Eris landed on the third-floor balcony of the abandoned factory. About twenty meters away, a dark figure crouched on the railing of the drying tower. The Alpha stood with his back to the light, facing Eris, and a thick tail covered in golden-blue scales slowly extended from behind him.
The figure suddenly opened its eyes. A pair of orange-red eyes glowed brightly in the rainy night, the pupils elongated into vertical slits like a snake’s. Thin lips parted slightly, revealing the crimson hue of the mouth.
“Curse User.” The Alpha’s fierce gaze swept over Eris. “A full-form Mimic… “Doesn’t look very formidable, heh. Is the host actually just a lucky charm doll?” He extended a slender, gnarled, brown-gold arm, its claw-like fingertips clutching a crude lucky charm doll fashioned from discarded hemp rope and white plastic bags, and waved it contemptuously in front of Eris.
“Who are you?”
“3316, Velociraptor A3.”
The Velociraptor wore a tracking collar unique to the research institute around its neck, allowing the test subject’s location to be tracked at any time. If the test subject went berserk and refused to obey commands, the collar would inject a high dose of anesthetic—or even an infectious agent—into the back of its neck.
“Old man, it’s a curse doll. Such an outdated provocation—are you still living before the Industrial Revolution?” Eris raised her pale green eyes to glare at him, hoisted the shotgun, rested her wrist on the barrel, tilted her head, and smiled, her crimson lips stretching into a long crack down to her dimples.
A vicious glint flashed in the Velociraptor’s eyes. Its powerful hind legs pushed off violently as it leaped over the railing toward Eris. Eris rolled backward and leaped, firing a shot over her shoulder at the Velociraptor’s landing spot. The Velociraptor landed without closing in on Eris, its feet landing firmly on the balcony railing.
Eris snapped his fingers, and the J1 differentiation ability “Misfortune Descends” quietly activated. The railing beneath the Velociraptor’s feet suddenly aged and shattered. Losing his balance, he leaped with all his might and managed to claw onto the narrow ledge of the building. His muscular arms pulled his entire body back onto the balcony.
Unable to close in on Eris for the moment, the Velociraptor felt a twinge of unease facing his opponent’s ranged weapon. He knew that Messenger-type test subjects could wield the tools of their respective masters, and generally, the damage these tools inflicted on the test subjects was severe and difficult to heal quickly.
Just as he was devising a countermeasure, Eris suddenly leaned out from the balcony one floor above and fired a shot at him.
Startled, the Velociraptor ducked behind an old iron gate. The shotgun pellets scattered into tiny pellets, producing a loud, crackling sound as they struck the gate, but the damage wasn’t as severe as the Velociraptor had imagined.
“Not a familiar…?” The Velociraptor brushed the dust from his shoulder and pulled the bullet lodged in his thick hide out. His body was exceptionally resilient; ordinary firearms couldn’t penetrate it. His movement was also extremely swift, and his strength far surpassed that of the Imperial Crocodile.
“Ah, this is a toy Nix gave me,” Eris said, leaning out from the balcony and smiling at him. “A Familiar? You’re not worthy of appreciating his artwork.”
A rustling sound came from behind him. Eris turned slightly and noticed that two figures had appeared behind him without him realizing it.
Both test subjects had tracking collars from the research institute fastened around their necks.
“Hm? Bringing reinforcements… that’s a bit much.”
Eris didn’t even acknowledge the other M2s, instead flicking her black-veined tongue at the Velociraptor in front of her: “I’ve killed more than one A3.”
Realizing the gun wasn’t a control device, the Velociraptor relaxed slightly. It dug its sharp, hard claws into the cracks in the wall, coiled its muscular, well-developed body, and leaped onto the high platform, landing with a thud that left a shallow, cracked indentation in the balcony floor.
The Velociraptor was Xiao Yang’s creation. Its build reflected his usual preferences: massive, burly, and powerful, standing over 2.3 meters tall. Though not as colossal as a Giganotosaurus, it was still an Alpha. In contrast, Eris was lanky and slender—not in the same weight class as the Velociraptor.
The Velociraptor’s primary ability is close-quarters combat, with all three of its specialized abilities focused on melee. It planted its feet and leaped into the air, swinging a fist the size of a soup bowl toward Eris’s face. Eris raised his forearm to block the blow, but the force of the impact was too fierce, sending him stumbling backward several meters.
The Velociraptor had no intention of giving him a moment to catch his breath. It spun around swiftly, its thick, powerful golden tail whistling through the air as it swung down toward Eris’s midsection.
The Velociraptor’s J1 specialized ability: “Hurricane Dragon Tail.”
This tail, sweeping in like a hurricane, carried such a sharp, razor-like edge that it could easily cleave a person in two.
The dragon’s tail, infused with A3-level overwhelming pressure, swept in, leaving no chance for evasion. Eris took the blow head-on; the collision of the two “hurricanes” produced a piercing roar, sending dust billowing from the balcony as shards of stone, ash, and debris exploded in all directions.
