LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 18 - A Newly Reborn Disaster?
Chapter 18: A Newly Reborn Disaster?
“Student Shin-woo! No, since you’ve graduated now, should I call you Mr. Shin-woo? Anyway, great job!”
“Yes. Thank you for your hard work as well, Team Leader.”
A month had passed since the monsterization incident in Myeong-dong.
During that time, I graduated from school, successfully became a Monster Cleaner, and was now an active member of the dismantling team.
A Monster Cleaner quietly handling the aftermath of Hunters.
…That was the ordinary life I had envisioned as a Monster Cleaner.
But then.
“Shin-woo! Great job.”
“Shin-woo, your girlfriend… no, your younger sister is here.”
“Hehe. This is the best time~.”
“This is the most fun period.”
I never imagined things would turn out this way, not even in my dreams.
It happened right after I had just dispelled my monster form and met Sophia.
“Hwaaah! I’m sorry! I was wrong! I can’t live without you! I’m sorry for calling you a liar!”
“Soph… Sophia. It’s okay…”
“Huuuu! Hweeeeeng!”
Maybe because she thought she almost lost me, Sophia first bowed her head to me the moment we met.
And I mean literally, she prostrated herself before me, making the ground under my feet a sea of tears.
Thanks to that, our reconciliation was swift.
From then on, well.
Returning home, Sophia apologized to Uncle Seok-gyu and Aunt Rolling.
And thanks to my parents who graciously accepted her apology, we could all sit around the dining table together for the first time in two years.
It was truly a happy ending.
I intended to live quietly as an extra, blending in as a human when things were calm and transforming into a monster only when big trouble arose.
However, as soon as I became an official employee of the Hunter Association and started working formally as a Monster Cleaner…
“Let’s eat lunch together!”
Interestingly, our dismantling team, including me, was mostly assigned to clean up the monsters Sophia had taken down.
Whenever we were dispatched, nine out of ten times, she was there waiting for us.
Before I knew it, Sophia even started helping our dismantling team, and whenever we finished, we would always enjoy a cozy(?) picnic together.
On top of the monster corpses, no less.
“Wow! Is it because it’s a 10-meter class monster? The view from up here is great!”
“Can’t deny that!”
Was it really okay for an extra like me to openly hang out with Sophia like this?
I worried about it, but whenever I ate the lunchboxes she prepared, I honestly wanted to stay in this state forever.
Because they were that delicious.
“I need to start meeting the main heroines soon… I hope they’re all safe…”
I thought as I bit into the homemade chicken nuggets.
Recalling the nightmare of experiencing this world through the keyboard in the past.
It seemed like I was leading an ordinary life of working, eating, and sleeping every day, but I was always mentally prepared for what was coming.
The first chapter of the main quest was about to start.
The “Rampage Incident,” where the captured monsters in the underground research wing of the Hunter Association building are released simultaneously.
There, I would meet one of the main heroines of the original story for the first time.
### Lee Hee-jeong
A researcher character with a background of living with her grandfather, the only surviving family member, after losing both her parents in the “Smiling Monster Incident” in Busan.
And at the same time,
“Hunter. Because you didn’t sacrifice yourself, my grandfather died. Couldn’t you have died instead?”
She was a crazy woman who would glare at the protagonist and stab him in the back if he made the slightest mistake.
“In this world, there’s probably no protagonist… right?”
In the prologue, Yu Che-ran had been acting alone.
In the original story, she had teamed up with the new hunter protagonist, moving as a duo.
So, in this world, is there no protagonist? I had made this deduction to some extent.
“Hmmm…”
“What’s wrong, Shin-woo? You suddenly sighed.”
Sophia asked, gazing at me with sparkling eyes as I pondered.
At times like this, it was hard to believe she was the Hunter who butchered monsters with a large sickle-like weapon.
“Uh? Oh, it’s nothing… I was just worried about whether Che-ran had recovered safely.”
“……”
Why was she acting like this?
Seeing the light quickly fade from her eyes, I concluded that Sophia was indeed a B-class Hunter.
“Are you… close?”
“Uh? Well, I don’t know if she would say we’re close.”
“You don’t know if she would say so…?”
“Yeah. On my side, she’s personally someone I feel affection for.”
In *Hunter’s Blood*, she was the only character I couldn’t save, no matter what.
Knowing that Yu Che-ran was safe made me smile involuntarily.
And then.
“Hiyah!”
Bang!
Suddenly, there was a sound of friction as if the air was being sliced, and Sophia’s fist flew just past my shoulder.
It happened in the blink of an eye.
Did I really do something wrong today?
I broke out in a cold sweat, realizing that if I had moved my head slightly, it could have been smashed.
“Why… why didn’t you dodge?!”
Why was she more scared than I was!
Sophia’s face was a picture of panic, almost crying, looking as if she might foam at the mouth at any moment.
“Because… I didn’t see it?”
“That… that can’t be! Back then, you subdued me without any issue…”
“Subdued you?”
“When we were in Myeong-dong a month ago…”
“What… what are you talking about?!”
A month ago was when I first confronted Sophia after my monsterization.
I quickly shut my gaping mouth.
