Hunting Down the Demoness!

Mo Fan gulped down heavy breaths, eyes fixed on the demoness snarling at him.

She too was coated in scales, but hers were blue-yellow — subtly different from the blue-green scales he'd seen before.

*Thank god I've reached Intermediate-Level Mage. My perception alone is leagues beyond what it was. If she'd landed on me from the ceiling when she first dropped, I'd probably be dead.*

This blue-yellow Demoness was fast. She wasn't as powerful as the transformed couple from the apartment, but her raw combat ability was easily on par with the Black-Beast Demon he'd faced back in Bo City.

Her speed bore a certain resemblance to a Black-Beast Demon's, and she came equipped with the same razor-edged foreclaws. When Mo Fan had barely dodged her first swipe, his arm had grazed one of those long nails for only an instant — and it was enough to open a gash across his shoulder.

*Shallow, at least.* If it had cut an artery, blood would have been spraying everywhere.

"Come on, then." Mo Fan planted himself at the stairway entrance and called out a challenge. "Step right up and show your grandfather Mo Fan what you've got."

The blue-yellow Demoness seemed to understand human speech. She let out a piercing shriek and launched herself straight at him.

Her attack patterns were cunning. As she closed the distance, she shifted position mid-charge — darting left, then rebounding off the queue barriers and walls to whip back to the right — constantly varying her angle to scramble his focus.

*Child's play.*

That kind of speed would have given the old Mo Fan real trouble. But now? With Basic-level spells executable in near-instant, he had no reason to act early. He could wait for the exact moment she committed to a strike.

**"KREEEEEE——!!"**

The blue-yellow Demoness spotted a gap. She lunged for the side of Mo Fan's neck, claws outstretched.

Mo Fan snapped sideways, body barely clearing the strike — and in that same instant, his right hand was already alive with lightning, seals writhing and crackling in frantic arcs.

"Lightning Seal: Furious Strike!"

He released it straight into her. A torrent of lightning serpents erupted and crashed across her entire body, burrowing into her skin and seizing every muscle with paralytic voltage.

"Rose Flame — Fire Burst: Blast!!"

She had barely crumpled to the ground before Mo Fan's left hand bloomed with rose-colored fire. The flames detonated point-blank between them — the heat-blast turned her face into a smoldering ruin, and the shockwave hurled her across the corridor like a ragdoll.

**Bwooooommm——**

The reverberation rolled back and forth through the gymnasium entrance.

Mo Fan himself slid backward several meters from the force, his shirt snapping in the scorched air.

He looked down the corridor at where she lay. No movement. No breath. She wouldn't be getting up.

"Rose Flame's power really is something else." He snuffed the last ember from his palm, a faint smile crossing his face. "One Fire Burst: Blast and the whole thing's done."

This Demoness had been roughly on par with a Black-Beast Demon — the same kind of creature that had cost him real effort once. Now it took one Lightning Seal and one Rose Flame strike to end it outright.

Mo Fan walked over and crouched beside her. The blast had shredded every scale she had.

A few seconds passed. They began to slough away. The rough, sticky blue-yellow skin beneath peeled back with them.

Fluid seeped from the cracks. A pale, mucus-slicked arm slowly slid free.

Molting.

It was exactly like the male host — the husband. Kill the demon form and it molts back. Lingling had been right.

"I... water... water..."

A girl's head emerged slowly, matted hair plastered to her skin with glistening slime.

Her face was drained of all color. Her lips were cracked and near-splitting. She stared up at Mo Fan with wide, helpless, terrified eyes — silently begging him to pull her out of this.

Seeing a girl who should have been in the full bloom of her youth reduced to clinging to life by sheer instinct — Mo Fan felt something catch in his chest.

He pulled off his oversized T-shirt and wrapped it around her, then lifted her and carried her to a nearby rest area.

At the vending machine, he bought a bottle of water and held it out. She snatched it from him and drank in desperate, heaving gulps.

He bought several more. When she showed the first faint signs of strength returning, he spoke.

"Stay here. I'll send someone to take you to the hospital."

"Don't... don't go..." Her eyes reddened, her body still trembling uncontrollably. She was still terrified.

She didn't understand what had happened to her. But she could feel the pain — and she could feel, somewhere in the fog, that she had done something terrible. She found herself clinging instinctively to the stranger who had saved her.

"Don't worry," Mo Fan said quietly. "Someone will be here for you soon."

He didn't dare linger. He turned and pushed into the gymnasium.

"Fan Mo, are you all right? I saw a red dot go dark." Lingling's voice crackled through the earpiece.

"Get the girl outside," Mo Fan said. "Find her something to wear — something loose."

"Got it." A pause. Then her voice came again, quieter. "...How about you don't go in? Wait for the school and the Hunters' Alliance to handle this. It's too dangerous in there."

Lingling didn't want him taking this risk.

Technically, this was already outside the scope of what they'd been hired to do. The red dot count inside was still climbing. If Mo Fan went in alone and got surrounded, he could end up as one of them.

They'd stumbled into this through a commission. The school's infection might partly trace back to their own hunting — some indirect chain of cause and effect. But the truth was, if they hadn't uncovered the parasitic, contagious nature of these creatures when they did, the number of infected could have been several times higher. Dozens of times higher.

What they could do now was get the word out — to the Hunters' Alliance, to the school — and let the people with actual resources take over.

"Fan Mo?" Silence on the other end. She tried again.

"Give me the nearest red dot."

"But — ...okay. Stay careful. Try to fight where there are security cameras. I can guide you from here." Lingling didn't push any further.

At her monitoring station, she pulled up the gymnasium entrance feed. It was nearly deserted — except for one shirtless figure sprinting into the dark. Her partner, Mo Fan.

She couldn't quite explain it, but watching him through the grainy screen, she could feel it — that raw, unyielding fighting spirit, the kind that looked at any demon and simply refused to flinch.

She switched feeds to the rest area. The girl Mo Fan had rescued was curled up beside the vending machine, knees drawn to her chest.

Her small frame wouldn't stop shaking. Her skin was white as paper.

She had Mo Fan's T-shirt on — cheap-looking, oversized, but just long enough to fall over her bloodless thighs.

In those eyes, there was nothing left but the pure, unguarded terror of someone who hadn't quite escaped their nightmare.