Huo Xiu had to admit he never expected his encounter with William to happen in such a ridiculously dramatic way.
After escorting Kevin’s group and the other survivors from J’s Bar to Central Station, he had gone back out to search for more people.
That part had gone exactly as expected.
He found David and Yoko Suzuki, the Umbrella intern.
Yoko had been extraordinarily lucky to make it out at all.
Once they were safely delivered to the station, Huo Xiu decided to make a detour to the underground laboratory and check for surviving personnel.
Nearly two days had passed since the outbreak began, but researchers trapped in sealed sections of the complex might still be alive.
Instead, he ran into a lunatic.
What was her name again…
Monica?
She had actually pointed a gun at him.
Greed really could make people stupid.
Some survivors had apparently been hiding with her, but Monica murdered her own colleagues because she wanted to sell the G-Virus.
Even William’s purge of the laboratory hadn’t managed to eliminate every last sample.
No security system was perfect.
Unfortunately for Monica, William in his current state was extremely sensitive to the G-Virus.
Revenge had already been satisfied, but his obsession remained: no one was taking the G-Virus out of his laboratory.
So when the idiot woman watched Huo Xiu casually twist her handgun into scrap metal and turned to run, William caught her—and implanted a G-embryo inside her.
“All right…
Looks like a fight is unavoidable.” This was a boss, after all, and one with terrifying evolutionary potential.
Huo Xiu decided to treat him seriously.
He removed his gloves, then took off his hat as well.
In a real fight, worrying about whether it might fall off was an unnecessary distraction.
Against Nemesis, they’d exchanged only a single move in what amounted to a spar, so keeping it on hadn’t mattered.
In a genuine battle, refusing to prepare properly would almost feel disrespectful.
Huo Xiu entered his combat form.
G’s consciousness was not yet fully mature, but it immediately sensed danger.
After evaluating its own body, it reached a simple conclusion: victory was not guaranteed.
The opponent radiated a degree of threat G had never experienced.
So it chose to probe first—identify his advantages, find his weaknesses, and evolve in whatever direction would best counter them.
“What a magnificent Tyrant…” William’s original consciousness had not completely vanished in the G1 stage.
The instant he saw Huo Xiu’s combat form, the instincts of a researcher surged back to the surface.
William had studied plenty of Tyrants, but never one that remained so close to human while being capable of switching voluntarily between distinct physical configurations.
Worse—or perhaps better—it matched his sense of aesthetics almost perfectly.
Even in his current condition, part of him desperately wanted to know how such a masterpiece had been created.
G had no intention of giving its host time to admire the opponent.
For some reason, William’s consciousness resisted less strongly in the presence of this enemy.
Perhaps because the opponent was obviously powerful?
It didn’t matter.
G already understood that much.
Less resistance from the host meant better odds.
If victory proved impossible, it could still attempt to flee.
Escaping while fighting William’s will at the same time would be far more difficult.
Then Huo Xiu threw his first punch, and G realized it had been catastrophically wrong.
The speed was so extreme that even G’s three eyes failed to track the movement.
The next instant, the gigantic eye on its shoulder burst beneath the blow, surrounding flesh exploding into red mist.
The force didn’t stop there.
G’s entire body was smashed down into the floor.
From that single punch, G felt its consciousness begin to dim.
One or two more strikes like that and it might genuinely die.
Yet the sensation of imminent death awakened something even stronger: a desperate survival instinct.
Under that pressure, G’s intelligence began developing at an extraordinary pace.
For the first time, its thoughts started crossing the boundary from beast to something almost human.
Think.
Think faster.
What weakness does he have?
Too strong.
Far too strong.
Strength, speed—everything exceeds this body.
I was naive.
Against him, even escaping is a luxury.
But not impossible.
There had to be a possibility somewhere.
Survival instinct erupted into conscious evolution.
Instead of progressing gradually into the expected G2 form with a new head, countless tentacles burst from its body.
Enormous mouths opened across its abdomen and back.
The rear maw began grinding through stone while the tentacles swept up nearby zombies and Hunters, crushing them into manageable bundles and stuffing them into the mouth on its abdomen.
At the same time, the raw red color of exposed flesh began disappearing beneath an expanding layer of white.
Bone.
Faced with Huo Xiu’s overwhelming attack power, G arrived at one answer: discard useless flesh.
