Ch.119Extinction-Level

The scene before my eyes changed almost simultaneously with my growing dissatisfaction.

The landscape shifted and transformed—this time to a river of alcohol flowing alongside meat.

I grimaced at the smell of liquor, and it changed again.

Cola with meat, not bad.

Sparkling water with cake, is this a joke?

The ground and river that had been changing countless times, their purpose incomprehensible, now crumbled like a child playing with clay before transforming into a shape from my memory.

“This is…”

Tap-tap-tap-tap, the sound of ingredients being chopped on a cutting board, the bubbling sound of food boiling.

“Yes, yes… you worked hard. Is there something you want to eat? Yes… again?”

I twitched at the corner of my eyes at the voice that existed only in my hazy memories.

The house I lived in during my childhood, before monsters even appeared.

The one cooking in the kitchen now is…

“Alright, come home safely.”

It’s Mom.

Looking down at my hands, I realized my body had transformed into that of a child in that brief moment.

Mom, who had just finished her phone call, came closer and crouched in front of the drawing I was working on.

“Oh my? What are you drawing? A cat?”

“It’s not a cat.”

What I was drawing was my favorite animal.

A large…

“Are you playing nicely here, drawing pictures?”

Mom stroked my head and returned to the kitchen.

Sizzle—the sound of frying food. As I approached, Mom looked down at me and tapped my forehead.

“Ah, didn’t Mom tell you not to come close when I’m frying?”

Fried food.

Fried food was Dad’s favorite.

On days when Dad was dispatched or the day after, Mom would always wait until his mission ended and make whatever food Dad wanted to eat.

Pork cutlets, chicken, fried shrimp, croquettes.

All the fried food would always be placed here, next to the sink.

“This child again.”

As I reached up to grab a croquette placed beside the cutting board, Mom blocked my hand and offered me a small plate with a properly cooled croquette.

“If you want something to eat, don’t sneak it—just tell Mom.”

Her hands smell like Mom.

As I stood there holding the plate of croquettes, Mom looked down at me quietly and said:

“Why aren’t you eating? What are you waiting for?”

“…Ketchup.”

She didn’t squeeze any ketchup.

I always eat croquettes with ketchup.

Mom knows this and always squeezes some onto the plate when she serves them.

“Ketchup?”

This Mom doesn’t know about ketchup.

At that moment, the image of the Mom I knew flashed through my mind.

“You.”

Simultaneously, Mom’s height decreased.

No, my body had returned to normal.

I grabbed the throat of this thing that had taken my mother’s form with my large hand.

“Why, why…! I’m Mom, Mo—”

Crunch, crunch, crunch—the vivid sound of neck bones being crushed as blood flowed from Mom’s eyes and nose.

“My mother is dead.”

“Ugh, urk, aaaah!”

After destroying the thing disguised as my mother right before my eyes, I realized the true nature of this place.

This is the white dreamscape I used to dream about for a while after receiving the surgery to become a monster.

The place where the monster’s instinct that speaks to me resides.

My consciousness, which had almost become hazy from the long-forgotten illusion, slowly returns.

“What an annoying creature.”

After doing this endlessly at the laboratory, it’s still pulling this crap?

No, it’s gotten worse.

The colors and smells, the shapes and temperatures, even the textures.

It must have been learning by peeping at what I see from inside my body.

Probably, as it begins to transform into an Annihilation-rank core, the strengthened creature is trying to devour me again.

This emotion and the corpses filling this place, which used to be just a white room, are the power the monster has built up from things I’ve devoured.

Inside the room, the corpses that had been imitating the floor and furniture rise from their places and take form.

“Mommy.”

“Mom, Mom, Mom.”

“Mom!”

“Sigh…”

I looked at the Moms wearing clean clothes and snapped their necks with a crack.

The chain tied to my left hand rattled, conveying its weight.

‘Mom will be fine… save that person.’

I still can’t forget.

The sight of my mother dying before my eyes.

“I clearly told you to stop imitating my mother.”

I clenched my fist, mocking the monster that had settled inside me.

In this place, I can’t use my special ability.

The same goes for the monster’s instinct.

All it can do is anesthetize my body with sweet temptation to tear me apart.

As I killed each corpse that had taken my mother’s form, the creature changed its shape.

“…Ah!”

“Daddy!”

“Ha.”

It was Dad who unnecessarily opened the front door standing lonely in the black space.

With a smile at the corner of my lips, I rushed toward Dad as I would have as a child and cut the creature with my father’s form in half.

“Can’t you do it properly? My dad wouldn’t be this weak.”

