Karrin ran without fear of weakness or danger.
He laughed as he lunged forward, swiping wildly, leaping over roots and fallen trunks. His nails scraped bark and stone as he pushed his body faster than it had ever gone, leaning forward as if speed alone could tear the forest apart.
He wiped his face hard with his sleeve medieval clothes.
"Damn it…"
The word burned.
It was embarrassing. I was weak. I was useless. I almost died—and I didn't even do anything.
He kept running, half-blind, crashing through the forest in a frenzy. He stumbled, fell, rolled through dirt and leaves, then forced himself back up as the air roared behind him from the speed he'd reached. He slammed his fist into a tree. The trunk split and collapsed with a groan.
"Ugh…"
Memories surged without mercy.
My family. My friends. Everything I could have become.
Useless.
As he laughs... Miserably
"I cried shamelessly, falling to myself..."
A burden to my family—past and present.
"Yeah, right," he spat bitterly.
And now I'm useless again.
Wrath and agony flooded his chest, drowning out reason. He slashed the air with his red-glowing claws. Dark crimson orbs burst forth, streaking through the trees like fireballs, tearing through trunks and branches. He ripped a chunk of wood from the ground and hurled it skyward, then stomped forward, kicking and punching trees until the forest itself seemed to recoil.
The noise carried.
Too far.
Figures began to move between the trees.
Ghouls.
They shambled toward him, drawn by the violence. Fear crept in—sharp, suffocating—the fear of being bitten, torn apart, devoured alive. His face twisted, devastated.
I can't even face Adam.
The thought broke him.
He collapsed to his knees and cried like a child.
When he looked up again, they were close but different.
As tall as him—some slightly taller. Their expressions were blank, empty. Fingers stretched like twisted branches. Their bodies were hideous, skin stretched thin over protruding ribs, necks elongated beyond what should be possible.
He forced himself to think.
Focus.
"Come over here!" he shouted hoarsely. "And give me your power!"
The ghouls responded.
Their mouths stretched wider than flesh should allow. Hollow eyes deepened into pure darkness, swallowing all light. For a moment, Karrin wondered where he even was—whether this was still reality.
He lunged.
So did they.
One seized his face, tearing into it. He felt claws rip through his eye, through bone and skin—only for it to regenerate moments later. Another grabbed his stomach, piercing straight through him before his body could heal again. A massive jaw forced its way toward his neck.
He screamed and shoved it back.
"No—damn it… damn it…"
He refused.
I won't be something that amounts to nothing.
I'll grow faster. I'll be faster. I'll be stronger.
So nothing—nothing—can ever hurt me again.
He bit down on a ghoul's neck. The flesh was hard as metal. He clamped harder, gripping its head and jaw with both hands as others swarmed him.
Another tried to tear into his side.
Another lunged for his throat.
"I chose this path," he growled through blood and teeth. "And I will succeed."
Blue chains erupted from the air, hundreds of them, binding the ghouls in an instant. They strained, snapping the chains one by one, but the delay was enough.
Karrin grabbed the nearest monster and drove his nails into its neck. It regenerated as fast as he did.
He forced it anyway.
Even as his nails split. Even as fingers tore. Darkness surged along his claws, sharpening them beyond reason. Agony flared as other monsters ripped into his back, but he did not stop.
I've experienced this before.
Again.
And again.
If I can't adapt, I'll fail.
His form darkened.
Deeper.
His eye turned blank—void of white, void of pupil. The monsters hesitated, staring back at him with their own empty gazes. Red mist poured into the forest, thick and suffocating.
The miasma spread.
It touched everything.
Rabbits twisted and deformed, limbs warping unnaturally. Wolves grew massive gaping mouths lined with too many teeth. Deer staggered through the woods on elongated necks, silent and wrong.
Karrin's hands reshaped into five long, blade-like extensions each, gleaming like living swords. His mouth widened, filling with massive, razor-sharp teeth. He tore a ghoul in half with a single bite and spun, carving through the rest in a storm of motion.
