TN: First of all, I want to apologize for disappearing for almost two months without saying anything.
A lot of things happened during that time. I had to deal with my thesis, school requirements, final defense, final examinations, and, finally, graduation. Needless to say, it was an extremely busy and exhausting period for me.
There were also times when I was technically free, but I was either too tired to translate anything or I had to deal with some personal problems, so I just couldn't bring myself to work on it.
I know that isn't much of an excuse, especially since I wasn't able to let everyone know what was going on, and I'm genuinely sorry for that. I know some of you have been waiting patiently for updates, and I really appreciate all of you for sticking around.
I also want to reassure everyone that I have absolutely no intention of dropping this fic. I love this story far too much to abandon it, and I fully intend to continue translating it.
I can't promise a perfectly consistent schedule, but I can promise that I'll continue working on it.
Thank you all for your patience, and I hope you'll continue to enjoy the story alongside me.
Anyway, that's all from me. Sorry for the long note, and enjoy the chapter!
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No matter how dazed Peter was by the impossible sight before him, the battle raged on.
Ken Kaneki slowly stepped forward toward the massive pile of rubble, his four crimson Kagune tentacles writhing behind him. He looked at the debris with cold, indifferent eyes. "What's the matter? Is that all you have?"
Crash!
"Gehahaha!"
The pile of gravel exploded outward as Venom rose again. His dark, liquid-like body shifted and writhed, forming terrifying, exaggerated muscles. His jaw unhinged, revealing a blood-red maw and a slithering tongue.
"Boy, you've pissed me off! Your attacks are useless!"
Kaneki narrowed his eyes. He noticed that the gaping holes his Kagune had punched through Venom's chest had already completely sealed. The black matter had simply woven itself back together, leaving no trace of the injury under the pale moonlight.
'Regeneration?' Kaneki thought calmly.
"Hahaha, come here!" Venom roared to the sky. His milky-white eyes narrowed into vicious slits, and his jagged grin stretched so far it looked like it would cut his head in half.
Moving with lightning speed, Venom threw his arms out. Two thick strands of black symbiote webbing—harder and more flexible than Peter's white webs—shot out and latched onto two exposed steel rebars protruding from the ruined walls. With a violent yank, Venom ripped them out of the concrete and hurled them at Kaneki like massive javelins.
Whoosh—!
The sheer physical force behind the throw made the steel bars whistle sharply as they pierced the air, looking like streaks of black light in the moonlit church.
'I can't take those head-on,' Kaneki assessed instantly.
His Rinkaku—the tentacle-type Kagune—boasted immense striking power and regeneration, but it lacked the dense, shield-like defensive capabilities of a Koukaku. Instead of blocking, Kaneki slammed all four of his crimson tentacles heavily into the ground.
With a loud bang, the stone floor cracked and collapsed slightly under the force. Using the recoil, Kaneki compressed his legs and launched himself high into the air like a cannonball.
A split second after his feet left the floor, the sharp steel rebars slammed into the spot where he had just been standing, burying themselves halfway into the solid concrete.
If I just stay on the defensive, I'll undoubtedly lose, Kaneki reasoned mid-air.
Using the momentum of his jump, Kaneki vaulted forward. In the blink of an eye, he closed the distance to Venom. His four Kagune tentacles straightened into rigid, crimson spears, thrusting directly at the symbiote's chest.
But Venom had anticipated the counterattack. He let out a deep, guttural roar. "I caught you!"
In an instant, the black matter on Venom's left arm shifted, morphing into a thick, pitch-black shield. His right hand enlarged into a massive, razor-sharp claw, reaching out to grab the incoming tentacles.
Screech—!
The sharp Kagune didn't pierce flesh this time. Instead, they slammed into the symbiote shield, emitting a harsh, ear-piercing sound like metal grinding against metal. Simultaneously, Venom's right claw snapped forward like a bear trap, attempting to grab the crimson appendages. Venom knew that if he could just get his hands on those annoying tentacles, he had the raw physical strength to rip them right out of the boy's back.
