Gold Experience

Li Qing tried hard to make his expression gentler, lest he frighten the benefactors on this bus who had, in a sense, saved his life.

Yet in the very next instant, an indescribable shock appeared on his face:

"This—"

"That meatball, that monster caught up!"

That was right. The bizarre meatball that had nearly swallowed Li Qing in the woods was now following the trail of Li Qing's Echoes Act escape, chasing after the bus he was riding at a terrifying speed.

Gales swept across its bloated, grotesque body, while the thunderous sound of tearing air rolled in without end.

Thirty meters, twenty meters, ten meters.

By the time Li Qing realized he had not shaken off the meatball at all, it had already closed to within ten meters of the rear of the bus.

In other words, Echoes Act had never left it far behind to begin with.

"How is that possible?"

Li Qing's expression turned utterly grim.

"When I used Echoes Act, it felt like I was moving faster than a high-speed train at full speed. That monster can keep up with that?!"

"This is ridiculous."

"Why do I keep running into these freakish things that want to kill me today?"

He clenched his teeth and shouted at the stunned middle schoolers in front of him:

"Move!"

"If you don't want to die, run to the front of the bus!"

"Huh?"

The middle school students on the bus could not understand Li Qing's agitation. They were still reeling from the shock of "a bald man suddenly popping out inside the bus."

The driver in the front seat was even slower to react. Only now did he realize that some sort of disturbance seemed to have broken out in the rear of the bus.

But he immediately discovered that this was far more than a simple disturbance.

Because that bloated Meat Chunk, constantly writhing and changing shape, had already leaped up from the road behind them and clung tightly to the rear window of the bus.

"Crack, crack."

Like a ravenous beast, the Meat Chunk madly devoured the metal shell of the bus blocking its path, accompanied by an eerie, horrifying sound of twisting metal.

This monster seemed capable of eating anything. Before long, the rear windshield and metal body of the bus had both been completely devoured.

In their place stood a writhing, sinister wall of flesh.

It seemed to regard the bus as a breeding bed for itself. Like a plague, the Meat Chunk continued to deform, stretch, and spread through the interior, quickly covering every seat and every corner in the rear of the bus with disgusting tumors of flesh.

Li Qing should have been grateful that he was blind now. Otherwise, that nauseating sight would surely have covered his body in goosebumps.

Still, even with only his hearing, the nearby sounds of the Meat Chunk writhing were enough to unsettle him deeply:

"Damn it."

"What do I do? This monster can even keep up with Echoes Act at its maximum speed. How am I supposed to deal with it?"

He stood there stiffly, with no desire left even to run.

After all, his earlier experience had already told him that blindly fleeing was pointless against a monster whose speed seemed to have no limit.

Li Qing froze in confusion, and the middle school students in the bus were just as terrified.

Though they could not see that evil Stand with the air of some wicked god, they could see the metal shell of the bus constantly twisting and deforming in "thin air" before vanishing into nothingness.

"God!!"

The Lord in heaven suddenly gained a group of followers frightened senseless:

Their gazes passed through the ghostlike "transparent" Meat Chunk and looked directly at the scenery outside, where nothing blocked the rear of the bus anymore.

"The rear of the bus... the windows, the metal panels, the seats—why are they all gone?!"

"Is it... is it haunted?!"

The middle schoolers panicked and instinctively fled toward the still-intact front section of the bus.

But then—

Like a shark that had caught the scent of blood, the Meat Chunk suddenly sprang up from the rear of the bus and lunged at the fastest-running boy.

"Ah!!"

The boy knocked down by the Meat Chunk immediately fell to the floor and cried out in terror at the bizarre attack.

He instinctively struggled beneath the invisible "ghost" with all his might, but in an instant, the Meat Chunk split into several thick flesh tentacles that tightly bound his flailing arms and legs.

"This..."

Sensing the scene, Li Qing's heart skipped a beat.

"It didn't attack me. It attacked a child who has nothing to do with me?"

"Why? Could it be..."

After thinking for a moment, he suddenly understood and muttered to himself:

"I was wrong!"

"I got it wrong from the beginning. This thing has no intelligence at all. It's acting purely on instinct."

"It wasn't pursuing me as a specific target just now. Like a mindless machine, it was simply carrying out a preprogrammed directive—"

"Attack the target within its sensory range with the greatest relative movement speed!"

Realizing this, Li Qing hurriedly shouted at the students still crowding toward the front of the bus:

"Don't move!"

"None of you move around!"

"Whoever moves the fastest now will die!"

Li Qing's shout had some effect.

The middle school students were startled and instinctively stopped their panicked shoving.

Everyone on the bus, including Li Qing, stood frozen as though they were playing a game of statues.

Of course, that unlucky student was still wailing under the Meat Chunk's restraints.

If nothing unexpected happened, he would be devoured by the evil Meat Chunk within seconds, just like the vanished glass and seats.

However—

At that moment, a blond boy stood up from a nearby seat at the worst possible time.

He was Giorno Giovanna, an ordinary thirteen-year-old middle school student and the protagonist Li Qing had come to Naples to find.

"Hey!"

"Kid, didn't I tell you not to move around?!"

Li Qing impatiently stopped that "nameless kid" from courting death, but he immediately noticed something strange:

Something was wrong.

That kid's breathing and heartbeat were not disturbed at all.

He was obviously just some random bystander, yet he had not panicked even now?

"Thank you for your concern."

Giorno replied calmly, "But I think I can save my classmate."

"Hm?"

Li Qing vaguely realized something. "Could it be that you're also a Stand—"

Before he could finish asking, Giorno made his move:

"You just said that the Meat Chunk selects its targets based on 'movement speed,' right?"

"If that's the case, then..."

"Leave this to me!"

Ripples stirred in Giorno's green eyes, and a humanoid Stand clad in golden armor with a lean, agile frame emerged behind him:

"Gold Experience!"

The moment the humanoid Stand called Gold Experience appeared, it unleashed a dense storm of punches through the air, as rapid and numerous as a meteor-fist barrage from an anime:

"Muda muda muda muda!!"

As it punched, it unconsciously let out a series of rather imposing cries.

For some reason, Li Qing found that cry vaguely familiar.

But he had no time to think about where he had heard those shouts of "muda muda" before. What concerned Li Qing now was the mysterious boy's incomprehensible maneuver—

Instead of ordering his Stand to attack the Meat Chunk, he unleashed that storm of wind-swift punches upon the empty seats beside him.

"What are you doing?!"

Li Qing asked in confusion:

"Are you trying to lure the Meat Chunk over with your punching speed?"

"But that monster has tremendous vitality. If you can't kill it, doing this will only get you killed!"

"Don't worry."

Giorno answered carefully and calmly:

"I'm not seeking death. I'm creating bait to draw its aggro."

"Creating bait?"

Li Qing simply could not connect "beating up seats" with "creating bait."

"That's right."

Amid the storm of punches unleashed by Gold Experience, the shattered, broken seats suddenly transformed into a vividly lifelike little bird:

"This is Gold Experience's Stand ability—"

"Create life."

P.S. Stand Stats

Stand Name—"Gold Experience"

User—Giorno Giovanna

Destructive Power: C

Speed: A

Range: C

Durability: D

Precision: C

Development Potential: A

Ability: A humanoid, close-range power-type Stand. It can grant "life" to objects it strikes, transforming them into animals or plants found on Earth. The creatures it can create are limited to those Giorno knows and understands. It cannot create extinct creatures or fantasy creatures.

Creatures created with this ability can grow or die according to Giorno's will. It can transform objects into human organs to fill wounds, but the pain will not disappear.