The wreckage strewn across the room entered Emil's sight. He swept his gaze around the spacious room, but Fenris and Emma were nowhere to be seen.
He knew Fenris's strength better than anyone. How could he suddenly disappear?
Emil's heart immediately tightened.
Clang.
An expensive lamp was knocked aside and crashed to the floor. A pained groan sounded from one side of the room.
Emil followed the sound and looked over. The sofa where Fenris and Emma had been sitting moments ago had been smashed into fragments. A thin man in a leather jacket was lying on his back amid the wreckage.
"Ah... ah..."
Scorching flames burned fiercely across his body. The man lay in the chaos, and the agony of being burned made him curl in on himself. He even began rolling around uncontrollably.
Slowly, he endured the pain and braced himself against the wall, struggling to stand. The skin exposed outside his clothes began turning a charred black beneath the flames, yet strangely, no foul smell came from it.
The fire raged. The man's low howls, however, gradually mixed with an uncontrollable excitement. For a moment, Emil could not tell whether he was crying or laughing.
"Heh, heh, heh... hahaha!"
A strange voice rang out. The man straightened crookedly, his steps unsteady and his whole body swaying. In only a few breaths, the skin across his body was slowly burned away by the flames, revealing stark white bones beneath.
The ugly wails turned into excited laughter. Flames surged high, wrapping around the entire body of a skeleton man dressed in black leather.
"Ghost Rider."
Through the Mirror Dimension, that iconic form allowed Fenris to recognize him at once.
He had only met Mephisto during the day, and by night, Ghost Rider had already come knocking. If that old bastard had not been interfering behind the scenes, Fenris would never believe things could be this coincidental.
"So he's the Spirit of Vengeance you've been looking for?"
Emma looked curiously at the vicious flaming skeleton. She had not expected the Spirit of Vengeance to truly deliver itself to their doorstep.
"He is a Spirit of Vengeance, yes. Whether he's the one I need is another matter."
Fenris carefully sensed Ghost Rider's current energy fluctuations, then turned and walked out of the Mirror Dimension.
"Come on. I want to see what exactly is going on with this Johnny Blaze."
"Boss."
The moment Fenris appeared, Emil seemed to have found his anchor. Even standing in front of Fenris as a shield, he became much more confident.
"Fenris?"
Fenris had just nodded when Wanda, still wearing her dinosaur pajamas, came pattering toward him.
She glanced fearfully into the room behind them. "What exactly is that thing?"
"Thing?"
Fenris laughed at once. "He isn't a thing. He's the Ghost Rider we were looking for."
"You!"
"You! And you!"
On the other side, after fully completing his transformation, Ghost Rider's earlier weakness vanished. Beneath his empty eye sockets, two clusters of flame rose.
He stretched out his long, burning finger bones and pointed at Fenris, Emma, and Emil one by one.
"The three of you are guilty!"
That hoarse, low voice carried a dreadful aura that made the hair on one's body stand on end. At the same time, all three of them felt a subtle sensation from deep within, as if they had been locked onto.
"Especially you!"
Ghost Rider snapped his gaze toward Fenris.
"Your sins are monstrous. Death is too merciful for you!"
Although Mephisto had drawn him here by planting Fenris's aura in his mind, through the perception of the Penance Stare, the sins on Fenris were particularly dense. They far exceeded the combined total of everyone else Ghost Rider had ever seen.
The souls who had died at Fenris's hands had long since become impossible to count. Seeing Ghost Rider aim his hostility at him, Fenris casually pushed Emil out of the way and crooked a finger in provocation.
"Come on, then. Come judge me."
"As you wish."
A hoarse voice sounded. Ghost Rider abruptly reached out and placed his hand on his motorcycle.
Blazing hellfire rapidly spread across the bike. The motorcycle's form began to change with it.
The flame decals on the body were swallowed whole, replaced by true burning fire. A silver-white frame with intense visual force and a sense of raw power slowly took shape, and a hideous skull emerged at the front of the vehicle.
Ghost Rider leapt onto his ride. The flames on the wheels surged, and in the next instant, he turned into a brilliant streak of fire charging straight at Fenris.
Seeing that Fenris did not dodge at all, he let out a contemptuous laugh, and his speed increased even further.
"Abomination!"
Before Fenris could act, Wanda, who had witnessed Fenris's suffering during this period and now knew that the Spirit of Vengeance was inside the man before them, tore herself free from Emma's protection.
"Fenris shouldn't fight right now. The two of us will pull his Spirit of Vengeance out!"
Before she finished speaking, scarlet energy poured from Wanda's palm and reached toward Ghost Rider as he sped toward Fenris.
"Got it!"
Emil did not hesitate at all. He stepped in front of Fenris, and his tall body began swelling into something even more massive.
Countless sharp bone spikes emerged from the joints across his body. The spikes on his elbows, knees, and other areas became several times thicker and sharper than before.
The once-chaotic bone spikes along his spine also became neatly arranged, large and small spikes lined in order. They no longer looked disorderly. Instead, there was a rough, savage beauty to them.
His earth-yellow skin grew even thicker, covered in scale-like patterns. Even his gaunt face became fuller.
In the blink of an eye, a giant more than four meters tall stood firmly in Ghost Rider's path.
He strode toward the burning motorcycle. As his tremendous strength erupted, the floor and ceiling shattered one after another, and the entire building began to tremble faintly.
"Go down!"
A low, pressure-heavy wave of sound rolled outward, shaking up a storm of flying debris.
Watching Ghost Rider grow faster and faster, Abomination raised both hands high. With a swing of his thick arms, his massive fists carried a violent wind and smashed down hard.
Ghost Rider had never seen anyone transform into such a terrifying form before. His heart jolted, and he tried to twist aside and avoid the heavy blow.
"Don't move!"
At some point, countless strands of scarlet energy had quietly spread around him.
With a sharp command, those energies suddenly condensed. Along with a powerful binding force, a pressure almost identical to what he had felt from Mephisto, though much weaker, swept over him.
"Roar!"
The flames across Ghost Rider's body churned wildly. He suddenly exerted force, trying to break through the restraint head-on.
But in the next moment, his vision was swallowed by darkness.
Bang!
Abomination's fist passed through the scorching hellfire and landed solidly on Ghost Rider's skull.
Crack!
First came a faint cracking sound. Then came a series of crisp clatters.
The tremendous force traveled through his bones. Fenris heard countless chaotic fractures ringing out one after another. Ghost Rider, who had just been charging wildly toward him on his motorcycle, now had every bone in his body shattered. Countless pale fragments flew outward and scattered across the floor in the blink of an eye.
(End of Chapter)
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