Anyway, the sweet potatoes were left uneaten, with about four of them abandoned on a small tray.
Feeling a bit disappointed, I decided to eat one, and it had a grainy texture, almost like biting into hardened chestnuts.
Instead of the rich sweetness I expected, it only carried the bland aroma of sweet potato, a flavor that even Shiyeon, the sweet potato ghost, would turn her nose up at.
‘Not great, huh.’
I peeled one and forced myself to eat it, but it was the kind of sweet potato that you didn’t want to swallow unless you had water.
Getting no attention from Shiyeon, it just sat there, left on the table until midnight.
Just after 12 o’clock, crossing over into the next day, the date changed to April 18.
Exactly three minutes past midnight, after roughly checking my mobile game attendance, I plugged my phone into the charger and tried to close my eyes.
“Why the hell, it’s past 12…”
‘Huh?’
From the shared entrance, a whining, annoyed voice drifted over.
What’s going on? Before I could even wonder, I saw a form moving in the darkness.
What’s that wriggling? I squinted my eyes to see what it was…
“Mary!”
“Ah, damn it, you scared me.”
Hearing a familiar voice from the black mass snapped me to attention.
At that moment, I somewhat guessed that a monster had appeared, judging by Shiyeon’s irritated tone, and I pulled back the blanket and got out of bed.
I was furious at the mascot that woke me up without knowing it was an even day after midnight.
It felt somewhat similar to the discomfort of a new recruit misunderstanding their duty and waking someone else up.
I knew that feeling very well, wanting to punch it in the face.
As I got dressed, I realized that no words were needed, so the Gomtaengi stayed quiet.
“Ugh.”
A yawn that hadn’t emerged while I was laying down with my phone slipped out the moment I realized a monster was here.
My body instinctively protested against the idea of going out at this hour.
I was dressed in plain black long sleeves and long pants.
With just a coat thrown over, I walked barefoot to the entrance to stuff my feet into some sneakers.
Just as I was about to step outside, the monster alarm began to go off.
The sound was quite clear, suggesting it had appeared closer than I had expected.
It felt like today was going to pass quietly for once.
To be precise, one could say it was yesterday, but…
For some reason, I didn’t want to acknowledge it as tomorrow until I woke up.
‘Well, at least it didn’t show up during mealtimes.’
Descending the stairs quietly, I tried to maintain a positive mindset, convincing myself that I had avoided the worst timing.
I let out a short yawn without making any sound and made my way to the shared entrance.
Today, I was headed to the transforming point, seeking out an empty alley at a quick pace.
The augmented reality games that had once exploded in popularity seemed to have gradually faded.
It was almost non-existent to see people standing around with their smartphones, crowding the alleys like fireflies.
‘Nice, the first alley.’
The closest transforming point to my home.
It was an alleyway from another apartment complex, just a few dozen meters away.
While it was closest to my house, it was also a smoking spot for high-schoolers living in the apartment.
Looking at the ground, I could see cold, discarded cigarette butts, long extinguished.
So usually, it wasn’t clean or empty, but today I hit the jackpot.
“Sun.”
My gaze drifted closer to the ground, and the walls seemed to grow taller.
The apartment became towering enough that I couldn’t even see the sky, and in my small hands, I gripped a familiar stick.
The sensation of everything in the world growing larger and higher struck me during my transformation.
The energy and clarity that surged through me stood in stark contrast to my shrinking body, filling me with the confidence and courage to soar into the dark sky.
“Where to today?”
I simply concentrated power in my soles and leaped upward, taking off into the air.
Though it was just a jump, I reached heights that would quickly touch the rooftops of tall buildings.
As I turned to the Gomtaengi, who was also hovering at the same height, it tapped a finger against its eyebrow and pointed toward the east from my perspective.
“Over there, it’s still moving!”
With the certainty of the direction given, just as I was about to change course midair to take off, I heard its breath, as if it hadn’t finished speaking.
“Plus… there are multiple reactions.”
“What?”
Was this finally a serious invasion? I had no interest in any casualties.
A sudden tension stretched over the usually routine monster extermination process as the Gomtaengi reported the news.
Twice as fast as usual.
With a start that could create shockwaves, we shot off to where the alarm blared loud.
Arriving at a redevelopment area defined by its cement road and crumbling red brick houses, I saw something in a rush.
“Hey, what the hell! Take it down quickly!”
“How are we supposed to do that?”
