Flames crawled over the girl's body, chewing through cloth and cooked flesh, but King's thoughts stayed cold.

  Human legs… what was it again?

  Right. Average mortal: about fifty percent fast-twitch fibers in the legs. Sprinters push it to around sixty, maybe eighty percent if they're monsters. The Ascended puts Grace on top of that, to carry them to a speed beyond even that… but they're still stuck inside what evolution gave them.

  The right leg ended in a charred stump just below the knee.

  This vessel isn't bound to that limit.

  King focused.

  Muscle at the stump writhed. Bone pushed outward, white-hot under blackened skin. Fibers uncoiled and stretched; tendons snaked down, weaving themselves into a new calf, then ankle, then foot. It grew in seconds, ugly and raw, but perfect. At the same time, he rewrote everything above it, both legs from the hip down.

  Convert all leg muscles to fast-twitch. Then thicken the myelin sheaths around the neurons, and condense the neural routes between brain and muscles.

  Nerves followed. Axons thickened. The myelin sheath around them doubled, tripled, wrapping the pathways in insulation. He pulled the map of the nervous system tighter, condensing the routes between brain and muscle until the signal had almost no distance to travel.

  It felt like someone was packing hot wire through bones. The body shuddered.

  Troublesome to maintain while burned like this. King grimaced as the new leg flexed and dug into the scorched ground. So I'll finish this in an instant.

  Fingers curled and stretched, nails lengthening, hardening, until the hands were more like claws than human hands at all.

  He pushed himself up.

  The fire made a ring around him, climbing his sides, licking at white hair. Every movement sent fresh pain tearing through nerves. He stood anyway.

  Across the ruined garden, the black-haired chef's eyes went wide.

  "I– I don't believe it," the woman breathed. "She took Chris's Meteor head-on and she's still moving…"

  Beside her, the hulking oil chef finished reforming, his body settling into shape with a wet, sloshing sound. Both of them stared through the haze of heat and smoke.

  King rolled his shoulders. The new leg responded like it had always been there.

  Muscles thrummed, wanting to fire.

  Then he moved.

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  To the chefs, it was like the girl had vanished.

  One second she was standing inside the flames. The next, a shockwave kicked up dust and loose embers as she tore across the distance. The ground cracked under the force of her step, and she blurred past them in a straight line, fire trailing in her wake.

  She skidded to a stop several meters behind them, body low, one hand braced against the ground, claws dripping.

  For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

  Then two red lines opened across the chefs' throats.

  Blood sprayed out in twin arcs, catching the light of the burning garden. The woman chef's cleaver slipped from her hand with a dull clatter. The oil chef's mouth worked soundlessly, as if trying to speak, but only more blood poured out.

  They both collapsed almost at the same time, knees buckling, bodies hitting the scorched earth with heavy thuds.

  King straightened, the flames still wrapped around him like a second skin. He glanced down at the oil chef's twitching body.

  "As I thought," he murmured, voice almost bored as he watched the oil-chef gurgle and slump. "If the blow is delivered with fire, you can't turn to oil to avoid getting hit."

  He clicked his tongue—tsk—and let a cruel little smile bloom.

  "I found your elemental weakness," he sighed, soft and amused. "How pathetic."

  His gaze snapped upward to the lone figure on the highest roof, towards the lanky chef still flicking ash from his second cigarette. The morning wind ruffled his coat, but the swagger in his posture faltered when their eyes met.

  Your turn.

  He sank into a low crouch. The muscles in thighs and calves thickened, fibers tightening and packing together until each leg felt like a compressed steel spring.

  Then he launched.

  The garden floor exploded under his feet. Charred soil and cracked stone blew outward in a ring, flowerbeds collapsing as he blasted off the ground. The impact left a crater where he'd been standing, smoke scattering in a violent shockwave. For an instant he was nothing but a streak of flame and white hair cutting through the air.

  Wind hammered against his face. The rooftop rushed up to meet him.

  The lanky chef's eyes went wide. He dropped the cigarette and tried to leap away, knees bending, weight shifting—

  Too slow.

  King's clawed hand speared straight through his sternum, bursting out between his shoulder blades in a spray of blood. The chef's eyes bulged, frozen in wide-eyed disbelief that he never got the chance to voice.

  "Bye bye," he whispered, yanking free.

  He crumpled without ceremony, body sliding off the roof in a limp tumble.

  King straightened among broken tiles and drifting cinders, the flame around him had died out. Servants swarmed the courtyard now, shrieking at the carnage.

  "All three chefs! They're dead!"

  "Monster! Murderer!"

  King watched them for a moment, then gave a small, amused exhale through his nose.

  Definitely the kind of mess those Peacekeepers would rush to.

  He could already imagine them closing in: sirens, weapons, and handcuffs. He'd already fought more than enough today. Getting dragged into another round with highly trained officers on top of this?

  Tiresome.

  His smirk sharpened.

  King turned away from the edge and took off across the rooftop, feet crunching over shattered tiles. He sprinted along the ridge, then cut sideways, leaping to a lower section of roof, then another, then another.

  At the far edge of the estate, he kicked off the last roof and soared over the outer wall, vanishing into the world beyond the mansion grounds.

  Behind him, the servants continued to scream about the dead chefs and the murderer on the roof.