Just moments ago.
After crashing into the sand, Evelyn found herself face-to-face with the towering mutant brute. She knew there was no chance of resisting—how could someone with such slender arms and legs possibly fight a three-meter-tall giant?
When she shut her eyes, she could only scream in her mind, I'm done for, certain her life was about to end in this barren desert.
Yet…
The attack she was expecting never came.
Still trapped in despair, Evelyn wondered if death itself could feel this drawn-out, when suddenly she heard the heavy thud of something hitting the ground.
The earth even seemed to tremble a few times. Only when Herman's slightly amused voice sounded did she, still trembling with panic, dare to open her eyes.
The first thing she saw was Herman calmly wiping his palm with a tissue. Then her gaze was drawn to the mutant's massive corpse sprawled across the sand like a fallen mountain.
Even without being a forensic expert, Evelyn could tell the difference between life and death—the brute was unmistakably dead.
Blood flowed freely from his enormous body, staining the surrounding sand crimson. On his chest and back, a large, gaping wound was visible, as though something had punched straight through him.
"You… what did you do to him?" Evelyn's voice quivered with disbelief. She hadn't seen what happened before the mutant fell, and she couldn't imagine what Herman had used to punch a hole through that monster's body.
Though she'd learned plenty of astonishing things from Herman along the way, her imagination still had its limits.
The idea of someone blasting through another person's chest bare-handed was inconceivable to her. She could only assume Herman had used some kind of powerful weapon—perhaps a high-caliber gun hidden in that "storage space" of his, or maybe some enchanted staff or magical artifact only a wizard could wield. Evelyn felt she had already stretched her imagination as far as it could go.
"I don't really like using firearms… except maybe a blue-flamed gatling gun. Why would a mighty Dark Lord like me need to rely on technology?"
Herman could easily read Evelyn's surface thoughts, so he already knew exactly what was running through her mind.
"Then what weapon did you use…? Wait—what the hell!? You can read minds too!?"
At first, Evelyn didn't even realize what had happened. Still rattled by the mutant's attack, she had asked out of curiosity—only to realize something terrifying. She hadn't actually said her thoughts out loud.
She replayed the moment in her mind several times and was absolutely certain she'd only thought those words. So how did this smug, unpredictable wizard of an employer know exactly what she was thinking? Besides mind reading, she couldn't think of any other explanation.
"Strictly speaking, it's called thought probing," Herman said with a raised brow. "But if you prefer to call it mind reading, that's fine—I do possess that ability."
For a moment, Evelyn's expression became priceless. She opened her mouth several times without speaking, her face flushing bright red.
"What kind of insane power is that?! How can you have something so twisted!?" Her voice trembled in disbelief, and she didn't even dare look him in the eyes.
Well...
To her, mind reading probably required eye contact. Lacking any real understanding of the supernatural, she didn't realize Herman could probe anyone's mind—at any time, from any distance—so long as they lacked mental defenses.
It just went to show how limited ordinary imagination could be. Even with her relatively open mind, Evelyn still couldn't grasp the extent of Herman's power.
"A wizard who can read minds sounds perfectly reasonable to me," Herman said casually. "As for how I killed that guy… I just gave him a light punch."
His tone was so sincere that it almost sounded believable. When he'd attacked the mutant brute, he really had used only the faintest bit of strength.
A body harder than steel? To Herman, even real steel might as well have been tofu.
"You ambushed him from behind? Don't joke around. With an injury like that, you must've used some kind of absurdly sharp weapon!"
Evelyn's face was full of suspicion. True to her role as the heroine of The Mummy series—the reincarnation of a clever and courageous Egyptian princess—she showed no fear now, even after nearly bursting into tears moments ago when the mutant brute had cornered her.
As she spoke to Herman, she crawled over to the mutant's corpse and poked it with her finger. Feeling the iron-hard texture of his muscles, Evelyn became even more convinced that Herman must have used some kind of weapon.
