On the raised rubble of a crater, Messiah Christ pulled his lover close. The precipice of death sank before their eyes, as if an abyss from hell was about to reach out its arms toward them at any moment. By staying pressed against the one he loved most, he struggled to keep his mind from collapsing into panic.
But reality spat upon them.
From the crater that had shattered the city center and piled up mountains of debris, swarms of cloud-like monsters finally caught their living scent. Like carp gathering to feed in a pond, they began converging toward them.
A short scream echoed among the group staring in horror.
Elizabeth Gahanov, unusually, lost her composure.
Reacting to the scream, everyone turned their gaze backward—and what should have been a street containing only a single flesh-folded monster was now completely filled with countless masses of rotting flesh, reeking as they marched forward.
They were surrounded front and back by an army of monsters.
Any ability to think calmly was cut away by the scythe of panic. All they could do was press against each other, trembling.
Then, in an instant, it happened.
A thunderous shock rose from beneath the earth, as if the ground itself were being launched upward. The tremor shook the entire city.
Maria and Elizabeth clung tightly to Messiah and Fan to steady themselves. However, Ilat Gahanov tried to keep his balance alone, but slipped from the unstable rubble and rolled down. His head struck something soft and slimy—realizing it was monster flesh, he recoiled in panic and scrambled back up the slope like a monkey. His usually lively face had turned pale, drained of color, as if death itself had brushed past him.
Even he, normally boyish and energetic, could sense it—the monsters were no longer the same as before. Something about the tremor had changed them.
Then it happened.
Explosions erupted across the city.
Entire high-rise buildings—dozens of them—were engulfed as shockwaves surged upward into the sky.
But what appeared within the explosion left Messiah and the others speechless.
From within the blast, something writhed—pulling and stretching like tangled threads, like a serpent being dragged by its head. Countless suction cups covered its body, each one large enough to swallow an entire five-story building.
The tentacles themselves, thicker than the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building in Dubai, rose from beneath the city.
There were multiple of them.
They swept through the city like cleansing arms, erasing buildings, rubble, and monsters alike.
The monster army froze in fear.
It was obvious even to the group.
Now was their chance to escape.
Ilat stepped forward—but Messiah stopped him.
"Not yet."
Ilat looked up from the rubble with suspicion, shooting him a sharp, cowardly glare.
"We don't have time to be shaking. This is the only chance we've got."
He already envisioned an escape route through the gaps between monsters and began descending.
"That's not it. If we wait just a little longer, it'll be safer… rescue might come too…"
Messiah muttered almost like a sleepwalker, his words detached from reality, as if he could see something beyond the present.
Maria, clinging to avoid being thrown by the tremor, asked:
"You can tell?"
Slowly, Messiah raised a weak arm and pointed at the tentacles sweeping through the city.
In that instant—
The tentacle was severed from its base.
It bounced across the city like a rubber ball, crashing into a construction district, still writhing even after being cut—moving as if it were alive.
A metallic screech pierced the air, followed by another subterranean quake.
And then it appeared.
At the city center.
A colossal creature emerged.
Its body was covered in countless teeth like skyscrapers. Its skin was a mixture of melted wax—gray and purple—exposed under sunlight. Its jagged, crocodile-like beak swallowed half the ruined city.
The true body of the tentacle's owner had revealed itself.
The city was already in ruins, but with this appearance, total destruction became inevitable.
Its open beak alone was large enough to cover the entire city, its scream echoing endlessly across the ground.
Messiah and the others covered their ears—but then they noticed something hanging from the tip of the beak.
"…A human?"
Maria whispered.
But the figure was far too large to be human.
The creature itself was over 20 kilometers in size. The humanoid shape hanging from it was still at least two kilometers tall.
Such a being should not exist.
Yet it stood clearly before them.
A human-shaped giant clad in armor.
The giant pulled out a sword embedded in the monster's face, sending purple blood raining over the ground. It kicked off the creature's skin, spun in midair, and landed on the ground.
The impact alone caused an earthquake-level shockwave that spread across the city.
The rubble they stood on collapsed, throwing them onto asphalt.
From the edge of death to the brink of annihilation, they leapt away like insects and pressed themselves against cracked buildings to distance themselves from the monsters.
But the monsters no longer moved with the same intensity.
Something like fear had been born within them.
As if instinct itself had been erased.
The group took this moment and ran.