“Wednesday — let’s go!” Enid was already moving.
Wednesday followed, but a voice cut into both their heads at once, stopping them mid-stride.
They listened for a moment, then split.
Enid sprinted for her room and the package they’d hidden away for exactly this kind of emergency, while Wednesday went to find Principal Weems.
BOOM!
A wet, splintering crash echoed through the halls — Tyler had made it inside.
He stood in the empty corridor a moment, focusing, listening, scenting the air, before he picked a direction and ran.
Nevermore was enormous, built like an old stronghold, its halls twisting in ways that took most students a full year to learn.
The Hyde tore through it anyway, bursting into classroom after classroom as if checking each one against some internal map, snarling when it wasn’t the right room, slamming his fist into the walls hard enough to crater the stone before moving on.
A Hyde’s senses — hearing, sight, smell — ran far beyond human limits.
The moment Tyler had broken through the front doors, he’d picked out heartbeats scattered through the building, whispered voices, panicked crying, the scuff of running footsteps.
Hearing them everywhere and finding them nowhere drove his frustration into something closer to rage, and he took it out on the academy’s walls, tearing his way through room after room.
Eventually he found the Quad.
He stood at its edge and scented the air — Wednesday, Enid, dozens of other students, all close, all recently here — but he saw no one.
Worse, the heartbeats had gone faint.
Even the whispers had stopped.
ROAR!
The sound rattled windows up and down the courtyard.
He stood still and focused harder, until two heartbeats surfaced through the silence — one somewhere above, in the building itself, and one right behind the door in front of him.
A wide, hungry smile spread across his face, making the already monstrous shape of him worse.
He charged, slamming his full weight into the door — and the world came apart.
BOOM!
The blast tore through him from the inside, the floor giving way beneath his feet as he was buried under a cascade of stone and burning timber.
Pain lit up every nerve as blood pooled beneath him.
No matter how strong a Hyde was, no matter how high his Super Defense climbed, a bomb going off against bare flesh didn’t care about levels.
Organs rattled.
A brain, however durable, still felt that kind of impact.
Injury was unavoidable.
The world spun around him, blood leaking from his mouth as his body worked, slowly, to knit itself back together.
“Move, move!” Tyler heard the thud of boots closing in, then the metallic click of weapons being raised.
“FIRE!”
BAM BAM BAM
Bullets stitched shallow, stinging lines across his body as he forced himself upright.
A wall of armored officers stood between him and the courtyard, rifles and heavy weapons trained on him, unloading everything they had.
‘How are they already here?’ Tyler thought, and lunged at the nearest one.
He caught the fear behind the man’s visor, watched him stumble back a step too slow, judgment scrambled by terror—
Something slammed into Tyler from the side, sending him sliding across the stone.
“Hey, buddy.” Leon straightened up, staring the creature down.
He glanced at the blood coating his hand, and a notification blinked into view.
[Hyde Outcast Bloodline Detected…]
[Absorption Complete — 50 Supernatural Energy Acquired]
[Bonus: New World Bloodline — 50 Supernatural Energy Acquired]
[New Ability Unlocked: Poison Immunity]
[Poison Immunity: The Host is immune to every type of poison depending on the skill level.]
[Current SE: 577]
Leon smiled, then reached into his pocket, closing his fingers around a small glass vial — the one he’d taken from Wednesday before coming here.
Crackstone’s blood, collected the night she and Enid had burned his corpse to ash.
He crushed it in his palm.
[Demonic Servant Bloodline Detected…]
[Absorption Complete — 50 Supernatural Energy Acquired]
[Bonus: New World Bloodline — 50 Supernatural Energy Acquired]
[New Ability Unlocked: Hellfire] Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
[Hellfire: The host channels unholy abyssal flames to directly incinerate an enemy’s life force and drain their energy.
This dark fire inflicts continuous burn damage and completely halts their ability to heal.]
[Current SE: 677]
Leon stood frozen for a second, processing it.
Crackstone’s own bloodline had come back tagged as demonic servant — meaning the self-righteous zealot who’d burned witches in God’s name had made his own deal with something far worse to get his power in the first place.
The hypocrisy of it almost made Leon laugh.
It ignored physical defense entirely.
Burned straight through life force.
Shutting down regeneration cold.
A slow smile spread across Leon’s face as the officers kept firing and Tyler flinched with every round that found him.
Tyler’s head snapped toward Leon, fury replacing whatever annoyance the bullets had put in him, and he blurred forward — Leon felt the impact like a truck, claws already buried in his stomach.
Leon grabbed the back of Tyler’s head and triggered Hellfire.
A small, sickly flame caught along Tyler’s shoulder, doing nothing to Leon but eating steadily into the creature it touched.
The flame was thin, almost delicate-looking — but it didn’t go out.
No matter what Tyler did, it kept burning.
“Stand down!” Leon tried Absolute Compulsion first, hoping to buy a few seconds.
Nothing.
He shifted immediately.
Petrifying Gaze.
Tyler’s whole body stiffened, not fully turned to stone the way Leon had hoped, but slowed — enough of an opening to take.
Leon’s eyes blazed crimson, twin beams punching straight through Tyler’s eyes.
Wet, popping sounds followed, thick fluid bursting free.
