I did not move.
Pressed against the shadow of a massive structure at the top of the tank, where no light reached at all, I was looking down below.
The old metal framework was twisted and hideously exposed, and the vivid sensation of rough rust scraping faintly against my scales came through.
But right now, there was no reason to let such stimuli scatter my focus.
What mattered was not the sensation touching my body, but the flow of the space that could only be read from this high vantage point.
A high position does not necessarily guarantee safety. If anything, it is closer to the opposite.
At this height, the moment someone’s gaze landed on me, I would become a target with no room to escape, and it would be over.
Even so, the reason I did not descend was because this place, dangerous as it was, showed me the most information.
The current me was not so dull that I could not distinguish the difference between danger and opportunity.
My field of vision opened.
It was not simply that I could see farther. Flow overlapped with form, fading heat remained atop it, and finally, the lingering traces of movements that had existed until moments ago were layered over that.
When the subtle movement of air was read first and temperature was applied over it, broken routes and connected routes embedded themselves in my mind like a single blueprint.
Where was blocked and where was open, what had stopped breathing and what still continued.
The sensation of this entire space being organized into precise data and engraved into my mind.
Even without consciously trying to draw it up, all the information came in naturally.
It was not a sense I was forcibly wringing out. At first, it had definitely been that way.
Every time I used it, my insides had throbbed numbly, and after reading a space once, my vision would blur. It had been a power unfamiliar to my body.
But now it was different. It was far too natural.
Rather, it felt as if it had always been this way, or as if I had taken this sense for granted since long ago.
It was closer to recovery than adaptation, and the speed of that recovery was abnormal.
I did not dwell on that thought for long. Even questions mixed with unease were a luxury right now.
I dropped my gaze downward again.
The place that had already been swept through once was horrific.
The corpses sprawled across the floor could scarcely maintain human form anymore.
Their limbs had been torn to shreds, and their torsos were badly damaged, the insides crushed until their shapes had completely collapsed.
Some had hardened in place with their organs and skeletal structures fully exposed, as if pressed down by immense pressure, while blood and filth had mixed together and dried dark red.
Over them stretched long marks, as though something heavy had been dragged through.
This was not simple slaughter. It was a trace containing the blatant intent to erase the very shape of existence itself.
The acrid smell of overheated, burnt metal, and the lingering scent of artificial chemicals mixed within it.
The memories of a modern person analyzed the components of this smell, while the senses of a Taoist sharply picked out the alien quality of that energy.
I reached the conclusion that it was not a monster born from a natural ecosystem. It was the result of someone’s intervention—in other words, an artificial mutant.
In the middle of that hellscape, three who were not yet finished remained. One woman, and two others.
The man leaning against the floor had his abdomen badly destroyed and was barely keeping his breath going, while the one standing had the metal frame around his shoulder torn away, his internal output lines exposed as he swayed unsteadily.
Neither would last long. Physically and energetically, they were already as good as finished.
Between them stood the woman. The woman called Karin.
“Hey… Karin…”
The man on the floor barely opened his mouth. His voice trembled as if his breath might cut off at any moment.
“This one… fuck… this really crossed the line. We went in too deep. Don’t you remember? Back in Sector 7. Back then, we were pushing them at first, too. But at the end…”
His breath caught, and a rough sound mixed in as blood filled his lungs.
“We all got ground up… Just like back then…”
“Shut up.”
Karin cut him off, short and cold.
Her gaze was already turned to the side, accurately picking out a small presence that had hidden itself as much as possible between the collapsed concrete debris.
A kid. It had lowered its presence to the extreme, but not enough to avoid my eyes, which possessed the eyes of a monster beast and the senses of a Taoist.
“Hah… fuck… if we get that one, our whole lives could really turn around…”
A rough breath tinged with greed burst from the man’s mouth. Even with death before his eyes, human desire was this tenacious and ugly.
“Bullshit. Bark after you get out alive.”
Karin adjusted her grip on the shotgun. Her wrist was trembling faintly.
The flow of energy drawing up her strength was falling out of rhythm by a beat at a time.
She herself must have been painfully aware that her condition had already surpassed its limit.
At that moment, the space pressed down heavily.
Before its form could even be seen, pressure arrived first, and the air rushed sharply to one side.
I caught the sign of that change before anyone else.
It’s coming. A rat.
But it clearly deviated from the form of an ordinary rat as I remembered it.
It was a grotesque mass of flesh itself, as if multiple individuals had been twisted and forcibly stitched together.
Torn chunks of meat and warped bones were tangled together, crushing one another, and between those gaps, sharp metal frames were embedded deeply like fragments of bone.
Every time it moved, a horrifying sound came from within, the sound of metal scraping raw flesh.
An unpleasant noise of living tissue and dead metal mingling as they ground each other down.
It was the dreadful failure of a modern experiment, and to the eyes of a Taoist, it was undoubtedly an abomination that defied the order of Heaven.
“…That thing, that’s not an ordinary fucking rat.”
The mercenary man muttered low, his voice trembling.
That was the leader that dominated and controlled the entire swarm.
As its body twisted faintly, the countless monster rats scattered around all aligned their directions at once.
It had not given an audible command, yet every movement converged into one.
Collective will, or perfect neural control by a superior individual.
“We have to deal with it right now.”
Karin threw herself forward first. It was a bold leap without hesitation.
A mana stone of excessively refined pure white, the sort that a mere fixer or low-grade mercenary would rarely even get to glimpse, was ground violently inside the chamber.
The shotgun in her hands roared thunderously, pouring out condensed high-pressure energy rounds.
Energy and matter exploded simultaneously as they were fired, and the pressure inside the barrel reached its peak before being released all at once.
Boom! The air screamed as it was torn apart.
