Became a Failed Experimental Subject-Chapter 17: That’s Fascinating

The restaurant was closed.

Well, nothing I can do. I’ll just have to try another one.

That one was closed too.

Bad luck... Maybe another place...?

Also closed.

Hungry and wandering through the streets for a while now, I stared in confusion at all the locked-up storefronts.

Even the grocery stores and clothing shops had shuttered.

“Why is everything closed...?”

There hadn’t been any sirens. No monster sightings, either.

But people were packing up in a rush and heading off somewhere—

And there hadn’t been any official evacuation alert, right?

Then, just as I was thinking that, the monster alert siren echoed through the city.

The classification: Murder-Class.

The people who’d already been heading somewhere picked up the pace.

Maybe now there was some kind of pre-warning system that let people evacuate before the sirens?

Maybe everyone had already been pre-alerted...

I stood there, confused, and decided to just wait for the evacuation to finish.

Once the restaurants reopened, I could finally eat.

Surely a hero would show up soon and take care of the monsters.

Squatting in front of a restaurant, I read the menu.

But no heroes came.

Within my monster senses, I could feel the hunger-ridden glee of Murder-Class creatures as they prepared to pounce on humans.

That trembling resonance—like right before biting into a fresh kill.

I stood up.

And between the alleyways, I transformed.

“It’s—It’s a Despair-Class! The siren says it’s Despair-Class!”

“Aaaaahhh!!”

“Wait! That’s the Black Cat!”

“Everyone! It’s the Black Cat! We’re safe—it’s the Black Cat!”

Why... are they relieved?

As I leapt between buildings, the citizens who hadn’t finished evacuating yet were calming down the ones screaming in fear.

Baffled, I arrived at the scene and tore apart the Hypnotoad Salamanders.

These giant salamanders, with massive eyes bulging from their foreheads, would hypnotize humans and quietly devour them—then lay eggs in the corpses.

Women who had just snapped out of the trance looked at me and exhaled in relief.

“W-We’re saved...”

“Hey! Anyone got ham? HAM?”

Oh. Jackpot.

Lately, people I helped seemed split into two camps: those who gave me no food at all, and those who gave me way too much.

Today was the generous kind.

As they packed up their things, someone tossed me some meat from their supplies.

I tore it apart cleanly and devoured it.

Mmm. I was starving... What luck.

“Kyaah! His fur! It’s so soft!”

“Holy crap, he’s so calm!”

“See? All that stuff they say on TV is total BS.”

The people I’d just saved came over carefully, some even placing their hands on my head and back.

I used to growl at anyone who touched me, but these days... if they gave me enough ham, I figured I might as well let it slide.

Call it payment.

But seriously—why hadn’t a hero shown up yet?

It felt like they were way slower than usual.

Just as I was wondering that, the people who’d fed me answered the question for me.

“Let’s go already—they say a Despair-Class is coming.”

“Aren’t we safe here with the Black Cat around?”

“Dude, he’s a monster too. If two monsters go at it, everyone dies. Safe my ass.”

...A Despair-Class is coming?

That was news to me.

I looked at a few women glancing down at their phones.

Must’ve gotten the alert by text.

I didn’t have a smartphone—no personal data, no ID, no reason to have one.

So I’d had no idea an alert had even gone out.

“Hurry! The shelters are gonna fill up!”

“Thanks, kitty!”

“Grrowl...”

“Wait—wait up! I need to pee first! Go without me!”

I’m not a damn cat.

I growled at the retreating girls, and one of them flinched and stopped.

She didn’t seem in too much of a rush, so the Despair-Class must not have been too close yet.

Just as I was about to leave—

She grabbed one of my tails.

“U-Um... you’re... smart, right? On TV they said... you’re a super-intelligent monster...”

What now?

I stopped walking, and she spoke, her voice trembling.

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“If... if you can understand me, could I ask just one thing? My boyfriend... he’s a hero. He’s stationed in Sector 2, to the north... They said the Despair-Class is heading that way, so he’s down there right now...”

I see... So the Despair-Class was headed toward Sector 2.

With that much preparation, the heroes would handle it.

I should steer clear so I didn’t get in the way.

Having learned something new, I turned to leave.

“Can’t you stop it? Please... I can’t live without him. I’ll give you meat. A ton of it, okay? M-My dad owns a butcher shop in Sector 5, and if you come to the back door, I’ll give you... like... a whole cow... secretly...”

My steps stopped.

I turned back to look at her.

She looked like she couldn’t believe the words coming out of her own mouth.

Her fingers brushed the bracelet on her arm as she stood there, hollowed out.

“What the hell am I saying... asking a monster...”

“Grrowl...”

She wasn’t wrong.

It was a stupid thing to say.

No matter how smart a monster might be, asking one to help kill another?

What kind of dream-world did she think this was?

This world is overrun ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) with monsters. Nothing comes that easy.

Growling, I sprang upward, leaving her behind and landing on the rooftop.

But still... A whole cow...

What would that even taste like?

Her family ran a butcher shop—

That meant it’d be fresh. No question.

She wouldn’t feed her precious boyfriend cheap meat, right?

