Just like Shinichi predicted, it happened the very next afternoon.
Ivan was sprawled on the beach, soaking up the sea breeze and enjoying the hell out of life, when his phone rang. Shinichi's voice came through tight and urgent.
"That bastard showed up. It's chasing Uda right now. If it finds out Uda still has his human brain, it'll slaughter him without a second thought."
"I told him to run toward the beach. We'll meet there. This time we finish it for good."
"Got it. I'm on my way," Ivan replied.
He ditched the nice sunbathing session, yanked on a loose shirt, and took off toward Uda's direction.
He left the sand behind and soon spotted Uda crashing through the woods, running for his life. The poor fat fuck was already sucking wind hard. He clearly wasn't built for this shit.
The little parasite on his chin kept yelling, "Faster! Faster! It's catching up!"
"Huff.. I can't! I'm already.. ug.. going full speed!" Uda gasped, bending over with his hands on his knees, chest heaving.
"The enemy seems to have pushed the host's body to its absolute limit. It's probably a fully mature parasite," Parasyte analyzed. Then it pointed at a narrow side path. "If you want to fight, that way gives us a better chance."
The second Uda ducked into the side trail, a completely ordinary-looking woman appeared right behind him. She stared at Uda's retreating back with zero expression on her face.
"The parasite on him didn't devour his brain either. Just like that man from before."
She vanished from the spot in a blur.
At the same time, Shinichi, who was rushing over from another direction, got the heads-up from Migi. "I'm about to go into hibernation," it told him.
Migi had already warned Shinichi about this last night. It had sacrificed thirty percent of its body to repair Shinichi's heart. Those tiny split-off pieces couldn't rejoin Migi anymore, so they traveled through the blood and spread throughout Shinichi's whole system. That was why his body had suddenly gotten so much stronger.
But everything has a price. Migi now had to sleep four full hours every single day.
"This is the worst timing," Shinichi growled.
Migi picked the absolute shittiest moment to crash. No matter how hard Shinichi yelled at it, the parasite kept slipping into sleep. Right before it went completely under, Migi hardened Shinichi's right arm into a solid blade.
"That's all I can do. If you can, just run. Maybe when I wake up we'll actually have a chance against her."
Shinichi stared at his blade arm. He thought about Uda getting hunted down right now. No way was he running. He wasn't dumping the danger on someone else.
Meanwhile, Parasyte had led Uda straight to the exact spot where he'd fallen off the cliff before.
"There's no path ahead. You sure fighting here gives us any shot?" Uda panted. He had no clue why Parasyte picked this particular ledge. If things went south, they could always jump off and escape into the sea.
Plus, since the parasite was on his chin, it could handle breathing underwater. Uda's chances of surviving the fall went way up.
"She's here," Parasyte said instead of explaining. It made Uda look forward.
A woman suddenly appeared on the path they'd just come from.
"You're the third special parasite I've run into. But to me, you're still just an annoyance."
Her head split open from top to bottom in several clean cuts. The split parts instantly turned into tentacles tipped with double-bladed edges.
The blade tentacles didn't go for Uda. They whipped backward instead.
Clang! Clang!
Ivan's sneak attack failed hard. The syringes he'd flung got chopped into tiny pieces before they even got close.
"Insane reaction speed," Ivan muttered. He'd been sure she wouldn't have time to block.
The parasite had stopped every single one.
"It's you."
A vertical mouth ripped open on the woman's neck, and several eyeballs popped out, all staring straight at Ivan.
"Freak. You're pathetically weak, yet you can still morph like a parasite. What the hell are you?"
Her words made Ivan sneer. "You think you're strong? Tell me, who was the pathetic bitch that jumped off a cliff like a beaten dog a few days ago? No way… no fucking way… was that you?"
"Shut up!" the woman said coldly.
Ivan's mocking tone worked perfectly. He pulled every bit of her attention onto himself, soaking up all the aggro.
Four tentacles sprouted from her split skull and came at Ivan's heart like a goddamn hurricane, slashing nonstop.
Against that insane speed, Ivan could only defend.
Even then, the blades on both his arms got hacked full of chips and notches. Deep cuts crisscrossed his chest and sides. If he hadn't sealed the wounds fast and stopped the bleeding, he'd already be a bleeding corpse on the ground.
And this was while he was fully focused. That showed just how terrifying the female parasite really was.
One slip-up and he was dead.
"Parasyte, quit standing around!" Uda yelled.
With Uda's Parasyte jumping in, Ivan finally got some breathing room. But the female parasite was fully mature. Even fighting two at once, she never lost ground. If anything, she was slowly pushing them back.
"You're nothing compared to my unified body. Your movements are just too slow."
The female parasite's tentacles couldn't keep up that insane speed forever, even for a complete one. She finally pulled her blade tentacles back and looked at the battered pair in front of her.
Parasyte raised its own blade too, thinking quietly, "She's right. Uda's breathing is completely fucked, and it's making me tired too. Plus her attacks are weirdly simple. She keeps targeting the same spots over and over. Some kind of fetish?"
"And right now, even teaming up with Ivan, we can't beat her. Ivan's in bad shape already."
It was spot on. Ivan looked like shit.
One hand pressed hard against his wounds, the other blade arm hanging limp toward the ground. Even under the crushing pressure of death staring him in the face, he still forced a shallow smirk.
"Pretty fucking thrilling. Got my adrenaline pumping like crazy. Too bad you still couldn't finish me off."
"Oh really?"
The woman twisted her head. In a flash, one blade tentacle shot forward like lightning.
Pfft!
The tentacle punched straight through his chest and ripped back out. A thick spray of blood exploded from the hole.
Ivan's body arched backward and slammed hard into the dirt. His eyes went dull, completely lifeless.
---
Sorry about that. Changed the protagonist's stay time from the original two weeks to five months. The outline was to have the protagonist enter the Parasyte world twice, but it would've felt too disjointed, so it got revised.
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Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69