Ch.20Annoying

I received the name Black Cat because I often take the form of a black feline monster.

The reason I take this form is simply because it’s convenient for escaping. My body, an entity that devours special abilities, needs to take the form of a monster to use its abilities.

While I can access other abilities as needed, the ability to silence sound and the physical structure that eliminates noise during jumps and landings require me to maintain a feline beast form.

If I use phasing to hide underground, Yu Anna can track a monster’s presence with her unique sense, pursuing me through darkness like someone groping through shadows. Additionally, phasing—an ability that shifts anything it touches into a liquid-like state—creates resistance, making submersion not particularly fast. I solve this drawback by sinking into darkness, disappearing into my own shadow, which requires me to maintain a form with numerous tentacles.

So while I occasionally remove wings or horns as needed, I always maintain the form of a black panther with multiple tails. There’s no monster form easier for escaping, so I have no choice. Everything is for safely escaping after defeating monsters. To return to human form, I need to completely disappear from Yu Anna’s senses.

But now I don’t necessarily need to do that anymore.

I can sink into shadows, hide underground and completely eliminate my presence, or use deception by sinking into one shadow and moving to another before eliminating my presence. As long as I touch the ground, I can escape somehow.

Somehow, the chase with Yu Anna has evolved from a rule where I win by escaping beyond her detection range to a rule where I win by touching the ground after creating a small distance.

To catch me, Yu Anna has been developing long-range shooting abilities, but well, I can still safely escape by sacrificing just one tail.

Now that hiding in shadows has become more important than silencing sound, I no longer need to maintain a feline beast form.

Yet the reason I maintain this feline beast form is simple: the meat that humans occasionally offer me.

“Kyaaah! It’s eating, it’s eating!”

“So cute!”

Though I can’t use my full power when suppressing my presence, I can still easily handle Homicide-rank monsters in this state.

Many people have started giving me meat as a reward when I appear without triggering monster alerts and eliminate all the monsters. Some people don’t even evacuate when monster alerts sound, instead approaching with backpacks, which makes me question their sanity.

They could be in serious trouble if heroes arrive late.

Yu Anna seems to share my concern as she chases me, saying the same thing:

“Can’t you just stop accepting meat? Do you know how exhausted the heroes are because of you? People aren’t evacuating properly!”

“Kyaak!”

Since she said this while hitting me with her ability on my front paw, it didn’t feel particularly pleasant to hear.

Still, since she was right, I decided to start refusing meat offerings. However, I couldn’t resist accepting things that looked really expensive and delicious.

Because of this, news reports have mentioned that Black Cat’s taste has become more sophisticated lately.

“Th-this is the Black Cat… hehe…”

“Will this work?”

“I hope so! Kehehehe… eat up! Do you know how much money I could get if I catch you?”

Perhaps because of rumors about a monster that helps humans and eats meat in return, strange people have been increasing.

Some put sedatives or sleeping pills in the meat they offer me. This doesn’t affect me at all when I eat it, but it doesn’t feel good.

People trying to catch me have even set traps in places where monsters might appear, endangering innocent people who get caught instead.

Using fleeing people as bait seemed to cross a line, so I tracked down the humans who set the traps by scent and promptly bit off their arms.

Still, the tastes of the wealthy seem quite extreme—there seem to be many who want to keep a monster that devours other monsters as a pet.

I hear such talk while eating meals, to the extent that someone has even put a bounty on Black Cat.

Do they think I’ll obediently follow orders if someone like that catches me? I’ll just bite off some limbs and escape. Are they in their right mind?

Some people have been increasingly obsessed with capturing me, and W City has seen an influx of people coming from elsewhere trying to catch me.

They’re trying to catch a Despair-rank monster when they’re not even S-rank heroes… have they all gone mad?

Since I let even these people go without killing them, things seem to be getting truly out of hand.

“It’s Black Cat! Black Cat!”

“Where? Where?!”

After a Homicide-rank monster alert, when I appeared without triggering additional alerts and eliminated the monsters, people who had been fleeing turned back at the mention of “Black Cat” to watch.

It was absurd that they weren’t fleeing from monsters but actually wanted to watch them, but having experienced this multiple times now, I simply slipped into the shadows as usual.

Then, Yu Anna dropped from the sky and extended light toward my shadow.

“Grrrr…”

“Everyone! What are you doing not evacuating? Evacuate immediately!”

“Kyaaah! It’s Yu Anna! Run away!”

“Run! Run!”

They seemed more afraid of the damage caused by Yu Anna than by me.

Yu Anna looked at me with exasperation but didn’t chase me. I also stopped in place, not wanting to flee hastily and cause harm to people.

“This is driving me crazy… seriously, do monsters look better than people now…?”

“Kyaah!”

As Yu Anna was expressing her frustration, tranquilizer darts flew from the city center.

I phased through the syringe to avoid it, then turned and knocked away the syringe flying through the air. I couldn’t properly dodge additional shots because there were still people who hadn’t evacuated.

“Wait, what?! What are you doing?!”

“Black Cat, tranquilizer shot, confirmed hit… no, missed.”

“You, what are you doing right now?!”

The ones shooting tranquilizer darts at me were heroes in black suits.

