I'm a proper student; I only take nine kinds of potions every day.

With a smile on his face, Ivan discreetly slipped his right hand into his suit trouser pocket and quietly touched it.

All four potions are still there.

The brass amulet given by Dr. Armitage was also lying against his thigh.

He felt relieved and continued walking.

The two chatted casually like that.

They talked about everything from the walls they climbed together as children, the apples they stole from the fruit stand together, to their later experiences taking college entrance exams.

Albert would say one part, and Ivan would say another.

The rhythm was like two old friends who hadn't seen each other for many years finally sitting at the same table, piecing together fragments of their lives from those years.

Before we knew it.

The two walked along the street for a full hour.

The bustling, brightly lit city center was left behind.

The buildings on both sides of the street gradually changed from bank buildings inlaid with marble decorations to factory walls with red brick exteriors and covered with rust.

The electric lights had somehow been replaced by gas lamps, and the distance between them was getting bigger and bigger.

The darkness between each pair of lampposts was noticeably deeper than in the urban area.

Several workers who had just finished work walked past them, chatting and laughing.

All three were wearing gray overalls stained with engine oil.

They stopped at a small tea stall on the street, each bought a bottle of black tea in a brown glass jar, and chug it down as they walked away whistling.

Albert snapped out of his reverie at the sound of the whistling.

"Feel sorry."

He smiled sheepishly.

"I've told you so much."

He nodded toward the little red tea stall.

"I don't have much money either. How about I treat you to a bottle of black tea?"

He walked up to the stall, took out a few nickels from his pocket, and handed them to the stall owner.

The stall owner was an old man wearing a dirty baseball cap. He took out two bottles of black tea from a wooden box under the stall and handed them over.

Ivan stood still.

Taking advantage of the moment when Albert turned his back to him, he quietly activated his Demon Hunter Vision once again.

This time, he finally noticed something was wrong.

In the shadows all around.

In those corners deliberately avoided by the gaslight.

Behind the corner of the factory wall.

Behind the bushes.

The inside of the window frame of the abandoned factory building across the street.

There were at least ten concealed auras and heat outlines.

Every place is a person.

Ivan carefully examined it using his Demon Hunter's Vision.

They are all ordinary people. They have no extraordinary characteristics.

But they were all poised to pounce.

A more distant location.

The inside of the abandoned factory building diagonally opposite.

Behind that broken window facing the street.

There was a person standing there.

The person was emanating a dense, almost overflowing, pink mist.

Alcott.

Ivan subtly withdrew his gaze and lowered his eyes.

"finally!"

He laughed to himself.

"You just need to show up yourself and everything will be fine."

The vast class difference meant that he could never even see Alcott's face, let alone humiliate or cause trouble for him.

Albert had already returned with two bottles of black tea.

He had an overly enthusiastic smile on his face.

"After saying so much..."

He handed a bottle to Evan.

My throat is so dry.

Evan took the brown glass bottle.

The bottle still carried the damp coolness of the stall owner's wooden box.

Ivan did not drink it.

If it contains something like phenobarbital, which is a drug whose positive effects are sedation and relaxation.

You might actually faint and get hooked.

He said with a sigh:

"My own brother handed me a bottle of sedative tea..."

"Tsk tsk, why does this feel so familiar?"

Albert's entire body stiffened abruptly.

A flicker of nervousness, too intense to hide, flashed in those eyes.

"Wha...what do you mean?"

Ivan did not answer him.

His gaze went over Albert's shoulder and straight to the broken window diagonally opposite.

"Alcott".

"It's time for your pretend game to end."

"Give me your head obediently, and I'll leave you with a whole corpse."

The instant Evan finished speaking.

The fake warmth on Albert's face, like the warmth of "old friends reuniting," instantly crumbled, as if a layer of fake skin had been ripped off.

What was revealed below was a pale and ferocious face, twisted and deformed by ambition and desire.

He suddenly pulled a dagger from his jacket pocket with his right hand.

The dagger gleamed coldly under the gaslight, its blade pointing straight toward Ivan's abdomen.

That stab was made without any hesitation.

There was no mercy shown.

Ivan's expression remained unchanged.

His left hand rose six times faster than Albert could make a move, and his five fingers gripped Albert's wrist with the precision of an iron clamp.

The bone made a soft clicking sound in the pliers.

Ivan sighed: "After you've slept with a few women, is it really worth risking your life for?"

Albert's eyes widened to their limit in that instant.

His face contorted into a near-manic excitement.

"certainly!!"

"This isn't just about women; it's about recognition!!"

"I have earned their approval!"

"If I can capture you, I can officially become a member of the upper class!"

He grinned at Evan, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth.

"Have you ever slept with the beautiful daughters of middle-class families? Have you ever slept with socialites?"