There was no way human strength alone could pierce through a body so grotesquely mutated.
"Could you put that a little more nicely? What do you mean 'ambush'? He just didn't react in time. I attacked him fair and square," Herman said, correcting her with a perfectly straight face.
"And why are you still crawling on the ground? Humanity spent millions of years evolving to walk on two legs. Are you having some kind of evolutionary relapse?" Herman gave her a puzzled look as she crept around in the sand.
His teasing remark made Evelyn's face turn as red as a ripe apple.
Of course she wanted to stand up, but her legs still felt weak after being scared half to death, so she had stayed on the ground this whole time.
"Sand is… very clean. I… I just feel like staying down here a little longer," Evelyn muttered stubbornly, clinging to her last shred of pride.
"..."
What could Herman even say to that? Compliment her for having a youthful spirit?
He could only give her a thumbs-up. Just as he was about to quietly count how long Evelyn could keep lying there, a furious shout erupted from the excavation team.
"Damn you filthy mortals! How dare you lay a hand on Charlie!"
The mutants working on the pyramid had finally noticed something was wrong. The burly mutant who'd gone to deal with Herman and Evelyn hadn't returned victorious. Instead, he lay lifeless in the sand—and that sight instantly enraged the others.
One mutant who had been clearing debris near the top of the pyramid spread the gray wings on his back and swooped down, landing beside the fallen brute.
When he saw the gaping hole in Charlie's chest, his expression changed drastically. He pointed at Herman and Evelyn, shouting hysterically,
"Impossible! How could you have killed him!?"
His voice carried across the excavation site, drawing the attention of the other mutants. The followers of Apocalypse turned in alarm and began running toward him.
Earlier, they had all assumed the hulking mutant would easily take care of Herman and Evelyn. None of them had even bothered to look back once he'd gone to do the job.
Now that the pyramid was nearly unearthed, their only focus had been on preparing for the awakening of their great god, Apocalypse.
But something none of them could have imagined had just happened.
In the blink of an eye, Charlie—the strongest and most durable among them—was dead. His death had come so fast that he hadn't even managed to send out a psychic distress signal through their shared link.
"Be careful. They might have some kind of advanced tech weapon," the pipe-smoking mutant warned, his voice tight with caution.
He was familiar enough with the rapid progress of modern science, but even so, he couldn't understand how Herman and Evelyn had managed to kill someone like Charlie. With his physical strength and durability, he should have been completely immune to conventional weapons.
"Lowly, worthless ants! I don't care what weapons they have! Under my sonic waves—"
A woman with ears resembling a bat's shouted furiously, but before she could finish, her head suddenly exploded.
Boom!
Like a smashed watermelon, blood and brain matter splattered across the other mutants nearby, drenching them in a sticky mess before they even had time to react.
This, of course, was Herman's doing. He had only been testing his psychic power, not expecting it to deliver such a devastating physical effect.
Perhaps because these mutants were so low-tier, the sonic woman had been instantly reduced to a headless corpse under the sheer force of his psychic assault.
"No!"
The winged mutant—apparently her lover—was the first to recover from the shock that froze the others. Fear and disbelief twisted together in his mind as he refused to accept what he'd just witnessed.
"You… you bastard!"
The winged mutant's voice was filled with grief and fury. He didn't know how the woman had been killed so suddenly, but he was certain one of the two humans before him was responsible.
Flapping his wings, he shot into the air.
Then, with a piercing cry, he dove straight down at Herman and Evelyn.
"I hate bird people."
As the winged mutant's clawed hands closed in, Herman moved with a speed no one could follow.
"Your wings are an eyesore."
Catching the mutant's arm mid-swing, Herman yanked him downward and slammed him into the sand.
He planted a foot on the mutant's back, seized both gray wings in his hands, and with effortless strength, tore them clean off—like ripping apart fried chicken wings, leaving behind a spray of blood and a gruesome mess.
...
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