From Will's perspective, whenever Lansi's scent wasn't entirely absent, it was buried beneath the suffocating stench of the bazaar, making it nearly impossible to distinguish.
Every time the trail seemed severed by a thousand competing smells, it would magically re-emerge.
It was strange.
What was even more bizarre, Will noted, was that despite taking this aerial form to track Lansi from above, he still hadn't managed to close the gap. However, the scent in the air was no lie, and coupled with the faint, warning pressure radiating from Winsor, the hunt only served to sharpen Will's excitement.
He felt the primal impulse of a predator closing in on its prey.
Driven by a twisted sense of curiosity, Will maintained a cat-and-mouse playfulness, refraining from using his full strength to corner Lansi at the start. This "indulgence" continued until he finally followed the scent and forced Lansi onto the edge of the high wall.
He believed he had finally pushed Lansi into a dead end.
High atop that wall, Lansi now had only two ways out: he could let Will take him away, or he could hurl himself into the sea. Yet, the drop from the high wall to the water was immense; at that height, even hitting the surface would leave him as nothing more than a mass of broken flesh.
Will folded his wings and landed on the stone.
Out of a lingering sense of mockery, Will did not shed his monstrous form upon landing. He merely tucked away his wings and stood directly before "Lansi" in his feline, mutated state. He loomed large, attempting to crush Lansi's spirit with the sheer weight of his presence.
Will lived for the fear of others; he thrived on manipulating them through terror.
The seaside wind was ferocious, and atop the high wall, its howling was the only sound.
"Lansi" was pinned against the precipice by Will's massive frame. Compared to the beast's gargantuan size, Lansi's petite body and hair whipped messy by the gale made him look increasingly fragile in Will's eyes.
This apparent weakness only triggered the most tyrannical instincts in Will's heart.
He suddenly wanted to choke Lansi to death.
If Lansi were allowed to struggle beneath his grip, Will imagined he could savor every second of the process—feeling Lansi's fear and despair peak until he exhaled his final breath in Will's hands.
There was no greater thrill than this absolute sense of control.
So, Will began to shift once more. The massive creature's upper body began to reorganize, its muscles knotting and flowing as it mutated. By the time the transformation stabilized, Will had crushed his form into something so grotesque it defied human imagination.
His lower half remained grounded by four powerful claws, but where his head should have been, a human torso now sprouted from the creature's neck. If one had to make an analogy, he resembled a nightmare version of a centaur.
Will didn't care about the aesthetic details of his upper body; his skin was a deathly pale, and when he opened his eyes, there were no pupils—only a void of pure blackness.
"Lansi" looked up at the horror before him. He seemed paralyzed by the abnormal sight, so much so that when Will reached out to touch him, he didn't even try to flinch.
"Do you see this? This is the true face of the Winsor you claim to love," Will hissed.
Satisfied that Lansi was trapped, Will reached out his arms to pull him into a suffocating embrace. As he did, he mocked Winsor relentlessly. He laughed at the fact that while Winsor claimed to love Lansi, he never dared to show Lansi his true form.
He ridiculed Winsor for only meeting Lansi in a perfect, manufactured posture. In Will's eyes, Winsor's face was nothing more than a disguise—a lie born to deceive, unworthy of Lansi's affection.
"I am the only pure emotion in his heart," Will declared.
He gripped "Lansi" by the shoulders, his body beginning to dissolve into a viscous, flowing blackness. He was intent on showing Lansi the so-called "reality."
"I will not deceive you."
"Lansi" offered no objection. He didn't try to pull away, appearing indifferent to Will's proclamations. In fact, judging by the slight, mocking twitch at the corner of "Lansi's" mouth, he seemed to view Will's words with nothing but disdain.
"Oh?"
Will let out a suspicious hum.
Almost as soon as he had laid his hands on "Lansi," a searing, burning pain flared in his palms.
Something was wrong.
When Will looked down at his hands, he was horrified to find that they were being consumed. The shoulder of the "Lansi" standing before him had dissolved into a puddle of translucent slime, and it was actively swallowing Will's palms.
To be more precise, the hand that Will had placed on "Lansi's" shoulder was gradually sinking into it.
'Wait... the person in front of me isn't Lansi?'
Only then did Will register the problem. In his daze, he suddenly thought of the only entity capable of mirroring Lansi's appearance perfectly while simultaneously projecting the oppressive warning pressure of Winsor—
"Long time no see, Will."
The figure before him raised his head, revealing a pair of pure, bottomless black pupils. He gritted his teeth at Will, adding, "You are far more irritating than I anticipated."
The moment the words left his mouth, the person collapsed into a torrent of unidentified black substance, surging forward to swallow Will whole.
Winsor believed that since he couldn't outright kill Will, his best option was to absorb him once again. He completely abandoned his human guise, reverting to his most primordial state to devour his offshoot.