Aside from organs absolutely necessary to remain alive, every available nutrient would be redirected into skeletal growth.
The organs themselves would be connected through simplified neural pathways, minimizing vulnerable tissue while maximizing defense.
But the biomass already contained within this body wasn’t enough.
G needed more.
That was why it produced the mouths and tentacles—tools for feeding as rapidly and efficiently as possible.
Even devouring stone served a purpose.
Minerals, especially calcium, could be processed into additional skeletal material.
Flesh or rock, G no longer cared.
Survival demanded compromise, and aesthetics meant nothing to an organism trying not to die.
G had no idea what level of evolution could be called “perfect,” but it understood one thing: against a creature this terrifying, successfully escaping would count as victory.
The underground laboratory no longer contained enough biomass.
G had already devoured the nearest living material, but regeneration and continued evolution demanded far more than the complex could provide.
It needed the surface—more organisms, more mass, more material.
At least the new tentacles had developed bone structures of their own.
Rather than continue fighting, G drove a tentacle into the ceiling.
Bone at the tip rotated violently like a drill, boring through reinforced structure and the rock above.
Other tentacles anchored its body and began pulling it upward.
Even the bone armor covering G was built from overlapping sections, while vital organs were connected through neural tissue in such a way that, if necessary, G could eject them from the main body.
Every part of the grotesque design had been created for one purpose: escaping Huo Xiu alive.
Huo Xiu had no intention of letting that happen.
The very adaptations G created to survive were about to become its coffin.
As G drilled upward, an enormous force suddenly jerked through the tentacle from below.
It tried to sever the limb immediately, but it was already too late.
Huo Xiu hauled the creature back down through raw strength alone.
G anchored more tentacles into the ceiling, yet even that failed—the section of laboratory ceiling it had attached itself to was ripped down along with it.
This isn’t working.
Huo Xiu was already closing in again.
With no time left to think, G chose the most extreme evolution available: an all-or-nothing defense.
This time it abandoned the mouths, the tentacles, and even its limbs.
Every scrap of biomass was redirected into bone until G became a cocoon of layered skeletal armor.
The overlapping composite structure was far stronger than before.
Ordinary bullets ricocheted harmlessly from it; even armor-piercing ammunition would struggle to penetrate.
Huo Xiu’s fists, unfortunately, struck harder than armor-piercing rounds.
For once, the impact didn’t feel like punching tofu.
If Huo Xiu had to describe it, it was more like throwing a full-power punch into a thick tree branch—and feeling the branch snap.
That was exactly what happened.
Layer after layer of reinforced bone split beneath Huo Xiu’s fists and claws as easily as dry timber.
G could feel death closing in.
Yet this man-made god still refused to die.
Dignity meant nothing now.
Like a sea cucumber ejecting its organs to escape a predator, G abandoned the skeletal shell, withdrew its neural network into its vital organs, and violently expelled those organs from the body.
Guided by consciousness, the individual masses tried to flee in different directions.
It was an ugly, animalistic act—nothing remotely godlike.
And G had badly underestimated Huo Xiu’s dynamic vision.
In the end, all the maneuver accomplished was creating several additional puddles of meat.
Once the vital organs were destroyed, G’s proliferated bone became nothing more than a heap of useless calcium growths.
William Birkin vanished with it.
The creature that should one day have evolved all the way to G5 was crushed here by Huo Xiu through overwhelming force.
Monica was dead as well.
The briefcase she had carried remained beside her, so Huo Xiu recovered it on the way out.
It contained a G-Virus sample.
He was admittedly curious what would happen if a body already carrying the T-Virus received G as well.
Would the Hypnos gene’s properties directly produce a version 0.92 T+G hybrid virus?
Tempting, but unnecessary.
He had no reason to gamble with it now.
Better to save the sample for the day he encountered an enemy he genuinely couldn’t handle.
Huo Xiu checked the time.
The first subway had departed successfully, carrying the initial evacuees safely out of the city.
Next came the second group.
His next destination was Spencer Memorial Hospital.
Vaccine production was still underway, and the hospital had mutated leeches that needed clearing out.
More importantly, NEST 2 lay beneath the facility.
Huo Xiu wanted to eliminate any containment risks there before a power failure released more Hunters and turned the hospital into a slaughterhouse.
Before that, however, he needed to make one stop at Ennerdale Street.
Raymond’s demolition operation…
should be starting any minute now.