“Nothing special,” the Velociraptor laughed.
As the smoke slowly cleared, the Velociraptor’s expression suddenly changed.
His tough, heavy golden tail was actually clenched in Eris’s hand.
“You’re just a mere Level 7 mature specimen. What gives you the audacity to challenge me? Did that old hag Aileen give you the confidence?” Eris caught the dragon’s tail barehanded, wrapping the tip around her wrist. With a sharp tug, the Velociraptor stumbled. Despite its massive frame, it had been easily shaken by a slender, doll-like figure.
The two M2-level test subjects behind him surged forward, lunging at Eris. Eris’s head twisted a full 180 degrees, gazing back at them with a sinister grin.
Two golden threads shot from Eris’s mouth, coiling like venomous snakes around the necks of the two M2 test subjects. The cursed threads were invisible yet intangible; once wrapped around them, they could not be removed. The only way to make the golden threads vanish was to pull them apart.
The two test subjects exchanged a glance and ran off in opposite directions.
Eris suddenly released his grip on the Velociraptor. Once again, disaster struck: the balcony above the Velociraptor’s head cracked and collapsed with a thunderous crash.
The other end of the golden, shimmering Curse Thread wrapped itself around the Velociraptor’s powerful ankle.
The Curse Thread, a companion ability of the Curse User, allows targets connected by the golden thread to suffer attacks of equal intensity. The thread can connect up to ten targets at a time; if the distance between any two targets exceeds 100 meters, the thread breaks and becomes ineffective.
Eris reloaded her rifle and fired a shot that blew the head off one of the M2 test subjects. The skull shattered, sending blood flying everywhere. Another M2 test subject, connected by the Curse Thread, simultaneously clutched its head, screamed in agony, and collapsed to the ground.
The Velociraptor, knocked down by a falling rock, also felt an explosive, searing pain in its skull. It forced its dizzy eyes open and saw a golden thread tied to its ankle.
Eris found the shotgun’s rate of fire too slow, so she extracted a long, white ceramic bone from her own calf, sharpened it, and clenched it in her hand, stabbing one of the M2 test subjects viciously, blow after blow.
The test subject was immobilized by Eris’s A3-level pheromones. It struggled frantically to crawl away, but the rain of stabs left it nowhere to hide; its wails were drowned out by the relentless rain pounding the ground.
Eris cackled maniacally in the downpour. The test subject pinned beneath him had been reduced to a pulped mass of flesh. Blood mixed with shreds of flesh was washed away by the torrential rain, flowing down the balcony’s drainpipe, spilling from the outlet onto the ground, and slowly spreading into pools of red across the puddles.
The other M2 test subject, connected by a golden thread, showed no visible wounds, yet its body was already fractured and its eyes glazed over, devoid of life. The mangled test subject was completely dead, and though it could still rely on the test subjects’ resilient properties to heal itself, it would be impossible for it to stand up again in the short term.
With the death of one of the targets connected by the cursed thread, the golden thread vanished automatically.
The Velociraptor struggled to crawl to its feet, but suddenly felt a burning sensation in its throat, coughing up a clump of blood. With its thick hide and tough flesh, ordinary weapons could rarely harm it from the outside, but Eris’s cursed thread did not inflict external damage; instead, it forced the Velociraptor to share the pain suffered by the other, more fragile test subjects. This was undoubtedly a fatal blow struck directly at the Velociraptor’s weakest point.
Eris rose from the downpour, his silver hair stained crimson. Blood and water flowed murkily down his arms. He tossed the long blade fashioned from a leg bone into the air; as it fell, he extended a leg, and the bone blade snapped back into place at the ball-and-socket joint of his leg.
Eris turned and smiled, the black-and-red cross-shaped lines on his face bending and rippling with his grin. He stuck his tongue out at him, the black lines on it glowing faintly.
“As if standing… on the edge of an abyss.”
The pitch-black sky hung like a curtain blocking out the light. The shadows of the abandoned factory’s balconies and towering structures sank deep into the darkness, while the bottomless pit leading to hell spread out like a Velociraptor tearing through the earth.
The Sorcerer’s A3 Division Ability, “As If Standing on the Brink of an Abyss,” caused the ground within the shadowed area to collapse. Those who fell to the bottom would be sealed away for eternity, facing their greatest fears every single second of their existence.
The Velociraptor spun and leaped. His stamina was not yet exhausted; with his endurance and speed, he sprinted through the rain, managing to outpace the spreading abyss of hell. In just a few seconds, he had retreated a hundred meters away.
Eris used the threads of the curse to weave and leap through the towering buildings, chasing after the Velociraptor. Suddenly, she released a strand of golden thread that materialized out of thin air and wrapped itself around the Velociraptor’s wrist as it ran.
