Chapter 104: Provocation

Fan Li had previously instructed Ellie and Button to stay away from him. This way, he could collect kill points while ensuring they were ready to provide backup at critical moments without needing to be summoned.

Everything had been perfect.

Fan Li appeared to have convinced the woman, but no one could have predicted that summoning her monster form required specific conditions: self-mutilation to mirror her own mangled appearance.

Sensing that Fan Li’s inner calm had been shattered, Ellie grabbed her heavy hammer and rushed over with Button, leading to the scene unfolding before them. As for the woman, she was intent on turning Fan Li into a creature just like her. In her eyes, both Button and Ellie were intrusive third parties; since they were strangers to one another, murderous intent naturally arose as they attempted to strike each other down.

The communication style of these monsters was simple: one only had to kill the other. There was no need to endure the awkwardness of trying to talk to someone they didn't know.

Ellie’s petite figure leapt high into the air. In a blink, she was upon the woman. At such close range, her face looked grotesquely surreal, made all the more terrifying by the savage iron hammer gripped in her hands. The momentum behind the hammer strike was like a block of iron dropped from a dozen stories up; if an ordinary zombie had taken such a hit, it would have been smashed into fragments, exploding on impact.

The woman saw this coming and, feeling a surge of unease, scooped up Fan Li around the waist and dodged to the side.

"Boom!"

With a thunderous crash, the hard asphalt of the street was smashed through, instantly revealing a deep, concave crater.

Fan Li had been taken hostage!

Initially, Ellie’s emotions had been under control, as she only intended to kill the woman. But now, sensing Fan Li’s growing agitation, Ellie’s state shifted.

"Waaaah!"

Ellie inhaled sharply, her midsection hollowing inward by several inches. The next second, her teeth began to rotate in layers, and a massive sound wave, mimicking the wail of a crying infant, erupted from her throat.

Furthermore, a phantom figure emerged behind her—a bloated, massive, obese visage where teeth occupied eighty percent of its features. Flanking the phantom’s body were over a dozen swaying tentacles, each covered in dense, jagged barbs. Once these tentacles ensnared an enemy, few could ever break free.

All the evil words in the dictionary were insufficient to describe this monster; she had transformed into a heresy that had no place in this world.

Since the moment Fan Li first summoned Ellie, he had only seen her use this ability twice: once against a Titan and once against a Nightmare. Both times, it had been a matter of life and death. Now, to Fan Li’s surprise, sensing that he was in danger, Ellie had summoned this second form from the unknown void without a moment's hesitation.

"Swish, swish, swish!"

A dozen tentacles lashed out like vines, binding the woman. At that moment, Ellie pushed Fan Li aside, choosing to face the overwhelming danger alone.

Seeing Fan Li about to fall, Button crawled across the ground, using hands and feet, attempting to catch its master with its own body. But to the woman, this clearly looked like the little girl’s helper was attacking Fan Li. Her pale, emotionless eyes flared with murder. She opened and closed her right hand, which held a pair of scissors.

Two simple movements.

Immediately afterward, a flash of cold light swept around Button. Vague, ghostly silhouettes of countless scissors flickered across its body.

"Click!"

"Clack!"

Before Button even realized what had happened, it suffered unimaginable damage. Like a doll being shredded at will, dozens of deep, bone-exposed wounds appeared across its neck, chest, limbs, and back, causing it to collapse to the ground, unable to even twitch.

Only because the woman was currently occupied by Ellie, and because Button, as a zombie, possessed the trait of immortality, did it survive. Had this been a human, there would have been no chance of living.

"Hiss!"

Fan Li hit the ground hard. Whether from the pain or his shock at the woman’s strength—which far exceeded his expectations—he gasped.

Button’s forehead had also been sliced open, trickles of putrid blood dripping into its eyes. It looked utterly wretched, yet even so, it struggled to crawl back up, attempting to rescue Fan Li.

An affinity rating of 80 was no lie.

The preconceived notion of loyalty was deeply ingrained in Button’s mind. Compared to the knife wounds it had barely felt, the sight of that constantly swinging giant hammer terrified it far more. Watching Button writhe like a worm on the ground, Fan Li quickly waved his hand to stop it.

He didn't want it to come over; he was afraid Button would provoke the woman again. If that happened, the mutant he had worked so hard to tame might truly be snipped into strips of cloth, its body parts scattered across the ground, and its life extinguished.

Just as the woman was busy disciplining Button, the tentacles summoned by Ellie seized the opportunity to bind the woman’s body.

More than a dozen tentacles surged over her—head, legs, waist—and especially her right hand, which held the scissors, was wrapped layer by layer, preventing her from snapping them open and shut.

At the same time, the monster’s phantom appeared behind the woman. A pair of scarlet eyes stared at her, and a blood-drenched maw slowly opened. A tongue, like a frenzied python, undulated in the void, as if in the next second, it would bite the woman in half at the waist and devour her.

It could be said that if the woman hadn't been distracted by the belief that Button was a threat to Fan Li, Ellie’s trump card would never have succeeded so easily.

Fan Li stood up, looking at the woman with complex emotions. Even though she was being pulled taut by the tentacles, to the point where her torso was beginning to deform, the woman seemed to feel no pain. Her mouth split open, reverting to that ugly, dynamic state. Without emotion, she uttered a few intermittent words: "Run... away... see... you..."

She was trying to make Fan Li run.

What a foolish girl.

"Clang!"

The sound of the savage hammer being dragged across the ground echoed. The petite figure approached Fan Li slowly.

"Run... away..."

The bound woman became somewhat manic. Her voice was no longer gentle; it sounded more like a blood-weeping cuckoo. She tried to make Fan Li flee this dangerous battlefield, to escape that terrifying monster. But Fan Li remained motionless, his gaze fixed solely on her.

The distorted creature, its face covered in teeth—a sight that would put even other monsters to shame—reached Fan Li’s side. However, instead of biting off his head, it acted like a cat finding a comfortable sofa; it held the hammer in its left hand and leaned its right side directly against Fan Li.

Ellie tilted her head toward the woman, her mouth full of rotating teeth spinning in circles, as if mocking her, or perhaps challenging her.