An invisible shockwave twisted the space, and the projectile followed after, burrowing in.
The side of the fused mass of monsters burst outward from within, and one small individual attached to it was torn away whole.
“It’s being pushed back! Now! Keep pouring it on!”
Gunfire continued without pause. Energy rounds poured out in succession, cleaving the darkness red.
Each time the barrel vibrated violently, the air ruptured along with the sound of firing, and the surrounding dust whirled like a storm.
Impact and heat simultaneously destroyed the monster’s tissue with relentless persistence.
Karin closed the distance. She dug in until the monster’s stench stabbed at the tip of her nose. Then she pulled the trigger once more.
Boom!
The projectile struck the core embedded deep inside.
Only then did the pillar supporting its interior collapse, and the connected tissues fell away like severed threads.
“It’s working! Push harder! Crush it with firepower!”
On the surface, it certainly looked like the monster was being pushed back. But I knew.
This was not being pushed back; it was merely enduring the firepower being poured onto it by force.
The tissues that had fallen away were drawn back up toward the main body as if pulled by an invisible force.
A grotesque sight, severed parts reconnecting again from the inside out.
Outwardly, it pretended to collapse, but in reality, it was condensing an even greater power behind it.
Karin instinctively sensed that danger as well. That was why she poured out attacks even more desperately.
Because she knew painfully well that the moment she stopped here, everything would be over.
She dug one step deeper. It was right then.
At the edge of her vision, one small individual hiding breathlessly behind the debris entered Karin’s sight.
It was only for an extremely brief instant, but the woman’s gaze clearly shifted that way.
A fatal mistake.
In that brief gap, her balance collapsed.
The pressure the creature had been building surged out like a bursting dam, and every structure around resonated with an unpleasant vibration.
An invisible wave spread outward in a sphere, encroaching upon the space.
I saw it. The ocular art within me reacted first.
The energy suppressed deep inside it crossed its critical point and began to run rampant.
Energy poured down like a bombardment. Karin’s next attack was half a beat slower than usual.
The leader rat did not miss that tiny opening and burrowed into her arms.
The impact struck first, and space distorted. Karin twisted her body, but she could not avoid it completely.
Her side was slashed open, and fresh blood scattered.
“Kgh, fuck…!”
Her breathing shook violently, but she did not stop.
Gritting her teeth, she forcibly raised the shotgun to its maximum output.
A sharp warning sound announcing overload rang noisily throughout the ruins.
“Hey, crazy Karin! Stop! The gun’s gonna blow!!”
“I know, fuck!!”
The output broke through its limit.
The shotgun’s barrel turned bright red with heat, and then the metal could no longer withstand it, spiderweb-like cracks spreading across it.
Through those tiny gaps, a blindingly intense white light burst out.
Boom!
An explosion erupted. The compressed energy was released all at once, blowing away the leader rat’s entire upper body.
The small individuals attached to the main body flew in all directions and slammed into the walls.
Karin did not stop there. One more shot. It was a desperate obsession to completely cut off its breath.
The mercenary man who had been holding out behind her forced his collapsing body to rise.
He shoved a round into his own overheated barrel by force.
The barrel, already at its limit, screamed. I heard the sound of metal twisting.
Crack, creeeeak—
The weapon screamed first, and its control device shattered.
In the end, the output backflowed, causing a massive explosion.
Kukwakwa-boom!!
A tremendous blast and shockwave swept over the scene.
The mercenary at the center of the explosion literally vanished without a trace.
The supporting structures could not withstand the impact of this final blow either and collapsed.
Metal bent and concrete split, and enormous fragments rained down like a storm.
Karin, too, could not withstand the blast pressure and was flung away.
Her body sprang up like a spring, colliding several times with sharp debris, and far away, she slammed into a rusted rebar protruding from the wall, her chest impaled.
What tenacious vitality. Even amid that explosion, the creature’s form began to gather again.
The scattered lumps of flesh squirmed, pulling one another together as they tried to form a mass again.
But in the end, everything collapsed.
Beyond the thunderous sound of falling stones and the thick dust, all noise was cut off.
In an instant, an unpleasant silence ruled the space.
Only then did I move.
From above, I slid soundlessly down through the debris.
Residual heat prickled against my scales, and the smell of burning and the stench of blood strongly stimulated the tip of my nose.
At the center was a small body. Pinned beneath fragments that looked as if they weighed several tons, it barely had only the spark of life remaining.
I stopped before it. My pupils split vertically and sank coldly.
The thing that had been the master of this hellscape until moments ago. The thing that was now completely still.
The bound flow unraveled, and the small fry scattered into the darkness.
Now, no further threat existed in this area.
Only one thing remained.
My gaze turned downward again. The small individual, a faint life response on the verge of being severed.
I knew that ending it here and quietly withdrawing was the right answer.
The reason of the modern person I had been, and the cautious judgment of the Taoist I had been, both said so.
And yet I could not tear my eyes away. Something inside kept scratching at me, itching.
What was inside that. Something with neither form nor boundary, yet clearly existing.
I tried to stop, tried to create distance, and tried to keep my thoughts going.
But rational judgment was far too brief, and before that judgment could even finish, my body was already leaning toward the prey.
If I miss it now, it’s over. No, I absolutely don’t want to miss it.
An instinctive certainty flashed through my mind that an opportunity like this would never come again.
I moved. I no longer controlled myself.
My field of vision narrowed, and the surrounding scenery blurred.
At a speed my consciousness could not follow, a primordial desire surged up from a place far deeper than judgment.
The dam of reason I had painstakingly built collapsed in vain.
Only a fundamental instinct remained, an unknowable urge to covet it, commanding this space.
At last, I touched it.
At that moment, from deep inside me, something hot surged upward as if exploding.