81. Strangling Legend

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The violet-black sky was piled high with thick rain clouds, and the wind had stopped, the air heavy and suffocating.

From above, two ant-sized figures tore through the palm cemetery, racing around tombstones, through the grass, and hurtling toward the botanical gardens beyond.

Dean was sprinting wildly behind.

His damp black hair streamed in the air, beads of sweat glittering and flung outward.

Ahead of him, Jack—despite being hit in both legs by a M1911A1—was still running like a man who had never been wounded. The kind of injury that should maim a normal person seemed to mean nothing to him.

He kept a distance of about eighty to ninety meters.

He suddenly stopped beside a tombstone, turned, lifted a Colt .38 revolver, and fired.

Bang.

The bullet tore through the air.

Dean’s body jolted as if struck by a bat in the gut. A bullet hole ripped his black suit and scored a pale line across the vest beneath.

The slug lost momentum and dropped into the grass.

...

One shot was useless. The man kept turning and sprinting.

The chase settled into rhythm.

Every few minutes he twisted, fired once to throw off his pursuer, and kept fleeing.

Dean grew increasingly unnerved. He fired two shots himself, but from that distance and while running so violently, his shots were nearly all wasted.

But Jack, the Devourer, was clearly no relic from old fairy tales. He had already absorbed every skill of human society and moved with seamless mastery in shooting, reloading, turning, and pulling the trigger as naturally as eating and breathing. Almost none of his shots missed.

The revolver’s rounds rained across Dean’s torso, head, and limbs.

If he had not been wearing armor and the danger was so obvious for “Shadow” to respond, he would have been lost. Even then, he had already been close to death more than ten times.

Still, he could not close the gap. All his powers, marksmanship, and brawling meant nothing; he was being strung along like a kite.

...

The man’s right hand, moving at a dizzying speed, plunged into his coat, while his left swung the revolver.

Then both hands snapped together.

Five fingers moved like butterflies through flowers.

Click-clack, click-clack.

In a single breath he reloaded completely and fired casually backward.

Bang.

Gunfire.

Dean screamed in fury, one hand clutching his right chest.

Without hesitation he turned, leaped over the cemetery rail, and vanished into the luxuriant garden.

Dean followed, and when he reached it his steps faltered. His eyes swept around.

The green expanse was crowded with bizarre knobs and outcroppings, shaggy Joshua trees, green desert willows, cacti, and tall, thin palms that utterly blocked sight.

From the God View, Dean lost the target at once. He shut off his recorder, slowed his breathing, and followed the clumps of blood with care.

To avoid being hit by a cold shot, his movement became odd and almost comic:

sprint, stop, sprint, stop.

From one cover to a beak-shaped rock, then from that rock to a tangle of desert willow.

His steps crawled and slid like a snake.

Right now Shadow could be called for only about nine minutes at full duration, so he could only summon it intermittently to guard vital points.

Otherwise there was no need to be so sly.

After he’d chased two hundred meters, Dean stopped behind a lush desert willow.

Tick.

A raindrop fell from the sky onto his face, chilling him through.

Drip-drip.

Fine rain lashed the muddy garden, and a gray mist rose from below. The blood tracks on the ground were quickly washed thinner and lighter.

A silver serpent of lightning crossed the dark sky. The swaying plants cast narrow, wavering black shadows—noisy and still all at once, like demons playing a malicious scarecrow game.

Dean also stopped beside a pool of blood not yet rinsed away.

The blood led to a one-meter-high, cane-branched giant cactus just ahead.

He tightened his hold on the Colt, held his breath, and stepped like a cat, but halfway there—

the God View caught a crouching figure not far to his left behind a round stone.

Against the rock, left hand on a gun, right hand gripping a gleaming dagger, two dark stains marked the hem of his suit, yet the wounds had strangely stopped bleeding.

He was hidden there.

Dean pretended not to see him and kept going toward the cactus, letting himself be plainly exposed.

A teardrop planchette slipped from his shirt pocket, slipped past the mind’s sight and glided around the left-side mirror-like rock.

It hovered midair.

Its sharp tip tracked the man moving on tiptoe, little short steps, toward Dean’s back.

Shush.

The air screamed.

The planchette tore through the air like a live wire and drove into the back of the man’s neck, then ripped sideways in one brutal pull.

Blood surged from the mouth-like split.

He let out a muffled groan, rolled flat, and sprang outwards wildly.

The planchette still followed, like an irritable bat, stabbing at the back of his neck and blooming in sprays of blood.

When he burst out from behind the huge rock that had shielded him—

Dean was already there with the gun raised, and he fired.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The bullets tore through the rain.