"I've played them all!"

His voice grew increasingly shrill.

"Last night! It was the most perfect night of my life!"

"Those three beautiful women are the kind of gems you could never have touched in your entire life!"

"I……"

Ivan didn't let him continue.

He suddenly pulled Albert's wrist upwards with the hand that was gripping him.

With his other hand, in an incredibly calm, almost mechanical motion, he supported Albert's elbow, the hand holding the knife.

Then he gave it a gentle push.

puff.

The dagger that had just tried to stab Ivan in the abdomen.

Its original owner stabbed it vertically upwards, right in the center of its lower jaw.

The blade pierced through the jawbone and into the brainstem.

The whole process took less than a second.

Albert stared at Evan.

Those pupils were still filled with unbelievable madness at the very last moment.

Ivan didn't look at him.

He simply loosened his grip on the dagger.

If Albert was merely bewitched by supernatural forces.

Out of consideration for their childhood friendship of climbing over walls together to steal apples, Evan would still try to save him.

Non-vegetation, ruthless Practice makes perfect?

Moreover, childhood is always viewed through a beautiful lens.

but.

When Evan heard Albert's roar, a roar born of utter depravity.

When this person boasts about how perfect last night was.

Ivan has already confirmed it.

This guy isn't controlled by anyone.

He did it voluntarily.

In this situation, even if Ivan kills Alcott tonight, disbands the Phoenix Brotherhood, and makes the Theosophers disappear from this city.

Albert will still hate him for the rest of his life.

Because Ivan shattered his dream of high society.

That being the case.

Then there's no need to keep it.

Blood gushed from Albert's jaw wound and the corner of his mouth at the same time.

His body twitched twice before he collapsed heavily onto the damp cobblestone pavement.

Those eyes, staring at Evan, never closed until his death.

Do not look down.

Ivan didn't even glance at it.

at the same time.

The ten hidden auras in the surrounding shadows all stirred.

Behind the corner of the factory wall, behind the bushes, in the doorway of the abandoned factory building...

One by one, figures emerged from the darkness and surrounded Ivan in the middle of the street.

"Ha ha ha ha!"

A burst of shrill laughter erupted from one of the figures.

That's Dennis.

He had his left hand in his suit trouser pocket and a Browning semi-automatic pistol in his right, his face full of smugness.

"The indiscriminate biting of stray dogs from the lower class."

He grinned.

"That's really interesting!"

Another young man next to him laughed and chimed in.

"This stray dog ​​has been bothering us for two years. It should die."

A series of heavy footsteps came from behind Ivan.

He didn't need to turn around to know who it was.

One of the members of the Phoenix Brotherhood rugby team.

Thomson, who once led the bullying of Evan.

The guy was holding a long oak baseball bat with spikes all over its surface.

The tip of each spike gleamed with a cold metallic sheen.

"Stray dogs."

Thomson's face wore an almost distorted excitement.

"Today I'll show you what happens when you offend the chairman."

Ivan took a deep breath.

A familiar, long-suppressed anger surged within him.

Albert does not deserve sympathy.

But he was very unhappy with the attitude and demeanor of these guys.

I never provoked them from beginning to end.

But they were relentless and used any means necessary.

The common people are treated like pigs and dogs, and the bottom class is treated like grass!

"Ha ha ha ha!"

Ivan burst into laughter, letting out bursts of wild laughter.

His body's increased flexibility, enhanced by the B virus, allowed him to truly stretch his mouth to his ears.

Then Ivan saw him grabbing his face with both hands, his eyes wide and his teeth clenched.

"Finally, I can finally kill all of you idiots to my heart's content!!"

The group was stunned by Ivan's crazed behavior.

Just then...

His 6.1 physique endowed him with explosive power, making his entire body like a spring compressed to its limit.

Whoosh.

Ivan's figure disappeared from the spot.

A 100-meter sprint takes only three seconds.

When running, one step can cover eight meters.

He traversed the entire street in an instant at a speed imperceptible to the naked eye.

Ivan ignored these ordinary people who he could kill at any moment.

He knew very well that these people were just cannon fodder for Alcott.

He had only one goal: to kill the most troublesome one first!

Only by taking the enemy by surprise can you defeat them in one move!

He pushed off the wet cobblestone pavement with his toes and leaped upwards.

Three meters high.

He was like a cannonball launched by a slingshot, soaring over the red brick wall of the abandoned factory.

Bang!

A heavy, steady thud echoed from the inside of the wall.

Moonlight peeked through the clouds.

Evan landed opposite the broken window of the factory and slowly raised his head.

His hair turned from jet black to silver-white in that instant.

His pupils contracted vertically, transforming into a pair of golden vertical pupils.

In the darkness, they resembled two small lamps that had been lit.

Breathtaking!