"Who's Charles?"
Before the confusion in Sinara's eyes could fade, Kalpas' fist had already smashed into his face.
Boom!
The delayed sonic boom ruptured Sinara's eardrums.
Sinara tumbled dozens of times before finally crashing into the railing of the dark passageway and collapsing.
"Weak. Far too weak. You're as soft as Aponia's punching bag."
Kalpas flexed his wrist. This mastermind who loved playing schemes and tricks was nowhere near as satisfying to hit as Kevin.
Just as Kalpas thought that, his head suddenly tilted to the side.
Whoosh!
A blood spear that appeared without warning sliced away a lock of Kalpas' hair.
The spear struck the wall behind him and blasted a huge hole straight through the hardened steel!
Sinara, who had been plastered against the railing, stood up again.
Except he was upside down, his head toward the floor and his rear in the air.
Kalpas had smashed his entire head apart, yet he acted as though nothing had happened. In a voice that might have come from his vocal cords or might have been ventriloquism, he said, "We are immortal... undying..."
"You are dead!"
If losing his head could kill him, if his heart exploding could kill him, or if being drained of blood could kill him, then Sinara would already have died in his own office.
As long as he was not completely reduced to ashes, he effectively had three hundred lives.
However, during his confrontation with the out-of-control weapons in the office just now, those three hundred lives had already been exhausted.
At this point, he was overdrawing his own life force.
But a beast driven into a corner was even more terrifying!
Splatter—
Sinara's flesh attached itself to the walls and spread like a tide.
The entire passageway began churning along with Sinara's flesh.
In an instant, Mobius and the others found themselves standing as though inside a writhing intestine.
Blood seeped through the fleshy walls. The moment even a tiny drop touched Kalpas' clothes, thick smoke rose as the fabric began corroding.
"I'll devour all of you!"
If Mobius refused to treat him, that was no great problem.
After being modified by both Mobius and unknown extraterrestrial life-forms, Sinara could no longer be judged by ordinary human standards.
As long as he could devour life-forms containing enormous amounts of energy, Sinara could recover all the same.
And every one of the three people before him was a delicious feast!
As the final boss behind Heliopolis Life Sciences, Sinara even possessed multiple "supernatural abilities."
Although Mobius had planted numerous backdoors inside his body during surgery, how could Sinara, a man capable of rising into MOTH's upper leadership, fail to guard against Mobius in precisely this regard?
By using his assortment of complicated abilities, Sinara successfully neutralized Mobius' control over him.
Unless Mobius personally installed another "detonator" inside his body, it would be impossible for her to rewrite Sinara's genes again.
But there was no need for that...
Crack.
Sinara had not fired just one blood spear. A moment earlier, he had sent three of them toward Kevin and the others.
Kalpas chose to dodge his.
Kevin, meanwhile, simply caught his with his bare hands.
The instant the blood spears touched Kevin, two icy blossoms bloomed.
Kevin's expression remained unchanged as he stood there holding a blood spear in each hand.
"Whoa! Catching blades barehanded, and you're even dual-wielding! That's so cool!" Charles, the young boy standing beside Mobius, stared at Kevin with sparkling eyes.
Kevin, however, was not trying to look cool.
"They're stuck..."
The blood spears had been firmly frozen to Kevin's palms.
Kevin tried to throw the spears onto the ground, but after shaking his hands twice and discovering he could not get rid of them at all, he simply gave up and kept holding them.
"Oh? Looks like we've got a punching bag that can actually take a beating... Hey, ice-face, don't you dare interfere. Get over there and stay out of this."
Kalpas knew what "problem" Kevin had encountered.
Kalpas had no interest in dealing with idiot Kevin.
Right now, all he wanted was a vicious fight of fists against flesh.
This "monster" in front of him was far better than anything he had encountered before!
Something he could kill more than once—wasn't that wonderful?!
If only Mobius were not here.
Ignoring Kalpas' opinion, Mobius directly ordered, "Kevin, finish this quickly. Pack up that masked battle maniac along with him. We're in a hurry."
"Mobius!"
Kalpas' eyes turned blood-red as he roared like a wild beast. "Hahaha! You understand me! Good! Excellent! Two opponents worth killing! Hahaha... Ahahahahaha!"
Kalpas clenched his fist and smashed it into the ground, directly burning most of the disgusting flesh around them into ash. "Come! In this battle, only the strongest deserves to survive!"
Kalpas seemed even more excited now.
Kevin, meanwhile, coldly assumed a dual-tonfa stance with the two spears.
Sinara had no idea what was going on, but he was dragged into the three-way melee anyway.
Mobius leisurely sipped her coffee while quietly watching the spectacle with Charles.
Mobius' emotional intelligence was hardly low. After interacting with Kalpas several times, she had gained a rough understanding of his temperament, so she had never intended to make Kalpas and Kevin cooperate against the enemy in the first place.
Rather than have the two of them hinder each other, it was far more efficient to let Kevin deal with Kalpas along the way.
Before long, Kevin returned to Dr. Mobius with Sinara skewered on an ice spear in his left hand and Kalpas skewered on another ice spear.
In the end, the guy wielding "crutches" won.
Mobius was not surprised by this outcome in the slightest.
She licked her lips and mocked the immobilized Sinara.
"Heh. You said I wouldn't have to be manipulated by the rest of MOTH's upper leadership? Sinara, you can't even free yourself, yet you're offering conditions like that. Who would believe you?"
"So, how did you enjoy the open-abdominal surgery performed by my little assistant? Wasn't it much more effective than my minimally invasive techniques? Hehe~ Looks like you really enjoy this kind of treatment~"
The grudge-holding snake always settled her scores immediately. Kevin approved wholeheartedly.
Sinara's body squirmed, but even when he tried to make a sound by rubbing his flesh together, it was completely futile.
Because Kevin had frozen his entire body into a slab of pork straight out of a freezer.
As the mastermind behind Heliopolis Life Sciences, Sinara was naturally very powerful.
But just like Vill-V, he had absolutely no combat experience or talent for fighting.
Against Kevin, he was like an infant. After only a few exchanges, Kevin caught an opening and froze him solid.
Kalpas, by contrast, managed to resist Kevin for quite a long time before finally being knocked unconscious on the spear.
As for why Kevin could suppress Kalpas so easily, the first reason was that Kalpas was holding back.
Mobius had long since noticed that Kalpas seemed to be keeping some kind of trump card hidden, which made her extremely curious.
And precisely because Mobius was curious, Kalpas ended up taking several extra beatings.
Yet even then, that arrogant little lab rat showed no intention whatsoever of revealing his trump card.
As for the other reason...
"Dr. Mei's little follower, tell me. After fusing with the genes of the Emperor-class Honkai Beast—Parvati—do you have any thoughts you'd like to share?"
Mobius had already experimented on herself. Naturally, she had no reason to show Kevin's body any mercy either.
With the reference materials Vill-V had left behind, the wholehearted contributions of HoMu Siegfried and the vast number of test subjects in Dusk City, along with the enthusiastic support of MOTH's upper leadership, Mobius had finally broken through the final barrier in creating a MANTIS.
"The cold radiating from my body can't be controlled at will."
Only moments ago, Kevin had once again undergone surgery performed by Dr. Mobius.
This time, he had become a MANTIS.