Once the black substance encased its entire body and those fleshy wings finished sprouting, G-Nemesis moved beyond anything biological. It moved beyond anything possible.
Ryan didn't even have time to pull the trigger. The last frame his retinas registered was the dark red energy network inside the creature's body detonating where it stood.
"BOOM!"
A muffled shockwave roared past his ears. He had no idea how the monster crossed thirty meters, only that his chest caved inward like a battering ram had hit him dead center. That horrific kinetic force poured through his ribcage without mercy, and even though his skin didn't split and his bones didn't break, the sheer wall of impact blanked his brain instantly.
His whole body flew backward and slammed into the stump of a fractured reinforced concrete pillar.
Thud.
He could see it coming. He just couldn't dodge.
Ryan clenched his teeth so hard they ached, the doubled images in his vision shaking violently. His perception could predict every strike, but ordinary human nerve response speed against an ultimate bioweapon was like crawling through mud.
Before he could struggle to his feet, the black rain overhead froze mid-fall.
G-Nemesis loomed above him like a collapsing mountain, its massive frame blotting out the sky. The translucent flesh-wings woven from bone-white spurs snapped shut, and the gust they kicked up whipped his hair across his face.
The monster didn't roar. Those eyes swimming with black substance held nothing but cold, methodical brutality. It raised its mutated right arm, thicker than a barrel, and brought it screaming down toward Ryan on the ground.
All he could do was cross both arms over his chest on instinct.
"KRAKOOOM!"
The earth heaved. The crystallized ground beneath him cratered on impact.
Pain.
Pain that bored through muscle and scraped against bone.
His muscles seized in violent, uncontrollable spasms. G-Nemesis seemed to have developed a profound irritation with this bug that wouldn't break. It grabbed Ryan by the ankle, hoisted him upside down, and swung him through the wreckage like a ragdoll, smashing him into everything in reach.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
A junked car on the left crumpled inward. A concrete wall on the right exploded into powder.
Ryan whipped through the air, battered from every direction, the omnidirectional blunt trauma nearly stripping him of the ability to think.
BANG.
One final heave, and the monster slammed him into the crater's edge.
He tumbled across the ground several times before stopping, sprawled spread-eagle on the scorched earth, chest heaving. He didn't have the strength to move a single finger. The pain had hijacked his body completely. His palm went numb, and the 9mm slipped from his grip, clattering into the rubble beside him.
Heavy footsteps closed in again.
G-Nemesis stopped beside him. It seemed to confirm the prey had lost all capacity to resist; the massive eyeball in the center of its chest, wrapped in black substance, fixed on Ryan where he lay.
It raised its left arm slowly. Three bone-white claws, each several meters long, gleamed with a reaper's cold edge under the dark red light. It intended to shred this annoyingly durable thing into pieces.
The claws rose high, aimed at his chest, and stabbed down.
Ryan lay on his back watching them fall, his pupils contracting to pinpoints.
The bone claws closed to less than half a meter from his skin. The razor wind off their tips had already sheared the hair from his forehead.
And then...
DING.
A single chime, impossibly clear, almost ethereal, as if broadcast from another dimension entirely, detonated in the deepest recesses of his mind.
A savage, unprecedented force erupted from his marrow, drowning out the layered phantom pain in an instant. There was no time to think.
He snapped his trembling right hand up, didn't bother reaching for the gun, just pressed his fingers together and swung to meet the descending bone spike head-on.
"BOOM!"
An earth-shattering crack.
The spike that should have punched clean through his chest shattered the instant it touched his fingertips, disintegrating inch by inch like brittle glass.
A shockwave rippled outward from his fingers in a perfect ring.
G-Nemesis's massive frame rocked backward from a single unadorned strike. The black substance coating its entire right arm vaporized into dust the moment it made contact, annihilated by a force that had no business existing at this scale.
True damage. The kind that didn't belong to any caliber or any power tier.
Ryan rose from the ground. His right hand still trembled, but the instinct that he now held something lethal, something absolute, burned the cold edge in his eyes into something unhinged.
"That was fun for you, huh?"
He rolled his stiff neck, and a slow, frigid grin split his face.
He didn't back away. He stepped forward.
G-Nemesis let out a low, uncertain growl. The flesh-wings on its back beat frantically, and dozens of tentacles thrashed like a demon's limbs, sealing off every possible retreat.
Ryan watched the avalanche of tentacles raining down and didn't flinch. He raised his hand again, his expression calm as stagnant water.
"My turn now. How do you want to die, you piece of shit?"