But Will had been a part of Winsor, after all.
Seeing Winsor return to his true form to consume him, Will made a decisive, split-second choice. He too abandoned his physical shape, melting into his own original state to try and swallow Winsor instead. Both entities unleashed their truest, most ancient forms, locked in a brutal struggle of mutual assimilation.
Consequently, by the time Lansi and Dr. Murin finally reached the perimeter, they looked up to see two massive, unidentified masses of black slime tearing into each other atop the high wall. As they ripped at one another, the two viscous substances surged and flowed like liquid, catching the sunlight and gleaming with a cold, metallic luster.
Lansi slammed on the brakes, allowing Dr. Murin to scramble off the back seat of the motorcycle.
He stood at a distance, watching the spectacle for a long while. Ultimately, he could only deduce that the two churning masses were made of the exact same substance. The only discernible difference was that one was slightly lighter in tone, while the other was a void of absolute black.
"What... what is that?"
The sheer noise of the cataclysmic clash atop the wall was deafening. Dr. Murin couldn't help but look up, but after just a single glance, his vision swam with black spots. A violent, blinding headache struck him instantly.
"Ugh—"
A wave of intense vertigo and nausea hit him like a physical blow. Dr. Murin immediately ripped his eyes away, turning his head to vomit violently while propping himself up against the motorcycle.
A single look was all it took to fall victim to the profound mental pollution radiating from the two entities. Normal human minds simply could not perceive them directly.
"Most likely... Winsor and Will?" Lansi guessed, keeping his eyes locked onto the two writhing masses. He studied them carefully, but he couldn't definitively tell who was who.
Unlike Dr. Murin, who was retching on the asphalt, Lansi didn't experience a severe reaction. He only felt a mild wave of dizziness—something entirely manageable.
The corrosive nature of the two liquid entities was terrifying; in the process of tearing at each other, they were actively dissolving the high wall beneath them. The rigid, reinforced concrete structure behaved like soft clay under the shifting weight of the two masses. Like a cake being bitten into, the top of the wall was rapidly being eaten away, leaving behind a jagged, pitted crater.
Dozens of onlookers had stopped to watch the phenomenon, but within moments, people began collapsing. The more mentally fragile individuals immediately suffered severe psychotic breaks on the spot. Within minutes, the entire neighborhood dissolved into chaos. People stumbled around like drunkards, shaking uncontrollably and wandering aimlessly.
"My God, we can't let the two of them stay here." Lansi muttered.
Seeing the expressions of sheer delirium on the faces of the people around him, he gained a terrifying new appreciation for Winsor's lethality. It was enough to drive anyone mad just by looking. No wonder Winsor had spent his entire life avoiding showing his true form.
Fearing that the longer the two masses remained on the wall, the more citizens would lose their sanity, Lansi grew desperate. He grabbed Dr. Murin—who had just finished emptying his stomach—and began pulling him toward the high wall's checkpoint.
"What... what are you doing?" Dr. Murin gasped.
As a academic worker who hadn't slept or eaten properly in days, and having just suffered a bout of severe vomiting, he was at his absolute limit. He stumbled and swayed precariously as Lansi dragged him along.
"We need to move, fast," Lansi said, looking back to steady the scientist before he could fall. He explained, "I heard from Carl that they secretly docked a small yacht in the harbor as an escape vehicle. It should be operational right now."
To deliver a fatal blow to the laboratory hierarchy, Carl and Rose had drawn up a highly comprehensive strategy. From breaking into the facility to mapping out an escape route in case the uprising failed, they had prepared for every contingency. Leaving a small getaway yacht in the harbor had been Carl's idea from the start.
Lansi believed that if the uprising failed, he would simply leave the Survivor Alliance behind and live out with Winsor. Even if it meant living a feral life of foraging and drinking blood in the wild from then on, he was perfectly willing to accept it.
So, after learning about Carl's contingency plan that morning, Lansi hadn't hesitated to steal the keys to the small yacht while he was busy strapping Carl to the bed. Now, it was coming in handy.
"No one could have guessed things would end up like this," Lansi muttered, his face twisted in a bitter grimace. Then, casting a slightly dissatisfied glance at Dr. Murin, he complained, "You run way too slow. Is your body completely hollowed out or what?"
Immediately after, ignoring Dr. Murin's nearly murderous glare, Lansi scooped the scientist up into a bridal carry and bolted toward the high wall's checkpoint.
Starting from this morning, absolutely nothing had gone according to plan. Lansi never expected that he would one day unravel a hidden thread tying all these completely unrelated incidents together, accidentally forcing a crooked plot back on track.
For instance, he hadn't expected Winsor to go rogue and try to handle Will all by himself. He hadn't expected that he would end up playing the role of a villain who kidnapped Dr. Murin. And he certainly hadn't expected that the first bridal carry of his life would be used on a former enemy.
