Became a Failed Experimental Subject-Chapter 56: There Is a Limit
“You’re back again.”
“Is she bad at math or at language? We’re talking about whether killing 10 people or killing 50 is the better choice, and she’s just going ‘neither~’? Kids like that are always the ones who say, ‘This is a gun,’ when you play rock-paper-scissors.”
Yaaaawn. With a drawn-out yawn, Gu Seoryong stuck her fingers into my tray and picked up a piece of meat.
“Seriously, why are you sitting there listening to someone who has no idea how the real world works? Don’t you get sleepy?”
“Don’t eat with your fingers.”
“Compromise, ideals, rules? Give me a break... Why would a monster follow that crap? Even espers don’t need to. That kind of thing only exists because the weak were scared of monsters and superhumans like us and wanted to leash us.”
Nom. Without even chewing properly, Gu Seoryong gulped down the meat in one bite and stabbed at another piece.
“Her sister’s an S-Class Hero, so maybe that explains her total disconnect from reality. Girls like that always break down crying when they get thrown into the real world like, ‘I didn’t know it was so cold and scary~,’ and then they die.”
“Gu Seoryong.”
“You spend your time listening to some greenhouse flower talk, but if you’ve got that kind of time, why not just make a baby with me instead?”
She kept stabbing and stabbing, snatching more of my food without rest.
I grabbed Gu Seoryong’s fingers and tore them off—crack.
“Ow.”
“Stop eating. That’s my meat.”
“Oh? So what if I eat a little? It’s free, isn’t it?”
“You starving or something?”
“I’m hungry. Thanks to someone, I turned into a mutant and fought despair-class monsters.”
Gu Seoryong swallowed her torn-off fingers and regenerated them on the spot.
Her mutation, like monsterification, seemed to drastically boost hunger.
No matter how I looked at it, it didn’t seem to have any real advantages over becoming a monster. So why the hell did Gu Seoryong insist on doing it?
“If you want food, go get your own.”
“Hmph. So someone can just gulp down a despair-class monster core, but I can’t have a few pieces of meat?”
When I pulled the tray closer to myself and pointed at the serving station, Gu Seoryong pouted and wrapped her tail around my leg, being annoying.
“And don’t you think you’re being kinda cold? You didn’t even say thanks for my help, but you’re all thankful to her?”
“You got something out of it too.”
“What? A despair-class monster to use like a pet? The latest info on the lab? I risked my life to fight for you to get those. I want compensation for my feelings. Make a baby with me.”
“If your ability hadn’t worked on them, you would’ve ditched me and run.”
“Oho, sometimes you’re weirdly sharp. That’s hot.”
Hit right in the weak spot, Gu Seoryong let out a slightly surprised emotion.
“But still, in the end I did everything you wanted, didn’t I? Fought the experimental subjects, didn’t kill 499, brought her back alive. You could at least thank me. I even put up with all your hypocrisy.”
“Hypocrisy?”
“Not killing 499 means you’re unleashing an uncontrollable despair-class monster. What if more humans die because of that? What if the moment you let her go, Starlight killed her?”
Lick. Gu Seoryong ran her split tongue across her lips and looked at me with sharp eyes.
“You didn’t overthink it. You just did it because you felt like it, right?”
“Hmph.”
“You felt relieved when I said I’d take 499 with me, didn’t you?”
Ssslither. The tail coiled around my leg slithered upward like a living snake.
“You’re just a curious monster doing whatever you want. Listening to that bitch yap about humanity is just boredom relief. No matter how hard she tries to talk about ideals—you're a monster. If you don’t like something, you’ll kill it, right? You want to kill, don’t you?”
“Sounds about right.”
“Ugh...!”
This bitch who’s been stealing my meat is now just spouting shit to get on my nerves.
But it’s not wrong, either.
Half-agreeing with her, I grabbed Gu Seoryong’s tail crawling between my legs under the table and crushed the bone near the base.
“W-what...? You mad I hit a nerve?”
