The residential complex was deep in the quiet of night. Thick clouds blocked the moonlight, plunging everything into deeper darkness. Streetlamps flickered erratically like they were on their last legs, then one by one snapped off with sharp pops. A faint breeze rustled through the greenery, making the trees and bushes whisper in the gloom.

  Against this almost ominous backdrop, a patch of darkness—darker and thicker than the night itself—slithered out from the shrubbery.

  At first glance I thought it was just filthy pooled water and moved to step around it. But the shadow moved with purpose, blocking my path. Only then did I realize something was wrong and stopped dead.

  What was this?

  After everything I’d already experienced, my mind hadn’t fully snapped back to everyday thinking. The old me would have been shocked speechless. Now, even confronted with something this bizarre, I only felt mild surprise. At this point, no matter how impossible the change, I could accept it.

  This unknown shadow had clearly come for me—and whatever was about to happen wouldn’t stop here. From the inky pool that reminded me of stagnant water, an impossibly thick arm suddenly thrust out. Like something struggling ashore from a lake, the arm slammed down, bracing against the ground. The sheer force shattered the concrete beneath the palm, sinking the entire hand deep into the broken pavement.

  The owner of that arm then hauled the rest of its body up out of the earth—head, other arm, torso, right leg, left leg—until the full, terrifying form stood revealed.

  It was a demon straight out of an oil painting: a massive, pitch-black goat’s head, a towering naked body nearly three meters tall blocking my way like an impenetrable wall of flesh. Crimson skin and muscle bulged with veins that seemed to throb with barely contained rage.

  The demon’s goat-like face was hideously contorted. Most people think of sheep as gentle white lambs, but there are breeds like the Damascus goat whose adult males look utterly monstrous—and this thing was exactly that. Worse, it had no lips: its teeth and gums were fully exposed, giving it a bloodthirsty, savage appearance.

  “Z,” it rasped in a voice like nails scraping across a blackboard.

  I instinctively focused every ounce of attention on the terrifying creature.

  “You know my name?”

  Just from the way it had appeared, I could tell this was no prankster in a costume trying to scare passersby.

  The demon didn’t answer. Instead it moved its protruding goat-like mouth and spoke in a chillingly cold tone that clashed with its savage appearance: “I’ve come to take your life.”

  “Take my life…” I examined its entire body carefully. “Before we get to that—what exactly are you? Since you can speak human language, you must possess intelligence no lower than a person’s…

  “I never expected there were nonhuman intelligent species like you in this world. Are there others elsewhere? What is your race called? Where do you mainly live?”

  I knew perfectly well how out-of-place these questions sounded at a moment like this, but I really was curious about nonhuman intelligent life. First the hole in the fifteenth-floor apartment, now this demon—unknown, fantastical adventure seemed to be approaching me step by step.

  At the same time, I wasn’t completely off guard. The monster kept saying it had come to kill me, yet after boldly revealing itself it started talking first. Was it trying to make sure I died knowing why? Or deliberately drawing my attention while something else moved in the shadows? I quietly brought my left hand behind my back and lit a firefly without a sound.

  Through the firefly, I gained a full three-hundred-sixty-degree awareness of my surroundings. And that was when I understood why it had so confidently stood right in front of me. About ten meters behind me, another shadow was slowly creeping closer—like a venomous snake stalking prey.

  Looking closely, I saw thin black threads of shadow connecting it to the soles of the demon’s feet. Hidden by the darkness, no human eye could have spotted them.

  Rather than trying to sneak attack with that massive body, it preferred misdirection… So this was its strategy?

  Why did it need to be this cautious against an “ordinary person” like me? Did it already know I was a superpowered individual?

  Would that shadow suddenly turn into a spike and pierce straight through me? Or transform into a swamp and drag me into another space? Or undergo some even stranger change?

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  I looked forward to whatever might come next and mentally prepared my countermeasures. Don’t let my calm fool you—I still had plenty of survival instinct. No matter how strong or weak my abilities were, the danger posed by anomalies could ignore strength entirely. The hole in the fifteenth-floor apartment had already taught me that lesson.

  But stronger than my sense of danger right now was an overwhelming, almost incredulous excitement. The next moment I might be locked in a life-or-death fight with an unknown enemy—something that had never happened in my life before, and exactly the kind of scene I had always dreamed of.

  Faced with my question, the demon seemed momentarily stunned. Then it asked: “You… aren’t afraid of dying?”

  “How exactly do you plan to kill me?” I pretended not to notice the shadow while asking curiously. “And stepping back a bit—why do you want to kill me? Have we met somewhere before?”

  At that, the demon let out a voice thick with resentment: “Maybe you’ve completely forgotten, but I’ve never forgotten for a single moment what you did to me two years ago…”

  “Sorry, I genuinely can’t remember. Could you be a little more specific?” I was truly baffled. “When exactly, where exactly, and what exactly did I do to you?”

