Had this confrontation taken place on solid ground, or in a desolate, abandoned facility, the Dawn Knight would have already deployed a catastrophic, definitive solution.
He had the means to incinerate the regenerating vampire—whether by flash-heating it with focused microwave energy to 30,000 degrees Celsius or by generating an intense, corrosive heat beam exceeding 100,000 degrees Celsius.
Failing that, a simple, powerful application of telekinesis could envelop the creature and banish it from Earth entirely; no biological organism, not even this variant, could survive the hard vacuum and lack of energy in deep space.
But the unyielding reality was that this monster was currently trapped within a colossal metallic vessel, cruising at six thousand meters, an airship packed with hundreds of unwitting human souls.
Every effective, terminal method Zhou Yi possessed was rendered obsolete, neutralized by the necessity of preserving human life and the pressurized hull.
The slightest misuse of his high-powered abilities—a fraction too much heat, an uncontrolled ripple of kinetic force—would tear the fuselage open, damning everyone aboard. His own telekinetic defense, while powerful enough to compress the wreckage, was insufficient to contain the forces unleashed by his most potent weapons.
Moreover, conventional physical attacks were proving terrifyingly ineffective against this new, grotesque form of vampirism.
Within the sphere of compressed debris, the giant Asa was stubbornly, impossibly alive. His bodily tissues were spilling out in distorted shapes, a gruesome, tangled tapestry of raw muscle, splintered bone, and hyper-reactive nerve tissue that fought against the containment field.
The mass was desperately attempting to push forward, resisting Zhou Yi's telekinetic power with a persistent, unnerving stubbornness.
This resistance was exponentially stronger than anything a mere physical body should possess. Zhou Yi's telekinesis, when fully applied, could generate hundreds of tons of localized kinetic pressure.
The fact that the monster could make this exertion difficult indicated that its entire cellular structure had mutated to an exponentially terrifying degree, gaining an inherent, decentralized anti-kinetic resilience.
Zhou Yi focused every facet of his formidable will. He could not afford to allow this creature any further opportunity to adapt. The changes the vampire had already undergone were shocking; before the R-variant could transition to its next unknown evolutionary phase, he had to eliminate it entirely.
The compressed debris cage began to shudder violently under the dual forces—the crushing pressure from the Knight and the fierce, outward-pushing force from the regenerative tissue inside. The structural metal within the wreckage whined and groaned, reaching its yield limit.
Zhou Yi ignored the warnings, redoubling his mental focus. The entire debris mass collapsed inward again, brutally eliminating the last pockets of survival space the monster had created.
The monster's cries intensified, rising from the cage with a piercing, inhuman quality. As the sphere grew tighter, the wails climbed to a frequency that was physically painful, prompting passengers in the outer rows to instinctively clamp their hands over their ears. Yet, the sound seemed to pierce through the bone, reaching deep into the mind.
Many people began to suffer sharp, stabbing pains in their heads, a sensation that felt less like an auditory stimulus and more like a direct, agonizing vibration on their cerebral senses. Those with sensitive nervous systems suffered immediate nosebleeds, a clear sign of mild, acute cerebral trauma.
Zhou Yi, protected by his armor's internal dampeners, still registered the disturbance. It was a chaotic, aimless fluctuation of mental energy—the very essence of telekinesis, but uncontrolled and dispersed.
In its death throes, the monster had passively awakened its dormant psychic potential, but without a cohesive mind to channel it, the power simply radiated outward as a destructive psychic shriek.
This was the third time Zhou Yi had witnessed an unprompted, passive mutation in the creature in less than five minutes. Each external pressure—UV light, physical impact, telekinetic containment—resulted in an evolutionary leap.
This was not an animal; this was a rapidly adaptive, terrifyingly efficient biological machine that bypassed the natural laws of genetics.
If such a monster were allowed to proliferate, it would not just dominate; it would render all other life forms obsolete.
Damaginos had not merely created a new warrior; he had recklessly opened a terrifying gateway to hell.
Zhou Yi clenched his fist, pouring all his energy into the crushing force. The internal resistance of the Beast-Staff was fading. It had lost all its structural integrity, fighting not as a cohesive body, but as a dense, fragmented mass. The internal destruction was terminal.
With a final, sickening crunch, the debris cage suddenly burst, the pressure no longer containing the contents. The organism's tissues poured out in a viscous, gelatinous flood that resembled a mud puddle mixed with dark, venous fluids.