But Kaneki was a half-ghoul. When his Kakugan was active, his speed, reflexes, and physical stamina were exponentially amplified.
Without a change in expression, Kaneki aborted his thrust. Instead of pulling back, he threw his entire body forward. He planted one foot firmly on Venom's outstretched, muscular arm and used it as a springboard. Tucking his body, Kaneki executed a flawless 360-degree front flip right over the monster's head.
Bang!
As he flipped over Venom, Kaneki lashed his leg backward, delivering a devastating, full-force kick directly to the back of Venom's skull.
The heavy impact sent Venom staggering forward, his face smashing into the stone floor.
Kaneki landed gracefully, sliding a few feet across the dusty tiles to bleed off his momentum. He turned to face his opponent, his expression turning solemn. He could feel a dull ache radiating from his foot. Hitting Venom felt entirely different than it had just moments ago. The monster was adapting. He was getting stronger.
Venom's defensive capabilities had visibly spiked. He pushed himself off the floor easily, cracking his neck with a sickening pop. He grinned maliciously. "That hurt. But it's still not enough. If you keep this up, kid, you're going to die."
The symbiote was a highly adaptable extraterrestrial organism. While it didn't possess elemental powers like breathing fire or shooting ice, it granted its host terrifying superhuman strength, astonishing speed, and near-limitless stamina. Because its body was fluid, it could morph its limbs into a variety of lethal weapons. And because it had previously bonded with Peter, it retained all of Spider-Man's abilities.
"Is that so?" Kaneki replied coldly.
Kaneki suddenly sprinted forward like an arrow released from a bow. But instead of charging straight at Venom, he veered sharply and ran vertically up the stone wall of the church.
Seeing this, Venom assumed Kaneki was abandoning the injured Spider-Man and trying to escape through the upper windows. "Little brat! Don't think you can run away!" Venom bellowed furiously, his black mass clinging to the wall as he scrambled up in hot pursuit.
Hearing the heavy, thudding footsteps closing in behind him, Kaneki intentionally slowed his pace. Suddenly, Kaneki twisted his body and pushed off the wall, falling backward toward the floor below. He pulled his four Kagune tight against his back.
To Venom, it looked like the kid had just slipped and given up. Laughing wildly, Venom leaped off the wall, diving after Kaneki with a massive fist pulled back for a lethal strike.
In the open air of the church nave, the two combatants plummeted toward each other.
Just a fraction of a second before Venom's dark fist could crush him, Kaneki lashed out. One of his Kagune tentacles whipped out and slapped flat against the adjacent wall. The sudden tension violently jerked Kaneki's body out of the path of the punch. Simultaneously, his remaining three tentacles merged together, twisting into a massive, cone-shaped spike.
Venom's sadistic grin froze. His punch hit empty air. Kaneki had perfectly evaded the strike and was now hovering just adjacent to him, bathed in the red glow of his Kagune.
Squwelch!
The massive, spiraled Kagune pierced completely through Venom's torso, pinning the heavy monster firmly against the stone wall mid-air.
Knowing Venom's ridiculous regeneration, Kaneki didn't stop there. He immediately pressed the attack. He whipped another tentacle out, bypassing Venom's arms and aiming straight for the monster's face. Specifically, his narrow, milky-white eyes.
Slash!
Caught completely off guard and pinned to the wall, Venom couldn't dodge. The sharp Kagune pierced directly into Venom's eye. A horrific mixture of scarlet blood and black, tar-like substance burst from the socket.
Venom's movement speed was incredible, but his reaction time and combat intelligence were hampered by his reckless rage. It had taken less than three seconds from the moment they leaped off the wall for Kaneki to outmaneuver him, pin him, and blind him. Venom had poured all his focus and strength into an offensive strike, leaving himself entirely defenseless.
