed no trace of pain.

He lowered his head and looked at the tongue piercing his chest, as though inspecting a nail stuck in his clothes.

His thick, inhuman left arm shot up with lightning speed.

Five sausage-thick fingers, covered in fine scales, seized the section of tongue embedded in his chest.

His right hand clenched into a fist the size of a sandbag, its scales as sturdy as armor, and smashed viciously toward that delicate yet horrifying face in the distance.

"Dragon Blood Potion? You succeeded?"

Pulis froze when he saw the scales on Richard's fist.

A rare flicker of shock passed through those blood-red eyes.

"Die."

Richard spat out the word.

Bang.

That sandbag-sized fist landed squarely on the left side of Pulis's face.

His once-handsome face caved inward as if it had been struck head-on by a tram. His cheekbone, nose bridge, and jaw shattered at once.

The upper half of his face became like a lump of rubber crushed in someone's hand, snapping backward some distance.

But the tongue piercing Richard's chest was still connected to Pulis's body.

The next second, Richard yanked hard.

Pulis's body, already flung away, was dragged back by his own tongue like a fish hooked on a line.

"Get over here!"

Bang.

The second punch. Pulis's jaw was completely shattered, and the skin on half his face ripped open, exposing the pale skull beneath.

Bang.

The third punch. The entire left side of his skull caved in, and an eyeball squeezed out of its distorted socket, dangling beside his face.

Standing in the distance, Evan watched this slaughter-like counterattack. The tiny bit of clarity left amid his agonizing pain made him instinctively pull two bottles of Blood-Burning Potion from his jacket's inner pocket.

He had kept these two bottles close to his body whenever he went out these past few days.

He had been afraid they might not be on him if he ever needed them.

"Nice one, Senior Brother! Beat this dumb bastard to death!"

"Senior Brother, leave him breathing! I want to punch him too!"

As Evan babbled nonsense, the relevant Demon Hunter knowledge surfaced in his mind again.

"After Bloodthirsty Species are injured in battle, they enter an extreme state of blood thirst."

"And Demon Hunters are accustomed to poisoning their own blood. This is an advantage unique to Demon Hunters among all professions."

Looking at Pulis in the distance, whose face had been beaten beyond recognition but who was still struggling, Evan did not hesitate. He directly twisted open the wax seal on the Blood-Burning Potion in his hand.

He tipped back his head and drained it in one gulp.

The burning, chili-oil-like liquid scorched its way down his esophagus into his stomach, instantly exploding through his blood.

He knew he could not help Richard in combat.

But he could not become his senior brother's burden.

He had no desire to become the blood bag Pulis casually grabbed to recover after being severely injured.

When Jotaro and Dio were beating each other up, an old man like him ought to stay far away!!

"My blood was already toxic. Let's give you something stronger."

[You have consumed an Incomplete Blood-Burning Potion. Duration: 5 hours.]

[Effect: Constitution permanently +0.2; during the duration, self-healing ability decreased by 300%, Blood Quality decreased by 50%.]

Evan struggled to throw the second Blood-Burning Potion to Richard.

Just then.

A light breeze brushed the back of his ear.

It was not the night wind!

Evan's pupils abruptly dilated.

A figure appeared soundlessly behind him.

Evan recognized her.

Pulis's female assistant.

The plain-faced woman in a white coat who always stood in the shadows of the laboratory.

To this day, she had never told Evan her name.

"Damn it."

Evan's mind raced through the agony.

"A feint."

Before he could fully turn around.

Both of the female assistant's shoulders burst open at once. Two blood-red, paddle-shaped flesh tentacles shot out with lightning speed, wrapping around Evan's body from both directions.

The force of that restraint was astonishing.

Evan's Constitution, which had already surpassed 2.3, was like a chick bound in iron wire before those two tentacles.

She turned and ran.

Her speed was absurd. Evan's feet had already left the ground, and he was slung over her shoulder like a sack kidnapped by bandits.

"Senior Brother!"

Evan turned back and shouted.

At the other end of the alley, Richard's fist stopped in midair. The face that had been filled with murderous intent a moment ago instantly turned furious, yet he blinked at Evan.

The instincts inherited from the Demon Hunter Characteristic told him that his senior brother seemed to have another plan up his sleeve.

"Fuck!"

He pretended to curse, tossed Pulis onto the ground like garbage, and turned to chase after them.

Then Evan discovered exactly what he had expected.

Richard was not good at running.

With his terrifying explosive power, overwhelming strength, and inverted-triangle physique straight out of a comic, his lower body bore a weight it was never meant to carry when he ran.

With every step, his torso swayed wildly from side to side, like a ship with its center of gravity installed wrong.

Less than two seconds later.

Evan looked back and could no longer see Richard.

In the night, a cold wind swept through the alleys of mid-November Bolton City.

Evan struggled to break free of the two flesh tentacles, but it was useless.

Every time he exerted force, the tentacles tightened further. His ribs had even begun to creak under the strain.

The female assistant's steady voice sounded beside his ear without the slightest fluctuation.

"Stop struggling."

Her tone was like she was reading meeting minutes.

"You chose the wrong side."

"There are only five active Demon Hunters from Adolf's line in all of Bolton City."

"Now, four of them have already been lured away by us."

"With one person, you think you can fight us?"

While his mind, splitting from pain, was churned into mush by the agony, Evan desperately seized every fragment of inherited memory seeping out from the Demon Hunter Characteristic.

Those whispers from old Demon Hunters around a campfire surfaced again.

"One of the signature characteristics of Bloodthirsty Species: Flesh Mutation."

"Bloodthirsty Species possessing this characteristic have bodies with powerful extensibility and regenerative growth."

"Supported by their own high-quality blood, they form tough flesh tentacles or wing-membrane tissue."

"But their essence is not indestructible."

"Their essence is similar to the human corpus cavernosum, becoming hard and strong through engorgement with blood."

The moment Evan saw that memory, he nearly choked on the bloody taste in his throat.

Those crimson tentacles that looked so cool and savage, like something out of a ghoul anime...

After all that, you were telling him they were basically corpus cavernosum?

"Then if I obtain this characteristic, wouldn't I be able to make it as big as I want?"

"Fuck! What am I thinking about!"

"Since it relies on blood engorgement..."

Evan's mind raced beneath the double assault of agony and absurdity.

"Then the blood inside must also be part of the body's overall blood circulation."

At that thought, Evan licked his teeth.

They still bore traces of the Blood-Burning Potion he had just gulped down.

The next second, he abruptly turned his head and bit down on the crimson tentacle cinched around his shoulder.

Creak.

The tentacle's outer skin was tougher than he had imagined.

His first bite was like biting into the sole of an old leather shoe. His front teeth could not sink in.

But with a Constitution that had surpassed 2.3, coupled with the madness of someone missing a screw, Evan refused to let go.

Second bite. Third bite. Fourth bite.

He frantically rubbed, tore, and ground his incisors against the same spot.

Finally.

The outer skin broke.

A huge amount of foul-smelling dark-red blood, enough to make someone vomit, sprayed into Evan's mouth.

The taste was a hundred times stronger than a sewer, and his stomach churned violently.

But he did not vomit.

Seizing the chance, Evan frantically spat the bloody saliva in his mouth, mixed with the remnants of the Blood-Burning Potion, into the bite wound.

Once. Twice. Three times.

The female assistant in front felt pain in her back and frowned slightly, but soon returned to calm.

She did not even slow down.

"This little wound."