Lansi carried Dr. Murin all the way to the guard station before finally setting him down.
Even after his feet hit the pavement, Dr. Murin looked utterly incredulous. His expression practically screamed, 'How on earth did you just lift me up?' After all, from an external perspective, Lansi looked far too delicate and slender. Who could have imagined that he could carry a grown man and sprint for over ten minutes without flushing or breaking a sweat?
"Eh, it's nothing," Lansi waved his hand casually, focusing instead on opening the iron gate of the checkpoint.
There were designated pathways running beneath the high walls. Just like the checkpoints separating the inner districts, every entrance and exit along the high wall was heavily guarded by the military. Everyone was required to register to pass through; any disobedience gave the guards the authority to shoot suspects on sight.
But right now, because the entities radiating profound mental pollution were clashing directly atop the structure, the soldiers had stepped outside to see what the commotion was. In doing their duty and looking directly at Winsor and Will, the entire garrison had been instantly incapacitated.
By the time Lansi and Dr. Murin arrived, the guards were sprawled across the floor, babbling absolute nonsense. One of them was weeping as he clung to a railing, crying that he wanted to go home to his mother.
Lansi stepped cautiously over the delirious soldiers on the ground. He shoved the door of the guard office open and motioned for Dr. Murin to follow.
Dr. Murin snapped his gaze away from the compromised guards, glanced up at Lansi, and stepped forward, passing directly through the gate. Once they crossed that threshold, the two were officially outside the jurisdiction of the Alliance.
"Just stay close to me and we'll head straight for the yacht," Lansi explained as he secured the gate behind them. "Once we pull away, Winsor and Will should give chase. That will keep the Alliance out of the crossfire."
"How can you be so certain Will will follow us?" Dr. Murin asked, finding the assumption strange.
Lansi turned around to guide Dr. Murin down the pier, flashing a distinctly mischievous smile as he did. "That's exactly why I had to 'kidnap' you."
Lansi knew very well that if Will was Winsor's offshoot, then their temperaments—even if neither would ever admit it—had to share core similarities. From what Lansi understood, Dr. Murin was hardly a saint, yet Will had chosen to stay glued to his side. The fact that Dr. Murin had remained safe and sound for so many days proved only one thing: Will regarded Dr. Murin as his exclusive property.
In Lansi's eyes, even though Will wore Winsor's face, he possessed the psychological makeup of a spoiled, naive child. Will understood what attachment was, but it was the attachment of a toddler—manifesting as a terrifyingly intense possessiveness.
Anyone who has ever taken a favorite toy from a child knows they will throw a massive tantrum, screaming until the entire household gets involved to retrieve it. Lansi understood this implicitly. Luring Will away was simple, so long as he held the right bargaining chips. He was one chip, and Dr. Murin was the other.
If you stripped Will of everything he claimed ownership over within the Alliance, he would have no choice but to follow.
The moment he got Dr. Murin aboard the small yacht, Lansi offered the scientist a sheepish, apologetic smile. "Sorry, but you really are a hostage this time."
Dr. Murin: "..."
'Weren't we explicitly agreed that Lansi was the bait? How did I get dragged into being a target too?'
"Hold onto something sturdy, or find a seatbelt," Lansi warned, yanking the starter cord. The yacht's motor roared to life with a loud, rhythmic sputtering.
"Why do you say that?" Dr. Murin's voice trembled slightly. It wasn't that he had never been to sea before, but back then, he was the revered director of the laboratory and no one dared treat him carelessly. Now, his only companion was a wild card running completely out of control.
"I've never actually driven a yacht before," Lansi muttered, rubbing his nose in embarrassment. "The last time I asked Winsor to teach me... well, this is my first time actually practicing."
Shaking with sudden dread, Dr. Murin tried to stand up, desperate to get off the vessel. He had made a catastrophic mistake; he had climbed aboard a sinking ship.
But Lansi wasn't about to give Dr. Murin a chance to back out. He flashed a wicked grin, then gunned the throttle. Accompanied by Dr. Murin's sharp scream, the small yacht pulled a violent U-turn on the spot and tore out into the open ocean at a reckless speed.
Somehow, Lansi managed to wrestle the steering into a straight line. Watching the sea water spray over two meters high into the air behind them, Lansi let out a thrilled, resonant cry that belonged purely to a mermaid:
"AI—YA—"
The low-frequency infrasound rippled across the water's surface.
Atop the high wall, the two liquid masses that had been locked in a vicious grapple froze instantly. They ceased their tearing, turning simultaneously to "look" out toward the open sea.
Through their shared perception, Winsor and Will witnessed the exact same sight: amidst a cloud of blinding white sea spray, a small yacht was skimming across the waves like a flying fish, shooting straight out into the deep blue ocean and leaving them far behind.
Winsor: "..."