The Plague Doctor stood like a polite gentleman, the gaze beneath his mask seemingly carrying a hint of regret.
"Actually, you needn't be so aggressive, C... well, I'll call you Victor. That's what they call you, and it's more polite, isn't it?"
His voice through the filter had a metallic, grinding, and hypocritically gentle quality.
"I've seen the files on you. Dr. 062 personally judged you as an 'uncontrollable failure.' Honestly, we usually have zero interest in failures." He spread his hands elegantly.
"You could have stayed peacefully in that ridiculous hotel in Transylvania with that vampire, and you would have been fine. After all, we don't want to provoke a Dracula unnecessarily."
His beak turned slightly toward Victor, his tone carrying a hint of genuine, chilling confusion:
"But why did you have to come out? Why did you have to... barge into our field of vision and remind us of your existence? It's like a flawed product that should have been forgotten, jumping back onto the quality control bench of its own accord."
Victor's lips curled into a near-tearing arc, making his smile look exceptionally hideous.
"Oh? 'Failure'?" He repeated the word flippantly, as if tasting a strange-flavored candy.
"That old fossil 062 is still alive? Say hello to him for me—and tell him by the way, the quality of the thread he used to sew my mouth shut back then was really subpar."
He casually raised a hand, tracing his lips with a fingertip as if the stitches were still there.
Victor took a step forward, Hyde's massive body held in his hand like a limp ragdoll.
"As for why I came out?" He let out a short, sharp laugh. In those eyes where crazed light always danced, a nearly pure, scorching flame was burning now.
"Because I've had enough."
His voice suddenly rose, carrying a cathartic, unquestionable declaration:
"Even my 'adorable' godson Dennis, a little guy worried because he's not a monster, dared to clench his fists and grow fangs for his Little Wolf Girl. Why can't I?"
"Hide in the hotel and pretend nothing happened? That's the biggest joke of all!"
Venom let out a low, hungry growl in coordination, its massive white eyes fixed on the Plague Doctor as its long tongue licked its sharp teeth.
"You people—" Victor's finger suddenly pointed at the Plague Doctor, his voice filled with unprecedented, scalding contempt.
"You and your laboratories, your cold needles, serial numbers, and this damn mask... you're nothing special!"
"Fear? Yes, I'm scared to death! So scared I have to drown myself in the sweetness of chocolate every night just to fall asleep!"
He practically roared this, veins bulging at his temples, but his eyes grew even more terrifyingly bright.
"But that doesn't mean I'll stay on my knees forever, begging you to let me go! And it certainly doesn't mean I'll stand by and watch you force the same nightmare onto anyone I care about!"
"So, I came out."
His voice suddenly dropped, but it carried an even more terrifying, bone-deep determination.
"Not jumping back onto some bullshit quality control bench—"
Venom's body suddenly swelled, and muscular black tentacles spread behind Victor like angry wings, blotting out the sky!
—but to smash it to pieces!"
Venom instantly swallowed Victor's face, leaving only those massive white eyes burning with madness and rage.
Combat form, complete.
"Snack time!" It let out a deafening roar. Its thick, muscular tentacles exerted sudden force, hurling the massive monster Hyde like a heavy bowling ball toward the motionless Plague Doctor!
The wind whistled! Hyde's terrified whimpers were stretched into a high-pitched, broken line by the speed!
Just as the massive object was about to hit—
The Plague Doctor didn't even take a step back.
He simply tilted his body slightly in a nearly elegant, nonchalant manner.
Hyde's heavy body brushed past the spotless plague mask and white trench coat, crashing onto the open ground behind him with a dull thud and a cry of pain, kicking up mud and rotting leaves.
The strike missed, but Venom's attack didn't stop for a second! Using the momentum of the throw, its massive body lunged forward at a terrifying speed completely at odds with its size, like a bolt of black lightning skimming the ground, pouncing straight at the Plague Doctor!
The battle reached a fever pitch in an instant!
Venom's arms were like wildly dancing pythons, instantly splitting into over a dozen hideous tentacles covered in hard black keratin, strangling toward the Plague Doctor from all directions!
Every strike carried a whistle that tore through the air!