If it was a whole cow, just how much meat was that?

My mouth started to water.

“...Mrowowww...”

Licking my lips, I glanced northward.

She just had to say that right when I was hungry.

Well, might as well take a look.

Let’s see how strong this Despair-Class really is.

If it looked stronger than me, I’d just leave it to the heroes and run.

Besides—

There was something I’d been meaning to test anyway.

Ever since the last time I faced off against that wolf-shaped Despair-Class,

I’d been practicing how to fully suppress my presence.

Even when I turn back into a human, some traces of monster aura remain.

I wanted to be able to control that completely.

Now, staying in monster form, I suppressed the resonance of my core.

The sirens that had been wailing across the city slowly faded away.

The results weren’t bad.

The problem was that moving like this was hard as hell.

Now operating with a human-level presence, I stepped lightly across the rooftops.

It felt like carrying a glass of water filled to the brim, trying not to spill a drop.

Fighting while this hidden was impossible.

The power I could muster was about the same as when I was in human form—

But at least the aura that usually gave me away to other monsters was fully gone.

At least, from my perspective.

Other Despair-Class monsters might still sense something off.

Keeping my movements minimal, I leapt high and unfurled my wings.

Soaring soundlessly through the sky above the city—no sirens now—

I flew toward the north with a single thought on my mind.

A whole butchered cow—

Wait, no, I meant: could the Despair-Class sense me?

If I really was fully hidden, then from now on I could move freely among people without attracting other monsters.

That meant I could finally make some money...

And one day eat my fill of premium-grade beef.

Mmm... Do butcher shops even carry premium-grade beef?

As I neared Sector 2, the number of people on the streets dropped dramatically.

I began to feel the faint pressure of both distant heroes and the approaching Despair-Class.

I landed quietly on a rooftop without being spotted, keeping my presence hidden, and stared at the monster.

It was still far away.

A squid... swimming through the sky?

I’d never seen a monster like that.

Even I, who’d had the data of countless monsters force-fed into my brain at the lab, didn’t know this one.

It had to be something extremely rare.

The squid had stretched its long limbs across the mountain ranges beyond the city’s outer wall—then shifted color.

And then—

It turned into a jellyfish.

Sparks flew in every direction.

A shapeshifter? Formless-Type? Or maybe an Esper-Type...?

Definitely a rare one.

Fascinated, I kept watching as heroes rushed out from within the city.

“Mirage just broke through the first containment line!”

“Well yeah, an electric fence wouldn’t hold that thing... Still, that was fast. Coordinate your abilities better!”

“It’s got insane reflexes—pair up with someone who has the opposite power type!”

Fire and ice. Razor wind and stones torn from buildings.

Formless and physical. Blunt force and cutting edge.

A barrage of psychic powers rained down on the monster—so varied in nature that no single trait could guard against them all.

Watching from a distance, I focused on one woman who stood out even among the heroes.

The space around her shimmered with heat.

Every time she swung a fist, the air itself tore apart like flesh being ripped.

From afar, her attacks looked brutal.

Looking at the way that Despair-Class monster—Mirage—was fighting against her, it seemed like I wouldn’t have to get involved.

Yu Anna could probably handle it just fine.

“Yaaawn...”

Guess I didn’t need to help after all.

So much for that beef.

Still in monster form, I stretched my jaws wide in a yawn—

And snapped my eyes open again.

Something felt off.

Mirage, the Despair-Class monster, was spewing a strange mist into the air.

“It’s coming! That’s the allure mist! Gas masks on!”

“Airspeed manipulation units, to the front! Block it!”

Kurrrrrrrrrrr

Like heavy clouds sinking into water, the thick mist billowed out, engulfing the heroes.

They scrambled to put on gas masks, pulling up their powers—but Mirage moved faster.

The heroes who inhaled the fog clutched at their throats, paralyzed by whatever psychic effect was laced into the haze.

From above, massive tentacles surged through the air—

Limbs distorted by sensory disruption, growing longer and longer.

They trampled the city’s borders, collapsing buildings in their path.

In mere moments, Mirage had gone from outside the city to inside.

The scene grew chaotic.

The heroes faltered, confused.

But I wasn’t watching the battle.

I was watching Mirage.

What I felt through my monster senses was completely different from what the humans were seeing.

Mirage’s true body didn’t match its outer appearance.

It was doing something similar to what I do—masking its presence, sneaking in under their noses.

While pretending to stay outside the city, it had crept all the way to the front lines.

Then it released its mist.

That’s why they couldn’t react in time—

The visual distance didn’t match the actual distance.

Which meant...

Mirage had experience.

It had been through this before—being surrounded by heroes.

This thing didn’t just kill humans.

It hunted heroes.

And more than that—

Yu Anna’s attacks weren’t hitting properly.

It looked like she was landing some solid blows.

The kind that should’ve done real damage.

But Mirage just regenerated, like it was nothing.

Yu Anna clearly felt something was wrong—

But she didn’t know what.

Was that the difference between monsters and humans?

We can sense monster cores directly.

I could feel exactly where Mirage’s core was—and even track where it was moving.

But none of the heroes had responded properly.

None of them could.