Chapter 418: The next meal
A long time ago, Ryan had been told that his Altered was special. It was normal for people to say this to their child but in his case, it was more true than others. His Altered form had come from a rare beast that was related to the Silverback Gorilla. Those great apes were one of the most natural and strongest beasts in the current world. Although many might argue about lions being the ones deserving of the title ‘king of the jungle’, without a doubt gorillas could claim that crown if they wanted.
The reason they didn’t was that most gorillas were peaceful by nature. Nevertheless, in terms of strength, a regular gorilla could match nearly two dozen humans combined. Now, take their ancestors, who had been far bigger in size and more ferocious and use its DNA to create an Altered, and the result would be an apex predator, especially in the right hands. This was what Ryan had been taught.
However, he was second guessing all of that right now, since the ‘ordinary’ human in front of him had survived so many of his attacks. The Gorilla Altered had fought against Altered whose defence had been their strongest trait, yet even they had been unable to take that many punches without it affecting them. Meanwhile, Gary looked like they had all been love taps. To top it all off, he was currently losing in a battle of strength.
‘How… how is he able to hold my hands like so? I know I haven't fully unlocked my power yet, but this is crazy. What type of Altered is this guy?!’ Ryan questioned. His transformed hands were starting to hurt, and it was difficult to uphold the current standstill.
‘Am I going to lose to this guy? How can I call myself the second strongest if I get defeated by some grunt who just came out of the facility!’ The Altered was fuming at that thought. ‘No, I can't lose. I’m at the top for a reason, and I’m going to continue being at the top!’
With these thoughts in his head, Ryan had decided to change his tactic, and stopped using just his brute strength. As he said to himself earlier, winning was the only thing that mattered.
He couldn't just think of Gary as someone at the facility, but as someone he needed to beat. At that moment, both of Ryan's arms started to shrink. They were getting smaller in size as he decided to revert his Altered form.
The others felt like this was a little strange, if he couldn't compete with Gary while he was transformed, how was he going to beat him without? However, what it did do, as both his arms were shrinking, was close the distance between the two.
“Are you going to do something, or just hold me all day!'' Ryan shouted directly into Gary's face now the two of them were locked in arm to arm. Gary was holding onto Ryan’s forearm, and he was doing the same thing back, but it was strange to everyone that Gary had yet to do anything.
That's when, Ryan opened up his large mouth, and it started to change, his canines grew outward until they were almost as big as a walrus’ tusks. They were curved sharper and would have the power of Ryan's jaw behind them. He bit down right into Gary's shoulder, They went through his whole body with ease. The pain this time was greater than any wound Gary had received before.
[-30HP]
[55/300 HP]
This one had hurt, and the scrunched up look in Gary’s face showed that. On reflection he had pushed Ryan off him, taking his teeth out of his body. It was a strong shove that had sent Ryan close to the back of the cage.
[Your blood loss has increased]
[-3 HP for every minute that passes unless something is done to address the wound]
[Emergency healing is unable to be used due to low Energy]
From behind, the others could see two large holes just underneath where his traps were. They could only imagine how much it must have hurt, but what was even more worrying was the amount of blood that had already split onto the floor.
“Stop the fight.” A voice said, shakey, when Ian looked at who had said those words he could see it was Izzy, and she was almost on the verge of tears.
“What are you doing, stop the fight!” Izzy said. “Can't you see his life is in danger, this is just a student match, not a real AFC match with a title on the line? Stop the fight!”
The female student was pleading to Eddy, but all she could see was a huge smile on his face.
“Stop it? Have you seen Gary? Does that look like the face of a person who wants me to stop this match?” Eddy retorted.
When they turned to look back in the ring, they could see that Gary had his head down, his arm over his wound, applying pressure. He was huffing and panting quite heavy, his chest rising up and down. When lifting his head, his eyes were glowing red. What’s more, the pupils had narrowed like a wolf, and his teeth had sharpened.
Gary had taken a low stance with his arms spread out, the fur on his arms had grown past his forearms and were growing up his shoulders as his biceps got slightly larger. The next, he finally went on the offensive by running straight toward Ryan.
The sick feeling returned in Shingi’s stomach, and he could no longer stay quiet.
“Eddy, you need to stop the fight! Ryan, get the hell out of there!”
Alas, the warning came too late, the Werewolf’s clawed hand was headed straight for Ryan’s chest, more specifically to the place his heart would be.
“GARY, STOP!!!” Xin screamed at the top of her lungs.
At the last moment, a shred of sanity allowed Gary to realise what he was about to do. Before his hunger took over again, he did what he could to change the trajectory of his attack. Were it not for Ryan subconsciously listening to his rival’s warning, and being in the midst of rolling out of the way, this would have been it.
As it was, the Werewolf’s attack merely scratched the Altered’s chest before the claw ripped right through the specially built cage. The material used in its construction was sturdier than the black bag, making it suited for Altered fights, or at least it should have been enough for the students…
Moving his hand, Gary cut through the entire gate causing a large slash, turning and looking at Ryan again. His eyes were back to glowing red. Even Xin’s shouting from the side did nothing to calm him down at that very moment.
“Screw this!” Numba shouted as he ran forward. The Goat Altered entered the damaged cage and transformed before placing himself between the Werewolf and Ryan.
“Stop, Gary! The fight is over! There’s no need to continue!” Numba tried to reason with his friend. “You asked me to stop you, remember? Let’s just go, ok?”
Too bad that the only thing the red eyed creature registered was that a tasty morsel had just volunteered as its hors d'oeuvres.
*****
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