132. The Value of Reality

Under the nocturnal Virginia Street Bridge, after the flurry of gunfire subsided, silence reclaimed everything.

"Did you hit it, Dean?" Lubben broke the quiet.

"Yeah, but it won't die, it only buys us time." Dean, peering down the sights of his rifle resting on the hood of the car, checked the system interface without seeing any kill notification. Even the sniper rifle couldn't completely eliminate the bat-woman.

"Think of something, Lubben, or this thing is going to haunt us endlessly!"

"According to the book's lore, only pure love can destroy the bat-woman!" Lubben pressed his forehead against Mary's, the woman gazing back at him with adoring eyes. "I have an idea. Lend me your knife, Dean."

"Wait, what on earth are you two talking about?" Marco rested his right hand on the trunk, his puzzled gaze shifting back and forth between them. "Love, lore, bat-woman—what does any of this mean?"

But they had no time to explain.

Dean jumped off the hood, pulled the Ouija planchette from his pocket, and handed it over.

Lubben carefully used the pointed tip of the planchette to nick both his and Mary's fingers, letting their mixed blood smear along the sharp blade, which instantly glowed with an alluring, razor-sharp red light.

"As long as the bat-woman is stabbed by it, she will turn to ashes and never be able to resurrect!" Lubben handed the knife back to Dean with a solemn expression. Dean frowned deeply, finding the whole thing utterly absurd.

The mixed blood of a couple was the supposed ultimate weapon? Could this really work?

Yet Dean had no leisure for further thought.

A fierce gale whipped through the night sky, and a sudden flapping of wings echoed from behind them.

The moment they turned around, a naked woman burst from the low-growing woods, her skin covered in a fine layer of down that shimmered with a silvery light in the moonlight.

Right in the center of her chest, a horrifying bloody crater left by the sniper rifle was still oozing blood.

Without a moment's hesitation, she swooped down toward the group, baring her claws.

That wild and alluring face grew larger and larger, revealing an ugly, bat-like nose, a bloody maw split wide to her ears, and a mouth full of jagged, uneven teeth.

The fishy stench she exhaled was enough to induce nausea.

Right on cue!

Dean tightened his grip on the blood-stained planchette and hurled it upward directly at the oncoming bat-woman.

A flash of cold starlight.

The planchette traced a silvery-white straight line and struck the bat-monster squarely in the neck with a wet thud, carving open a bloody gash.

The blood on the blade surged into her body through the wound like an anesthetic poison!

Thud!

A heavy body dropped to the ground!

The bat-monster's charging momentum came to an abrupt halt, as if she had slammed into an invisible wall, plunging onto the grassy area beside the bushes. Her immense inertia carried her sliding forward a distance.

Amidst flying blades of grass, she crashed hard into the Bronco parked by the roadside.

The vehicle shuddered.

She lay flat on her back at the rear of the car, completely motionless.

The four people by the car wore varied expressions.

Lubben and Mary clung tightly to each other, holding their breath, a mix of astonishment and disbelief washing over them. The mortal enemy that had plagued them for half a year had died just like that?

Marco's withered right hand rested on his chest, his wrinkled old face filled with horror as he stared at the winged female corpse not far from the car.

He swallowed hard.

How did a proper romance story suddenly transform into a fantasy tale?

Dean's tense face did not relax in the slightest.

A profound sense of unease gnawed at his heart like the Sword of Damocles hanging overhead, ready to fall at any moment!

"Get back!"

The three instinctively obeyed the command and retreated quickly. Dean immediately retrieved the MP5 from the vehicle, cradling it in his arms with the stock pressed against his shoulder, and unloaded a burst of fire into the corpse five meters away.

Tat-tat-tat—

The dark muzzle spewed tongues of flame.

White smoke billowed, deafening gunfire erupted, and a storm of bullets precisely blanketed the monster's left wing, puncturing and tearing the thin membrane between the finger bones while peppering the ground with a vast cluster of pockmarked bullet holes.

At the same time, the Shadow of the Past manipulated the bloody planchette, slicing wildly at her right wing and cleanly carving away the largest piece of membrane, leaving it looking like a tattered, wind-beaten flag.

...

After Dean poured out a torrential storm of lead from the full magazine, his fingers danced swiftly, clicking as he swapped in a spare magazine.

Yet his fluid motions suddenly froze.

Roar!

A roar swept through the night sky.

A terrifying shockwave erupted from the center of the bat-monster, ripping up patches of turf and hurling them into the night air, shattering the eardrums of all four people present.

The shadow instinctively shoved Dean, sending him rolling flat across the ground.