"You lose," Kaneki said quietly.
Hanging in the air by the tentacle anchored to the wall, Kaneki violently ripped the spike out of Venom's eye, causing another spray of black and red blood.
Just as Kaneki raised his Kagune to impale Venom's other eye and finish the fight, a sharp, deafening neigh tore through the church. It sounded like the roar of a frenzied, primordial beast.
A surging, concussive shockwave suddenly erupted from Venom's maw. The raw sonic force battered Kaneki, forcing his cone-shaped Kagune to slip. Freed from the pin, Venom slammed his massive fists against the wall, causing the entire section of masonry to collapse.
Sensing the danger, Kaneki quickly retracted his Kagune and threw himself to the side. But Venom lunged through the falling debris, his jaws snapping shut with terrifying speed.
A splash of crimson blood flew into the air.
"Ngh." Kaneki grunted, rolling through the air and landing heavily on a flight of stairs. He looked down at his left arm. A huge chunk of flesh had been cleanly bitten off, as if by a wild animal.
Blood poured from the wound, but Kaneki's Rinkaku regeneration immediately kicked in. The severed muscle fibers and tissues began to wriggle and weave together, slowly reconstructing the arm.
"ROAR!!!"
"I AM VENOM!!!"
Kaneki's pupils shrank to pinpricks. His pale face grew incredibly grim as he looked up at the pitch-black monster towering over him.
With a roar that shook the very foundations of the church, a shockwave of air rolled in all directions, kicking up a dense cloud of dust. From within the dust, a true behemoth stepped forward.
Venom had grown into a hulking giant, easily the size of a small mountain. His pitch-black body radiated the horror of an endless abyss. Black, fluid-like tendrils whipped erratically around him, and his impossibly long, curled tongue slithered out, dripping with acidic saliva. His muscles had swollen to grotesque proportions, looking like dense, impenetrable rock.
Kaneki's expression darkened further as he looked at Venom's hands. A single one of Venom's palms was now as long as Kaneki's entire body. If he were caught, he would be crushed like an insect.
The milky-white eye that Kaneki had just pierced was completely intact, having regenerated flawlessly. The rows of jagged, razor-sharp fangs in his oversized maw were even more exaggerated. Kaneki knew immediately that if he took a single bite from this version of Venom, he wouldn't just lose an arm—he would lose half his torso.
"Boy, I should thank you," Venom's voice had deepened into a demonic, dual-layered baritone that vibrated in the chest. "It was your power that finally pushed Flash Thompson into absolute terror. Because of his fear, I have completely taken over."
Venom stretched his massive arms, his claws casually gouging chunks of stone out of the church pillars. His physical size was absurd.
To survive Kaneki's lethal combo, the symbiote had been forced to play its trump card: it was aggressively draining Flash Thompson's life force to fuel its own exponential growth. Flash, a high school athlete not even twenty years old, was having his cellular vitality consumed so rapidly that his internal biology was aging into his thirties just to sustain the monster's mass.
"Kaneki?"
Peter Parker limped out from the shadows. His superhuman metabolism had healed his broken bones enough to allow him to stand. He took one look at the mountain-sized Venom and felt a cold sweat break out.
"Let me help you!" Peter shouted, stepping forward.
"Don't come any closer. You don't even have a suit," Kaneki refused flatly, his eyes never leaving Venom.
Peter hesitated. It was true. When he violently tore the symbiote off himself, he had shredded his clothes. Worse, the web-shooters strapped to his wrists had been completely crushed in the struggle. Right now, he was standing in a freezing church, battered, bruised, and practically in his underwear, with absolutely no way to shoot webs. His combat power was crippled.
Seeing Peter's distress, Venom let out a rumbling laugh. "Peter! You're nothing but trash without me! You abandoned me!"
Suddenly, a new voice echoed through the ruined church. It was light, casual, and incredibly out of place.
