◉◉◉◉◉
The air rippled with heat.
A rolling tide of faint red energy surged outward from Kael, carrying with it a chilling, suffocating killing intent that crashed over the three nightmare Pokémon like a wave.
Freshly evolved, Kael's body felt like a pressure cooker ready to explode.
He needed a fight.
He needed something to tear apart—
something to bleed off the overflowing power rampaging inside him.
The boost he'd gained going from Machop to Machoke felt even greater than when, in his past life, he'd evolved from Flaaffy into Ampharos.
A perfect storm had formed inside this body:
A clone's flawless genes.
The hidden buffs of his system.
Human surgical modification, fusing Ghost-type power into his being.
Three months of brutal, precision training in the Fighting Dojo.
All of it had accumulated in his Machop stage, saturating every fiber of his body to its limit.
And evolution had just turned all of that stored potential into pure, violent reality.
In that instant, Kael felt like his very existence had been upgraded.
His glowing crimson eyes swept over the three nightmare Pokémon frozen in place by his earlier killing intent.
Leavanny.
Nidoking.
Grumpig.
He looked at them the way a predator looks at prey standing in its dish.
"…Forget it," he said quietly. "You can all come at once."
It wasn't arrogance.
To him, in his current state, none of the three looked remotely threatening.
If they came one at a time, the fight would be over too quickly.
He wouldn't enjoy that at all.
With overwhelming strength, even selfishness felt justified.
His red pupils flashed.
In a single breath, the murderous aura suffocating the clearing snapped back sucked into his body like a collapsing tide.
Silence crashed in after it.
Thud—
Three bodies hit the ground at once.
"Haah… haah…!"
Leavanny braced herself on both arms, gasping for breath.
The suffocating bloodlust from moments ago had nearly drowned her.
She lifted her head weakly, staring at the towering figure standing in the middle of the clearing.
In the glow of the dark purple flames licking off his body, Kael looked less like a Pokémon and more like a demon that had crawled up from Hell.
Run.
You have to run.
NOW.
The thought hammered wildly through her mind.
For once, the usually vicious, bloodthirsty Leavanny didn't think about counterattacking.
She thought about running.
She knew, very clearly, that whatever kind of monster could unleash that kind of pressure was not something their little squad was built to handle.
The only path to survival… was escape.
She flicked a glance at Grumpig, eyes filled with desperate hope.
Teleport.
Use Teleport.
Get us out of here.
But Grumpig only shook its head helplessly, eyes tight with strain.
It couldn't.
Kael had already sealed that option the moment he evolved warping the local space with a surge of Aura and Ghost-type power, locking the area down like a cage.
With Grumpig's level of psychic strength, there was no way to break that spatial interference.
No Teleport.
No retreat.
"Damn it…"
Leavanny gritted her teeth and forced herself shakily to her feet.
She could feel Kael's gaze on her—
mocking, amused, cold.
Weakness and humiliation burned inside her.
She was a nightmare-infected executioner, a tailor of corpses—
And now someone else was looking at her like trash?
She could barely accept it.
Running won't work.
Even if they somehow tried to sprint into the trees, could they outrun something like that?
All Kael had to do was release that suffocating killing intent again, and they'd instantly freeze like before left helpless, waiting to be butchered.
Their only chance—
He was to bet everything on his arrogance.
If he underestimated them, if he wanted to "enjoy the fight" and held back…
Then maybe, just maybe, they could hurt him enough to open a path.
"Fine…"
A hard glint flashed in Leavanny's eyes.
She met Nidoking's and Grumpig's gaze.
The three of them straightened slowly, taking up fighting positions, forming a loose triangle around Kael.
The nightmare infection had twisted their minds over time, turning their battle style cruel and sadistic.
But years of fighting side by side had also forged something else:
Teamwork.
They didn't even need Grumpig to coordinate with telepathy.
Their formation snapped into place on its own.
Power began to build inside each of them.
Kael just watched.
Calm. Interested.
This was better.
Opponents who'd already given up could never push him.
Only those who still clung to hope could show him everything they had.
And Kael wanted to see that hope break.
He wanted to crush it himself.
SHHHK—
The air ripped.
Leavanny vanished.
Her green silhouette blurred, reappearing from Kael's blind spot in a flicker of motion.
Most Pokémon thought of her as a long-range controller someone who fought from a distance with strings and silk.
They were wrong.
Her body was aerodynamic and lean, built for speed.
Her leaf-blades were razors.
Her silk was sharper than steel wire.
With nightmare corruption amplifying her cruelty and precision—
Leavanny was an assassin.
She moved like one now.
"Shk-shk-shk!"
A glittering storm of silver threads exploded from her arm, lashing toward Kael.
Threads that could slice stone like warm butter.
Kael didn't move.
He simply let his left arm hang where it was, at his side.
The threads wrapped around his forearm, tightening instantly, digging in with tremendous tension.
"Now!"
Leavanny's eyes flashed.
She jerked her arms back with lethal force, intending to sever the limb in a single, clean cut.
In her mind, she already saw the spraying blood.
The torn flesh.
The ripped tendons.
Nothing happened.
Kael's arm didn't even twitch.
The wire-thin strands were pulled taut, straining with all their might—
And his dark, muscular limb might as well have been made of solid steel.
"How…?"
Leavanny's eyes widened.
A tremble of disbelief shook her chest.
Her threads tightened again, vibrating with power.
Still nothing.
Kael's arm remained exactly where it was, resting casually at his waist.
He turned his head slowly, looking down at the silky wires eating into his skin.
Then he looked at her.
"Kehehe…"
The twisted laugh crawled out of his throat as his lips stretched into a wide, savage grin.
The kind of grin that said:
You picked the wrong toy.
◉◉◉◉◉
~Support with 200 PowerStones = 1 Bonus Chapter
◉◉◉◉◉
For early access to advanced chapters on P-atreon:
P-atreon/iamxeno
(Just remove the - hyphen to access Patreon normally)
Thank you so much for your support and for reading!