AAARRGGHH!
Tyler shrieked, but the grip on Leon didn’t loosen — if anything, the creature’s head snapped down, teeth sinking into the side of Leon’s neck.
SPLURT!
“LEON!” Wednesday’s voice tore across the courtyard — that was the last thing Leon registered clearly before he was slammed to the ground, the pressure at his throat crushing down harder, blood pulsing out between Tyler’s teeth.
[Regeneration Lv5]
[Upgrade to Lv6: 200 SE]
[Current SE: 477]
[Hellfire — Lv1]
[Upgrade to Lv2: 160 SE]
[Upgrade to Lv3: 310 SE]
[Current SE: 7]
Instinct moved faster than thought.
Leon dumped every point of SE he had into both skills at once — his neck was still open, blood gushing out, and hesitation died fast.
The bleeding at his neck slowed, his flesh knitting itself shut in real time, while his right hand shot out and a much larger wave of flame rolled across half of Tyler’s body.
ARGH!
The creature thrashed, blind and burning, slamming through walls hard enough to send officers flying, bones breaking on impact as they hit stone and pavement.
Tyler’s screams kept coming as he rolled, clawed at himself, did everything he could to smother a fire that fed on something no amount of rolling could touch.
BAM!
He crashed through wall after wall until he finally broke free of Nevermore entirely, vanishing into the tree line.
Leon pushed himself upright, one hand clamped over his throat, feeling the last of the bleeding about to stop as skin sealed itself over the wound.
“LEON!” Enid and Wednesday reached him at a dead run, catching him as he swayed, barely upright, both of them staring at the ruin of his neck with open fear.
“Oh my God—Leon, please don’t die.” Enid choked out.
“Can you heal?” Wednesday’s voice stayed level, but her eyes hadn’t left him.
“Y-yeah.” He’d lost enough blood that anyone else would already be unconscious, and even with the wound closing, his body still felt hollowed out, wrung dry.
But he could sense the Hellfire moving further away with every second.
“I have to go.”
“No.” Both girls said it together, and Wednesday’s answer came immediately.
Enid glanced at Wednesday in surprise — and then really looked at her, at the raw edge in her voice, and her surprise slid into something closer to understanding, then quiet shock.
“We can’t let him get away,” Leon said, gently working himself free of their hands.
“The cops won’t be able to stop him.
Not like this.”
“Please — stay,” Enid begged.
“What if something happens to you again?”
“I can handle it.” He managed a weak pat to the top of her head before pulling away, his body stiff and clumsy as he forced himself into a run, already too fast for either of them to follow.
“Reckless,” Wednesday said, already taking a step after him.
Then she stopped, jaw tight, because he was already gone.
“Insufferably reckless.”
The two of them stood there a moment longer, the courtyard quiet except for distant shouting and the smell of smoke, before Wednesday turned and found Enid still staring after him.
“I hate just standing there,” Enid said.
“If I could wolf out—if I could actually fight beside him—maybe he wouldn’t have to keep doing this alone.” Her eyes dropped to the blood pooled on the stone, most of it his.
“I hate it.”
“You did what you could,” Wednesday said, her voice as flat as ever.
“He would have gone after Tyler regardless.”
“I guess.” Enid glanced at her, then followed Wednesday’s gaze toward the trees where Leon had disappeared.
“You like him, don’t you?”
***********
“HELP ME!” A voice, warped and inhuman, tore through the house as a hulking shape burst through the door, black flame still crawling across its shoulders and chest.
“MOM!”
Thornhill ran for the entrance and found Tyler in full Hyde form, thrashing against the doorframe, flames licking over him without touching anything else in the room.
“MOM!” His voice came out distorted, barely his own.
She threw a bucket of water over him.
Nothing happened.
“What is that?” There were no burns on his skin, no visible wound — just the flame itself, and beneath it, his color draining, his hollow eye sockets weeping dark fluid.
She didn’t understand what she was looking at, and for the first time in a long while, real fear took hold of her.
“Did someone follow you?” she demanded.
“HELP ME!”
The pain in his voice was answer enough.
She spun, grabbed a bag from beside the door, and threw the back door open to run —
“AHH!” She stumbled back, a scream tearing out of her as a figure filled the doorway, one hand still pressed to a half-healed wound at his throat.
“Leon!”
“Long time no see.” He smiled, blood staining his teeth, his eyes already beginning to glow.
PSSSHT!
A large hole opened in the center of her forehead before the sound of the shot even registered.
“No more taking chances,” Leon muttered, stepping over her and into the house.
Tyler was on the floor, blind, groveling, dragging himself toward the sound of his voice.
“PLEASE!” the creature begged.
“HELP ME — MAKE IT STOP!”
Leon crouched in front of him, watched the ruined, sightless thing crawl closer, and held his hand over the flame long enough to confirm it wouldn’t touch him either.
Then he grabbed Tyler’s skull, his eyes flaring one last time in the dark.
A wet, ripping sound followed as his lasers found what was left of the creature’s eyes.
A moment later:
[Supernatural Creature Terminated]
[Supernatural Energy Absorbed +500]
[Current SE: 507]
************************************
[AUTHOR’S NOTE]
🔥 NEW WEEKLY TARGET: