The Creatures That We Are

Chapter 90: Loss of Control

[You now have a total of 406 Luck points. Do you want to use them?]

—Put 200 points in Strength and the rest to Agility.

—Put all the points I acquire during the fight into Agility until things come to an end.

[Access ends.]

Gao Yang opened his eyes and rushed down the hill, jumping over the wall with an agile leap and landing on the running track. Without pause, he rushed straight toward Mad Red at an impressive speed.

Mad Red’s twisted face turned disappointed. Why didn’t he make an explosive jump like he did last time?

Holding the mascot head with one hand, Mad Red threw it toward Gao Yang. Gao Yang dodged it by simply cocking his head to the side. From the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of red. He immediately made a powerful jump to the side. The next second, the mascot head that had just missed him exploded midair.

The shockwaves hurled Gao Yang into the air. He made a roll and got to his feet, feeling a burn on the left side of his face. It was the result of the torrent of heat coming from the explosion.

Gao Yang’s heart sank. It seemed that the man could turn anything into bombs with varying power, not just the human body. As expected of the 19th ranking Talent: Detonation. It was truly a tricky one to deal with.

Calm down.

Kill him!

Calm down.

Kill him!

...

The two voices echoed in Gao Yang’s head as his rational mind clashed with his emotional side, resulting in a tangled mess of thoughts. Wan Sisi’s eyes and smile as well as the terrible way she went vied for attention in his brain, and rising fury burned through every drop of blood in his body.

Finally, his rational side lost.

“Ah!” Gao Yang screamed and charged at Mad Red. There was nothing on his mind but the thought of killing the man.

Opening his arms wide, he shot two torrents of flames from his palms to sweep up Mad Red.

The heavy mascot suit was burned to ashes in the blink of an eye, but Mad Red had already jumped out of it like a cunning snake shedding its skin.

Under the tight leather pants and black sleeveless vest, his body was covered in lithe muscles and all manners of scars—some long and thin from bladed weapons, and others big and uneven from heat and burns.

“Haha, that’s right! Be angry!” Mad Red savored Gao Yang’s rage. “Yes, keep going. Don’t disappoint me!”

Without wasting his breath, Gao Yang rushed toward Mad Red again.

Mad Red lifted his skinless red right hand. Between his fingers were three translucent marbles. In a matter of half a second, the marbles were injected with strange energy and turned into red glowing orbs.

Swish! Swish, swish! Mad Red snapped his wrist, throwing the three marbles at Gao Yang.

Taken aback, Gao Yang jumped to the side to dodge them.

Boom, boom, boom! The three marbles blew up in his proximity. Gao Yang rolled to his feet on the lawn, but his face, neck, arms, and thighs were now covered in about eight dark gashes. The injured parts turned crimson as blood gushed out anew.

Although he had moved out of the range of explosion, he hadn’t been able to dodge all the glass shards. They cut through his skin easily like a sharp, heated blade cutting through butter.

Gao Yang balled his hands up and clenched his jaw.

Although the 200 points he put into Agility had made him much more agile, he couldn’t get close to Mad Red in an instant without White Rabbit’s Jump, and he needed to do that to secure his victory.

Gao Yang cried out and charged at the man again.

He could only bet on the fact that Red Mad would run out of his small bombs sooner or later. He couldn’t have brought an endless supply.

Mad Red threw another three marbles.

Boom, boom, boom!

Although Gao Yang had been prepared to dodge out of the way, a few bleeding, steaming cuts were still added to the previous ones.

“Haha! Run! Jump all you want!” Mad Red kept casting small bombs at Gao Yang with a twisted expression like a kid enjoying a game.

Gao Yang ran with all he had around Mad Red. Every time he tried to get closer, he was driven away by a bomb, achieving nothing but getting new additions to his collection of wounds.

After a dozen or so exchanges, Gao Yang was covered in bleeding gashes from head to toe.

