It was as if every drop of blood in Harry's body froze. His shoulder bag slipped from his slackened shoulder and struck the marble floor with a heavy, muffled thud, breaking the tense, confrontational silence in the laboratory.
His pupils trembled violently as his gaze darted wildly between Norman's twisted face, Peter's deathly pale one, and Rimuru's calm expression. His fingertips trembled uncontrollably.
The man before him was unmistakably the father who had raised him for twenty years, but his face had completely lost its usual cultured composure.
Scarlet veins webbed the whites of his eyes. His eyelids had rolled most of the way up, exposing murky, cold pupils. The muscles around his cheekbones bulged grotesquely, and the corners of his mouth stretched into an inhumanly wide arc, forming a cruel, bizarre smile.
His swollen shoulder and back muscles had split the seams beneath his suit's arms, revealing bulging blue veins beneath his skin. Undisguised bloodlust and hostility radiated from him. He was like a completely different person from the Norman Osborn in Harry's memories.
"Dad... Dad?" Harry's throat was dry and tight, and his voice shook uncontrollably. He instinctively edged half a step forward, only to stop short, frightened by the chilling malice radiating from Norman. "What's happened to you? Your face... why do you look like this?"
Peter's heart sank. The tense web glands at his fingertips contracted sharply, and cold sweat broke out across his back. He had been entirely focused on the rampaging Green Goblin, and his Spider-Sense had warned him only of Norman's malice. He had completely missed the faint footsteps approaching in the corridor. He had never imagined Harry would come to Osborn Tower alone in the middle of the night.
As Harry's close friend, who spent nearly every day with him, Peter knew