High strike! One tentacle, like a scorpion's tail, stabbed straight for the face!
Low sweep! Another skimmed the ground, viciously sweeping toward his ankles!
Encirclement! More tentacles flanked from the left and right, Block all escape routes!
The offensive was as dense as a torrential rainstorm, without a single gap! This was an attack that no human reaction speed could handle!
However—
The Plague Doctor's body seemed weightless, or perhaps he could predict the future.
At the very last moment before a tentacle could hit, he always managed to avoid the lethal sharp edge with the smallest, most precise, and nearly perfect movement.
His feet moved in a light, crisscrossing pattern, as if dancing a waltz of death.
Leaning back slightly, the sting-like tentacle missed the tip of his beak by a hair's breadth.
Jumping lightly, the sweeping tentacle narrowly passed beneath the soles of his shoes.
His body twisted and spun like a piece of paper, and he slipped out from the encircling net of tentacles from an unbelievable angle.
His movements had no waste—precise, efficient, and chillingly calm.
His white robes didn't even catch a speck of dust, forming a brutally stark contrast with Venom's wild and violent attacks.
"It's useless." The Plague Doctor's calm voice came clearly through the storm of attacks, carrying a hint of metallic indifference.
"Your attack patterns, your muscle activation habits, even your cognitive biases—Dr. 062 recorded them all clearly in your file. Remember your Battle Royale? You showcased yourself perfectly."
With another phantom-like slide, he let Venom's heavy strike, capable of splitting boulders, miss and smash into the ground, leaving deep cracks.
"To you, this is a battle."
"But to me, this is just a... data verification."
"Shut up!" Venom let out a deafening roar, its attacks becoming even more frantic and disorganized. Tentacles smashed into the surroundings like an out-of-control black storm, plowing deep furrows into the ground and snapping trees in half!
"Angry so easily?" The Plague Doctor's voice remained steady as he moved freely through the destructive storm, his white robes fluttering as if he were strolling through a garden.
"Your movements are all over the place. As expected, flesh-and-blood creatures find it difficult to control their base emotions. Truly tragic and lamentable."
He tilted his head slightly, preparing to elegantly dodge a basketball-sized rock that Venom had blindly thrown his way.
"Throwing rocks?" He even had the leisure to let out a soft chuckle. "After finally evolving from monkeys to humans, can't you come up with more creative attack patterns?"
Click.
An extremely brief, faint sound—almost drowned out by the wind.
The Plague Doctor's sensitive hearing precisely captured this discordant note.
The source of the sound wasn't from the front, but from the side of the rock about to pass his ear—outside his visual blind spot.
That sound was like the click of a miniature mechanical latch being instantly activated.
What was on the side of that rock?
His electronic eye instantly pushed its data processing rate to the limit, but it was too late.
Boom—!!!
The seemingly ordinary rock exploded violently less than ten centimeters from his head! Scorching flames and thick black smoke instantly engulfed him! The powerful shockwave blew the surrounding fallen leaves away in a circular burst!
"Is that high-level enough for you, Mr. Plague Doctor?!" The combined voice of Victor and Venom came from outside the flames of the explosion, filled with hearty mockery and the pleasure of revenge.
The flames and smoke quickly dissipated.
The scene gradually became clear.
The Plague Doctor still stood in place, but his iconic plague mask, a symbol of medieval terror, was now shattered. Half hung precariously, while the other half had been completely blown away, revealing the truth hidden beneath.
Everyone who saw this—Victor, Venom, and even Wednesday watching from a distance—clearly saw the sight behind the broken mask:
Instead of half a face of flesh and blood, what was exposed to the air was a bright silver skull frame gleaming with cold metallic luster, and a mechanical electronic eye embedded in the socket, emitting an unstable crimson glow! Sparks crackled at the break, and a wisp of black smoke rose from it.
That was no human, nor even any known supernatural creature!
The air seemed to freeze.
Venom's massive white eyes bulged wider than ever before, its huge mouth hanging open unconsciously. Finally, all the shock converged into a single, simple, and direct profanity from the soul, roaring through the entire forest:
"Motherfucker!! the terminator?!"
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