His body hardened—again and again—until claws, strikes, and bites no longer reached him. The remaining monsters fled, scrambling away like terrified animals.
Dark cloaks of shadow wrapped around him.
His vision sank into red. His thoughts spiraled, unraveling. Hunger consumed him. Thirst burned without end.
The only thing left in his sight was a distant structure—an abandoned, collapsing facility, half-swallowed by decay.
Dark red miasma poured from it.
It called to him.
It consumed him.
Had he gained… power?
—
Adam — POV
We ran.
Not blindly—never blindly—but fast enough that thought struggled to keep up. The forest bore Karrin's passage like a wound. Deep claw marks gouged through bark and stone. The ground was torn open, scorched, shattered, as if something furious had been dragged through it rather than run.
Yuruki slowed for only a moment, crouching and holding on his back. Her eyes moved, calculating.
"Well," she said calmly, "this is something."
She stood. "He's angry. That much is obvious. But anger alone doesn't explain this direction."
I didn't understand what she meant. Not yet.
Yuruki looked at me—emotionless, precise. "If I had to guess," she continued, "you probably shouldn't go after him. The air is thickening...And something is saturating it."
Rehan appeared beside me as a flickering hologram, arms crossed, expression grim.
"She's saying he's following something dangerous," Rehan said. "This atmosphere—this matter—it's corruptible. It doesn't just affect beings. It rewrites them into something more grotesque."
Power.
The word lingered unspoken.
Yuruki stared at me while Rehan finished speaking. Her gaze was empty, unreadable.
"Do you really want to save him?" she asked.
I didn't hesitate.
"If I can," I said, "I will."
She smiled—not warmly, but with certainty—and stepped behind me kicking at the air, pointing forward.
"Then let's go. There's nothing to think about. We save him."
She trusted her judgment. And I trusted her.
As Yuruki thinks...
Whatever this corruptible essence was, it wouldn't erase her. Anything that attempted to alter Yuruki would be destroyed and replaced by her original information. That was her nature. That was her certainty.
And if not—
There were backup plans.
She gripped my back as I sprinted forward. We vaulted between trees, shadows cutting through shadows, the forest blurring into streaks of darkness.
Then the ground shook.
Violently.
I slowed.
Ahead of us, the earth was being destroyed.
The ground split, uprooted, devoured. Trees vanished. Matter itself was swallowed whole. One of abominable creatures swarmed around a single, impossible presence—eating monsters, earth, and flesh alike.
I swallowed hard.
"What the hell is that…?"
Yuruki looked at it—and smiled.
"That," she said softly, "is something."
It was an ethereal mass of red, vast beyond scale. Thousands of eyes opened and closed across its surface. Countless tentacles were fused into the ground, stretching for kilometers. Mouths—thousands of them—consumed living beings without pause.
It was mountain-sized.
Red strings extended from its core of monster coming out from the body of mass, faint but endless, tethering humanoid figures torn of flesh—creatures that moved like puppets, barely alive.
Around the entity, Also countless dark and white luminescent chains pulsed, constricting, containing—trying to contain what could not be contained.
"This feels familiar," I muttered.
Fog rolled thick around it, limiting my vision, as if reality itself refused to let me see the whole thing.
Then—
Impact.
Something massive struck us from the side.
The world flipped as we were driven into the ground. Dirt and stone exploded upward. I barely had time to react before I saw it.
A monster.
Twelve feet tall. Lanky, twisted limbs. Tears streamed endlessly from hollow eyes. Its mouth gaped wide, filled with razor-sharp teeth that didn't fit its skull.
Instinct took over.
Yuruki.
I moved without thinking, turning, covering her with my body as its elongated fingers—nails sharp as blades—swiped toward us.
The air screamed.
And the hunt had truly begun.... Of the mystery of this world.