Ch.3Became a Monster (3)

The gazes of the female soldiers surrounding me had already completely shifted away from me.

Even though they should know how absurd it is to turn their backs on a monster at such close range.

I suppose it means they’ve encountered a monster so formidable that someone like me isn’t even worth their concern.

“Grrrr.”

“The, the Monster of Violence…!”

“Wh-what should we do? What can we do…?”

“Are we all going to die here? Is that it?”

An overwhelmingly powerful opponent that makes you forget even the resolve to fight back.

When faced with such an adversary looming before them, the female soldiers literally looked pale-faced and dazed.

“All of you, don’t panic!”

Just one.

Except for the squad leader who always gave orders to them.

“I’ll be the bait.”

“…!”

“N-no, Squad Leader!”

“You’ll definitely die! Besides, there’s that lackey monster here too! Numerically, it’s a 2-against-1 situation.”

“Doesn’t matter. And you saw it yourselves. That lackey is nothing special.”

Meanwhile, I’ve become the “nothing special” one.

“Look at that pathetic sight. It’s just like the Goat Monster, only with a hard body. Even though its master has arrived, it’s still keeping its head buried in the ground.”

“Y-you’re right…!”

“It’s true. How utterly disgraceful!”

No, I’m just staying still because I feel like I shouldn’t move…

But if I got upset at those words and suddenly stood up, that would cause another problem.

So for now, staying still is half the battle.

Droop.

“Huh? Now it’s slumped down.”

“See? There’s a reason it’s just bait even among monsters!”

“It’s the ‘outcast’ of the monster world! I understand completely, Squad Leader.”

Like that position of someone who always puts their head down on the desk during school breaks even when they’re not sleepy.

As they said, I decided to become the so-called outcast and stay quiet as a mouse to avoid drawing attention.

Meanwhile.

CRACK!

“Grrrrrrrr…”

“The, the Monster of Violence just picked up the armored vehicle we came in…”

“And tore it completely in half…”

“Tch! This thing could destroy a skyscraper in one blow if it wanted to! It’s probably just toying with us right now.”

The monster that appeared before the female soldiers now.

Its name was definitely the Monster of Violence?

It seemed this creature was responsible for reducing this Y City to ruins where I had opened my eyes.

By the way.

‘Monster of Violence? …That sounds very familiar.’

It was a monster that seemed to trigger some memory I couldn’t quite grasp.

After all, I was a veteran player of <Monster Frontline> until right before its service ended.

I must have encountered it somewhere in the game.

And if it had the power to reduce an entire city to this state, it must be at least a Semi-Grade 1 monster or higher.

‘Who was it again…?’

While I was thinking deeply, still lying flat on the ground.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Gunshots rang through the air.

“Monster of Violence! I am your opponent!”

The squad leader finally began her role as bait for her subordinates.

She drew the pistol strapped to her waist and fired its barrel, loaded with anti-monster bullets, directly at the Monster of Violence.

Her marksmanship was impressive.

I’d heard that pistols, with their shorter barrels compared to machine guns or sniper rifles, are difficult to shoot accurately with, unlike in movies.

Yet all three bullets fired by the squad leader went precisely into the Monster of Violence’s eyes.

“KIEEEEEK?!”

“A-amazing…”

“To hit only the eyes with such precision, as expected of our Squad Leader!”

“It’s just buying time! Meanwhile, all of you retreat now.”

Monsters, like all living creatures, tend to follow humans who attack them first.

Exploiting this habit, the squad leader began running in the completely opposite direction from her subordinates.

“Grrrr…”

Naturally, the Monster of Violence, which had taken anti-monster bullets to the eyes without suffering even 1 point of damage.

“Over here! Come this way!”

Bang! Bang!

It looked toward the squad leader who was still firing her pistol alone.

Whoosh.

It leaped high into the air as per her plan.

THUD!

“Huh?”

“What?”

“What’s going on?”

It landed right in front of the subordinate female soldiers, completely contrary to the plan.

“I definitely attacked it first… Why?”

Having tried to become bait for her subordinates only to end up making them all bait instead, the squad leader looked thoroughly confused.

But I wasn’t particularly surprised.

Because this was actually “normal.”

‘Monsters track whoever attacks them first… but that’s limited to lower-grade monsters whose brains aren’t well developed and rely more on instinct.’

This opponent was a high-grade monster capable of single-handedly devastating an entire city.

In other words, it wouldn’t be strange at all if it possessed intelligence matching its immense power.

In a way, it might be like me—unable to speak human language but fully understanding human conversation.

But perhaps because it was the Monster of Violence, known only for mindless destruction.

The squad leader’s mistake was underestimating the creature’s intelligence, seeing it as just a rampaging neighborhood bully.

“H-hey! Monster! Look over here! Follow me!”

Bang-bang-bang-!

The squad leader kept pulling the trigger until her magazine was empty.