"Abandoned? Please. I get abandoned all the time. Why don't you go cry to your momma, you ugly pile of space-goo?"
Venom whipped his massive head around, feeling utterly humiliated. "Who is there?!"
Sitting casually on the edge of the ruined upper staircase, with his legs dangling nonchalantly over the drop, was a man tightly wrapped in a red and black tactical suit. Two katana swords were strapped in an X across his back, and heavy pistols were holstered on both thighs. Various pouches and weapons bulged under the suit.
"Spider-Man? No... who are you?!" Venom snarled, momentarily confused by the red and black color scheme, which easily resembled Spider-Man's outfit in the dim light.
"Me? Just a humble mercenary looking for a paycheck." The man stretched his arms, speaking in a highly animated, almost manic tone. "Hey, Spidey! How about you hire me to chop this big guy into sushi?"
Peter stood shivering in his torn spandex, the cold night breeze blowing through the shattered windows. He looked down at himself and realized he looked like an absolute pervert running around half-naked in a church.
He swallowed hard. The situation was grim. Kaneki didn't seem to have the overwhelming advantage he did in the comics against a monster this size, and Peter was completely unarmed. This weirdo, no matter how crazy he sounded, was heavily armed.
Peter bit the bullet. "How much?"
The man in red and black gasped in sheer joy. He leaped to his feet and drew both katanas with a metallic shing.
"For you? Seeing as we're practically matching outfits, the strongest mercenary in the universe, Deadpool, will do it for a cool one million bucks! I'll start hacking!"
Venom boiled with rage. He was a towering, unstoppable apex predator, and these bugs were openly discussing his assassination fee like he was a nuisance?
"GO TO HELL!!" Venom roared.
He swung his massive claw horizontally. The sheer velocity of the strike tore through the air, creating a deafening sonic boom. In the blink of an eye, the giant black hand slammed into the staircase where Deadpool was standing.
RUMBLE!!
The devastating physical force completely obliterated that section of the bell tower. Stone, wood, and steel shattered outward. Dust and smoke billowed up into the night air as the moonlight poured freely through the newly created crater in the church wall. Kaneki and Peter were forced to dive for cover to avoid the shrapnel.
Satisfied, Venom slowly retracted his colossal claw. He grinned maniacally at the cloud of dust. "What a joke. Your mercenary is just a pile of mud now."
Kaneki and Peter looked at the ruins in surprise. Did the guy really just die like that? Was he all talk?
Peter sighed, his shoulders slumping. 'I knew he was just a joke.'
"Wow, how much do you weigh big guy? You shoved that giant claw right up my ass! If Vanessa finds out about this, she is definitely not going to want to sleep with me tonight."
Deadpool casually climbed out from the edge of the rubble. In front of everyone's shocked eyes, his severely crushed and mangled body began to snap back into place. Broken bones realigned with sickening crunches, and flattened tissue inflated back to its original shape at a speed visible to the naked eye. He didn't stop complaining for a single second.
Suddenly, his casual demeanor vanished. He moved from a slow crawl to a blindingly fast blur of red and black. Gripping his twin katanas, the blades glinting coldly in the moonlight, Deadpool leaped off the ruined balcony directly at Venom.
"Daddy Pool is gonna chop you down to size!"
Before Venom could even raise a hand to swat him, Deadpool spun in mid-air. The two silver blades flashed in the dark, moving so fast they created a loud humming sound as they cut through the air.
Schwing!
The blades sliced horizontally right across Venom's massive throat.
Black symbiote fluid erupted from the wound like a geyser. The cut was incredibly deep, biting straight into the muscle. Venom grabbed his own throat, stumbling backward in genuine shock.
"It looks like I won't need to pay that million after all," Peter said, a hopeful smile breaking across his bruised face.
But Kaneki didn't smile. His eyes remained locked on the monster, his face grim.
"It's useless," Kaneki said softly. "His regeneration is too strong."
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Word count: 2625
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