The Right to Live
The Scale-Skin Mother Demon was almost within arm's reach. Mo Fan could already smell the rank, bloody stench rolling off the creature.
Those vicious claws were closing fast. With no time to think, Mo Fan gathered a ball of rose-red flame in his palm.
He held his nerve — waiting until the creature lunged to within three meters of him — then snapped his right arm forward and hurled the fireball into the space between himself and the Scale-Skin Mother Demon.
*Fire Burst: Blast!!!*
A rose-colored inferno detonated in midair. The scorching shockwave swept toward the Scale-Skin Mother Demon while the concussive force sent Mo Fan hurtling backward.
He twisted his body in midair, redirecting his fall, and crashed down onto the main stage of the central arena below.
The Scale-Skin Mother Demon was something else entirely. The Fire Burst: Blast had done little more than stall it for a fraction of a second — those razor-edged claws slashed forward regardless.
**Slash — slash — slash — slash!!!!!**
Cold light flashed in crisscrossing arcs, sharp as swords. The frenzied claw strikes were like a hundred blades hacking through the air at once — even the rose-colored flames Mo Fan had Released seemed to be cleaved apart by the creature's claw aura.
Some of those raking slashes still caught him. Bloody gashes tore open across his arm, his chest, and his left cheek.
The arm wound was deep — deep enough that he suspected the bone had been hit. The pain made him hiss sharply through his teeth.
The cuts on his chest and face were shallower, at least. Any deeper and he'd already be dead.
**Thud!!**
Mo Fan slammed hard onto the stage, blood streaming freely from his wounds.
The Scale-Skin Mother Demon was so much stronger than the last time he'd faced one. Its speed was staggering, and its frenzied claw strikes had been practically a hurricane of blades. If he hadn't used the Fire Burst: Blast's shockwave to throw himself clear, he would have been reduced to shredded meat.
The central arena had descended into complete chaos. The appearance of the Greenish-Yellow Demonesses had sent students scattering in every direction.
A few with cooler heads had begun casting magic to fight back, but the scene was too chaotic. Worse, no one knew when the person beside them might rip off their own skin — even those capable of fighting were hopelessly disoriented.
When Mo Fan came crashing down from the stage, almost no one paid him any attention. He did, however, draw a wave of screams from the girls fleeing in his direction.
A body falling from the sky — for them, "terrifying" didn't even begin to cover it.
"Everyone get away from here!!" Mo Fan snapped, his irritation flaring at all the shrieking.
*All those years learning magic, completely wasted. They're Mages — when you encounter a Demon-Beast, you're supposed to calm down and fight. Running around like a herd of sheep... I have no idea how any of them got into Pearl Academy.*
"Mo Fan, Mo Fan, are you all right?" Lingling's worried voice crackled in his ear.
Mo Fan hauled himself out of the small crater his fall had punched into the stage and touched a finger to the long gash running down his cheek...
His hand came away drenched in red.
"Still alive. This thing's reached Battle-General-class!" he answered, his gaze locked on the Scale-Skin Mother Demon not far away, which was letting out a frenzied, gleeful cackle.
The Scale-Skin Mother Demon looked thoroughly pleased with itself. It even had the leisure to watch its offspring chase down the helpless prey scattered across the arena, savoring the cruelty and bloodshed of the pack hunt.
**Shriek!!!!!**
**Shriek!!!!!**
At that signal, the girls who had been fleeing in panic suddenly collapsed to the ground.
Their fingernails began to lengthen. They started tearing open their own skin.
Scales emerged from the flesh beneath. Hungry, predatory eyes stared out from faces that had moments ago been human. Obeying the Scale-Skin Mother Demon's command, every one of them fixed their gaze on Mo Fan — his entire left cheek soaked in blood — and long tongues lolled from their mouths, flicking slowly through the air.
Soon, several Greenish-Yellow Demonesses that had been pursuing other prey behind and to the sides of the stage halted as well. They turned as one toward Mo Fan and began crawling slowly in his direction.
The Scale-Skin Mother Demon kept its distance rather than closing in. It seemed to understand that Mo Fan's Blazing Fist: Heaven Shatter was dangerous — the moment it spotted the Fire Element Star Chart weaving together beneath his feet, it stopped advancing and instead ordered the surrounding Greenish-Yellow Demonesses to encircle him.
The Intermediate-level Blazing Fist was powerful, yes — but not powerful enough to handle them all at once.
With eight Greenish-Yellow Demonesses closing in around him, Mo Fan didn't dare trace the Star Trails any further.
*A single Blazing Fist can't wipe out all eight of them. And the moment I play that card, the Scale-Skin Mother Demon will charge in without restraint and tear me apart.*
"Tsk, tsk. Kill you, and this place becomes my nest." The Scale-Skin Mother Demon let out a grating, alien sound, its tone dripping with mockery.
Lingling's earlier analysis had been right. By parasitizing living humans, this Scale-Skin Mother Demon had developed genuine intelligence and the ability to speak.
"Mo Fan, Mo Fan — we're moving in. We have to abandon the parasitized victims. If we don't, the casualties will be far worse!" Lingling's voice came through in his ear.
"She has intelligence. If you come in, those hundred-plus parasitized girls are as good as dead," Mo Fan said.
"That's still better than the entire gymnasium becoming her nest. You cannot kill the Scale-Skin Mother Demon — it's simply not possible." A different voice cut in, rough with authority — clearly not Lingling's.
Mo Fan had no idea who it was, but this was obviously the person calling the shots for the whole operation.
Sacrifice over a hundred parasitized girls?
Over a hundred of them.
All between eighteen and twenty years old. If their bodies were laid out side by side — what a heartbreaking sight that would be.
His mind drifted unbidden to the first girl he had saved.
Crawling out from inside a scale-covered monster's body, bare and shaking — in that state, Mo Fan hadn't felt a single impure thought. Because she had been tormented beyond recognition: her skin gone pale as death, tinged with a sickly purple, every drop of color drained from her face. Covered in slime, she had crawled forward on pure instinct alone. In that moment, nothing of a girl's beauty, her dignity, her shame mattered in the slightest. She had only wanted to live.
It was because of that sight that he had charged in.
Impulsive or otherwise — he believed that any decent person who had seen what he had would have done the same, pushing themselves to save as many lives as possible.
He drew a slow, deep breath.
He wiped the blood from his face.
"Give me a little more time." Mo Fan said it with complete, unwavering seriousness.
"You can't kill it. It's a Battle-General-class creature — how could you possibly? We're already at the entrance." The Demon-Hunting Squad's bald captain shot back, anger bleeding through every word.
From the very start, he had believed that a Blue District student was wholly incapable of killing a Demon-Beast. The City Demon-Hunting Squad had already made its decision: sacrifice the hundred-plus parasitized victims to protect the other four or five thousand people.
A tragedy was a tragedy. Still better than four or five thousand people all transforming into monsters.
"Bastard! I said give me more time — are you deaf?!" Mo Fan exploded at the voice on the other end, cursing with full force.
Outside the gymnasium, the Hunter King standing atop the great beast's skull, the flamboyant leather-clad man, Scholar Li, Department Head Zhou Zhenghua, and the Demon-Hunting Squad's bald captain all froze when that outburst came crackling through their earpieces.
The bald captain was just drawing breath to shout back when the Hunter King, standing on the great cyan beast's skull, spoke first.
"Give him a little more time."
"But—"
"They also have the right to live."