An explosive presence burst from the massive body sheathed in thick muscle.
“Khu-hu-hu—.”
Unlike Heinz’s presence, which seeped in calm and cold, or the Duke’s, which pressed heavily down on all sides, that aura ferociously prodded the instinctive sense of danger in everyone present, making it impossible to tear their eyes away.
Like an active volcano on the verge of erupting at any moment, impossible to gauge when, how, or on what scale it would explode.
“Stay on guard! Don’t rush in recklessly.”
“Leave the other side to the outer perimeter group! If our forces are split, it’ll be dangerous!”
“Is that… really human? No, is it a demon after all?”
Not only the vampires who fed on the blood of living creatures, but also the powerful beings who had crossed realms and transcended their limits, could instinctively understand the moment they faced that man.
Though he had the shape of a human on the outside, that thing was by no means human.
Gulp— ‘What in the world is that monster…?’ A monster.
That was the thought they all had in common.
The unfamiliar beast’s head hide pressed down over his head like a mask and covering his face only made them feel it more strongly.
At a glance, his appearance was that of a half-man, half-beast demon itself.
“…Who are you? How did you get in here? …No, do you even know what you’ve just done?”
Amid the air thick with taut tension.
The Duke slowly stepped forward and muttered in a low growl.
The barbaric uninvited guest had appeared and, at the same time, fatally wounded one of the Beoncheon Society’s transcendents and killed two of Dracul’s vampires.
No matter how one looked at it, it was obvious he was an enemy. However, since they knew absolutely nothing about him, the Duke intended to gather even a little information before the battle began. ‘Why did he attack us? Is he connected to Phantom after all? Then the one fighting the outer perimeter group right now too? As for the means he used to intrude here… let’s say he has such an ability. The problem is the fact that people like that appeared out of nowhere.’ The Duke’s mind tangled in confusion as he suddenly faced an unidentified opponent.
Even though the intelligence network of the Beoncheon Society, a secret organization that spanned the entire world, was second to none, he had not the slightest idea about the ones who had just barged in.
Naturally, they should have already finished every investigation they could in advance on Phantom… on Heinz as well!
However.
Naturally, that unknown intruder, Harley, had no intention of obediently answering the Duke’s question.
“Huh? What’re you saying? I don’t speak your language. Speak English, you punk!”
He brazenly answered the other party’s Romanian in English. For him, who possessed “Xenoglossy,” language barriers meant nothing, but it was a small prank he played to disguise his country of origin while he was at it.
At that, the Duke furrowed his brow slightly and was just about to open his mouth again…
“Well, don’t worry too much! There’s a fine method in this world called conversing with the body! Kahahaha—!”
With Harley’s mad laughter, having no intention of babbling any longer, his muscles writhed violently.
Creaaak! Creeeak—!
Then a clamorous metallic sound flowed from his body.
It was a vicious noise that could never come from the body of a living creature, the kind one might hear from large heavy machinery.
Chiiiiiik.
—At the same time, his entire body glowed red-hot and scorching steam blasted out around him. The air boiled with heat, and the atmosphere began to shimmer.
Crack.
— Craaack!
His already massive muscles swelled to their limit, his limbs bulging, and hook-like sharp claws grew from his fingertips.
Beneath the scales densely covering his whole body, “Madness” flowed, and a dark red haze-like “Bio-Aura” began to creep upward.
It was the ideal form of a certain experimental subject that stood at the apex of living things and, after endlessly pursuing growth, had transcended its limits.
It was truly the “Ultimate Evolved Lifeform” itself.
“…What is that?”
“A mutation-type demon? No, that’s not simply on that level…”
“What a vile aura. Everyone, keep a firm grip on your minds! If you’re contaminated by that, you’ll instantly become Mad Vamps!”
The Beoncheon Society’s group unconsciously took a slight step back at the transformation that had occurred in an instant.
Like prey confronted by a predator that reigned at the top of the ecosystem.
