Chapter 80: Regenerative Insect Skin

Chapter 80: Chapter 80: Regenerative Insect Skin

Chapter 80: Regenerative Insect Skin

The black insect thrashed violently inside Axel Vance’s hand, all six jointed legs clawing uselessly at the air while a sharp hiss escaped from its body. Several cracks still split its shell from the collision with the tree, yet Axel could actually see the damaged sections slowly knitting back together. Whatever this creature truly was, its vitality was every bit as abnormal as the larger monster form it had tried to create.

"Pretty tough for something this small," Axel muttered as he tightened his grip. The creature’s struggles immediately weakened, though it still twisted desperately between his fingers. With his free hand, Axel reached inside his battered jacket and pulled out the Blessed Bible Hannibal Lecter had given him back in prison.

The moment Carrie White saw the Bible, her expression changed. A flash of instinctive fear crossed her tear-streaked face, and she unconsciously pulled herself farther back against the roots of the nearby tree. Axel noticed the reaction but did not comment on it, because the monster in his hand was a much more immediate concern.

He opened the Bible and began Holy Reading in a low, steady voice. Psionic Power flowed into the sacred words as the familiar supernatural pressure gathered around him, and the insect’s body suddenly went rigid. For the first time, something disturbingly human appeared inside its compound eyes.

Fear.

The creature began struggling with renewed desperation. It twisted hard enough to damage one of its own limbs in an attempt to slip free, but Axel’s grip never loosened. Brilliant light spread across the cracked black shell as the purification fully took hold.

A harsh sizzling sound followed.

The creature disappeared rapidly inside the silver-white radiance, its body breaking apart into ash before it could make another sound. When the light finally faded, the only thing remaining in Axel’s palm was an almost transparent shell as thin as a cicada wing.

Despite its appearance, the material felt remarkably tough.

System prompts appeared immediately.

[Holy Reading Lv.3 — MAX]

[Specialization Bonus: Psionic Power +0.3]

[Max-Level Ability Acquired: Righteous Words]

[Righteous Words: Through long practice with sacred reading, the host has learned to combine wording, tone, posture, and gaze into a powerful psychological and supernatural deterrent.]

[Psionic Power: 2.7]

Axel studied the notifications for a moment. Holy Reading had already been at Lv.2 — 800/1000, so purifying the parasite had finally pushed the skill to its maximum level. The new +0.3 bonus replaced the previous +0.2 specialization bonus, meaning his actual Psionic Power had increased by only another 0.1, from 2.6 to 2.7.

There was no additional Physique reward and no direct base Psionic Power increase. Axel guessed that the parasite’s tiny core body simply did not contain enough supernatural substance to provide much after everything else he had absorbed recently. At least it had left behind useful material.

He turned the translucent insect shell over between his fingers and felt the faint supernatural residue running through it. Instead of wasting it, Axel decided to test Spirit Binding and prepared a simple fictional binding process using the shell as the central material. Carrie remained seated nearby, watching with growing curiosity as the strange object began glowing softly.

The light intensified for several seconds before fading.

When Axel picked the shell up again, its internal structure felt completely different.

He sent a tiny amount of Psionic Power into the material.

A clean pulse of life energy immediately flowed back.

Axel raised an eyebrow. "Well, that’s useful."

The shell had effectively become a portable supernatural healing item, converting a portion of his Psionic Power into restorative vitality. Considering that his left leg was still fractured from crashing through the school-bus roof, the timing could hardly have been better. Axel pulled away the crude support around his lower leg and examined the injury.

The calf remained badly bruised and swollen around the fracture. The energy he had stolen from the parasite and Carrie earlier had already started repairing the damage, but the bone was nowhere near fully restored. Axel pressed the transformed insect skin against the injured area.

The material immediately adhered to him.

A cool sensation spread through his lower leg as Axel fed Psionic Power into the artifact. Deep beneath the skin, the damaged bone and surrounding muscle began repairing at a supernatural rate, while the swelling and discoloration gradually receded.

Carrie stared wide-eyed.

Axel remained still while the healing continued.

Within several minutes, the sharp pain had faded into little more than soreness.

He removed the insect skin and stood.

His left leg supported his weight normally again.

Axel took several steps around the clearing, flexed the ankle, and nodded with satisfaction. "Not bad." Aside from mild stiffness, there was almost no sign that the leg had been fractured only minutes earlier.

The insect skin had changed too.

Its once-clear surface looked noticeably duller after a single use.

Axel examined it and estimated that the material probably had enough stored integrity for another five or six treatments before becoming useless. "So it’s consumable."

Still, five or six emergency healings were better than none.

He carefully folded the translucent material and tucked it into his pocket.

Only then did Axel turn toward Carrie.