“Gerooooo!”
“Another explosion, damn it!”
…The magical girl was nowhere in sight, and it was genuinely as if we were trying to subdue beasts that had escaped from a zoo.
Fish, terrestrial beasts, insects—the monsters looked like a bizarre amalgamation of every living creature on earth.
Its roar echoed through the night sky, booming with defiance.
With a size comparable to a decent-sized home.
“Kyoooom!”
The leadership monster shouting to take it down was struck by the tail of the fusion monster and sent flying far away.
Internal conflict—though if you exclude the huge monster, their unity seemed good.
Was this like something out of a B-grade zombie movie, an escape of an experiment?
I speculated in various ways, but without a clear conclusion, I just voiced my bafflement amidst the curse.
“Seriously, what the hell is this situation?”
“It’s a mess, to put it simply.”
As I stood there dazed, watching the situation unfold, hurried footsteps approached me.
“What are you doing! Quickly support…”
“Huh? What?”
The monster seemed too flustered to observe the surroundings.
It raised a hand with only two fingers on its shoulder, then withdrew in shock, taking a few steps back as if its entire body had melted.
Can I call that collapsing?
The once green creature instantly took on a blue hue as if a dye had been poured over it.
Oh… how interesting, is it a chameleon?
As I curiously stared at the melting mass of it, I took a step forward.
“Uukiyaaaaak!”
“Ah, damn.”
Just taking that one step, it screamed in a shrill and horrific manner as if seeing a murdering maniac wielding a chainsaw.
Hearing that scream was deafening.
The sheer size of the massive creature staggering towards me made this place barely shake with a rumble.
Drawing the attention away from the nosy monsters around, the fusion creature began to move toward the source of the sound.
I didn’t describe it as stepping because it was, in essence, dragging its body along—a mass of flesh that was hard to determine as limbs.
“Gerooooo!”
Once more, the fusion monster roared with resonating might.
I could clearly see its slow movements targeting me, compelling me to strike first.
I could no longer endure the nocturnal noise pollution.
“Quiet…”
Gathering strength into the tips of my feet, I leaped straight onto that massive bulk.
With each finger’s joint pressed down with force, I unleashed my final blow.
“Take this, you bastard!”
The impact started at the strike point, and the flesh squished down, creating an indentation.
The fusion monster was squished down effortlessly, like a deflated soccer ball, crushed flat and turned grotesque.
The shockwave that unleashed struck the ground with residual force.
As I swiftly resolved a situation that had previously seemed unsolvable with many monsters clinging to it, a moment of silence was followed by cheers.
“Whoa, whoa!”
“Truly, amazing!”
“Sun, you are the best!”
Despite not knowing what the situation was, they looked as though they had been in quite a bind.
To receive cheers from monsters, that was certainly something to experience in one’s lifetime.
Though I felt a little better, I gathered the monsters with a stern expression.
“Don’t think about slipping away and gather here.”
“Yes…”
“One, two, three, four…”
Counting the monsters that assembled at the gathering signal, I found eight in total.
From the leadership monster that had been knocked away by the horrendous creature’s tail, I could somewhat gather the situation now…
It appeared that some monster executive named Maker had returned in a spaceship, bringing along its brilliant invention.
That invention was truly labeled Combatant Cultivator No. 52.
The number increased by one from the same name machine that had previously been discarded.
Anyway, the such machine had the function of merging cells of monsters suited for battle, automatically generating monsters intended purely for combat.
Theoretically, if that machine worked properly, you could send artificially created combatants to areas requiring fighting power, including the ‘Black Zone’ where combatants typically shied away!
…And that was the plan that had gone awry, leaving us in this mess.
“So, you tried to do something sneaky but couldn’t manage it… is that it?”
To summarize, they got caught trying to set up an automatic hunting scheme.
It seemed they had intended to send in the artificial monsters for a battle with no chance of winning, essentially saying, “Have at it, here, eat this.”
One of the monsters, who was side-eyeing cautiously, still seemed to have the gall to mutter a response.
“If we skip over many parts… yes, that’s correct.”
“You wanted to send machine-made monsters that can’t even communicate to make it easier for you, right?”
“…….”
They looked like secondary characters in a series of blunders, like a private caught red-handed by a commander.
No matter how many mouths they had, they were left without words.
If they admitted it, they would simply be serving as scapegoats; if they denied it, their logic wouldn’t hold.
“Shove your heads in, you idiots.”
