(Oborozaki Village)
The massive cockroach monster and its skittering swarm of mutated insects converged on the spot where Ayumu had been pinned. They tore at the mud, mandibles clicking in a hungry frenzy, only to find nothing but an empty, cracked gas mask lying in the sludge.
The lead cockroach tilted its head, its antennae twitching violently. "FOOD?" it hissed, confused.
High above the toxic green fog, Ayumu was sitting comfortably on the edge of a rooftop, looking down at the swarm. An ant-like mutation spotted him and let out a distorted roar: "FOOD!!"
Ayumu stood up, instinctively reaching for his face. He felt the bare skin of his jaw and immediately clamped his mouth shut, holding his breath to avoid the radioactive particles swirling in the air.
(Great, my gas mask is gone...) he thought sarcastically. (I assumed there was nothing here since it wasn't a portal fight. I let my guard down for a split second. Luckily, I moved before that thing could actually touch me.)
Suddenly, a grasshopper mutation coiled its powerful hind legs and launched itself into the air with a bone-cracking snap. It soared toward the rooftop, its two-fingered claws sharpened like organic scythes. "FOOD!!!" it shrieked, swiping at Ayumu's throat.
Ayumu didn't even look stressed. With a casual flick of his heels, he stepped back—not just a few inches, but a full fifty feet in a single blur of motion—landing perfectly on the roof of a neighboring building. Behind him, the grasshopper slammed into his previous position, completely pulverizing the top floor of the structure.
(I can breathe normally if I use Orvex Respiration to filter the poisoning,) Ayumu calculated, his lungs starting to burn slightly from the lack of oxygen. (But looking at these things, I can't take chances by inhaling This Radiation. It Might Be More Than Just Poison)
The building beneath his feet began to vibrate. A spider-like creature was eating through the foundations from below, its corrosive spit melting the stone to reach its prey. Ayumu sighed internally and leaped again, clearing the distance to a far-side roof with effortless grace.
He face-palmed as he landed. (Great. I didn't bring my weapon. I thought it wouldn't make sense to carry a sword when I was just handling an evacuation. I didn't know I'd be dealing with a hidden infestation.)
He watched the monsters below as they began to scale the walls. (I thought they could speak English, but I was wrong. They only know one word—they must have learned it by listening to the screams of the humans they caught. These things have been hiding underground for years, secretly picking off the villagers of Oborozaki. The people here had no idea what they were living on top of.)
The cockroach monster surged upward, closing the gap. It unleashed a flurry of heavy, chitinous punches. Ayumu side-stepped every single one, his movements like a dancer's. As the monster lunged for a final strike, Ayumu threw himself backward, catching himself on his hands just inches from the roof's surface before launching into a powerful mid-air kick.
BOOM.
The kick connected squarely with the cockroach's chest, sending it flying across the street. It slammed into a ruined house with enough force to turn its internal organs into "paint," splashing green insect blood across the walls.
(They must really hate me for taking away their *buffet* [Evacuating The Humans]) Ayumu thought, walking calmly toward the edge of the roof. He stopped near a blackened, dead tree that had managed to stay upright.
(If I don't have my sword...) He reached out and snapped a thick, jagged branch off the tree. He swung it through the air twice, the wood whistling with the sheer speed of his wrist.
(This will do.) Ayumu said jumping down from the roof top and landing on the grasshopper monster wrapping his leg around his head as he stabs the branch deep into the grasshopper head, the body of the grasshopper immediately began to inflate and kept growing bigger and bigger, ayumu backflip to the side of a build just immediately before the grasshopper bursted like gym and immediately a butterfly insect whooped in with blade razor large sized wings moving very fast to slice ayumu of the walls, ayumu spotted it coming with his eyes looking from the side as he turned nonchalantly to see it approaching, the butterfly monster immediately made contact with ayumu slicing the building in half as it yells out "FOOD!!!" as it whooped back up it didn't notice ayumu on top of it as ayumu held his head hit his free hand, the bird then realised he was on his back but it was too late, with his other hand he sliced he butterfly monster's head clean of his body making it descend with ayumu at his back crashing into a to die as Ayumu walked out of the rubble dusting of his cloth as he thought still holding his breath (three gone...) He said looking at the numbers (two more to go)
Ayumu didn't wait for them to reach him. He stepped off the edge of the roof, dropping like a silent stone through the toxic fog. He landed squarely on the shoulders of the grasshopper mutation, his legs locking around its neck with the precision of a vise.