“No. I just suddenly wanted to break your tail.”
Because I’m a monster who does whatever he wants.
Crunch. Crunch. As I gripped further up the tail and crushed it bit by bit, Gu Seoryong’s head trembled slightly each time.
“You’ve got a few things wrong, so I’ll correct you.”
“Ugh, ah, hot, ngh...hah...”
“I can kill an experimental subject any time I want.”
The reason I didn’t kill her was because she hadn’t done anything yet.
Subject 444’s sister—if she started indiscriminately attacking humans, then she’s no longer human.
Then I’ll kill her.
“Same goes for you.”
Even if Gu Seoryong and 499 came at me together, I’d win.
I didn’t let her go because I wasn’t thinking—I just allowed her to stay inside my territory.
So don’t cause trouble in my zone.
“Haaah...♥”
Crunch—when I tore off Gu Seoryong’s tail at about halfway, it flopped like a live fish.
Her tail was lizard-like; barely any blood even when ripped off.
I set the severed tail down where I’d been sitting and picked up my empty tray.
Then, sitting there scratching at the exposed tail stump with her fingernails, Gu Seoryong muttered,
“Hah... Ah, shit... that was hot...”
A scent so thick it stung my nose, paired with a slow, sticky pulse of vibration.
Guess that’s monster instinct. Me saying I could overpower her at any time must’ve hit her like a dominant male monster flexing—got her all riled up.
I ignored the clingy, mating-call-like wave she was giving off and pointed my chin toward the serving station.
“Shut up. If you’re hungry, eat and leave quietly.”
“Hnnng... But I want to eat something else.”
“If you’re not hungry, then get lost.”
“Ooh, how cold.”
Gu Seoryong clicked her tongue in disappointment and calmed the trembling of her core.
Leaving her alone, I went to refill my tray and returned—
Only to find a black-haired little girl sitting in my seat.
“Meow?”
In the girl’s hand was Gu Seoryong’s severed tail.
As I stared down at the girl chewing on a monster tail, she blinked her big eyes and looked up at me.
Vmm... A faint vibration stirred my monster core in response.
Resonance with a similar wave—this was the curse left behind after devouring 444.
“It’s Oppa! Hi! Did you eat? Are you hungry?”
“499, huh.”
“Yup! I came today because of her.”
“I’m not 499, I’m Sagugu!”
“Good. Well done.”
“Sagugu did good!”
As 499—no, Sagugu—introduced herself, Gu Seoryong patted her on the head.
She was calm and docile, with no hostility at all. Looks like Gu Seoryong’s mental manipulation was complete.
“What is Sagugu? Is that supposed to be a name?”
“Coming from someone named Park Dundeun, that’s rich.”
“Huh? Wait—where’s my food?”
Just then, one of the residents under Gu Seoryong’s ability placed a tray down in front of Sagugu and wandered off, confused, back toward the serving line.
Sagugu started eating with her bare hands.
As I sat down across from her, Gu Seoryong sighed.
“She eats a crazy amount. Dunno who she takes after. So, until we can keep up with her appetite, we’re crashing here for a while.”
“If you eat a lot, you grow big!”
“And then she says stuff like that.”
“Yu Hyena won’t be pleased.”
Judging by how fast she was eating, Sagugu would probably consume nearly as much as I did.
Yu Hyena once mentioned that the amount I ate made the volunteers exhausted.
Now with Sagugu added to the mix...
Still, better than starving and losing control to instinct.
“Don’t eat too fast. Chew slowly. If you eat too fast, Yu Hyena gets mad.”
“Slowly! I’ll chew a hundred times!”
“What’re you talking about, Gugu? You can just swallow it. It’s tiring for me to keep my ability going.”
“Tasty! Mom, you eat too!”
“Mom?”
“...I don’t know. I told her I’m her big sis like a hundred times, but she won’t listen.”
For once, Gu Seoryong looked genuinely exhausted as she lifted a finger and wiggled it lazily.
