New day, same routine. Ivan started with training the "Transfer" talent again. After grinding it nonstop, the fusion progress had climbed to 16 percent.
He turned his left hand into a blade and slashed it across his right wrist, but not fast. The skin on the wrist split open a split second before the edge even touched it. The blade passed through empty air while the cut sealed itself right behind the swing, smooth as if nothing had happened.
Phew~ Way better than getting sliced and then burning a ton of energy to heal the wound afterward.
Ivan's little trick saved stamina and kept him at full fighting strength. As long as his prediction and reaction speed stayed sharp, blades and bullets would have a hard time landing for real.
Still, it was kinda lame in practice.
He couldn't spend an entire fight guessing every incoming strike just to pre-split his body. In a real scrap, especially against someone on his level, that kind of distraction would get him killed. It would only be useful once it turned into pure instinct, some automatic danger sense that kicked in without thinking.
"Too many fucking flaws still," Ivan muttered, but he was the type who loved experimenting anyway.
He raised his right hand toward the wall, flicked his middle finger like he was shooting a marble. Whoosh! The finger flew off, morphed mid-air into a razor blade, and slammed into the concrete. The second it hit, dozens of tiny blood-and-flesh steel spikes exploded out of the blade's surface.
"Keh~ Not bad for an attack," Ivan smiled. "Just gotta reel the tissue back quick or the cells die off."
He jogged over to the battered wall, bent down, and picked up the blade. The cells inside were already almost dead.
Luckily, once he pressed it back onto the stump, the vitality came rushing back fast.
It was basically swapping out the tired cells in the finger with fresh ones from the rest of his body. As long as he didn't overdo it and drain too many at once, it barely affected his combat ability. After a fight he'd just need to stuff his face and crash for a bit longer than usual.
Of course, if he felt nasty enough, he could treat it as a one-shot weapon. Drive the blade into someone, then suck every last drop of life out of the cells, turn the whole thing into a meat bomb. Steel wires would burst out and shred the poor bastard's guts from the inside.
But with his current fusion level and cell activity, that trick was still out of reach.
"Getting late. Better check in with Shinichi and see how things are going."
Ivan remembered the manga. The parasite that took over Shinichi's mom was a real sadistic piece of work. It had stabbed straight through Shinichi's heart and even hunted down his fleeing father, scaring the man half to death but still refusing to let him go.
If that thing wasn't dead yet, it would definitely be digging for every scrap of info on Shinichi's family and on Ivan.
Compared to Ivan, who liked to operate alone and was hard to track, the hospitalized Shizuka was a much easier target right now.
Meanwhile, at the hospital entrance, Shinichi's phone started buzzing in his pocket.
"Morning, Shinichi. How's your mom doing? I'm on my way over with some fruit to visit."
"Everything's good. Dad's been staying with her the whole time. Thanks again for your help that day. They told me I have to thank you properly."
Shinichi had only learned how close they'd come to dying after talking with his dad and Migi. One second slower and both he and his mother would've been corpses. He meant every word of that gratitude.
Just for some reason, no matter how strongly he felt it, the words wouldn't come out of his mouth.
"Hey, Shinichi. Why'd you guys move all the way out to Sakurazaki Hospital?"
Ivan stepped out of the taxi a short distance away, hung up the call, and waved at Shinichi with a lazy grin.
Shinichi snapped out of it and smiled back. "My uncle works here, and Mom needs quiet recovery time, so we pulled some strings to transfer her. I'm staying at a little inn near the beach for now."
"Yeah, Tokyo's too noisy for proper healing. This place is way more chill."
Ivan had taken the ferry over. The view was actually decent: bright blue sky, endless ocean stretching out forever.
Shame that every country on the planet kept pumping wastewater into that beautiful sea like it was a fucking toilet. No wonder monsters like parasites showed up. Sure, they lived inside humans, but humans were just parasites on Earth anyway. The whole "parasite" label was relative as hell.
Right then, a girl with a neat ponytail walked up to them.
"Hello."
She wore a long dark-blue sailor uniform, cute and fresh-faced, and she stopped on purpose to greet them.
Ivan had no clue who she was. He glanced at Shinichi, who gave a small smile. "Hey. You're Murano-san, right?"
"Just call me Satomi. Is your mother doing better?"
"The doctor says she's recovering well." Shinichi had barely finished the sentence when his right hand moved on its own, pressing against his ear. Migi's voice came through low and clear: "A companion is approaching. About three hundred meters away, near the shoreline. Can't tell if it's hostile yet."
"They're here," Shinichi muttered.
He hadn't expected the thing to actually come looking.
"Sorry, this is my classmate Ivan. We've got something to handle right now. Talk later." Shinichi didn't waste time explaining. He took off running toward the parasite's direction.
Ivan watched the kid's back disappear, still holding the bag of fruit, and shook his head with a scoff. "That little shit didn't even wait for me. I'm carrying all this crap and he just bolts. Zero respect for guests, merde."
He turned and shoved the fruit bag into Satomi's hands.
"Mind giving this to Shinichi's dad? Tell him it's a gift from Ivan Greevs."
Once she took the bag, Ivan jogged after Shinichi without another word.
Satomi watched the two of them sprint straight ahead and yelled after them, annoyed as hell. "Wait! If you keep going that way you'll hit the seawall! You have to go around to reach the beach!"
By the time she finished shouting, they were already gone.
"Shit… at least three times faster than before," Ivan Greevs growled, pushing hard to catch up. He could barely even see Shinichi's back anymore.
They kept running until a three-meter-tall concrete seawall blocked the end of the path.
Only then did Shinichi stop.
"Shinichi, I need to ask you something. Are you really going to kill it?" After what happened with Parasite Mr. A, Migi wasn't sure Shinichi actually had the balls to murder.
Migi's question made Shinichi slow down for a second. But then the image of his mother lying unconscious in that hospital bed flashed through his head, followed by the memory of her arm getting hacked off right in front of him. That did it. His resolve snapped back into place like steel.
"I can't stand the thought of that thing still breathing," Shinichi snarled under his breath.
He crouched and leaped straight up, clearing the three-meter seawall in one clean bound.
"Putain de merde, I'm reporting this asshole for using cheats," Ivan muttered, genuinely jealous as he followed behind. The boost Migi gave Shinichi was straight-up broken.
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Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69