The next second.

With the ferocious momentum of a quadrupedal beast, the bat-monster charged straight at Lubben and the other two!

Wails, snapping bones, splashing blood.

...

When Dean recovered from his dizziness and came to,

Marco was leaning against the vehicle, groaning in cold sweat. His right arm hung limply by his side, twisted into a pretzel shape, the broken bone at the elbow puncturing the skin and exposed to the air in a gory mess of flesh.

Mary leaned against a palm tree, her face pale as she clutched a horrifying wound between her collarbone and neck. Blood surged out wildly, making her form-fitting red dress look even more vividly bright.

She gasped in pain through gritted teeth, her eyes fixed rigidly ahead as she mechanically repeated, "Lubben, Lubben."

Ahead, the bat-woman clamped Lubben under her arm and sprinted toward the bridge, holding him like a kite frame. She flapped her wings in an attempt to flight, but the wing membranes had long been shredded by Dean, leaving almost nothing but bare bone frames, rendering flight utterly impossible.

...

Dean scrambled onto the hood, operating the sniper rifle once more. He stripped off the scope and aimed closely at the distant bat-woman at close range.

Bang!

The sound waves blasted the air, creating a pale shockwave in mid-air.

The sprinting bat-monster's body jerked violently. With a cry of anguish, her left calf snapped instantly and twisted.

Robbed of her speed, she limped frantically toward the edge of the bridge.

Dean jumped down from the car, pursuing her in long, rapid strides while tracking the bat-woman's back with the MP5.

A small fraction of the bullets found their mark, only to be stopped dead by the tough, resilient skin on the bat-monster's back, failing to penetrate deeply!

...

Fearing he might accidentally hit Lubben, Dean simply ceased firing and pursued her with the speed of lightning.

Step by step, they trod onto the Virginia Street Bridge. Clutching Lubben, the bat-woman backed against the bridge railing, baring her teeth and snarling viciously at the approaching Dean.

Dean closed the distance slowly, narrowing the gap.

Fifty meters.

Forty meters.

Roar!

The bat-monster pressed her razor-sharp, awl-like right claw against Lubben's deathly pale neck, then flicked her chin to signal Dean to back away. Taking a deep breath, Dean slowed his pace, daring no longer to close in recklessly.

"Leave me be, Dean, let her take me!" Lubben shouted, putting on a brave face with his neck trapped. "According to the plot, I'm bound to escape after half a month. Go back and take care of Marco and Mary!"

"Shut your mouth, you brat, I won't let you play the hero on my watch!" Wheezing heavily, the old man shuffled up not far behind Dean. His face was twisted from the agony of his fracture, wrinkled like an orange peel, and his reddened eyes fixed upon the grotesque monster as he straightened his spine.

"My dear... beautiful lady, what use is it for you to take a penniless, statusless loser? Let Lubben go, and I'll go with you! I run a clinic; I'm practically a wealthy man."

Roar!

The bat-woman's pitch-black pupils shifted back and forth between Lubben and Marco, her expression growing increasingly restless and uneasy. Yet the private detective, who had put her through hell and even killed her once, was fixing her with the cold, venomous glare of a viper, seemingly poised to unleash a thunderous strike.

Her survival instinct kept the bat-woman from acting rashly.

"Get lost, old man, go back and run your clinic!" Lubben lashed out mercilessly at the self-sacrificing old man. "Stop putting on this hypocritical act of doing it for my good. I know your motives clear as day."

"You've always wanted to turn me into a breeding tool for the Van Helsing family, barking orders at me."

"You constantly patronize me with your high-and-mighty pointing, beating me down with disgusting words, trampling my ideals and pursuits, and turning my life into an absolute mess, worse and worse by the day!"

"I've had enough! I never want to see you again. Get lost!"

This ruthless roar made the old man cover his mouth. The night wind suddenly turned bitterly cold, making his aged, emaciated body sway like a rotting, withered tree. He nearly collapsed to the ground, and crystal tears welled up in his eyes.

"You're right. I'm a terrible father. I've always ignored your feelings and kidnapped your ideals."

"Now it's my turn to atone. I'm over sixty, I don't have many years left."

"Let me go in your place. No one will ever interfere with your life again," Marco choked out, speaking with a heartbreaking and sincere tone. "You can be with Mary forever; you can chase your dreams as a writer to your heart's content."

"Don't keep Mary waiting too long."

Lubben froze for a moment, his gaze shifting not far away, where a graceful woman in a red dress was haltingly stepping onto the bridgehead.

The bat-monster holding him also spotted the "love rival," and her emotions destabilized once more. Her pitch-black pupils contracted, her breathing grew heavy, and that alluring, feminine face rapidly mutated back into a wrinkled, ugly batish visage.

At this moment, the howling wind died down.

Dean, who had been quietly waiting all this while, glanced at the weeping Marco beside him, a passage from Lubben inside the cave flashing through his mind—

"It doesn't strictly have to be romantic love. According to the lore in my book, as long as the bat-monster feels the warmth of love, familial affection works too. It can comfort her and conquer her!"

Seizing the microsecond when the bat-monster's attention was drawn to Mary, Dean moved.

His left hand swept across the corner of Marco's eye and cheek, wiping away his warm tears.

His right hand gripped the blood-stained planchette.

Bringing his hands together, he smeared the tears across the sharp edge of the planchette.

Throw!

The Shadow of the Past dragged the planchette in a semicircle, silently skimming across the bat-woman's back and leaving a bloody gash.

That negligible, minuscule wound created a miracle!

The bat-woman stiffened all over as if struck by magic, involuntarily loosening her grip on Lubben's neck. She staggered backward with a deformed posture.

Boom!

A blinding flash of fire ignited. The bat-woman seemed to have been doused in gasoline before being shoved into an inferno.

Roaring flames instantly swept across her entire body, their scorching glare shattering the dark night.

The people on the bridge were struck dumb by this sudden turn of events, staring with wide eyes and utter speechlessness.

Amidst the churning white smoke, the bat-woman's tense, twisted, and ferocious face suddenly relaxed, revealing a smile of utter release. Accompanied by a light, joyful feminine voice, her burning body—from feet to head, inch by inch—eerily transformed into burning pages of a manuscript that scattered across the sky.

The pages were densely covered in writing... resembling drafts, and when the night wind blew, they drifted toward the Truckee River beneath the bridge, turning to ashes alongside the flames.

A notification flashed across Dean's vision:

You have completely destroyed the fantasy creation—Bat-Woman. Brawling Lv.2 (220→230/300), Marksmanship Lv.3 (10→20/400).

"Did we win?" Marco looked at Dean in disbelief, stammering, "Did we defeat that fiend?"

"It seems so," Dean tilted his head and thought aloud.

"Lubben!"

"Mary!"

Two piercing screams rang out.

The newly freed writer and the woman in red embraced once more.

With such fierce strength and such a tight posture, it was as if they wanted to knead each other into their own flesh and fuse as one.

Lubben impulsively planted a kiss on his girlfriend's neck, only to taste a mouthful of fresh crimson. His expression froze, and he watched in horror as the gash on Mary's neck sprayed blood like a fountain, soaking her entirely, down to her flaxen hair.

Her face was drained of all color, tinged with a grayish, numb hue of death. Her obsidian eyes were rapidly losing their luster, growing dim as she looked up at him.

"Lubben... Lubben..."

Her voice was weak, and her blood-painted lips reflected a cruel, mesmerizing beauty.

"No, Mary, don't scare me!"

Lubben scooped the woman up in a bridal carry. Trickles of blood dripped from the heels of her shoes onto the ground, pooling into a puddle.

Boom!

Mary's gorgeous red dress ignited without a flame.

The intense firelight illuminated her closed eyes and lifeless face.

Boom!

Mary transformed entirely into fire. From the flames flew burning manuscript drafts covered in writing, soaring into the distant night sky.

"No! The plot shouldn't go like this, I never wrote it this way! I didn't write it like this!"

Heartbroken, Lubben opened his arms and tried desperately to hug her, but he couldn't hold on to anything. The manuscript pages drifted away one by one, turning to ashes just like the bat-monster before her.

Stretching his arms out to their absolute limit, he stumbled in pursuit of the very last piece of paper suspended in mid-air, stepping right past the bridge railing.

"Lubben, come back, don't do anything foolish!" Marco scrambled to the edge of the bridge with his broken arm, trying to grab him.

"Don't come over, or I'll jump right now!" Lubben turned to flash him a smile filled with despair and a complicated sense of release.

"You know what, Marco, I never figured out the ending for this book, but now it has one."

Gazing into the void as though he saw Mary's loving smile, he made a deliriously loud declaration:

"Lubben Van Helsing and Mary, assisted by the detective Dean, defeated the bat-woman and reunited. However, Mary suffered mortal wounds beyond cure. In the end, Lubben chose to hold his beloved and leap together from the Virginia Street Bridge into the Truckee River, never to be separated."

Never to be separated—

The resolute declaration echoed across the bridge.