Clinging to various parts of the building walls, they continuously fired net guns and tranquilizer guns, apparently prepared to capture me.

It was ridiculous to think they could actually catch me with such things, but I decided to let myself get hit rather than dodge and risk hitting people. The heroes then fired concentrated shots at me with smiling faces.

“Stop! Don’t provoke it! Who are you?!”

“S-rank hero Yu Anna, you’re the one who should stop. We’re from the government’s monster research department.”

“Monster research department…? Do you even know what you’re doing?!”

“We’re successfully capturing the Black Cat that you’ve been unable to catch, aren’t we?”

“Grrrrrrrr…”

Sedative, sedative, sedative… the contents of the syringes I’m letting hit me are triggering unpleasant memories.

Noticing the displeasure in my cry, Yu Anna’s expression visibly hardened.

She grabbed the radio of one of the black suits who was reporting somewhere and threw it to the ground.

“Don’t talk nonsense about successful capture and get out of here now! Do you think Black Cat can be caught that easily?!”

“Starlight, can’t you see this? Black Cat is…”

“Grr, ooooooooo…”

The people had all evacuated.

No longer feeling the need to keep letting these syringes hit me, I phased through them, dropping all material objects to the floor.

Then I glared at Yu Anna once.

Yu Anna shook her head slightly, seemingly telling me not to do it.

I don’t care? I’m going to do it?

These bastards are really annoying me, so I think I need to break some things today?

“OOOOOOOOOOO!!”

“Aaaaaahhh!”

“Aaaaaaah! You fucking bastards!!”

A massive roar, sound with mass, scattered the building’s concrete like dandelion seeds blown in the wind.

Poised to pounce, I tore off the hands and legs of the black suits who had been shooting tranquilizer darts at me, one by one.

I wasn’t killing them, but I had no intention of leaving them alone after they attacked me.

“Aaaahh! R-run away!”

“You said it doesn’t attack! Black Cat is… Black Cat is an anomalous entity… you said it doesn’t attack humans!”

“Who said it doesn’t attack, you fuckers! Monster research department?! I’m going to report all of this! I’ll make this public to the citizens!”

“Run! Ruuuun!”

“Where do you think you’re running! You goddamn bastards! I told you not to provoke it! Why are you needlessly triggering it and increasing the damage?!”

Only S-rank heroes can handle Despair-rank monsters.

That day, Yu Anna, who had been responding alone to prevent other heroes from getting involved, ended up carrying over 30 burdens.

I threw away those burdens one by one, increasing the damage.

[Black Cat unusually destroyed 124 buildings today…]

[While there were 0 deaths, the number of injured reached 32. However, they were all heroes from C City…]

[Outsiders coming to W City aiming to capture Black Cat—is it okay to leave this situation as is?]

[Regarding this, Starlight claimed that those attempting to capture Black Cat unnecessarily provoked it and escalated the situation. Evacuating citizens also testified that they witnessed Black Cat quietly allowing itself to be hit by tranquilizer darts and nets…]

[Fuck this, just because they’re a government research department they can do whatever? What about my store! Are you going to pay my insurance? Are you going to cover my losses until the building is rebuilt?!]

[Recently, there’s been talk about an increase in outsiders entering W City trying to capture Black Cat…]

[W City has maintained the position that since Black Cat is ultimately a monster, there’s no way to prevent people from coming to capture it. However, since Starlight has been saying that unnecessarily provoking Black Cat could lead to unpredictable actions, this could be considered a foreseeable incident…]

[Shouldn’t we say that while Starlight couldn’t catch Black Cat, she was controlling it well, and outsiders from other cities caused the accident?]

Yu Anna drank alcohol in her room for the first time in a while, then crushed the beer can in her hand.

Since becoming a hero, how many times had she been as annoyed as today?

Recently, as the standoff with Black Cat, who could now erase its presence, had reached a stalemate, Yu Anna’s frustration grew even more.

Ironically, now that the time it took for Yu Anna to lose Black Cat had shortened, the damage to W City had decreased significantly.

Yu Anna’s work hours had also decreased, and honestly, if Black Cat continued just catching monsters without causing other incidents, it wouldn’t be bad.

What bothered her was that citizens kept thinking of Black Cat as a safe monster.

And that outsiders with similar misconceptions came to W City and caused disturbances.

[Seriously, how the fuck did B-rank heroes from C City think they could capture what S-rank hero Starlight couldn’t catch?]

[Do they look down on Starlight who caught Mirage when A City couldn’t? Do they think Black Cat is a pushover when even Starlight, who caught Mirage when A City couldn’t, can’t catch it?]

[W City has been completely safe and peaceful lately with Black Cat and Starlight tearing apart all the monsters, but I never imagined other cities would cause trouble like this.]

[There’s someone here offering 2 billion to catch Black Cat—is this person sane? Who would sell a living nuclear bomb for 2 billion?]

[If C City really wants to catch Black Cat, they should send an S-rank hero, not B-rank ones. Did they seriously think Black Cat could be caught that easily?]

[Star Punch! Star Pun… Kitty Punch!]

I know right, thought Yu Anna as she looked through internet community comments with deep sympathy.

She even saved an image of a muscular Yu Anna punching a kitten, followed by the kitten transforming into a muscular beast punching the letter “C City.”