"It's over! Humanity's finished!" Seeing Joseph go down, the Nazi officer Stroheim let out a wail like he'd just been told his parents were dead, his whole body trembling.
It wasn't death he feared—it was what came after. The future. The despair waiting for humankind.
Because he, Rudol von Stroheim—the man who had personally unleashed a being that stood utterly above humanity, the Pillar Men—would go down as mankind's sinner.
"D-Damn it…" Joseph tried to push himself up, but the wound in his chest was too severe. His vision swam black, and he nearly passed out on the spot.
"Grandpa Speedwagon… Grandma Erina… I can't fall here." Sheer willpower kept JoJo barely conscious, but fighting on like this was nothing but a fool's fantasy.
"With injuries like that, even the first JoJo would've been helpless—let alone against a Pillar Man, something far more terrifying than a vampire." Nearby, Speedwagon shut his eyes in despair. All that was left now was to wait for death.
And yet… after waiting and waiting, the final blow never came.
Uneasy, he opened his eyes—only to find Santana hadn't continued the attack. Instead, the Pillar Man was staring at the young man who'd come with JoJo, his expression oddly grave.
Santana spoke. "You… your magnetic field is strange… completely different from these primitive humans… maybe… if I assimilate you… I'll evolve further… become stronger than those three."
"Is that so?" Ray Chu vanished in a blur and appeared behind Santana. His ten fingers swept across Santana's back like a pianist's hands, tapping dozens of hidden points in the space of a heartbeat.
But Santana only scratched his back like nothing had happened, tilted his head, and said, "Are you scratching an itch for me? Even if you try to please me, I will still assimilate you."
In that short time, his speech had already smoothed out.
"…" As expected. A Pillar Man's body was built nothing like a human's. Pressure points that would drop a normal man didn't even register.
In that case, the only way to beat him was to force him into his true form.
But that grotesque assimilating ability… Ray Chu couldn't say he was confident he could escape it cleanly, even with his own skills.
"I don't know what you're thinking," Santana said, his face unchanged, "but my brain tells me the best choice is to assimilate you immediately."
The next instant, the muscles along his spine split open like a blooming flower. Pale, bony structures sprouted and multiplied at a horrifying speed, spreading outward like a cage snapping shut around Ray Chu.
Ray Chu retreated like lightning, but Santana followed like a shadow—looking as if he wouldn't stop until Ray Chu was absorbed.
"Careful! You've got a wall behind you!"
With the two of them about to slam into the base wall and nowhere left to give, Ray Chu suddenly twisted, planted his feet against the stone in rapid succession, and kicked up—ending up upside down on the ceiling, as if gravity had simply let him go.
Santana, unable to stop his momentum, smashed bodily into the wall with a dull boom. The razor-sharp bones on his back sank into stone as easily as cutting tofu.
Santana was stuck. Ray Chu didn't attack right away—he moved to Joseph's side instead.
"You dead?"
Joseph forced his muscles to knot, temporarily sealing the wound in his chest. He managed a strained smile. "Not dead yet. What about you—can you handle that thing?"
Ray Chu hesitated.
Then Joseph suddenly slapped a hand onto his shoulder. A strange ripple—Hamon—flowed from Joseph's palm into Ray Chu, gathering and settling in the center of his chest and abdomen.
Ray Chu looked over in surprise. Joseph smiled bitterly. "That's my last Hamon. I'm counting on you."
On the other side, Santana—embedded in the wall like a relief—seemed to finish his own thinking. He shifted, and the stone behind him shattered into chunks as he tore himself free.
Their eyes met.
The next instant, Santana sprinted across the floor, terrifying pressure packed into his fist as he hammered toward Ray Chu.
But something astonishing happened.
Santana's punches were fast and vicious, yet no matter what he did, he couldn't land a hit. Ray Chu's body swayed and slipped with razor precision, dodging every strike by a hair.
Seeing his attacks fail, Santana didn't keep flailing. He cocked his head and asked Ray Chu, "Have primitive humans already evolved to this level?"
"No." It wasn't evolution. It was Ray Chu's martial instinct—reading the line of the punch a fraction ahead and moving first.
Aside from the one doing it, the only person who truly understood what had just happened was JoJo.
A Pillar Man's raw specs were beyond human limits—there was no question of that. But a creature that had never learned martial arts… how could it grasp the principle of anticipating an enemy?
"Humans… really can surpass vampires… even Pillar Men… through learning…" In that moment, JoJo finally understood what Ray Chu had said earlier.
With an IQ of 400, Santana quickly worked out the real reason. "You calculated my attack trajectory? Then how about this!"
His body moved like it had no bones as he whipped out a kick. Ray Chu dodged like before—but Santana's right leg suddenly extended midair at terrifying speed, like a heavy truck slamming into him, and kicked Ray Chu flying.
"Not good!" Speedwagon and Joseph both cried out—but in the next moment, Ray Chu sprang back up, a thin thread of blood at the corner of his mouth.
Santana's gaze flickered, fixing on Ray Chu's chest and abdomen. He crossed his legs and put both hands behind his head in a strange pose.
"So that's it. It's that Hamon protecting you."
The instant he'd kicked Ray Chu, he'd tried to assimilate him—and had been repelled again.
"In that case…" Santana surged forward once more. This time his target was Joseph on the ground—his hand spearing for Joseph's head.
Bang!
His knife-hand was intercepted midair by another fist. Blood spattered as Ray Chu bared his teeth in a grin. "This one's for you!"
The next second, Ray Chu's other fist—packed with Hamon—smashed into Santana's head.
The force snapped Santana's head back violently, and his skull seemed to melt, spreading outward—
"We won!"
"No—!" The two reactions collided almost at the same time. But Ray Chu and Joseph, closest of all, went pale—because that punch had carried none of the feeling of hitting something solid.
Santana's face had flattened, his head twisted at an impossible angle. His arms suddenly wrapped around Ray Chu's body as he murmured, "Caught you."
"H-How is Hamon completely ineffective on him?!" Speedwagon cried in disbelief.
"It's not that." Joseph spoke through clenched teeth. "Look—the blood on the ground!"
"Hamon is flowing off his surface into the floor and affecting the blood—like rain on a raincoat. It just runs right off!"
"Too weak…" Speedwagon's voice cracked as the truth hit him, despair and frustration flooding in. "It was the last bit of Hamon JoJo could pass on—there isn't enough to break through Santana's skin."
At that moment, the Nazi officer Stroheim suddenly shouted, abandoning Speedwagon as he sprinted toward the stairway beside the passage.
His escape drew little notice. Everyone present had their eyes locked on Santana.
With both hands clamped around Ray Chu, the Pillar Man—expressionless from the moment he appeared—showed joy for the first time.
Because at that very instant, his body, his cells, and the genes carved into his deepest core were screaming with delight.
"I can feel it… this deliciousness… become one with me. Become an Ultimate Life Form."
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