"Is this really love?"

Dean interrupted him with an icy question, while steadying the old man beside him who was blacking out and nearly fainting.

As if deeply insulted, Lubben turned his head in anger and glared fiercely at him.

"Do you know why your and Mary's blood couldn't kill the villain in the book?" Dean shattered his illusions word for word. "Because—love never existed between you and her in the first place!"

"Shut up! You're talking nonsense!" Stung right where it hurt, Lubben flushed red and stuttered in rebuttal.

Yet that very scene involuntarily flashed through his mind: why had the mixing of his and Mary's blood failed to kill the bat-woman?

This already violated the lore established in the book.

He was both bewildered and terrified.

Seeing the panic-stricken expression on the other man's face, Dean's voice grew even more composed.

"Lubben Van Helsing, your power is truly miraculous. You brought the events of your book into reality, granting life to the book's characters, Mary and the bat-woman."

Dean's tone shifted.

"But you are no God. At best, you can bring illusory creatures to life, but you cannot grant them a soul."

Indeed, Dean's planchette had killed the bat-woman, yet it had failed to harvest any soul whatsoever.

"Mary had no soul, which is why every word and action of hers was as flawless yet unreal as a performance. And how can something without a soul truly express love to you?"

The color drained entirely from Lubben's face, and his body trembled like chaff in the wind.

"Mary and the bat-woman were nothing more than puppets operating according to the plot of your book. Everything they did was just scripted performance!"

"That's why when I disguised myself as you, I could trigger the plot just the same!"

Lubben clutched his head.

"For years, Lubben, you've locked yourself in a narrow apartment, endlessly weaving beautiful dreams to wrap tightly around yourself, masking your fragile heart."

Dean paused, delivering a merciless blow to shatter his final shred of hope.

"Yet fantasy remains fantasy, and fake is fake. The so-called great love between you and Mary is nothing more than self-deceptive delusion!"

"And yet, your father Marco's tears easily killed the bat-woman, proving that he is the one who truly loves you!"

Dean's words were as sharp as blades, stabbing into his heart over and over again. Sitting on the edge of the bridge, Lubben completely crumbled, a breakdown sobbing wrenching from his throat.

"Wake up, face reality!"

"No!" Lubben roared madly in extreme reluctance.

"Lubben!" Dean asked with absolute finality.

"You'd rather sacrifice all your time, energy, and life to the cold fantasies in your mind, to the desires in your heart, than spare even a fraction of it for family members who truly love you?"

"How can you bear to watch him grieve his own child's death?"

Lubben raised his head with great difficulty to look at Marco.

The old man wore a face of desperate pleading, his straight spine subtly hunching over as if aging a decade in a single instant. For the very first time, he bowed his head before his absurd son.

Yet taking a deep breath, Lubben cracked a bitter smile, a flicker of resolute determination flashing in his eyes.

"I'm sorry... Marco, I've never once made you proud from the day I was born, and this time I'm going to disappoint you again. Let me be willful one last time and put a period to my work!"

With those words spoken.

Lubben closed his eyes, opened his arms, and plunged headfirst off the bridge in resolute defiance.

Free fall!

No!

Marco's knees buckled as he dropped to the ground, crying out in helpless despair.

Dean watched the scene expressionlessly.

...

Whoosh—

Under the force of gravity, Lubben's body plummeted rapidly, the freezing wind drilling frantically into his nose, ears, and throat, inflicting a tearing pain.

Thump-thump went his heart.

Breathing became extremely difficult.

Simultaneously, an indescribable terror gripped his mind and body from inside out.

A good-for-nothing like me, who tramples on familial affection, is bound for hell, isn't he?

He told himself.

Yet I have completed the final work of my life.

I can die without regrets.

Lubben wore a look of utter relief, and the next moment, he lost consciousness.

...

Whoosh—

A miraculous scene unfolded on the Virginia Street Bridge.

A horizontal body slowly floated upward from beneath the bridge onto the deck, as if a powerful, invisible force had pulled him back from the abyss into the realm of the living.

He landed steadily on the bridge surface, completely unharmed in body, though overcome and unconscious from the emotional overload.

Good heavens!

The gray-haired old man rubbed his eyes in disbelief, then sobbed as he rushed forward to support his recovered son.

"You still want to commit suicide right in front of me?"

Dean crossed his arms, shook his head with a smile, and withdrew the Shadow of the Past that had enveloped Lubben's body. He cast one final, lingering glance at Lubben.

"Now that you've had your final moment of stubbornness, you can damn well return to reality!"