Dean put three rounds in succession into the neck and cheek.

The roar of gunfire briefly crushed the howling storm. The man’s head snapped in a sickening turn; half his face looked like a tomato splattered on the ground, two blood-soaked, bone-revealing pits gaping, and one temple shredded by a bullet.

A fierce stench of blood filled the air.

A wound that should have killed any ordinary person only made the man sway.

Then a low growl rose.

R-oar...ha.

The air rippled.

The infernal sound stabbed into Dean’s brain like a sharpened dagger and split it open by the dozen; from the cracks poured grief even darker than the one from the cemetery.

Break everything.

His ears buzzed like a room full of people screaming.

Dean grew hazy, unable to focus. The Colt in his hands drooped on its own.

Then Shadow opened the recorder and became armor, clinging to his body like a shell.

Dun-dun-dun-dun... dun... dun-dun-dun.

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A burst of wild disco music poured out.

Blood-soaked, white-boned as a corpse-masked fiend, the man sawed in another. The chance was enough; he lunged.

Boom!

Lightning split the violet sky open, thunder ripping overhead.

The impact threw Dean into the wet, sticky mud, soaking his coat. The man’s knees drove into Dean’s abdomen, and with his right hand he raised the knife toward Dean’s throat.

Boom!

Thunder roared with a sequence of shrill, skin-torn vibrations.

Silver flashed, lighting a cold, cruel face and a wildly swinging arm.

But all five thrusts were deflected by the Ghost Armor; not a single inch of Dean’s fragile throat was cut.

The man then aimed the revolver at Dean’s forehead while Dean lay pinned beneath him. At that moment Dean had come to his senses, and his black pupils faced the man’s dark green slitted eyes.

In an instant, telekinesis shoved the barrel aside. The shot exploded beside Dean’s head, kicking up a wet-soil crater and speckling his cheek with black mud.

He drove several counters.

His left hand flashed, seizing the man’s index knuckle and pressing backward until the finger bone snapped and the skin tore and folded back.
His right hand plunged into the torn line at the neck and dragged sideways, rolling skin free so red-and-white vessels and trachea flashed in the air.
His knee stamped the man in his groin.

A bloodied three-strike combo that would have put a normal man out cold.

The man showed no pain. He head-butted Dean’s nose, and while Dean reeled, he exploded with a wave of force from his right hand, crushing Dean’s hands aside as the cold muzzle aligned itself with Dean’s eyes.

Bang!
Clang!
Bang!
Clang!

Shot. Hammer.
Shot. Hammer.

Sweat and blood flew.

He kept his right hand nailed to the trigger and never lifted it, while his left kept cocking the hammer—turning the revolver into a burst weapon.

The barrel stayed pressed to Dean’s head, one round after another.

The air hummed, and the ground shook.

Smoke drifted from the muzzle; the pungent smell of powder opened in sparkling fire.

Dean looked as though an iron hammer were smashing his skull over and over. His body arched back, fingers and toes went rigid, and he sank into the mud with each blow, blood running from his eyes and nose, with no strength to strike back.

But the Ghost Armor that guarded him showed impossible toughness. The invisible shell gathered at each impact point like a miniature cyclone, hardening and holding fast, stubbornly resisting powder and steel, deflecting every smoking slug before thinning and fading again.

Even while defending, Shadow took the initiative and used telekinesis to lift Dean’s Colt from the ground, carry it behind the man, and fire it off in the air.

The man’s neck twisted, and another bloody hole opened at the join of shoulder and nape, but he only gave one muffled grunt, then swatted away the stolen gun.

Looking down at the monstrous face beneath him, Dean noticed the shock of horror on it:
the magazine was already empty. Dean, after too much impact, had collapsed into concussion and near-numbness, eyes shut, while that blood-soaked visage remained whole—without a single bullet hole.

“What the hell are you? What kind of monster is that?”

The man growled and gave up the assault. He stood, forced his broken index finger straight, gave his neck vertebrae a cracking twist. He inhaled, and blood and flesh at his face and neck rose up as if alive, forming endless granules that stitched themselves together and stemmed the flow at once.

The cost was huge.

His face went the color of old paper, and he staggered like a heavily wounded man, vanishing into the rain.

After an unknown stretch of time, and with the drizzle hissing, Dean stirred.

Lying in the mud like a corpse, he groaned, opened blood-threaded eyes, and somehow sat upright. His mouth tasted of iron, his head split with pain, and every touch confirmed blood on his ears, mouth, and nose.

He gritted his teeth, grabbed the gun and planchette, and rose shakily, then his knees gave way and he dropped again.

