novellhall Chapter 44: I'm going to give you some juicy gossip!
Chapter 44: I'm going to give you some juicy gossip!
In those few seconds of their conversation.
From the darkness at the end of the alley came a rustling sound that sent chills down your spine.
A cold wind swept in.
Ivan raised his still-normal right eye to look over, and his pupil suddenly dilated.
Pris is back.
But he was no longer the elegant professor in his black silk shawl.
On either side of the humanoid torso, darkness coalesced into two enormous bat wings covered with bone-spiky patterns.
Its wingspan is more than three meters wide, and dark red veins flow on its wing membranes.
His entire face protruded forward, his mouth split open to the base of his ears, revealing two rows of jagged fangs.
The thing rose from the ground and swooped down toward Richard and Evan.
"Kyen!"
Richard clenched his right hand suddenly.
Pris crashed into an invisible wall half a meter away from them, his speed abruptly halted, and the gust of wind whipped up by his wings made Ivan's hair dance wildly.
But next second.
Pris opened his mouth.
From the monster's mouth, which was split open to its ears, came a two-meter-long, scarlet tongue covered in barbs.
The tongue moves so fast that it is almost impossible to see with the naked eye.
It was like a red-hot steel needle, instantly piercing through the invisible shield that Richard had just laid out.
Richard's reaction was also faster than a human's.
He shoved Ivan far away, but his own body missed the best opportunity to dodge because of the pushing motion.
The barbed tongue pierced his chest with precision, entering from the front and emerging from the back with its tip.
Large amounts of black liquid gushed from the wound, splashing onto the cobblestone pavement of the alley.
But Richard showed no sign of pain.
He lowered his head and looked at the tongue piercing through his chest, as if examining a nail stuck in his clothes.
Then he moved.
The thick, inhuman-looking left arm rose with lightning speed.
Five fingers, as thick as sausages and covered in fine scales, grabbed the piece of tongue that was piercing his chest.
His right hand was clenched into a fist the size of a sandbag, its scales as sturdy as armor, and he slammed it down hard towards the exquisite yet terrifying face in the distance.
"Dragon Blood Elixir? You succeeded?"
Priss was momentarily stunned when he saw the scales on his fist.
A rare look of shock flashed in his eyes, which were already bloodshot.
"Die!"
Richard uttered three words.
Bang.
The fist, the size of a sandbag, landed precisely on the left side of Pris's face.
His once handsome face was as if it had been hit head-on by a tram, instantly caved in, and his cheekbones, nose, and jawbone shattered at the same time.
The upper half of his face looked like a crumpled piece of rubber, which bounced backward a distance.
But the tongue that pierced Richard's chest was still connected to Pris's body.
The next second, Richard suddenly pulled hard.
Prisna's body, which had already flown away, was pulled back by his own tongue, like a fish caught on a fishing line.
"Come here!"
Bang.
The second punch shattered Pris's jaw, tearing the skin off half his face to reveal the white skull beneath.
Bang.
The third punch. The entire left side of the skull caved inward, and the eyeballs were squeezed out of their deformed sockets, hanging precariously on the side of the face.
Ivan stood at a distance, watching the counterattack that resembled a massacre. The last vestiges of clarity amidst the excruciating pain made him instinctively pull out two vials of Blood Burning Potion from his jacket pocket.
He's kept these two bottles close to his body whenever he goes out these past two days.
I'm afraid that if I ever need it, it won't be there for me.
"Well done, senior! Kill this bastard!"
"Senior brother, spare his breath! I want to punch him a couple of times too!"
As Ivan rambled on, relevant demon-hunting knowledge resurfaced in his mind.
"When a Bloodthirsty Seed is injured in battle, it will enter a state of extreme bloodthirst."
"Witchers are accustomed to using their own blood to poison others. This is a unique advantage of witchers among all professions."
Ivan looked at Priss in the distance, who was beaten beyond recognition but still struggling. Without any hesitation, he twisted open the wax seal of the Blood Burning Potion in his hand.
He tilted his head back and gulped it down.
The burning, chili oil-like liquid burned its way down his esophagus into his stomach, instantly exploding in his bloodstream.
He knew he couldn't help Richard on the combat front.
But he cannot become a burden to his senior.
He didn't want to become the blood-sucking bag that Pris could grab and drain after he was seriously injured.
When Jotaro and Dio were fighting, that old man should have stayed far away!
"My blood is already poisonous, let me add some more toxic stuff."
[You have consumed an incomplete Blood Burning Potion. Effects last: 5 hours.]
[Effect: Permanently increases constitution by 0.2; within the effects of the medicine, self-healing ability is reduced by 300%, and blood quality is reduced by 50%.]
