"Hey, talk to me... hm?"
Alistair waited, thinking the man was just a rare tough nut to crack. He was about to grind his heel into the man's ribs to "encourage" him, but he noticed the man's expression was blank, his eyes vacant.
What is this? An anti-leak mechanism?
Alistair immediately thought of sealing techniques from certain ninja shows. This guy was a common thug; he shouldn't have the willpower to resist an interrogation like this.
Fine. If I can't get info, I'll just recycle the waste.
Alistair raised his hand to finish him off. He had little sympathy for people like this—he barely considered them human.
Splat! Squish! Pop!
Suddenly, several black tentacles erupted from the man's body, lashing out to entwine Alistair's arm.
DOOOM!
An invisible ripple expanded, and everything ground to a halt.
Punch!
Alistair's fist punched straight through the man's chest. Without a moment's hesitation, he kicked off the body, using the momentum to hurl himself away from the "corpse."
Doom.
Time began to flow again.
Whoosh!
A fountain of blood sprayed from the hole in the man's chest, but the tentacles didn't wither. Instead, they thrashed wildly, clawing at the air toward Alistair.
Fuck! This is the actual entity!
Alistair retreated several steps. These things were soft-bodied; punching them would be useless, and getting entangled would likely lead to a world of trouble.
Destroy the container, and you destroy the guest.
Alistair looked at the corpse. These tentacles were feeding on the man's soul. No wonder he looked so brain-dead; his very will had been digested.
Is this a modification or a parasite?
He dismissed [The World] and began to circle the body. The tentacles seemed to have a maximum range of about four meters. They retracted as he moved away. [The World]'s effective range was only three meters. He was just a bit short.
Alistair glanced at the two punks who were paralyzed with fear nearby.
"Hey, can you see those things?" Alistair pointed at the thrashing black limbs.
"We didn't see anything! We didn't see anything! Please don't kill us!" They wailed, slamming their heads into the pavement.
"Fine, get lost. And make sure nobody comes near this place."
"Yes, sir!" They scrambled away in the opposite direction.
Alistair realized they couldn't see the tentacles. They just saw Alistair kill a man, leap away, and then stare intensely at a corpse like a psychopath. They only obeyed because they were terrified of his strength.
Alistair waited until the tentacles retracted slightly, then lunged into the four-meter zone.
The black limbs surged toward him like hyenas sensing rotting meat.
DOOM!
A foot away from impact, time stopped again.
Ignoring the deepening sense of nausea from overusing his ability, Alistair stepped right up to the corpse and summoned [The World] at point-blank range.
Ora Ora Ora Ora!
In a single second, he unleashed a barrage of punches that turned 90% of the corpse into unrecognizable pulp. He used the last fraction of a second to leap back.
Doom.
Time resumed. Alistair was clear of the attack range.
As time flowed, the remains of the man disintegrated into a bloody mess. The tentacles fell limp on the ground.
Wait... they're not disappearing?!
The base of the tentacles detached from the pulped remains and retracted into a dense, pitch-black sphere. Before Alistair could react, the sphere sank into the ground as if the pavement were water.
Did I just... help it? Alistair stared at the "mosaic" on the ground, silent.
This was a run-down district; nobody would be around until the evening commute. But he couldn't leave this mess here. Calling Hiza's corporate cleaners was an option, but Hiza was a figurehead; he needed a real professional. He called Kamekura.
"Thirty minutes? People will find it by then. Forget it, I'll do it myself."
Alistair hung up. This place was too remote for Kamekura's men to reach quickly.
He summoned [The World] one more time, smashed the surrounding pavement into a crater, shoved the remains inside, and buried them. Then, he used the Horse Talisman's power to "restore" the ground. It wasn't perfect—there was some gravel and loose dirt—but it looked like minor roadwork.
Alistair brushed off his clothes and headed for the station. He needed to talk to Seraphina and Alisa. They had books on the supernatural; maybe they knew what that thing was.