Fires surged and spread all over the weeds on the track. At some point, they had come together to form an ocean of flames.

Night had fallen. The two men stood amid the fire, the air between them filled with flying ashes and embers.

Mad Red hadn’t moved an inch. He stretched his arms leisurely like he had just finished warming up. On the other hand, Gao Yang was out of breath and covered in injuries, a good portion of his stamina exhausted.

Flickering firelight danced on their faces, lighting them up and plunging them in shadows alternatively.

Gao Yang made sure that Mad Red had run out of bombs before rushing to the man without pause.

Scoffing, Mad Red took out a long and thin silver-gray whip from his back with his right hand. It was a customized weapon made with Black Gold, among other materials.

Imbued with red energy, the whip swung.

Crack!

The whip flickering with red light cut through the air, coming down at Gao Yang’s face from above. Caught off guard, Gao Yang barely managed to dodge it with a sidestep. The whip hit the ground instead, and the air went still for half a second.

Bam! The ground burst into a line of flames.

Caught in the burning grass, Gao Yang quickly made a few rolls to put out the fire. Just when he started to look up, the red whip came down on him again.

Gao Yang staggered and jumped backward.

Bam!

Another line of explosions triggered. The violent shockwaves sent Gao Yang flying. He followed the momentum and rolled the moment he hit the ground, retreating backward and putting some distance between him and Mad Red.

Mad Red pulled the whip away and wound it up in his hand, his eyes glowing with viciousness and hatred. “It’ll be too easy for you if I just kill you. I need to make you feel my pain a hundred—no, a thousandfold!”

At the same time, he imbued the whip with energy again, making it even more blindingly crimson than before. He raised his hand and cracked the whip.

The ground burst into explosions again, sending surging flames and clumps of soil everywhere and leaving a small ditch on the running track.

This time, Gao Yang was a little further from the man. He moved quickly and managed to get out of the way intact.

Panting heavily, he wiped off the blood on his face and focused his mind. His pain and his quickly draining stamina finally cooled down the fury in his chest, and his rationality returned to him gradually.

Calm down.

Think.

From the detonation of the human body from before to the marbles and now the long whip, Mad Red’s attacks had never changed from the core mechanic of injecting something with Detonation, and then using that thing as a bomb.

And he must touch his target with his right hand to inject it with his energy. The duration of the contact would determine the power of the explosion.

The only opening for Gao Yang to get close to the man was when he was imbuing his whip with energy.

Gao Yang took a deep breath and rushed toward Mad Red, making a feint attack.

Mad Red swung the whip around relentlessly, while Gao Yang jumped from side to side to dodge the attacks. The whip kept hitting the ground, triggering lines of explosions and leaving behind flames and ditches.

Again, Mad Red’s whip stopped flickering red and turned back into its original silver-gray.

Mad Red yanked the whip back and quickly rolled it up to imbue it with energy from his right hand. It was obvious that the process was slowing down. Before he could finish it, a stone flew toward his head.

Mad Red bent his neck to dodge it. In that moment of distraction, Gao Yang rushed out of the blazing flames and lunged at Mad Red.

Mad Red cracked the whip with a backhand, and Gao Yang caught the whip, yanking it forcefully to close their distance until they were only two meters apart. Surprised, Mad Red quickly pulled back the energy he had injected into the whip to stop it from exploding.

Gao Yang was betting on that while being ready for mutual destruction.

The moment Mad Red stopped the explosion, he realized what Gao Yang was doing. Gao Yang’s other hand was already shooting fire at him.

Still holding the whip, Mad Red quickly crouched down to avoid the flames. Then he made a sweep of his leg to knock Gao Yang off balance.

Gao Yang jumped and tucked his legs up, all the while grabbing the whip with his right hand and yanking, getting into Mad Red’s space through counterforce.

When Mad Red realized that not letting go of his whip was a mistake, Gao Yang’s knee was already slamming into his face, accurately and violently.