Evan struggled to throw the second bottle of Blood Burning Potion to Richard.
Just then.
A gentle breeze brushed against the back of his ear.
That wasn't the night breeze of November.
It is a kind of active, conscious movement of airflow.
Ivan's pupils suddenly dilated.
A figure appeared silently from behind him.
Evan recognized her.
Pris's female assistant.
That plain-looking woman in white, always standing in the shadows of the laboratory.
She has never told Evan her name.
"Oh no!"
Ivan's mind raced amidst the excruciating pain.
"Luring the tiger away from the mountain."
He hadn't even had a chance to turn around completely.
The female assistant's shoulders exploded simultaneously, and two blood-red, oar-shaped fleshy tentacles extended out with lightning speed, wrapping around Evan's torso from two directions.
The binding force was astonishingly strong.
Ivana, whose physique had already surpassed 2.3, looked like a chick bound by wire in front of these two tentacles.
She turned and ran.
The speed was outrageous; Evan's feet were already off the ground, and he was being carried on her shoulder like a sack of potatoes being kidnapped by robbers.
"Senior brother!"
Ivan turned around and shouted.
At the other end of the alley, Richard's fist froze in mid-air. His face, which had been filled with murderous intent just moments before, instantly turned furious as he winked at Ivan.
His innate Witcher instincts told him that his senior brother seemed to have other tricks up his sleeve.
"Fuck!"
He pretended to yell angrily, threw Priss to the ground like trash, and turned to chase after him.
Then Evan discovered the situation just as he had expected.
Richard was not good at running.
His explosive power was terrifying, his strength was superb, and he had an inverted triangle physique like he stepped out of a comic book. However, when he ran, his lower body bore a weight that he shouldn't have had to bear.
With each step he took, his torso swayed dramatically from side to side, like a ship with its center of gravity off.
Less than two seconds.
When Evan looked back, Richard was already out of sight.
As night fell, a cold wind swept into the alleyways from the city of Bolton in mid-November.
Evan struggled to break free from the two fleshy tentacles, but to no avail.
With each exertion of force, the tentacles tightened their grip, and his ribs even began to creak under the strain.
His female assistant's steady voice rang in his ears, without a single inflection.
"Stop struggling."
Her tone was as if she were reading meeting minutes.
"You've chosen the wrong side."
"There are only five active members of Adolf's lineage of witchers in the entire city of Bolton."
"We've already sent four of them away."
"You think you can fight us all by yourself?"
While letting his splitting headache be turned into a jumble of excruciating pain, Ivan clung desperately to every wisp of inherited memory seeping from his demon-hunting traits.
The whispers of the old witcher by the campfire resurfaced.
"One of the signature characteristics of the Bloodthirsty race: flesh mutation."
"Thirsty Bloods have this characteristic, and their bodies possess great flexibility and regenerative capacity."
"It relies on its own high-quality blood as support to form strong fleshy tentacles or wing membrane tissue."
"But its nature is not indestructible."
"Its essence is similar to the human corpus cavernosum, which becomes hard and strong by filling with blood."
The moment Evan saw this memory, he almost choked to death by the taste of blood in his throat.
Those crimson tentacles, which looked as handsome and ferocious as ghouls...
After all this, you're telling me it's essentially a sponge?
"If I acquire this property, wouldn't I be able to grow as big as I want?"
"Damn it! What am I thinking?!"
"Since it relies on blood flow..."
Ivan's mind raced as he was caught between excruciating pain and a sense of absurdity.
"Then the blood inside must also participate in the blood circulation throughout the body."
Thinking of this, Ivan licked his teeth.
There were still traces of the Blood-Burning Potion that had been gulped down there.
The next second, he suddenly turned his head and bit the crimson tentacle that was wrapped around his shoulder.
Squeak.
The tentacles' outer layer was tougher than he had imagined.
The first bite felt like biting into a piece of old cowhide shoe sole; my front teeth couldn't get in.
But with his physique that broke through 2.3, coupled with his crazy, almost delusional, mind, Evan wouldn't let go.
The second bite. The third bite. The fourth bite.
He frantically rubbed, tore, and ground the same spot with his incisors.
at last.
The outer skin was bitten through.
A large amount of foul-smelling, dark red blood sprayed into Evan's mouth.
The smell was a hundred times stronger than that of a sewer, and his stomach churned.
But he didn't vomit.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Evan frantically spat his mouthful of blood and saliva, mixed with the residue of the Blood Burning Potion, into the bitten wound.
One bite. Two bites. Three bites.
The female assistant in front felt the pain in her back and frowned slightly, but quickly regained her composure.
She didn't even slow down her running pace.
"This little wound."
Her voice came from ahead, indifferent and cold.
"It means nothing to me."