The Plague Doctor, like a polite gentleman, seemed to have a trace of regret in his gaze beneath the mask.
"Actually, you really don't need to be so aggressive, C... Hmm, let's call you Victor. That's what they call you, which is more polite, isn't it?"
His voice came through the filter, carrying a metallic, hypocritical warmth.
"I've read the files on you. Personally labeled by Dr. 062 as 'uncontrollable failures.' Honestly, we usually have zero interest in failures." He spread his hands elegantly.
"If you had just stayed quietly in that ridiculous hotel in Transylvania with that vampire, you would have been safe and sound. After all, we don't want to provoke a Dracula lightly."
His beak turned slightly toward Victor, his tone carrying a genuine, chilling confusion:
"But why did you have to come out? Why did you have to... break into our field of vision and remind us of your existence? It's like a defective product that should have been forgotten jumping back onto the quality control table by itself."
The corners of Victor's mouth split into a near-tearing arc, making the smile look exceptionally hideous.
"Oh? 'Failure'?" He repeated the word flippantly, as if tasting a strange-flavored candy.
"That old fogey 062 is still alive? Say hello to him for me—and tell him the quality of the thread he used to sew my mouth shut back then was really shitty."
He raised his hand casually, tracing his fingertip over his lips, as if the sutures still existed there.
Victor took a step forward, the massive body of the Hyde like a limp rag doll in his hand.
"As for why I came out?" He let out a short, sharp laugh. In those eyes usually dancing with manic light, a nearly pure, scorching flame burned.
"Because I've had enough."
His voice rose sharply, carrying a cathartic, undeniable declaration:
"Even my 'cute' godson Dennis, a little guy worried because he wasn't a monster, dared to clench his fist and grow fangs for his little werewolf girl. Why can't I?"
"Let me hide in the hotel and pretend nothing happened? That would be the biggest joke!"
Venom let out a low, hungry roar in coordination, his giant white eyes fixed dead on the Plague Doctor, long tongue licking over sharp teeth.
"You people—" Victor's finger jabbed fiercely at the Plague Doctor, his voice filled with unprecedented, scalding contempt.
"You and your labs, your cold needles, numbers, and these damn masks... You're no big deal!"
"Fear? Yes, I'm scared to death! Scared enough that I have to get drunk on the sweetness of chocolate every night just to fall asleep!"
He almost roared this sentence, veins popping on his forehead, but his eyes shone terrifyingly bright.
"But that doesn't mean I'll kneel on the ground forever begging you to let me go! And it definitely doesn't mean I'll watch helplessly as you force the same nightmare onto anyone I care about!"
"So, I came out."
His voice suddenly dropped, carrying an even more terrifying resolve to burn it all down.
"Not to jump back on some bullshit quality control table—"
Venom's body expanded abruptly. Muscular black tentacles unfurled behind Victor like angry wings, blotting out the sky!
"—I'm here to smash it!"
Venom instantly consumed Victor's face, leaving only those huge white eyes burning with madness and rage.
Combat Form: Complete.
"Snack time!" He let out a deafening roar. Thick, muscular tentacles flexed violently, hurling the massive Hyde gripped in his hand like a heavy bowling ball, smashing it viciously toward the motionless Plague Doctor!
Wind howled! The Hyde's terrified whimper was stretched into a broken line by the high speed!
Just the moment before the behemoth hit—
The Plague Doctor didn't even take half a step back.
He simply turned his body slightly with a near-elegant, understated posture.
The Hyde's heavy body grazed his spotless beak mask and white trench coat, crashing onto the clearing behind him, splashing dirt and rotting leaves, emitting a dull thud and a wail of pain.
One miss, but Venom's attack didn't pause! Borrowing the inertia of the throw, his massive body shot out with terrifying speed completely disproportionate to his size, like a streak of black lightning hugging the ground, pouncing straight at the Plague Doctor!
The battle entered white-hot intensity instantly!
Venom's arms were like dancing pythons, instantly splitting into a dozen hideous tentacles covered in hard black keratin, strangling toward the Plague Doctor from all directions!