Without a moment's hesitation, he drove the jagged tree branch deep into the monster's skull.
Immediately, something strange happened. The branch, reinforced by Ayumu's Orvex, acted like a pressurized valve. The grasshopper's body began to hiss and inflate, its chitinous plates stretching and cracking as it grew larger and larger. Ayumu didn't stick around to watch the finale; he backflipped off the creature, sticking to the side of a nearby building just as the grasshopper burst like a wet balloon, coating the street in a geyser of green sludge.
(Four...) Ayumu counted silently in his head, his lungs beginning to throb from the lack of air.
Suddenly, a high-pitched drone filled the air. A butterfly mutation—if you could call a ten-foot monster with razor-sharp, steel-like wings a butterfly—whooped through the fog. It moved at a blurring speed, its wings humming like chainsaws as it aimed to slice Ayumu off the wall.
Ayumu tracked it from the corner of his eye. He didn't panic; he simply turned nonchalantly as the creature closed the distance.
CRASH.
The butterfly's wing sliced through the concrete building like a hot wire through butter, shearing the structure in half.
"FOOD!!!" the monster shrieked, banking sharply to loop back up for another pass.
As it ascended, it didn't realize its weight had shifted. Ayumu was no longer on the wall—he was crouched on the butterfly's back. Before the creature could react to the passenger, Ayumu gripped its head with his free hand, pinning it in place.
The monster realized too late that it had become the prey. With a single, fluid motion of the Orvex-infused branch, Ayumu sliced the butterfly's head clean off its shoulders. The massive, winged body lost all lift, spiraling downward with Ayumu still standing calmly on its thorax.
They slammed into the rubble of a collapsed house in a cloud of dust and debris. Ayumu walked out of the wreckage, casually dusting off his suit jacket as if he had just stepped out of a taxi.
(Three gone...) he thought, his eyes scanning the shifting green mist as he maintained his iron grip on his breath. (Two more to go.)
The venomous spider monster didn't wait for the dust to settle. It skittered across the rubble with unnatural speed, its acidic saliva dripping from its mandibles and melting holes into the concrete as it charged. Ayumu didn't retreat. He tightened his grip on the jagged tree branch, his body coiling into a swinging stance as he prepared to meet the beast head-on.
But just before the collision, the world tilted.
The ground beneath them began to vibrate with a frequency that shattered the remaining glass in the village. Both Ayumu and the spider halted their charge, the monster sensing a predator even greater than itself. Ayumu looked down, his eyes narrowing as the sludge-like earth began to bulge and crack.
Before he could process the scale of the vibration, a massive shadow erupted from beneath his feet.
Ayumu flickered out of existence, a high-speed blur that reappeared fifty feet away just as a colossal Giant Maggot surfaced. It wasn't like the others—it was a gargantuan, 1000-foot-long nightmare, a fleshy mountain of muscle and slime that leveled three entire city blocks just by rising.
Ayumu landed on a tilting lamppost, his lungs screaming for oxygen as the burning sensation in his chest grew almost unbearable. He rolled his eyes toward the sky, still stubbornly holding his breath.
(Great. More to deal with. At least it can't get any worse from here,) he thought, his internal monologue dripping with sarcasm.
As if the universe were answering him, the ground around the giant maggot began to boil. Twenty more soldier-class insects—smaller, but just as lethal—crawled out of the tunnels created by the massive larva. The giant maggot began to thrash, its sheer mass wrecking everything in its path like a slow-motion earthquake.
Ayumu let out a silent, mental sigh. He looked at the dead tree branch in his hand, then at the twenty-one new targets and the toxic spider still waiting in the wings.
(Great I just Jinxed Myself,) he thought Looking Up The Sky To See How Late It Was [8 pm]. He adjusted his stance, his Orvex beginning to flare visibly around the wooden branch, turning the dead wood into a glowing, Blue-hued blade.
He didn't have much air left, he could maybe last for 10 minutes Tops.