There’s no way he would fall to a single charge from a monster like me.

But that’s right.

The monster that has settled in my body couldn’t possibly create my father properly.

I still remember both my dad and mom.

Monsters make the memories of humans they’ve digested their own.

Conversely, they don’t know memories they haven’t digested yet.

The creature still doesn’t fully know either my dad or mom.

Similarly, neither do I.

I don’t remember well anymore.

“…Ah! Daddy!”

“…Ah! Mommy, Mom!”

Sweet moments that make me think monsters were just nightmares.

But mixed in between are slight feelings of dissonance.

Dad wasn’t someone who could play with me this often.

Mom—it’s strange for a dead person to be moving around in the first place.

“Hahaha! …Ah! Over here!”

“…Oppa!”

“…Ah!”

“…what do you want to be when you grow up?”

“Shut up.”

A girl I played with almost every day in my childhood, her younger sister, school teachers, friends.

Places I wanted to go, things I wanted to eat together, people I wanted to meet.

As I destroyed each one of these things, the space began to shake.

[Woo, wooooo…!]

With its strengthened power, the creature that had resolved to succeed this time.

When nothing it tried worked, it now bursts into tears.

I was worried something might be different when it became Annihilation-rank, but is this all?

Like an insect emerging after eating its cocoon, it’s gradually gaining strength and gnawing at me.

Someday, the monster will completely devour me, but.

Not yet.

“I’m not giving my body to you yet.”

Crack—I clenched my fist and struck the ground full of corpses.

[Wooooooooooo!]

With the monster’s cry shaking the entire space, the solid world trembled, and splat, splat—corpses bounced up here and there.

When I was at the laboratory, after rejecting the mother the creature created, I simply ignored it.

I hated the thing imitating my mother, but I didn’t particularly have a reason to live either.

Now, it’s different from then.

I want to eat something more delicious than these things the monster created.

Kwang! The monster’s instinct, torn apart by my punch, spreads like melting ice cream on the floor.

“You just stay quiet and give me what I order from here.”

The monster’s instinct that hasn’t properly settled is like a vending machine.

Hit it and something comes out.

As I was thinking that while suppressing the instinct…

[Ooooh!]

Some of the mud fragments that were exploding outward.

The monster inside me met my eyes.

#

Boom.

“No more… ugh, blegh…!”

“Huk, heack… huh…”

“Hwoook, hoo…”

Cage’s ability—a barrage of power unleashed relentlessly toward the monster trapped in the isolation chamber.

Among those who had used all their strength to melt down the Despair-rank monster’s flesh, Baskerville rotated a cannon shell, turning it into a magic bullet before their eyes.

Eventually, the bullet hit the exposed core with a kwang! as it spun through the air.

“Did… did we defeat it?!”

“Baskerville! You son of a bitch! I told you not to say that!”

Kwang! After the explosion, the outer shell of the monster core shattered, revealing the nucleus inside, which began regenerating at a rapid pace.

At that moment, the black-haired girl’s spatial cut tore through the monster’s nucleus.

“Did we get it?!”

“I think it’s dead?”

“W-wow…”

“Kugh, I can’t even cheer.”

Boom—as the remaining monster flesh collapsed, everyone remained silent despite seemingly having defeated just one Despair-rank monster.

Gu Seo-ryong, who had already defeated another monster with Sa Gu-gu, picked up the monster’s core.

“Wait…! What are you planning to do with that, Gu Seo-ryong!”

“I don’t know why you helped us, but we can’t just let you go like this!”

“Thanks for the help, but you’re under arrest, Gu Seo-ryong!”

“Hmm… well, I expected this reaction.”

“Kuk, huh…!”

“Ack!”

Baskerville, who had barely managed to aim one magic bullet, and the A City heroes who had collapsed from exhaustion, blocked Gu Seo-ryong’s path as she held the core’s nucleus.

Gu Seo-ryong swung her hand toward those blocking her way.

Slash! Deep gashes began to rot, and the heroes collapsed where they stood.

“P-poison…!”

“I’m too tired to use my ability, you know. If you resist with all your might, you won’t die.”

After completely neutralizing the heroes, Gu Seo-ryong disappeared.

Sa Gu-gu followed behind, grabbing Gu Seo-ryong’s tail and climbing up as she vanished into the debris of destroyed buildings.

“Cage and the rest—I spared their lives, but these so-called heroes make no sense to me.”

“Sa Gu-gu is sleepy and hungry.”

“Me too. I’d like to kill a few people to fill my stomach… but that seems difficult too.”

