The moment Luke entered the Space Station, he smelled blood.
The docking area had opened into a dark corridor, with electric sparks cracking off here and there.
Fortunately, ORIGIN's modules seemed to be big enough to hold an unnaturally tall figure like Mushroom's, the cyborg lighting up everything around it in a dull, cyan glow.
Luke held up his hand, making the cyborg dim that glow even further.
"Delicate…" he said, his Spirituality ringing in his ears, picking up dangers in all directions. "Do not attack, Mushroom-nimi. Even if we have taken precautions against a potential breach, it wouldn't last against the vacuum of space too long."
Luke still had no idea how Amon had brought him to space.
It had felt like he had no need of breathing or existing above Earth's atmosphere at all.
Luke could easily replicate similar effects by bestowing a combination of Quirks upon several lifeforms and taking them to space.
However, what Amon had done had seemed much simpler and conceptual.
Regardless, Luke had no choice but to depend upon Bioalchemy at the moment.
For the mission, his and Nyx's Beyonder abilities were more than sufficient, especially combined with Mushroom-nimi's raw power.
So, Luke had bestowed a dedicated set of Quirks upon Nyx — all centered on the possibility of the most threatening scenarios playing out during the mission.
Also, after careful Decryption, Divination, and Deliberation, they had decided not to bring any more lifeforms with them.
First, no matter what kind of lifeform he brought with him, bestowing a teleportation Quirk upon it wouldn't allow him to run away to Earth unless the Quirk was of Blessed Gone Insane Complexity.
Second, even if he somehow remained conscious after activating that Quirk, which was already a hopeful scenario, something Luke feared to count on, it was hard to imagine whether the said Quirk would be powerful enough to bring Nyx and Mushroom-nimi with it as well.
Third, and perhaps the most contributing reason behind Luke's decision not to bring any more lifeforms was that… lifeforms could be corrupted.
The fate of the crew members of ORIGIN was already bleak.
Luke didn't want to add more threats to their numbers.
A corrupted, Quirk-bestowed lifeform going rogue…
No.
That was the last thing Luke could afford, especially if he failed to deactivate the Quirk just like in Mushroom-nimi's case.
"Our mission is simple," he said, levitating within the corridor. "Confirm Star's situation and…"
Before Luke could word the worst-case scenario, a loud THUD echoed across the entire corridor.
Grrrr…
A blur crawled out from the dark side, its electric sparks illuminating its pus-like, filthy appearance.
Fast.
It was extremely fast.
Within a fraction of a second, crawling, growling, and breaking off large chunks of the wall, it stormed toward the Apostles of Mr. Fool.
Luke's heart pounded in his chest.
Not out of fear, but it pounded as he hoped dearly that the cyborg wouldn't panic.
Just as he finished hoping that, the filthy creature jumped across the corridor, lunging at them.
It was a blob of flesh with tentacles, covered in boils filled with pus, lashing out and tearing through the module's walls like a knife through butter.
But, despite the wretched appearance, the most striking thing about this creature was the head embedded deep into the central blob of flesh.
It was a face that belonged to a human, with its eyes closed.
Its brain was exposed, with black veins slithering out and going into a mass of flesh the size of several footballs.
It was through those black veins that the face dangled as if someone had tried to sew the face and the mass of flesh together, but had given up midway.
[Rampager!] Miss Justice screamed in Luke's mind instantly.
That wasn't the word he liked to hear at all.
In Mr. Fool's world, Rampagers were nothing but Beyonders who had lost control, becoming monsters. The loss of control could stem from either internal or external factors and was related to the corruption that came with the Potions.
Forget about Beyonders from Mr. Fool's world; Luke himself had almost turned into a Rampager not once but several times. The last time he had lost control was when Singularity and Conformity had found him in the past, while the Radiant of Hope showed him how One For All came into being. If it hadn't been for Amon, as ironic as it sounded, then he would have all but become a Rampager, along with Nyx.
But there was one puzzle in all this.
A Rampager, a monster who had succumbed to corruption, had been… a Beyonder.
And ORIGIN's crew, no matter how many members it had, had no Beyonders among them.
Which meant the monster coming at them to rip them into pieces could be no one else but a person with a Quirk!
Just as Luke's mind finished those thoughts, the black veins attaching the brain-exposed head to the mass of flesh tightened.
With a snap, the closed eyes on that face opened.
Even without using Spirit Vision, Luke recognized the activation of a Quirk, his Danger Intuition shooting through the roof.
Nyx screamed.
A needle stabbed into Luke's head as well, making him grit his teeth.
Behind them, Mushroom-nimi's entire body swelled, gaining hundreds of boils, each containing a little mushroom with a mouth opened wide as it screamed.
A Spiritual attack!
Time stilled.
The innumerable tentacles rushed toward Luke, Nyx, and Mushroom.
At the tips of those tentacles, pus spurted, corroding wherever it landed.
If those tentacles made contact, they would pass right through the three of them.
Sadly, neither Nyx nor Mushroom-nimi had any experience in handling such an attack.
Fortunately, Luke had only recently survived a similar attack — a Wraith's Scream — not once, but twice!
As Luke's eyes reddened, as the tips of those tentacles replaced everything in his vision, he… opened his mouth and made a popping sound.
A squelch rang out as the Air Bullet struck the middle of the mutated Quirk user's head.
In the next moment, the entire head exploded into smithereens…
… bits of flesh, blood, and acidic pus flying in all directions!