The mess quickly spread over the deck, submerging the wreckage and snaking into the crevices of the cabin floor. The sheer volume of the outpouring—far exceeding the mass of the original man—was horrifying.
Based on every observation, the creature was dead. The original brain and heart tissue had been completely pulverized, indistinguishably mixed with other vital organs in the oozing puddle of flesh. Asa's consciousness was annihilated; the pile was nothing more than highly aggressive, rotting biomatter.
Despite the foul, repulsive scene, the passengers on the periphery erupted in a wave of relieved, fervent cheering. Their gratitude was absolute; their hero, the Dawn Knight, had defeated the nightmare and saved their lives.
In their admiration, a young man, impulsive and energized by the adrenaline of survival, broke past the perimeter and rushed toward his idol, phone raised to capture a photo of the Knight and the wreckage.
The moment of his approach, however, triggered a reaction not from a single sentient mind, but from the ground itself.
The invisible mental surge began again, radiating from the puddle of flesh, but this time it was different. It was not a single, agonizing scream, but a chaotic, unified hum.
Zhou Yi instantly recognized the truth: as Asa's consciousness died, every single piece of his organic tissue, every fragment of bone and nerve, had acquired its own individual will.
These countless, infinitesimal consciousnesses shared a singular, profound biological instinct: hunger. The approaching human worshipper was not an admirer; he was food, a necessary fuel source for the critically wounded, regenerating collective organism.
A mass of flesh and tissue, resembling a chaotic mixture of tentacles and spider silk, erupted from the muddy, viscous puddle.
It shot forward with impossible velocity, the finest tips of the limb making a sharp tearing sound as they broke the sound barrier. Its target was the unsuspecting, reckless human rushing toward the Knight.
Zhou Yi reacted instantaneously, deploying his full telekinetic field around the fan, attempting to block the projectile. The field, usually an impenetrable barrier of kinetic force, met the multi-limbed, supersonic flesh—and failed.
It didn't shatter the field. Instead, the flesh-and-blood mixture seemed to neutralize it. Zhou Yi felt his powerful energy resonate with the combined, subtle vibrations of the countless individual psychic wills within the tentacle.
This resonance caused his immense, focused kinetic power to lose all physical efficacy. The barrier vanished, not broken, but cancelled out.
The composite tentacle continued its thrust, unimpeded, a terrifying demonstration of the R-variant's evolved defense mechanism against its creator's greatest weakness.
Zhou Yi knew he was a step too late to pull the man to complete safety. He managed to shove the man aside with a burst of retracting telekinesis, but the supersonic tip of the tentacle still slammed into the human's shoulder.
The impact was devastatingly precise. The tiny, hardened tip shattered the man's fragile biological defenses and pierced his entire shoulder. Staring down in shock, the man barely stifled a scream.
He watched, horrified, as the mixture of flesh and blood lodged within him began to pulse rhythmically, drawing blood and fluids through its thin, translucent membrane.
The embedded tip, retaining its own parasitic, strange sentience, was slowly, deliberately working its way deeper into the man's circulatory system.
The victim was paralyzed by a terrifying cocktail of pain and a strange, itching, tingling sensation deep within the wound.
Zhou Yi was upon him in an instant. He could not use brute force to pull the parasite out, fearing he might extract vital nerves or blood vessels along with it.
With surgical, high-speed precision, he deployed the sharpened edge of his adamantium spearhead (which the armor always carried) and cleanly sliced through the tentacle at the point where it met the skin.
The main mass of flesh on the floor trembled violently as its connection was severed, emitting a fresh surge of painful mental energy.
More alarmingly, the severed tip of the tentacle—the part now hopelessly buried within the wounded man's shoulder—retained its independent, predatory consciousness. It was still pulsing, still burrowing, and now it was completely separated from the central mass.
Zhou Yi looked from the wounded man to the horrifying puddle of sentient, feeding flesh on the floor. The crisis had escalated dramatically.
He had not just contained a monster; he had unwittingly created a self-aware, solar-powered parasitic organism that was currently feeding on an innocent passenger—a creature that his telekinetic shield could not stop.
He was losing control of the plane, the mission, and the ethical rules that governed his existence. He had to stop the internal invasion and contain the primary threat without further damage to the aircraft.