“Well, nothing I can do. My ability doesn’t always do what I want, you know? When I was rewriting her mind, I made her see me as someone she has to protect above all else—even more than her own life—and now she’s like this. Her mind’s got too many holes in it, nothing much left in there to swap out....”
“I’m the Oppa, and you’re the mom, huh.”
“Oh my, you’re right! Gugu? He’s not Oppa, he’s Daddy now.”
“Oppa’s not Daddy... He’s Oppa.”
“Tsk... Not helping. Gugu? You’ve got food all over your cheeks. Use your hands to clump ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ it together properly before you eat.”
“Nyamyat!”
Clicking her tongue, Gu Seoryong pulled a handkerchief from her chest pocket and wiped the food from Sagugu’s mouth.
“You take good care of her.”
“Well, of course. She’s like my very own fang now, isn’t she?”
To Gu Seoryong, Sagugu was a blade that compensated for the limitations of her abilities—her lacking destructive power.
If she was a weapon like that, of course Gu Seoryong would take good care of her.
Just as I started to let my guard down a little, Gu Seoryong brought up something I couldn’t ignore.
“By the way, while I was digging through Sagugu’s memories, I picked up some recent intel from the lab. Interested?”
“...Talk.”
Gu Seoryong rested her chin on her hand and flicked her tail, speaking as if it was nothing important.
“The researchers who discarded CXI didn’t expect him to last this long. Apparently, they figured Starlight would’ve been able to take you down by now.”
“Because of Starlight’s ability?”
“Probably? That power of hers really is nonsense. Besides that... maybe they didn’t think you’d just not listen to them, but actually hesitate to attack humans? Now that I think about it, it’s kind of amazing. How do you ignore your instincts to that degree?”
“You just do it.”
“Ugh, that answer’s so annoying.”
“Aren’t you also holding back quite a bit?”
“You and I are different, you know?”
Back at Guryong Fortress, Gu Seoryong didn’t eat her villain subordinates.
She did keep human meat in the fridge, but even that showed an unusual amount of restraint.
Some intelligent monsters use humans as bait to lure more prey, but Gu Seoryong seemed to work differently.
“I... use drugs to keep it under control.”
When I heard that, I remembered the strange feeling I got back in her room.
She makes her own drugs, does inefficient things like mutating herself into a pseudo-monster, all just to keep looking human.
Why go that far?
As if to bury the question, Gu Seoryong kept talking about the lab.
“Alphabet seems to be focusing more and more on drugs to control the test subjects... And the Numbered ones like this girl are in the most active stage of production. The Romania division that scrapped you seems to have suffered catastrophic losses from the monster they created recently. Alphabet’s calling it the Fall of Romania.”
“Quite a grand nickname.”
“Oh? I think ‘Strongest in Romania’ is even grander, don’t you? Either way, they’re names that sound like kids made them up.”
“I didn’t even know I had a nickname.”
“Hehe... well, that stuff doesn’t matter. What does matter is... the lab’s now focused on creating monsters that can beat you.”
Grinning wickedly, Gu Seoryong finally voiced what had been lingering in the back of my mind.
“Don’t you think they’ll send another experimental subject to W-City?”
They probably will.
For combat data, for testing whether they’ve created something stronger than me—without a doubt.
Sensing my silent agreement, Gu Seoryong leaned in and whispered.
“What’ll you do if those precious humans you’re trying so hard to protect get killed by another lab monster? You’d be devastated, wouldn’t you?”
“Next time will be different.”
“Because you’re teaming up with Starlight? Hmm, don’t you think the lab already figured that out after what happened? I bet next time they’ll send something even stronger—something that can kill you for sure. What’ll you do if they manage to create something even more successful than you? A true Extinction-Class?”
“If that happens...”
If it comes to that, then I’ll have to become Extinction-Class myself.
But to do that... just being a monster won’t be enough.
Having become Despair-Class by devouring countless humans and monsters, my core’s instincts were telling me:
I’ll need to accumulate even more curses and fear.
Only then can I become Extinction-Class.