I had thought it was a mere suspicion, but it seemed she still doubted I was a human-shaped monster.
“I shouldn’t have patted her head back then…!”
The only fortunate part was that I didn’t respond to Sophia’s recent attack at all.
If I had dodged her punch, I would have been caught without a doubt.
“Could it be that she wandered around my room with a dog leash because of that suspicion?”
That gave me chills.
Even now, Sophia was apologizing to me with teary eyes, but I couldn’t let my guard down.
I felt like I would be tested again later.
***
In the underground research wing of the Hunter Association.
The scale varied from country to country, but Korea, being a developed nation, had a research facility that boasted significant research capabilities by global standards.
The purpose of the research wing was quite simple.
To capture and study the periodically appearing monsters, developing quicker countermeasures and strategies.
Moreover, the weapons and equipment used by Hunters mostly originated from the Association’s research wing.
Aside from that, what else would there be to do? Maybe just personal research by the researchers in their spare time.
Anyway, it was a place located underground in a building that was said to withstand nuclear bombs, making it one of the safest places in the world.
In other words, the safest place on Earth.
Of course, this meant that the ‘outside’ couldn’t harm the ‘inside.’
But it also meant that any slaughter happening inside was meaningless in terms of external threats.
“Hiek…! Hik!”
The test tubes displaying the monster corpses were all broken, leaking green fluid.
The research wing floor was littered with the bodies of fellow researchers, people with whom conversations were shared just yesterday.
In the blood-soaked research wing, the only conscious human survivor was Lee Hee-jeong, one of the main heroines of the original story, hiding under a desk and holding her breath.
“W-what should I do…? What should I…?!”
If it had been the so-called
Even if it was momentarily chaotic, the research wing was directly beneath the Hunter Association lobby.
The numerous Hunters there would have immediately mobilized and quickly resolved the issue.
But this was… different.
“How on earth did this happen…!”
Lee Hee-jeong cautiously poked her head out from under the desk.
And beyond the brutally murdered researchers and monster corpses.
She swallowed hard as she looked at the enormous test tube that had been broken first, in the center of the research wing.
At the bottom of it, there was a white girl connected to Korea’s first national disaster-level monster, the Angel, by an umbilical cord.
Oh, let me correct that explanation.
A human-shaped monster in the form of a white child was now sitting there.
And that thing was the culprit of this incident.
“A corpse giving birth?! What the hell is going on!”
This happened ten minutes ago.
I was checking the corpse of the Angel monster, as usual.
At first, I thought the liquid had entered its belly, causing it to swell.
But then the corpse began to tremble, and eventually, the dead Angel gave birth to a white offspring with an umbilical cord attached.
At that moment, the entire research wing was a cacophony of chaotic exclamations.
Monster births were incredibly rare phenomena.
And a human-shaped monster offspring at that.
Unprecedented.
It could have been the world’s first major discovery.
The ultimate ‘experimental subject’!
“Is it female?”
“If it’s female… this is seriously huge news, isn’t it?!”
“When it grows a bit larger, we can conduct breeding experiments to quickly increase their numbers.”
“Then let’s use this specimen for birthing purposes and call a Hunter to neutralize it.”
To quickly neutralize it by removing its limbs, we drained all the liquid from the test tube since it was still just a baby.
We called a fast-handed D-rank Hunter from the first-floor lobby.
And from there, the incident happened in a flash.
It was just a baby.
A monster that had just been born.
It easily caught the strike of the D-rank Hunter who had pulled out a dagger to cut its wrist, then immediately broke the Hunter’s neck.
Then it began to munch on the dead Hunter’s body with crunching noises.
As it ate, its body rapidly grew from an infant to a child. And as if by some coincidence, when the monsters in the cages broke out and attacked, it killed and devoured its kind, the other monsters.
It was a monster, devouring monsters—an absolute beast.
“By human standards, its size is now around ten? No, maybe eleven years old?”
Even in a life-threatening situation, Lee Hee-jeong, true to her researcher nature, didn’t stop jotting down notes in her notebook.
She occasionally glanced at the monster, who was eating amidst the corpses of the other monsters, with cold sweat dripping down her forehead.
Squeak.
“Oh?!”
The young monster suddenly stopped chewing and stood up abruptly.
Then, tearing off its own umbilical cord, it turned around, covered in monster corpses.
“……”
Why did it suddenly do that?
Was it because the taste was bad?
No, wait, even if it’s a humanoid monster, can it actually taste?
Despite the situation, her curiosity as a researcher flared up.
“The situation is completely messed up…”
“What, are all the smart ones dead?”
“A… a Hunter?!”
“Oh. There’s one survivor.”
Three Hunters began walking out of the elevator entrance where the young monster was staring blankly.
They were Hunters whom Lee Hee-jeong had some acquaintance with, all recognized for their skills as powerful B-rank Hunters by the Association.
“So we just need to take that thing down?”
“A humanoid monster… If we catch it, even as a baby, we’ll probably get a promotion, right?”
“Then let’s get it done quickly.”
An ice crystal embedded itself in the chest of the young monster, which had been tilting its head.
“Kyaah?!”