Chapter 78: All Out!

"Imperial Wind!" A dense, swirling vortex of wind-elemental Aura gathered on the Tiger Deacon's massive body, doubling his speed in an instant. He was a tiger, yes, but an old tiger cannot awaken a wind-element psionic skill. This was a power he had stolen, a psionic skill obtained from absorbing a rare Aura Core long ago.

Ethan, as the colossal Way Big, saw the Tiger Deacon's speed suddenly increase. He was on the verge of escaping the combined pressure of him and the newly arrived General. No, you don't! Ethan quickly mobilized the last, desperate trace of psionic energy in his body. He brought his massive arms together, crossing them at the wrists to form a distinctive L-shape. (This, of course, was just his personal favorite pose, a flair of dramatic instinct.) Then, he shouted with all his might, his voice a cosmic boom:

"Cosmic Ray!"

In that instant, a dazzlingly powerful beam of white-hot cosmic energy shot out from the edge of his vertical hand, accurately hitting the fleeing Tiger Deacon. No matter how agile the Deacon was, he could ultimately not outrun the speed of light. Because the Deacon had returned to his original, now non-gigantified, huge physique, this powerful beam of light almost completely enveloped his entire body.

"Aah!!!" A strong, searing burning sensation instantly spread throughout his body, causing the Tiger Deacon to let out a pained, agonized cry. The light beam lasted for a full three seconds, and in that time, Ethan's reserves of psionic energy were also completely and utterly exhausted. The Omnitrix symbol on his chest blared a final, critical warning before his colossal form dissolved in a flash of green light. Helpless, he had to revert to his original, human form, falling the last few meters to the ground in a heap.

The Tiger Deacon, who had been hit squarely by the Cosmic Ray, was a horrifying sight. The fur on his body had been burned to ash. His exposed skin was even more red and blistered, and large, blackened areas had appeared all over him. He had at least second-degree burns across his entire body. In this state, the Tiger Deacon simply could not escape the pursuit of Mayor Everett Thorne and General Valerius. The Mayor's Web of Darkness shot out, firmly binding the smoking, twitching cultist. At this time, his own psionic energy was also nearly exhausted from the prolonged fight, and his gigantified tiger form finally dissipated, reverting to his normal, though still imposing, size.

After reverting to his human form, Ethan stumbled over to meet up with his friends. Just as he took a few steps, his foot suddenly kicked something small and hard. He lifted his foot to look and found that it was a simple, unadorned blue ring.

Could it be? With the speed of lightning that left no time to cover one's ears, he snatched up the ring and shoved it deep into his pocket. Here, one had to give a big, silent thanks to the Omnitrix. It had really been diligently guarding his clothes this whole time. It was one thing to change his body, but before, when the potion had transformed him into the mindless Direwolf, his clothes had directly disappeared. But when the Omnitrix initiated its own protective transformation into Blitzwolfer, his clothes had returned to his body, perfectly intact.

At the same time, Agent Croft and Agent Sterling, working together with deadly efficiency, had already successfully killed the last of the Rank Three cultist masters. The remaining Rank One minions had also all been wiped out by Marcus and Seraphina. Thus, Ethan was now in an extremely safe situation.

The Tiger Deacon was still struggling nonstop in the shadowy bonds, but it was of no use at all.

General Valerius walked over, a grim smile on his face. "Heh, a Rank Four Evolution Cult Deacon is worth at least a third-class merit on my record." A Deacon was a high-ranking apostle of the Evolution Cult, and would already have been able to come into contact with some of their special, confidential matters. For example, why they were trying to capture Ethan this time, and what their ultimate objective was. He would definitely know all of this.

But, what happened next was something none of them had expected. The Tiger Deacon's body, bound in the web, suddenly began to wither. His skin shriveled, and the blood in his body was rapidly, unnaturally, disappearing. Very quickly, all the blood in his body seemed to have been sucked dry from within, and his whole person had turned into a grotesque, dried corpse. A few seconds later, pop! His brain directly exploded, spattering the inside of the shadow-web with gore.

General Valerius stared in disbelief. "What in the hell is this situation?"

Seeing the other party's horrific, self-destructing state, even Mayor Thorne couldn't help but suck in a breath of cold air. "I don't know either. I've captured high-level prisoners before, but I've never had such a thing happen!" The two of them had a look of deep doubt and concern on their faces, but since things had already come to this, there was nothing they could do. They quickly went over to check on Ethan's condition.

At this moment, in a secret, high-tech laboratory of the Evolution Cult far away, the Mad Doctor was sitting in a chair, working on his computer. Suddenly, a small screen next to him displayed a notification: the Tiger Deacon's life signs had disappeared. He merely glanced at it briefly, his expression unchanging, then casually deleted the message. Then he came to a small cultivation tank on his desk. Inside, a tiny red insect, no bigger than a millimeter, was visible. "Looks like the newly cultivated Hemo-leech Parasite is very successful," he murmured to himself. "But the trigger condition is still too harsh; it needs to be improved a bit."

This was a Hemo-leech Parasite that the Doctor had meticulously cultivated. This type of bio-engineered insect could silently drill into a person's body and then lie dormant, waiting. When triggered, it would suck their host's blood completely dry. After sucking the blood dry, its own body would also explode because it could not bear the huge amount of ingested blood. The explosion inside the body could then blow a person's body apart from within. He had secretly placed a Hemo-leech Parasite on the Tiger Deacon's body before he left for the mission, and it had been parasitizing his brain ever since, a failsafe.

However, there was a prerequisite for the Hemo-leech Parasite to suck blood, which was that the host person's psionic energy must be completely exhausted. After all, the parasite itself was too fragile. In the process of sucking blood, if it were to inevitably suck in even a little active Aura, it would cause its own body to collapse, failing to achieve the effect of silencing the host. And this kind of insect had no true intelligence and acted purely on instinct. The instinct the Doctor had set for it was simple: to start sucking blood when a person's psionic energy reached absolute zero. This was a kind of biological reminder for the Hemo-leech Parasite, a trigger reminding them when they could safely suck blood. After all, if a person was forced into a state where even their psionic energy was completely exhausted, they would either be killed by their opponent or become a prisoner.

For the Evolution Cult, an apostle could die, but they absolutely could not become a prisoner, because that had the potential to expose crucial secrets. That was why the Doctor had cultivated this kind of horrific insect, to control the apostles and ensure their silence. But now, it still had many shortcomings. After all, its own strength was not that different. If its host was captured by an opponent before they could even use up their psionic energy, then the Hemo-leech Parasite would not be awakened.

The Doctor came to his computer and pulled up an experimental file. That was precisely the experimental record of the Beastification Potion. He deleted all the information about the New Veridia branch and the subject, Ethan Atherton. After all, he didn't understand the full situation of the battle. He just assumed that since the Tiger Deacon had been forced to such an extent that his parasite activated, the stronghold must have been discovered, and that branch had also been completely destroyed. As for Ethan, he had already judged his body to have failed the experiment from the beginning. This time, even if he was rescued by the authorities, they would have no way to restore his genes from the potion's damage. And Ethan's foundation was already severely damaged. The reason he had left so decisively before was that he had completely given up on this experimental target. So, in his cold, calculating mind, this experiment was obviously, definitively, a failure.