He was so furious that his hatred and venom erupted almost tangibly. He used so much force that his mouth suddenly split open.

The muscles at both corners of his mouth twisted and tore apart, then his chest abruptly shattered into pieces. The surface of his body cracked like a broken eggshell, and from within, twisted tentacles burst forth.

At the ends were round suckers and backward-facing barbed teeth, writhing and dripping with strands of sticky mucus.

“You worthless, stagnant trash—you deserve to die in your bedroom…”

In that muffled, venomous voice, William Carter’s arm—now a slimy, barbed appendage, or rather, a tentacle—stabbed viciously toward Henry Bennett’s chest.

At that moment, Henry Bennett’s eyes suddenly widened.

He stared at that disgusting, terrifying tentacle boring toward his heart. The tension peaked instantly, and it felt as if all the blood in his body was being forced into his brain by some invisible power.

The panic that had been building for so long erupted in that instant, surging forth more violently than any panic attack he had ever experienced.

“Is this real, or an illusion?”

“He… turned into a monster?”

“……”

Accompanied by intense headache and dizziness, he felt as if everything around him slowed down.

All he could see was William Carter’s furious, shattered face, the tentacles writhing out of his body, and that arm imbued with inhuman strength.

How could this be…

How could he encounter something so absurd, so nightmarish?

He couldn’t understand why, but he could hear his heartbeat with startling clarity, and the interval between each beat seemed to stretch out endlessly.

Ever since he had endured the panic that plagued him for four years, and forced himself to adapt to the feeling of those episodes, he had often experienced this sensation.

The more anxious he became, the slower everything around him seemed, almost to a standstill.

In the same second, he could think about more things, absorb more information, as if the world had frozen and only his mind was racing at explosive speed.

In the past, this feeling brought only pain and torment, but now it seemed to have an unexpected effect.

His thoughts raced at an explosive, overloaded pace.

What would take others a long time to figure out, he understood in less than a second.

……

……

“The William Carter in front of me has turned into a monster, and he’s full of hatred toward me. He wants… to kill me.”

“Should I run?”

“No, I can’t escape. This monster is too close.”

“So, if I want to protect myself, there’s only one way left…”

Henry Bennett recalled the words Grace Cooper had just whispered: “If you want to survive, you have to kill him.”

Killing is, of course, wrong. Henry Bennett had never even killed a chicken, let alone a person. But the thing in front of him was a monster, and it was attacking him—what other choice did he have?

So, the question was: how to kill?

As this question flashed through his mind, Henry Bennett’s thoughts raced explosively, desperately capturing every detail around him. In this slow-motion world where time seemed to stop, he saw William Carter’s split skin, the grotesque flesh and tentacles, the unknown tissue inside his body, and at the very center of his split torso, that dark red heart, slowly swelling and compressing blood.

Out of the corner of his eye, he also saw the glittering shards on the floor—the fragments of the mirror that had shattered when William Carter shoved him into it.

A new courage began to well up in Henry Bennett’s heart.

……

……

“Bang!”

In a fit of rage, William Carter’s arm, now a tentacle, lashed viciously at Henry Bennett’s chest.

The speed was astonishing, but he hadn’t expected that, just as his tentacle struck out, Henry Bennett, who had been pinned against the wall, suddenly slid to the side and crouched down.

The tentacle struck the bathroom’s tiled wall, sending shards of tile flying.

Even William Carter was surprised. He couldn’t imagine that the panicked, weak, and defenseless Henry Bennett could dodge the blow. But he immediately roared, and more tentacles surged toward Henry Bennett.

But after dodging the first strike, Henry Bennett’s movements were surprisingly quick… No, not quick—precise.

He had thought it through many times, observed for a long while, and his actions were efficient, decisive, and precise.

As he crouched to dodge the blow, he reached out and grabbed a long, knife-like shard of mirror from the floor.

He even picked one that was long enough and sharp enough.

Before the tentacles on William Carter’s body could strike at him again, he gripped the shard tightly, stood up, and drove it straight toward William Carter’s chest.

“Shhk!”

Henry Bennett’s wrist pierced through the slimy tentacles and thrust into William Carter’s open chest, the sharp mirror shard stabbing directly into William Carter’s frantically beating heart.

That heart was like leather, seemingly tougher than expected, but Henry Bennett used all his strength in that blow, stabbing straight through and plunging the shard a full ten centimeters into the heart.

The tentacles William Carter had been flailing suddenly went limp.

He staggered backward, and in his split, uneven eyes, there was a look of shock and terror.

Meanwhile, Henry Bennett gripped the blood-soaked mirror shard tightly, staring at him without blinking.