novelraw Chapter 209: The Truth Behind Everything
Chapter 209: The Truth Behind Everything
He’d guessed wrong.
The Scarred Woman hadn’t picked this spot because she thought it was safe. She wasn’t playing games.
She was just too broken. Too hurt to run far.
In her despair, she’d curled up in this dark corner, hoping to breathe her last breath without him noticing.
“Truly unfortunate.”
Wilbur stood behind the trembling figure, his voice soft, as if afraid to disturb something fragile. A cruel, pleased smile touched his lips.
“Haha, I mean you.”
“This time, I won’t let you escape.”
Before the words had even faded, Wilbur’s left hand had risen.
That hand, covered in a grotesque carapace with its fractured bones, clenched, gathering its power.
The next second,
he vanished.
The air compressed with a dull boom.
He reappeared hovering in front of the movie screen, directly above the curled-up figure!
No fancy moves.
Wilbur’s massive, battering-ram fist, carrying enough force to crush rock, smashed down!
SPLAT—!!
A dull, wet explosion echoed through the empty cinema.
A slurry of red and white matter splattered across the screen, spraying back dozens of rows into the seats.
That seemingly fragile body, under a punch that could pierce steel, showed almost no resistance.
It just… shattered.
It burst apart into unrecognizable filth and sludge.
But.
In the center of that bloody mess, Wilbur’s triumphant smile froze. His expression shattered!
Wrong!
“She” wasn’t the Scarred Woman.
Not at all!
Even though Wilbur, wanting to end this quickly and perhaps with a bit of mockery, had used nearly his full strength…
he’d expected that, given her previous resilience, even a clean hit shouldn’t have resulted in this…
She shouldn’t have just… popped like a normal person.
Therefore…
a thought that iced his blood slid down his spine.
“I am here.”
A calm, indifferent voice, laced with mockery, drilled into his ear.
It came from…
directly behind him!
Wilbur’s pupils contracted, but it was too late.
Before his brain could even process the sound,
a cold, sharp chill pierced through the muscle and bone of his back.
THLUK—!
A scarlet longsword stabbed into his back.
The blade sliced through his flesh as if it were butter. The tip erupted from his chest, bringing a spray of bright red blood.
A violent Transcendent power, belonging to “Ember,” poured into his body along the blade!
It wasn’t hot like fire, or cold like ice. It was a pure, destructive churning!
It crushed his heart in an instant.
Like a high-speed blender, it shredded his organs in the blink of an eye!
From the outside, Wilbur still looked like a whole person.
But beneath his skin, in his chest and gut, everything was a bloody slurry!
A person like that could not survive.
Not a Third-Rank. Not even a Corpse-Plague Acolyte with powerful vitality. Impossible!
“Guh—”
A fountain of bright red blood, mixed with chunks of organ, poured from his mouth.
His eyes were wide, the whites threaded with bloody veins, the veins on his face bulging like worms.
“How... is this...”
He tried to speak.
But with his organs liquefied and his lungs collapsed, no sound came out. Only a broken, wet gurgle.
He stared at a point in the empty air, his life draining away at an astonishing rate.
But he wasn’t willing!
He didn’t understand!
The woman behind him seemed to know his final, desperate question.
She knew what he needed to know.
He needed to know—
How did she still have that much strength?
How, with a caved-in sternum and a broken body, could she deliver a fatal backstab?!
After all, even though he’d been distracted by the decoy…
just like when the zombie had ambushed him, without enough speed and explosive power, it was impossible to break a Third-Rank’s instincts and reaction time.
To achieve this perfect kill!
In other words—
That sword strike!
Even from the front, it had enough power to clash with him head-on. To pierce his defenses!
But…
with her body so broken, escaping was one thing. But a sword strike like that should have been impossible!
Unless…
Pandora’s voice drifted over him, calm as a grave. Answering his final, fading question.
“Of course, it’s because...”
“...of the Sloughing Decoction.”
Sloughing Decoction??
Sloughing Decoction!!
The word was like a thunderclap, connecting the broken pieces in his mind!
The “shell carrying his mark”…
The “strangely recovered strength”…
The “overly fragile flesh”…
He understood!
In an instant, he understood everything!
The damned Scarred Woman… she hadn’t run.
The moment she broke free, while he was fighting that zombie, she’d drunk the potion. The legendary, priceless Sloughing Decoction!
Using the potion’s effects, she’d instantly healed her worst wounds and recovered some of her strength.
More importantly…
The essence of that potion was “shedding skin” and “rebirth.”
While it rebuilt her, it washed away every foreign substance, including the tracking mark he’d left!
Then…
She used the stripped “skin”—the flesh carrying the mark—to create a new shell, a decoy stained with his tracking signal!
Finally, she just needed to drape that skin over some unlucky zombie inside the mall, set it up here playing a movie to get his attention…
…and a killing trap, built specifically for him and his own cautious nature, was complete.