Just then, boom—a pulsing sound similar to the explosion of an ability echoed throughout the entire city.

“It would be a shame if the Annihilation-rank died because it couldn’t control its power, right?”

Gu Seo-ryong was about to bite into the core like an apple but ended up biting empty air.

In that brief moment, Sa Gu-gu had stolen the core using spatial manipulation and put it in her mouth.

“You…! That’s for Mom! You already ate the previous one!”

“Awoo aeouea.”

“Haah, seriously!”

And at the center of the city, where destruction was most widespread and extensive.

The central district where government officials resided, with few people living there.

“Hoo… hoo…”

“Kuheueu…”

Yu Anna, with one arm completely crushed and hanging limply, raised her remaining hand to look at the monster before her.

Anticipating that the monster might relocate its core, she had unleashed flames with maximum firepower to cover the monster’s entire body.

Large movements were likely to be avoided, but with Cage’s ability supporting her, she had managed to hit her target.

Unfortunately, the monster had covered its core with both hands to withstand the attack, though its regeneration speed had visibly slowed.

Now, if she could just launch one more attack like before.

While fighting the monster, Yu Anna glanced around at the debris and looked behind her.

“Huh, huh…”

Cage was clutching his chest where his heart would be, his face pale.

Irregular waves—something unknown was wrong with Cage’s heart right now.

Because of this, in the moment Yu Anna hesitated…

“Don’t hesitate, Starlight… a commander must know when to order death to their subordinates if necessary.”

Reading that look in her eyes, Cage amplified his ability’s wavelength.

“One more time is possible. The timing is up to you… cough!”

“Jeong Ho-young!”

Cage could no longer endure and collapsed, coughing up blood.

While Yu Anna worried about Cage, she remained wary of the monster that might pounce at the first sign of weakness.

However, the monster did not attack.

Boom—a resonance spreading across the night sky.

The monster’s fur bristled at the heavy infrasound carried by the circular ripples dispersing the clouds.

Fear reflected in the monster’s large eyes.

“K-hehehe… a monster, indeed.”

“Pieeeeek!”

“Wait!”

Cage, who had collapsed with bloody foam at his mouth, burst into laughter, and the monster, which had shrunk its body slightly, spread its two wings.

Flap—as the monster took flight and accelerated with its ability, Yu Anna rose to chase it.

Whoosh! A massive darkness fell before her.

“…Eh?”

Crash! The monster flying through the air was struck in the night sky and slammed into the ground.

Impact control…? What exactly hit it? Darkness? Shadow…?

After several questions flashed through her mind, Yu Anna thought of Black Cat.

That was an attack from Black Cat, who had become Annihilation-rank.

But where exactly was Black Cat?

Just then, Yu Anna noticed something strange in the corner of her vision.

A round moon floating in the dark night sky.

There were two of them.

These weren’t moons.

“Black… Cat?”

The enormous Black Cat placed its paw on top of the monster that had tried to escape by flying again.

Beneath the paw, the monster seemed to be using all its strength to break free from Black Cat, as boom, boom—waves of energy pulsed.

One of Black Cat’s paws crumbled with a cracking sound before regenerating.

After quietly enduring all these attacks, Black Cat lifted its bloodied paw once and then struck the monster with its opposite front paw.

“Kraaaaaaak! Aaaak!”

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! With each strike of the front paw, the monster’s body collapsed like finely minced meat.

An overwhelming difference in class where no technique, ability, or anything else worked.

Even after wearing it down through battle until now, to have such a difference with that monster.

This is Annihilation-rank.

A monster that destroys the world.

The monster, which had lost its original form and become something made of blood and meat, imitated Yeo Un-jae and begged for its life.

“Y-Yu Anna! S-save…!”

Black Cat lowered its head and scooped the monster that had been under its paw into its mouth.

Crunch, crunch—with terrible sounds, the monster that had been Yeo Un-jae was crushed.

The monster that had given everyone so much trouble until just moments ago, like an insect.

While Yu Anna felt something beyond emptiness and terror at the surreal scene, Black Cat swallowed the monster with a gulp.

The ruins of A City, where all monsters except Black Cat had disappeared.

The giant Black Cat quietly gazed at the exhausted Yu Anna.

“Woowaaaaoong…”

“Eh…?”

Was that Black Cat trying to say something just now?

In the center of Black Cat’s two eyes—two moons—thin lines formed, split, and filled into circles.

“Isn’t it?”

The fact that it defeated the monster means it’s Black Cat, right?

Yu Anna’s heart began to beat faster, weighed down by anxiety.