Then, when they belatedly realized the instinctive reaction they had shown, their expressions twisted.
For people as prideful as they were, the very fact that they had displayed such disgrace was humiliating.
“Whoo—.”
But regardless of that, Harley, now grown to roughly three meters tall, merely spat out the steam generated by the combustion of immense energy and glared fiercely at them.
“Kheh, now then—
“Let’s finally…”
Beneath the beast’s head covering his face, his lower jaw appeared, densely lined with shark-like teeth.
And that jaw, so developed it could hardly be called human, twisted into an arc—
“…Let the hunt begin! Khuhahahaha!”
Then, with a savage laugh steeped in madness, that massive body shot forward at high speed.
***
A black silhouette stealthily slipped out of the scene at the center of the forest and moved quickly toward the outskirts. ‘I let my guard down.’ The figure in question, an assassin dispatched from the Beoncheon Society’s Greece branch by the Doctor’s order, coldly calmed his mind.
Fortunately, even in a desperate crisis, he had at least managed to save his life, but the situation he was in was hardly optimistic. ‘Losing my limbs is fatal. For now, I’ve applied emergency measures of a sort, but…’ His gaze turned to the right half of his body.
Black limbs had taken the place of the severed stumps, stopping the bleeding at the cross sections.
It was an artificial body he had made by weaving the dark chakra he could control for the sake of immediate movement. ‘…To think that monster was on that level.’ It had been a mistake to loiter nearby, trying to gauge the sudden intruder’s abilities.
Who could have known that the bastard would not only see through his concealment, but could sever his limbs simply by reaching out and grabbing him! ‘If I could, I’d like to escape like this.’ However, in a chaotic situation like this, he couldn’t just withdraw alone simply because he had suffered a critical wound.
Moreover, unlike monsters such as vampires that could regenerate severed limbs in no time, he was a pure human. If he wanted to receive proper treatment from the Doctor later, he needed to build up merit in some form. ‘It can’t be helped. That monster is too bad a matchup for me, so first I’ll support the outskirts and clean up the intruder on the other side…’ But.
That thought of his did not last long either. ———!
A streak of light pierced through his senses, disordered by injury, and arrived right before his eyes without sound or presence.
“……!”
As if it had been waiting, the preemptive attack came flying before he could even track his opponent. ‘Damn it… this one is a monster too…!’ Kwaaaang—!
And the one who had launched that attack.
The High Elf Harris, who had been summoned to Earth along with Harley, let out a soft whistle while completely assimilated with the forest through skills such as “Natural Body” and “Assimilation with Nature.” ‘He dodged at that instant? His body isn’t even whole, yet he’s quite something.’ With Themis, the bow made from a branch of the World Tree, in one hand and an arrow in the other, his eyes half-lidded.
“But I can’t simply let you go.”
As the golden star within the emerald iris of his half-closed eye glittered, “Observer of the Milky Way” activated once more, and the entire landscape of the forest entered his view more clearly than if observed by a cutting-edge satellite.
Where every living creature was moving from and to, what kind of energy and realm they possessed, and more.
After neatly organizing all information and driving it into his mind, he aimed his bow toward another location and quietly drew the bowstring. ‘Every one of the bastards here is a limb of the Beoncheon Society. I won’t let a single one leave this place alive.’ The mission Harris had taken on this time was to keep the Beoncheon Society’s group on the outskirts—including the sniper and the archmage—from intervening in the center, while restraining and eliminating them.
At the same time, his goal was to hide his identity to the very end. But for him, who could now assimilate with nature itself using even “Muyupal Bagua Secret Art (Modified),” that was not very difficult.
The support-type ability user who had created disgusting eyeballs everywhere was already gone, and the transcendent-class assassin who had been most likely to pinpoint his location after that had just now…
Kwaaaaang—!
Been unable to withstand his full-power attack and ended up reduced to a handful of ash. ‘This is one burden off my shoulders. Thanks to Harley marking him in advance, I was able to deal with him more easily than expected.’ Originally, an assassin with excellent stealth and mobility could not have been disposed of this easily.