The girl was still sitting near the tree roots, pale and exhausted after releasing so much telekinetic power. Fine sweat covered her forehead, her hands trembled slightly, and she watched Axel with a mixture of fear, curiosity, and something approaching admiration.

Axel walked over and stopped in front of her. "Your name is Carrie, right?" She looked up quickly and nodded.

"Do you understand what you just did?"

Carrie opened her mouth.

Her eyes immediately filled with tears again.

"I... I don’t know," she whispered. "I saw Chris changing, and then everything just disappeared from my head." Her voice shook harder as she added, "Then things started moving, and I couldn’t stop it."

She lowered her eyes.

"I didn’t mean to hurt anybody."

Axel remained silent for a moment.

Carrie White.

The name, the bullying, and the uncontrollable telekinetic power finally left little room for doubt.

Axel remembered the horror story from his old life. Carrie White had been a socially isolated teenage girl with enormous psychokinetic potential who eventually suffered one humiliation too many and lost control catastrophically at prom.

This world had relocated her to Louisiana and changed several details, but the core remained obvious.

Carrie was powerful.

And dangerously unstable.

Axel’s thoughts shifted toward everything he had encountered since leaving Miami. Cult cells stretched across multiple states, Jason and Freddy had nearly turned Crystal Lake into a supernatural disaster zone, Leatherface had been artificially enhanced, Papa Jupiter had guarded a nuclear research base, and the cult had somehow gained access to a fragment of the Color of the Stars.

Trying to handle all of that alone was becoming unrealistic.

Even Lionel and Seth could only cover so much.

Axel needed more capable people around him.

Preferably people who understood what supernatural threats looked like before those threats appeared in their bedrooms.

His gaze returned to Carrie.

A girl with immense telekinetic potential, almost no control, and enough conscience to run into a dangerous forest because someone had helped her certainly qualified as someone worth paying attention to. If her power could be stabilized and properly guided, she might become far more useful than dangerous.

Axel softened his voice. "Don’t panic. You saved Chris’s life."

Carrie looked up in surprise.

"Even if your technique was a little rough," Axel added.

She quickly wiped away the tears on her cheeks. "He’s... he’s alive?"

"He’ll live."

Axel turned toward Chris.

The teenager remained unconscious where he had fallen, but his breathing and heartbeat were stable. Most of the monstrous changes created by the parasite had already begun reversing after the creature’s destruction.

Axel checked him briefly.

Chris looked terrible.

Bruises, cuts, and transformation-related injuries covered much of his body, but his limbs had returned to normal proportions and the strange growths along his back had disappeared. Only a thumb-sized black scar remained on the back of his neck where the parasite had attached itself.

Axel suspected that mark might never disappear completely.

"Lucky idiot," he muttered.

Carrie looked toward Chris with obvious relief.

Axel grabbed the unconscious teenager by the back of his clothes and lifted him. "Come on. We get him back to the bus first."

Carrie immediately hurried to her feet.

She clearly wanted to help carry Chris, but after looking at Axel dragging him along almost effortlessly, she seemed unsure what useful assistance she could actually provide. In the end, she simply followed closely behind him through the woods.

The trip back was much easier now that Axel’s leg had healed.

A short while later, they emerged from the tree line beside the highway.

The yellow school bus was still parked where they had left it.

The long-haired driver was pacing nervously beside the open door.

The moment he saw Axel appear with Carrie behind him and Chris hanging from one hand, he visibly relaxed. "Oh, thank God. You’re back."

Then he noticed Chris’s condition.

"What happened to him?"

"Bug sting," Axel replied.

The driver stared at him.

Axel added, "Bad bug."

He hauled Chris into the bus and set him down inside.

The students immediately erupted into noise.

"Chris!"

"What happened to him?"

"Someone call an ambulance!"

"Is he bleeding?"

Within seconds, the entire bus had descended into chaos again, although this time the panic was directed toward helping their injured classmate instead of tormenting Carrie. Axel leaned against the door frame and allowed himself a moment to rest.

Carrie remained beside him.

She hesitated for several seconds before quietly saying, "Thank you."

Axel gave a small grunt in acknowledgment.

Carrie looked over the dried blood, torn clothing, and rapidly healing wounds covering him. "Were you hurt too?"

"Minor injuries."

She glanced toward the hole he had smashed through the roof. "Do you need to go to a hospital?"

"No."

Axel looked toward the sky.

Somewhere far away, Seth Brundle and Lionel Cosgrove were probably trying to figure out where the Creeper had taken him. He needed a telephone, a police station, or any other way to contact them before they started driving across half the country searching blindly.

Beside him, Carrie bit her lower lip.

She seemed to argue with herself for several seconds before finally gathering enough courage to speak.

"Mr. Vance?"

Axel looked toward her.

Carrie raised her head, nervous pleading visible in her eyes.

"Can I ask you for a favor?"

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