Opposite the tattooed man, Xu Mo strolled over, speaking with a look of lingering dissatisfaction.
“Or rather, is there anything you'd like to tell me?”
“Actually, you don't have to say anything. Why don't you just run along to the afterlife? At your age, it'd count as dying of old age anyway.”
The tattooed man didn't speak. He only gasped for breath as he looked up, his eyes burning with frantic killing intent.
“You little brat... you brought this on yourself!”
With that, he produced something from his palm and stabbed it straight into his neck.
It was a syringe filled with an inky green potion.
Xu Mo raised his eyebrow.
What? You've got drugs too?
On his game panel, the man's level instantly began to climb the moment the potion was injected.
【53→59!】
It wasn't a massive jump, and he was still within the range of a Rank 5 Scavenger, but that wasn't all.
A muffled growl escaped the tattooed man's throat as his entire body suddenly arched forward.
Inky green lines began to spread along his tattoos, which seemed to function like a network of meridians etched onto his skin.
It was quite fascinating; the effect of this potion was clearly different from what the Inner City students used.
Amidst the sharp cracking of bones, the skin on the tattooed man's arms became unnaturally smooth, secreting a large amount of mucus as fine scales began to sprout!
He looked exactly like he was evolving into a loach!
Staring at his new look, Xu Mo was momentarily dumbfounded, finding the sight oddly familiar.
Blinking, he took a sharp breath and muttered hesitantly to himself,
“Sss—with a look like that, I think I have some idea of who you are...”
“Tsk... but that's not right. Are you guys really showing up this early this time?”
Xu Mo narrowed his eyes as he watched the tattooed man's transformation.
In the mid-to-late game storyline of 《Old Ones' Awakening》, there was a special organization whose members could morph their bodies into various animal forms.
When Xu Mo played the game in the past, he had assumed they were just a group of people with animal-morphing Word Souls, though he had found it strange that they never chanted their Word Souls during their transformations.
Now, it seemed that if this man was indeed one of them, then this form wasn't a Word Soul transformation at all—it was drug-induced!
This was truly a first...
“What are you talking about?” Bai Feifei asked in confusion within her mind. “You know him? What do you mean by 'them'?”
Xu Mo chuckled, saying mischievously,
“How should I put it? Just a bunch of rather bizarre furries, hehe.”
Bai Feifei: ?
She had no idea what "furries" meant.
“Logically, they shouldn't be appearing at this point,” Xu Mo added. “But now it seems that if it really is them, you've essentially changed history.”
He didn't explain further. The revelation that these people actually used drugs made him frantically connect the dots with the events occurring inside Dawn City.
By now, the pain in the tattooed man's fractured body had eased, and he stood back up.
The potion's effects were still active. The inky green patterns continued to crawl along his tattoos. Though slow, it felt as if he was leveling up.
Inside his triangular eyes, a frantic, confident gleam flickered once more.
“Hehe... Hahaha!”
The tattooed man threw his head back and laughed, spreading his arms wide as he felt power surging through his veins.
As time ticked by, he no longer looked entirely human. He glared viciously at “Bai Feifei.”
“You little brat, you had a lot of fun beating me up just now, didn't you?!”
He lowered his head and licked his lips.
“Now, it's my turn!”
“I'm going to make you regret ever being born!”
With that, he reached into his shirt to pull out another syringe and stabbed it straight into his neck.
The second dose.
An inky green light erupted. The tattoos seemed to come alive, lifting from the surface of his skin and twisting into eerie patterns in the air.
The intoxicating feeling of immense power made him lose all self-control. He spewed a stream of vulgar insults, though it was hard to tell who or what he was cursing.
Xu Mo stood where he was, hands in his pockets, staring straight at him.
He found the whole display rather bizarre as he observed the various weaknesses highlighted across the man's body by the Killing Machine interface.
Seriously, does this really have to take so long?
It's been over ten seconds already!
Annoyed by the man's constant shouting, Xu Mo suddenly moved.
He couldn't be bothered to wait for the man to finish his monologue. Vanishing like a bolt of black lightning, he materialized right in front of him.
The tattooed man instinctively tried to strike, wanting to unleash the immense power coursing through him.
But he suddenly realized he couldn't move!
His transformation was still incomplete. Like an animal caught mid-shedding, he was currently in an extremely vulnerable state.
A long sword gleamed before him. The blade sliced through the air, accurately slashing toward the inky green patterns spreading down his thigh.
Squelch!
The sound of metal slicing into flesh was accompanied by a spray of blood, eliciting a horrific scream from the tattooed man.
For some reason, the agony from this single cut was far more excruciating than any of the injuries he had sustained during their previous exchange.
On his body, the inky green light climbing along his tattoos snapped like a physical thread under the sword's edge.
With the patterns severed at his thigh, the glow above and below instantly lost connection.
The tattooed man's body stiffened violently.
The sensation was hard to describe—it was like a surging wave of emotion being abruptly cut short, leaving all his power stuck halfway, suspended in limbo.
His physical "evolution" seemed to have frozen at the halfway mark.
His eyes bulged as his body trembled violently, completely caught off guard by this turn of events.
How... how could this happen?!
“You... you...”
His voice cracked, completely out of tune.
Xu Mo pulled out the long sword, flicking the inky green fluid off the blade.
Tilting his head, he looked somewhat dazed himself, as if he hadn't expected it to be this easy.
“Seriously, that's it?”
“Don't you think your cast time is way too long?”
The tattooed man opened his mouth, but no words came out.
“You guys really need to optimize this state,” Xu Mo muttered to himself, sounding quite dissatisfied.
Whenever he encountered these people in the game, they were always able to transform instantly.
It seemed the potion had not yet been perfected at this point in time.
Without another word, he summoned another sword out of thin air and drove it into the man's other leg, followed by his shoulders, his arms...
Bai Feifei's storage ring was always stocked with a variety of weapons. Within moments, Xu Mo had turned the man before him into a human pincushion!
Every strike sliced cleanly along the tattoos, yet carefully avoided his vital organs.
“Ahhh!! You damn bastard!...”
The agonizing pain made the tattooed man scream hoarsely, but with his transformation completely disrupted, he could do nothing but curse.
“What are you screaming for?”
Xu Mo clapped his hands and looked back at him.
“Shouldn't you perfect this kind of trick before trying to use it in a fight? Otherwise, why would I sit around and wait for your cast animation to finish?”
“Can't I just kill you right now?”
Rate on N.U.