Every strike carried a scream that tore the air!
High! A tentacle whipped like a scorpion tail, stabbing straight for the face!
Low! Another hugged the ground, sweeping viciously at his ankles!
Encircle! More tentacles outflanked from left and right, locking down all dodge space!
The offensive was dense as a storm, seamless! This was an attack no human reaction speed could handle!
However—
The Plague Doctor's body seemed weightless, or perhaps capable of foreseeing the future.
In the final split second before the tentacles hit, he always managed to dodge the deadly edges with the smallest, most precise, near-perfect movements.
His steps interwove lightly, like dancing a waltz of death.
Leaning back slightly, the sting-like tentacle grazed the tip of his beak by a millimeter.
Leaping gently, the sweeping tentacle passed dangerously under the soles of his shoes.
Twisting and rotating his body like paper, he slipped quietly out of the encircling net of tentacles from an impossible angle.
His movements had zero waste. Precise, efficient, suffocatingly calm.
That white robe didn't even pick up a speck of dust, forming an extremely cruel contrast with Venom's wild, violent attacks.
"Useless." The Plague Doctor's calm voice came clearly through the storm of attacks, carrying a metallic indifference.
"Your attack patterns, muscle exertion habits, even your thought tendencies—Dr. 062 recorded them clearly in your file. Remember your Battle Royale game? You displayed yourself thoroughly."
He side-slipped again like a phantom, causing Venom's heavy chop, capable of splitting boulders, to miss and smash deep cracks into the ground.
"To you, this is a battle." His beak turned slightly, as if admiring a performance.
"But to me, this is merely... data verification."
"Shut up!" Venom let out a deafening roar of rage. His attacks became more chaotic. Tentacles smashed around like an out-of-control black storm, ploughing deep furrows in the ground and snapping trees in half!
"Angry so easily?" The Plague Doctor's voice remained steady, weaving freely through the destructive storm, white robe fluttering as if strolling in a courtyard.
"Your movements are all messy. As expected, flesh and blood creatures can hardly control their low-level emotions. Truly pathetic and lamentable."
He tilted his head slightly, preparing to gracefully dodge a basketball-sized rock thrown randomly by Venom, just as before.
"Throwing rocks?" He even had the leisure to let out a soft scoff. "You finally evolved from monkeys, can't you come up with some more creative attack patterns?"
Click.
An extremely short, crisp sound, almost covered by the wind.
The Plague Doctor's sensitive hearing captured this discordant note precisely.
The source of the sound wasn't from the front, but from the side of the rock about to graze past his ear—outside his visual blind spot.
That sound was like the snap of a latch on some micro-mechanism being instantly activated.
Something is on the side of that rock?
His electronic eye spiked its data processing rate to the maximum instantly, but it was too late.
BOOM—!!!
The seemingly ordinary rock exploded violently less than ten centimeters from his head! Scorching fire and thick black smoke swallowed him completely in an instant! The violent shockwave blew the surrounding fallen leaves outward in a ring!
"Is that creative enough for you? Mr. Beak?!" Victor and Venom's mixed voices came from outside the explosion's glow, filled with hearty mockery and the pleasure of revenge.
The fire and smoke dissipated quickly.
The scene became clear.
The Plague Doctor still stood in place, but his iconic beak mask, symbolizing medieval terror, was now shattered. Half hung precariously, the other half completely blown away, revealing the truth hidden beneath.
Everyone who saw this scene—whether Victor, Venom, or Wednesday holding her breath in the distance—clearly saw what lay behind the broken mask:
Where half a face of flesh and blood should have been, exposed to the air was a bright silver metal skull frame shining with cold luster, and a mechanical electronic eye embedded in the socket, emitting unstable crimson light! Sparks crackled at the break, and a wisp of black smoke rose from it.
That was absolutely not human, nor any known supernatural creature!
The air seemed to freeze.
Venom's giant white eyes widened unprecedentedly round. His huge mouth opened unconsciously. Finally, all shock converged into a simple, straightforward curse from the soul, roaring to shake the entire forest:
"Motherfucker!! Terminator?!"