Having achieved his intended result, Harris immediately moved with soundless steps.
And right after that.
Slaaaaash—!
Kugugung!
A shot that tore through space and carpet bombing by grand magic poured down onto the place where he had been moments before.
It was an attack from the Beoncheon Society’s outer perimeter group, who had survived to the end and stubbornly resisted through the repeated exchanges that had been going on even before he focused on the assassin. ‘To destroy nature to this extent. They truly are wretches who deserve divine punishment.’ Harris glanced over the area devastated by their attacks and quietly furrowed his brow.
As a guardian of the forest, how could he stand by and watch such behavior?
With his hostility toward the Beoncheon Society growing even stronger, Harris called the spirits once more and drew his bowstring. …In truth, if one were to ask who should be arrested first for the crime of damaging the forest, there was one person who would have to be taken in before anyone else, but he deliberately did not look back toward that place and ignored it.
The battlefield at the center of the forest.
Kwaaaang!
A hand wrapped in dark red energy and the aura contained in a shining hammerhead collided head-on.
“Khuhahahaha—! Ah, good! This is good!”
“Huaaap!”
A fierce shockwave spread in all directions from the collision of immense force against force, and within it rang a mad laugh.
The result of that clash was stark.
“Kheuk! You monster!”
Perhaps confident in his strength, the large hammer warrior ground his teeth as he was flung miserably backward.
But the crisis did not end with just that.
Having lost his balance, he saw a massive hand closing in on his face, clenched his teeth, and used all his strength to knock it away.
Claaaang—!
At that, a metallic sound that should not have rung out when a hammer and a hand collided resounded noisily.
And taking advantage of that brief opening, his surrounding comrades rushed in and barely rescued him from danger.
“Don’t clash with him head-on! Use a rotation and wear down his strength first…!”
“Do you think that kind of method will work on something like that?!”
“This is the best method we have right now! For now, we endure and…”
The scene looked like a raid against a boss monster.
The problem was that the boss not only possessed intelligence, but had also learned master-level martial arts.
“Kahaha! Don’t hold back, let’s play some more, my friends!”
A monster wielding human techniques created for the weak to face the strong began to run wild, and the scream-laced shouts of those clinging on somehow to suppress it never ceased.
“Whew—
“Now it’s finally a little more comfortable. Duke, we still had unfinished business from earlier, didn’t we? We should settle it this time.”
“…Phantom!”
Within that chaos, Heinz spoke in a leisurely manner.
He calmly looked his opponent up and down, as if evaluating him.
It was the gaze of an appraiser grading ingredients.
***
Inside a building in downtown Bucharest.
Crash—! Clang!
The Doctor, who had suddenly risen from his seat, rushed forward in a frenzy.
The snacks laid out on the table were scattered, turning the surroundings into a mess, but such trivial things were no longer in his mind.
No, the current him had not the slightest leeway left to pay attention to anything else.
“What… is that… exactly…?”
As if bewitched, he approached the hologram footage and stared at the screen, murmuring blankly.
His words expressed doubt, but he knew what that was better than anyone.
He had no choice but to know.
“Could it be…? No, that can’t be?”
The Complete Evolved Organism Project.
About ten years ago, after encountering the “blood of the Predatory Dragon” that had crossed over from the dimension of Raubeda, where countless dragon species and dragon hunters lived, it was the project he had conceived and drafted.
In fact, hadn’t he tried to capture Heinz alive this time precisely to complete that research?
“Aaaaah—! That’s definitely…!”
It was not at the level of a chimera that forcibly attached and used the bodies of different species. It was a project to create an ultimate lifeform that continuously evolved while constantly obtaining superior genes…
“But… that.”
But no matter how coldly he tried to judge reality, he, possessing the “Eye of Truth,” could tell at a glance.
“…That! Why is that over there—?!” ‘That’ was unmistakably a lifeform created based on the results of his own research.