“Each of these bullets costs more than a regular shell! So look at me, damn it!”

Special ammunition created to counter monsters.

Surely until now, they had used such technology alongside heroes to subjugate numerous monsters.

But from Semi-Grade 1 monsters and above, capable of destroying entire cities alone, even that doesn’t work.

They were literally walking disasters.

“Damn it, damn it!”

If even S-class heroes failed to subdue it.

The Hero Association would determine the territory unrecoverable and launch nuclear weapons at the city, turning it into a land where neither humans nor monsters could live.

In fact, one of the joke endings in <Monster Frontline>’s credits featured such a scenario.

Of course, now that the game had become reality, it was no longer something to laugh about.

‘Sigh, I should probably stay like this for now.’

In my previous life, I was an ordinary office worker who grew up in a middle-upper class family, graduated from university normally, and worked a normal job.

I wasn’t a bad person, but I also wasn’t the type to throw myself in harm’s way to save soldiers who were about to die.

Besides, my current species is monster.

If I stayed still, I wouldn’t be killed by the Monster of Violence as a fellow monster, at least for now.

“M-mommy! Mommy…!”

“Use every weapon you have!”

“I-it’s useless… We’re all going to die here!”

Even if I stood up, what could I possibly do against a monster that devoured an entire city by itself?

So although I felt a bit guilty, I also wanted to live.

‘Monster of Violence… Monster of Violence…’

As I kept repeating the name of the creature I wished would just disappear from my vicinity.

‘…Monster of Violence?’

While I had been staying quiet.

Memories from the past suddenly began to surface.

“Ah, fuck, how the hell do you defeat this bastard? Doesn’t it have any weaknesses?”

Yes, the Monster of Violence.

I knew it.

It was from <Monster Frontline>’s 1.5-year anniversary event when the hero-exclusive equipment system was first introduced.

It was a monster that could only be defeated with such exclusive equipment.

‘To get exclusive equipment for one hero, you needed at least 600,000 won including the pity system… and you could have 5 heroes in your deck…’

In other words, I spent a whopping 3 million won for the 1.5-year anniversary.

…An amount that forced me to break my savings account.

I stood up.

***

Over 100 military units were clearing out miscellaneous monsters on the outskirts of the city to facilitate smooth combat for the S-class hero who would soon arrive in Y City.

Among them, the situation of the 27th Unit, which had fallen into an unexpected crisis, was currently being monitored in real-time within the Hero Association.

“Why is the Monster of Violence at the outskirts of the city instead of the center?”

“I don’t know. Damn it, I was just monitoring because I heard reports of a rare humanoid monster specimen…!”

“At this rate, the annihilation of the 27th Unit is just a matter of time!”

“How much longer until S-class Hero Rank 3, ‘Flash Fox,’ arrives in Y City?”

“Well… it will take at least 30 minutes, sir.”

The monitoring room of the Hero Association was extremely busy.

And for good reason—the Monster of Violence, which should have been confined to Y City, had for some reason already reached the very outskirts of the city.

If it advanced just one more kilometer from the 27th Unit it had encountered, it would reach X City, where people were still living.

“Should we issue an emergency order to X City just in case?”

“No, we can’t! Half of Y City’s refugees are already gathered there. Instead of helping the refugees, we’d be creating more refugees…”

That would cause the Hero Association’s reputation to plummet.

As an organization that receives support from numerous civilian groups, corporations, and the government, they needed to avoid further mishaps as much as possible.

But was that even possible in the current situation?

And to make matters worse.

“Huh? T-team leader, we have a big problem!”

“The humanoid monster presumed to be following the Monster of Violence is moving!”

Had the heavens abandoned the 27th Unit?

The unidentified lackey monster, which had been pretending to surrender, was now slowly getting up.

“Damn it… The 27th Unit somehow needs to lead those monsters back to the center of Y City!”

Should they issue an emergency evacuation order for X City, just like they did for Y City a month ago?

As important as reputation is, it’s not more important than people’s lives.

But issuing an evacuation order for an entire city requires following proper procedures, and they didn’t even have that much time.

They were caught between a rock and a hard place.

“T-the humanoid monster is moving first!”

“Damn it!!”

So while the subordinate monster dealt with the military unit, the Monster of Violence would cross Y City’s walls and advance to X City.

BOOM.

[KIEEEEEK?!]

…or so they thought.

“Huh?”

“What?”

What they saw through the monitor was completely different from what they had expected, an unforeseen sight.

The Monster of Violence, which until now hadn’t suffered a proper wound from any hero’s attacks or state-of-the-art heavily armed weapons.

This creature, which had seemed like the very embodiment of “violence threatening humanity,” was now.

“The Monster of Violence is…”

“Bleeding?”

It was being beaten to a pulp by what they thought was its lackey monster, spitting blood as it was sent flying onto the department store it had destroyed.