“Me…ugh…what happened? Concussion?”

He breathed hard, trying repeatedly until, by the huge regenerative force of his Ironborn gift, he finally held his balance and stood. Instinctively he tried to summon Shadow, but got nothing.

It had clearly reached its limit and vanished automatically.

Dean wiped blood from his face and coughed violently, with fear, fury, and stubbornness burning together.

“Still let the Devourer get away?”

Bang-bang.

A few shots sounded from the woods nearby.

His heart tightened. He pulled out a spare magazine and replaced it, then followed the sound, but his legs trembled the whole way, like a corpse just dragging itself out of a grave.

Minutes later he saw a figure in a wet black suit.

A flash of lightning lit that man’s bright, polished forehead and deeply lined poker face; one shoulder of the black suit was stained in fresh red.

He was pressing his shoulder and trudging toward the cemetery’s way out, steps ragged and spent.

“Karl—weren’t you supposed to stay in the graveyard to watch over Holden? How did you get here? You’re hurt.”

Dean’s chest tightened, but he forced a light gait and went over to him as the smell of blood thickened in his nose.

“I’m fine, just a shoulder wound,” Karl said, voice still shaken. “But tell me honestly, what the hell was that thing? I hit its neck. It didn’t even flinch. Then it shot back and almost blew my head off, and then it disappeared.”

Karl dabbed the rain from his face while Dean sat heavily on a rock beside him, panting in pain, dry-heaving from dizziness.

“I don’t know what it was, but it was definitely not Jack, and not something we can handle. I’ve been taken for dead by it this time.”

“Forget about that. As long as you’re alive.” Karl said with concern. “You’re hit worse than me. Rest here. I’ll call for backup.”

Dean gave a silent nod, then used God View to scan Karl’s forearm.

It was smooth and bare, clean—any marker he had written there in waterproof pen had vanished.

Dean’s pupils narrowed with a flash of pain and hollow grief, yet he managed a smile.

“When you come back, remember to bring me a can of beer.”

Karl made an OK sign, turned toward the cemetery, and didn’t realize the instant Dean lifted the Colt and aimed its yawning muzzle at the back of his skull.

A metallic-hot wave of blood-fused rage surged through his whole body through the line of the gun.

Devourer.
I sentence you to death.

Shots.

Sparks burst outward.

Karl crashed forward like a body struck by a speeding train, his face buried in mud, mud splattering up as blood turned the puddle red.

Three rounds, the tremendous force of them ripping through flesh and skull, making a horror-filled cavity.

Even that nonhuman shell, under sudden heavy strikes, lost the ability to resist.

You used the Colt M1911A1 to hit him, causing moderate injury. Mastery +1*3, Shooting Lv.1 (98/200).

Dean staggered over and, expressionless, aimed at the back of his head.

Bang-bang-bang!

He emptied the magazine in one go, matching exactly the brutality done to him moments before.

Dean watched coldly as limbs twitched, spasmed, and shook; half a skull’s flesh and bone exploded outward in a blood fountain, exposing red-and-white brain tissue.

You used it... causing severe injury. Shooting Lv.1 (102/200).

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Still not dead.

“You wanted to blow out my head!”

Driven by fierce rage and tangled emotion, Dean dropped to one knee. With his right hand spread open, he brushed away splintered bone and slid his fingers into the gaping wound at the back of the skull, and then, like kneading tofu, he tore, gripped, and mashed until it became dust, until it was only pulp.

The Devourer quivered like an animal laid on a butcher’s block, twitching, convulsing in nerve-shudders, yet making no sound.

Prompts of proficiency kept flashing in Dean’s vision.

He dug into that ravaged body and crushed it again and again; the hunger had peaked so sharply that he lost all reason and kept attacking—attack after attack.

You used it, inflicting severe injury. Mastery +1*9, Melee Lv.1 (152/200) → Lv.1 (161/200)

Dean pulled back his hand, smeared with brain matter, flipped the unconscious monster over, raised the planchette, and drove it hard into the neck.

“You wanted to cut my throat, didn’t you?”

Shush-shush-shush.

A melee skill activated.

The blade split flesh like a trained butcher: trachea and major artery torn, spinal column punctured.

One strike after another.

His movement was so fast it became a blur. Blood and tissue splashed over Dean’s head and face; in his pale face and eyes stretched to their limit rose a savage, wild fulfillment.

Come on—kill me.
Come on—keep running.

You used the planchette to strike, causing moderate injury. Melee +1*20, Melee Lv.1 (181/200)

Sorrow, hatred, and relief all burned harder in his chest.

