-----
-----
Three months later.
Deep inside a vast forest, a flash of steel cut through the air. A towering beast, more than two meters tall, let out a strangled cry before splitting in half, blood spraying as its body hit the ground.
Beside the corpse, Saeko Busujima calmly slid her katana back into its sheath. Without hesitation, she turned to hunt her next prey.
She had barely taken a few steps when another massive creature burst out from the trees.
"Perfect," Saeko murmured, her eyes narrowing with sharp light. Her hand settled on her blade's hilt.
The monster lunged. In that instant, Saeko's sword left its sheath in a gleaming arc. The beast froze as if turned to stone.
She resheathed her katana in one smooth motion, already turning away. Behind her, a jagged line tore across the monster's body. A gush of blood followed, and the beast collapsed in two twitching halves.
Farther off, on the edge of the forest, lay a massive basin surrounded by steep mountains.
On one of those mountains, a boulder began to tremble. Slowly, it lifted into the air.
Only then did it become clear—a Venom clone was beneath it, muscles bulging as it hefted the giant rock overhead.
It took a few heavy steps forward and gazed down into the valley below.
There, another Venom-shaped figure was wandering across the plain.
Two Venoms.
The sight was disorienting, almost absurd.
From above, the Venom with the boulder let out a roar and hurled it downward.
The Venom on the ground, busy sniffing around, looked up just in time to see a mountain-sized shadow crash down on him.
Boom!
The impact shook the earth. Dust and stone exploded outward. Black fluid splattered across the edges of the crater, writhing like living tendrils.
Not far away, two other Venoms were locked in a brutal wrestling match, slamming into each other like raging beasts.
Elsewhere, one Venom crouched over its prey, feasting noisily. Blood covered the dirt around him.
Another Venom crept up, eager to share the meal. The feeding Venom snarled in fury, instantly forming jagged blades from its arms in warning.
The challenger didn't back down, answering by raising its own weapons.
They clashed, tearing into each other in a frenzy.
Looking closer, it became clear—there were a lot of Venoms here. Some bigger, some smaller, but all nearly identical.
And all of them radiated something wilder, fiercer, more savage than the original.
At the peak of a nearby mountain, the true Venom stood silently, watching the chaos below. Dozens of his copies fought and bickered over scraps, killing time with endless violence.
"What a damn headache," Venom muttered, rubbing his forehead. These things were like wild animals—untamable, vicious, impossible to reason with.
It all went back to the battle with that super-class monster.
After Venom and Saeko left that battlefield, they had thrown themselves into nonstop combat. Venom devoured beast after beast, slowly clawing his way back to full power.
They didn't eat, didn't rest. They just hunted. And after two relentless months, they'd scraped together a million life points.
Venom used the system to erase his biggest weakness: his vulnerability to heat.
But instead of rushing to fight Zinogre again, he kept grinding, determined to grow even stronger.
A month later, after another spree of battles, Venom had racked up more than four hundred thousand points. He started gambling them in the system lottery.
The rewards: a katana, and a skill called Split.
The katana, of course, went to Saeko.
The skill, he kept for himself.
Split allowed Venom to shed part of his body, creating a clone. A perfect copy. Every power Venom had, the clones had too.
Amused, Venom tested the ability again and again—until the basin turned into the madhouse it was now.
The problem?
These clones weren't like him. They weren't calm or rational. They were like that Venom—the one from Marvel.
Wilder. Hungrier. Always itching for a fight.
And they had a strange way of bonding—through battle. The more they fought each other, the closer they seemed to get.
Every one of them called themselves Venom.
Unruly, stubborn, quick to rage—they were beasts. But even so, they still listened to the original's commands… unless they were angry, in which case, nothing could rein them in.
The upside? Any life their clones killed, the original Venom got the points for.
They were him, after all. Their kills were his kills.
So Venom began sending his copies out to hunt. Even when he stayed put, his life points soared.
One Venom now equaled an army.
And if he could keep splitting endlessly? Then one army wouldn't even begin to cover it.