  I had no memory of ever doing anything to earn such hatred from a nonhuman being—especially since this was the first time I’d ever seen an intelligent creature that wasn’t human.

  I was far more inclined to believe it had come because of the fifteenth-floor apartment. Probability supported that theory too.

  In the past I had never seen anomalies like this. Today I had encountered two at once: the “hole” earlier, and now this “demon.” If they were unrelated coincidences, that would be too far-fetched. Assuming they were connected made far more sense.

  The hole, the ritual array, the fallen hunter… All the clues I’d gathered during the day resurfaced in my mind like items pulled from a drawer. A suspicion formed—was this talking “demon” really a nonhuman race?

  Might it actually be a human—more specifically, a fallen hunter who had transformed? Or perhaps a monster summoned by a fallen hunter?

  And speaking of “two years ago”—that was when I had done something fairly memorable: following leads from child disappearances and local folklore in another province, I assisted the authorities in dismantling a local feudal superstition group. Could this demon be claiming it was the cult leader or someone connected to them?

  But I remembered that cult leader had been burned alive by his own followers after his credibility collapsed. He couldn’t have gone to hell and reincarnated as a demon for a second life. Besides, during that incident I never openly revealed my superpowers to anyone.

  The “two years ago” this demon mentioned was most likely a smokescreen meant to mislead me.

  “Still asking so many questions even with death staring you in the face! In the end you’re no different from ordinary people—just another fool numbed by peaceful life into forgetting what death even means.” The demon let out an ugly laugh. “This ends here. You’ll die without ever knowing why you lost…”

  As it spoke, it lowered its center of gravity. Its voice suddenly boomed: “—Die by my hand!”

  The moment the words left its mouth, it charged toward me with terrifying momentum. But knowing its plan, the overly long wind-up looked almost obvious. It clearly wanted my attention fixed on itself. The real killing blow was still the shadow creeping up from behind.

  The instant it launched its frontal assault, the flat shadow behind me rose into a three-dimensional blade and shot toward me from the rear.

  I raised my left hand—still hidden behind my back—and the firefly at my fingertip suddenly swelled.

  The firefly was essentially a tiny flame I had summoned. Now I poured extra mental energy into it like fuel. Like dumping gasoline onto a brazier, the firefly instantly ballooned into a blazing fireball.

  The fireball burst outward in the next instant, sending searing, blinding streams of flame surging in all directions—toward both the demon in front and the shadow behind. The overwhelming glare was enough to blind any ordinary onlooker instantly.

  Fortunately there were no other witnesses besides the demon and me—and neither the flames nor their light and heat could harm me. Both the fire itself and the radiance it gave off were manifestations of my own mental power. Unless I intended to harm myself, this force could never injure me.

  The demon seemed to anticipate my counterattack. The moment the situation changed it immediately leaped backward warily, never entering the range of the flames.

  The shadow attacking from behind flattened itself against the ground again, then sprang up at my feet—slipping through the blind spot the flames hadn’t covered—and reshaped into a blade thrusting toward me once more. Even though it was shadow, the intense light couldn’t dispel it. What an amazing ability. While marveling at that, I immediately twisted aside to dodge.

  Normally, at that speed, I wouldn’t have been able to evade it. But because I had discovered the attack in advance—and because my opponent clearly hadn’t expected me to notice—I actually managed to avoid it by sheer luck.

  Not that getting hit would have mattered much anyway.

  “—So it’s a fire ability!”

  The demon hadn’t been blinded by the glare. It landed on the ground beside a streetlamp and let out a triumphant laugh: “You’re finished, Z… The next strike will take your life!”

  As it spoke, it reached out and gripped the streetlamp—ripping it straight out of the ground—and hurled the entire heavy pole at me like a javelin.

  To be clear: it wasn’t throwing a spear—it was throwing an entire streetlamp post, and at speeds comparable to an Olympic javelin thrower. This was no longer an anti-personnel weapon; it was a siege engine. The sheer visual impact was so overwhelming that even I reflexively dodged again.

  My raised foot hadn’t even touched the ground yet—the lamppost had only just grazed past my cheek—when the demon charged forward at horrifying speed.

  At the same time, both its arms transformed: the fleshy limbs morphed into white bone scythes like a praying mantis’s forelegs. Its movement speed had increased dramatically from its earlier attack.

  Judging from the stark contrast between its cautious approach earlier and this all-out assault, it must have been wary of my unknown abilities before—hence the feint-and-flank strategy. Now that it had confirmed its victory, it was unleashing its full power without reservation.

  Its brutal face filled my vision as it closed in.

  And I simply watched it approach.

  Then my gaze ignited its body.