The Velociraptor wasn’t afraid of him. With the creature dozens of meters away and moving at breakneck speed, it would be nearly impossible to hit it with a shotgun. Moreover, Eris’s Curse Thread could only connect to living beings; even if it could share damage, there wasn’t a single bird in sight, so the Curse Thread couldn’t harm him at all.
Unexpectedly, however, the other end of the Curse Thread was clamped in Eris’s jaws.
“Die,” Eris sneered at him, then raised the short-barreled shotgun and pulled the trigger against his own jaw.
The deafening gunshot was drowned out by the downpour. The Velociraptor felt an unbearable pain shoot through his jawbone; half his face felt as if it were being scorched by flames.
The Curse-Wielder’s madness filled him with terror—Eris had actually wrapped the Curse Threads around herself, willing to inflict severe injury upon herself just to deal a devastating blow to her opponent.
The Velociraptor’s legs stiffened, and the Abyss he was chasing was about to swallow him whole. He clung to the edge with both hands, struggling to climb up, when suddenly, a searing pain shot through his left hand as if it had snapped. He let out a wail and plummeted into the bottomless abyss.
——
On the now-extinguished searchlight of the observation tower, Bai Chunian crouched atop it in a cat-like posture, observing the situation below.
Eris also caught the scent of brandy pheromones in the air and looked up at Bai Chunian.
“What are you doing here?”
Half of Eris’s jaw had been shattered by his own shotgun, leaving only the lower half of his face, but it slowly returned to its original state. His left hand had been pulverized into nothingness, yet a brand-new one gradually grew from the ball-and-socket joint; he twisted his wrist.
“Hurting the enemy a thousand times while hurting yourself a thousand times—only you would pull something like that off.” Bai Chunian shook the lion’s ears hidden in his hair and praised softly, “Not bad, quite impressive, meow.”
“Disgusting.” Eris hoisted her shotgun and turned away lazily. “Go sleep with your seafood wife. Don’t get in our way.”
Bai Chunian pointed to the communicator on his ear. “I don’t intend to get in your way. I was just following orders to see what you were up to. “I just received an evacuation order. Aileen sent five A3 ace test subjects over. You’re on your own.”
“Hahahaha, so what if there are five? I’ve killed way too many of the lab’s star test subjects.” Eris turned back and stuck her tongue out at him, then suddenly paused, rubbing her nose and muttering under her breath, “As long as that fish doesn’t show up, everything’s easy.”
“Well, I’m outta here. Bye-bye.”
Bai Chunian turned and leaped off the searchlight, hands in his pockets as he landed lightly and began to jump away. But a pheromone with the scent of rust pressed down from the air, cutting off his path.
Bai Chunian stopped in his tracks and scanned the area for the source of the pheromone.
Beyond the railing of the drying platform, a piece of steel the size of a tombstone, dark as ink, slowly rose from the dim sky. Intricate patterns were engraved upon it.
The massive, floating slab of steel blocked the only ray of light piercing through the clouds, and shadow engulfed Bai Chunian.
Bai Chunian looked up. Floating in the air was a dark-blue shield, at the center of which was embedded a complete human spine. The blue and red nerves and blood vessels had fused with the shield, and at the top of the spine grew a gland pulsing with power, set into the shield like a ruby. The pheromone with the scent of rust was emanating from this very gland.
The shield loomed overhead as it closed in. The heavy pressure made Bai Chunian feel a hint of threat. Forced back by the steadily advancing shield, he leaped off the drying rack and eventually retreated to Eris’s side.
“Holy crap, is she alive?” ” Bai Chunian slipped a hand into his pocket, stroking his chin as he studied the colossal creature floating in the sky.
Eris ignored him, instead gazing at the distant edge of the Abyss and clenching her teeth. The Velociraptor, its body covered in wounds, was actually crawling slowly up from the edge of the Abyss.
“It managed to grab the edge with its one remaining hand and didn’t fall in, did it?”
“Don’t worry.” Bai Chunian used the miniature camera issued by IOA to snap a photo of the shield, then one of the Velociraptor, before draping his arm over Eris’s shoulder for a selfie. He packaged the photos and sent them to the tech department, leaving a note beneath the images: “We’re blocked and can’t retreat. Look up info on these guys.”
The tech department’s on-site technician replied: “OK.”
Bai Chunian patted Eris on the shoulder: “Good brother, once a leader, always a leader. Let’s work together for a bit.”
Eris swung his gun barrel, clapped his hands, and with a wide grin stretching to his dimples, he tilted his chin up and replied excitedly, “Yep!”
Bai Chunian pulled out his phone and sent a voice message to Lan Bo: “Honey, school’s out. Come pick me up.”
Eris, who had been beaming with joy, suddenly pulled a sour face.
This part of the story flows pretty smoothly. If you can’t wait, save up two chapters and read them together—it’s a little climax, haha. But I still didn’t get to write the part I wanted to today.