Dean, as if possessed, mechanically repeated the thrusting motion into the neck.

The man’s shaking grew more violent, then at a certain instant his limbs dropped limply to the ground and did not move.

The planchette suddenly drove into the earth.

Dean froze, then looked down. He had torn Karl’s head clear from his body; it rolled once over the mud.

That face was Karl’s, turned toward him as though it could ask a final question with its last breath.

The blood-slick planchette grew hot and bright all at once.

Clearly, the soul of the newly dead Devourer, like the souls of the four hunters who had died before, was trapped within it.

A flood of crimson notices crossed Dean’s sight:

Investigation progress 90/100 → 95/100.
You have killed the supernatural entity Devourer. Supernatural Hunter proficiency activated.
Your physical condition has partially recovered. You siphoned 1.5 Physique from the Devourer.
Physique: 12.6 → 14.1.
...
You used the planchette to decapitate the Devourer in its transformed state. Mastery +20, Melee Lv.1 (200/200)
Level up?
Yes.
Melee Lv.1 → Lv.2 (0/300)
Agility +0.5, 12.2 → 12.7
Strength +0.5, 10.8 → 11.3
Physique +0.5, 14.1 → 14.6

Dean’s exhausted body suddenly seemed to receive a heavy stimulant. A burning torrent from the Devourer’s corpse surged into him, circling once and spreading through every part of him.

It was like a furnace lit inside him. The joints and bones of his limbs were all ignited at once by that boiling fire, flaring into even more extreme heat.

A two-point total shift in Physique over two uses is too large.

He heard an eerie cracking inside himself. Skin, muscles, tendons, joints, veins—they grew, stretched, strengthened, and hardened under that strange nourishment.

Hot breath poured from his nose and mouth. His cheeks and neck turned deeply red. His hands and skin looked as if they had been baked, red enough to bleed.
Even the scars on the backs of his hands and across his body faded in plain sight, almost gone, leaving only smooth, fine, and resilient skin.

There was no time to celebrate. A surge of uncontrollable frenzy and rage made him seize his suit.

Whush.

A blaze-red hand tore it apart.

The ripped cloth tore in half.

The bulletproof vest flew off.

The dense lines of his muscle stood fully exposed.

Bare-chested, Dean plunged his head into the cold, foul pond to quench the inferno in him.

As the rain eased, a thread of white light broke through the clouds.

The maddening heat finally drained away from inside him, and with it the long-finished exhaustion and pain. Even the searing concussion from repeated head shots burned out.

He wiped the mud from his face, then studied his body, reborn and clear-eyed, feeling better than ever.

“To get 1.5 Physique from it, that creature’s own Physique had to be even higher. No wonder its life force was so stubborn.”

Dean’s eyes moved toward the head-and-torso-separate remains on the ground. His fury had been spent, but he had still made a mess.

If the Devourer still looked like Karl after death, how could it have escaped from the holding cell and rescued Abby?
You can’t just call this Karl-shaped corpse the killer in Abby’s case.

And there was Karl’s true body.

“Karl?!”

Dean shouted. The name ripped through the fine rain, echoing in the tangled garden.

He scanned the area again through God View.

Minutes later, beneath a palm tree, he found the real Karl. Karl had his coat off, wearing only a vest and shorts, leaning against the trunk with one hand on his bullet-struck neck, collapsed into shock.
Blood from the wound streamed down half his body, reddening a large patch of shirt; his chest rose in only the faintest motion.

“Hold on. I’ll take you to the hospital.”

“We caught the killer. You haven’t even seen it once with your own eyes. You cannot die!”

Dean checked the wound, ripped strips from his own clothes, and shoved them on, pressing hard. But even at his fingertips he could barely feel Karl’s carotid pulse. His life had slipped beyond retrieval.

At that moment, a line from Thomas Allen surfaced in Dean’s mind:
A detective’s fate is never meant to end well.

Screw that fate.

“It’s too late to get him to a hospital in time. This ordinary man has maybe ten minutes left. You want to save him?”

A hoarse, magnetic baritone suddenly came from behind a Joshua tree not far away, crawling up Dean’s neck in gooseflesh.

Dean lifted his head nervously.

A ragged vagrant stepped out: wild hair, torn clothes, untrimmed beard, one side of a black eye mask, the other eye fixed on Dean.

For one instant it was as if a radiant cluster of stars flashed and an immense, cold, desolate universe swept before him.

He seemed to sink into a boundless vastness and spoke:

“Are you Tham?”

“Tham from beyond Balcadosco?”

“The Tham who killed Alexander Raphael?”

(End of Chapter)