Became a Failed Experimental Subject Novel - Chapter 30

“Uh… what kind of name is that… Yes! His name is Park Deundeun! Combatant Park Deundeun! Just looking at him makes me feel strong!”

“Oppa~! I bet other things are strong too! Don’t do the arena, come up to my room!”

“I’ll give you more money in my room! This way~! This way~!”

[He’s in excellent physical condition! He might be quite skilled! And without a weapon! Wow, he’s full of confidence! I wonder which monster he’ll face!]

A loud burst of laughter. The emcee spun the roulette and held out a button to me. I raised a single finger and poked the button. The spinning roulette slowly came to a stop, pointing to a monster.

[Ah…]

“Oh, damn it.”

“No!”

The needle pointed to the only Crushing-Class monster on the roulette: the Stone Lion. This monster, with a body like a stone statue, was impossible to even face if one’s power output wasn’t sufficient. Especially for a human, not even a monster, and a physical-enhancement type of power, unless it surpassed a certain level.

[What will you do? If you surrender now, it’s a 10 million won fine! Ah! Of course! Life is more important than money, right?]

“Fight! Fight! Fight!”

“What a waste of that physique! Coward!”

“Woooooo!”

“Oppa! Come up to my room~! I’ll pay for it! Building 103, Unit 402~!”

Without answering, I stepped down from the stage. The audience, thinking I had surrendered, booed. However, when I headed towards the cage instead of the tent, the boos turned into cheers.

[Oh my god! Is he going to fight?! Park Deundeun!]

“Kyaaah!”

“Park Deundeun! Park Deundeun! Park Deundeun!”

Amidst the audience’s loud cheers, the gruff man scowled, came out of the tent, and headed towards the opposite tent with other men. The men, pulling a large iron cage out from inside, placed the cage containing the Stone Lion inside. They then injected it with several doses of what looked like the same tranquilizers used on the Blade Cat, and quickly exited.

[Betting results: Human 28, Monster 72! Combatant Park Deundeun! If you win here, it’s 10 million won! Can he really hunt the Stone Lion?!]

“Grrrr…”

The Stone Lion, awakened from its sleep, growled at me and slowly lowered its upper body. It was the characteristic pre-charge posture of a feline monster. I waited for the Stone Lion, hands on my hips. Previously, in human form, my physical strength was between Lethal-Class and Crushing-Class. But now… I felt I could definitely exert Crushing-Class level power.

I grabbed the head of the Stone Lion as it charged at me with one hand.

[The Stone Lion charges… Huh?]

“Grrrrr…! Grrrrrrrr…!”

“Hmm…”

As expected, it’s possible. Perhaps the practice of controlling my monster aura helped. The strength I could use in human form had increased. My body’s durability also seemed a bit better… The Stone Lion kept swinging its claws, but my arm didn’t even get a scratch.

I continued to press down on the Stone Lion’s head, and the Stone Lion’s momentum changed as it sensed something unusual.

“Kwoooh…! Kyaaang?! Kaaak, kaargh…!”

Squeeze. As I kept pressing down on its head, the Stone Lion’s head slowly began to crack. Crack, crack. Pink flesh seeped out from between the bursting rocks, and the Stone Lion’s head ripped apart. The Stone Lion, which had been thrashing its hind legs to break free, stopped moving with a crunch as its head shattered beyond its limits.

[Uh… uh… A-Stone Lion… h-hunted… It’s done. I-It was Park Deundeun!]

I wiped the monster’s blood from my hand onto the Stone Lion’s corpse, then exited the cage. The audience was unusually quiet, without a single cheer. Not knowing where to go, I returned to the tent. At that, the people inside the tent distanced themselves, moving far away from me.

“You bastard… What are you?”

Just then, men in suits rushed into the tent.

“That just now, he’s at least a B-rank Esper, isn’t he? Are you a Villain from another organization? No, I’ve never seen a Villain who uses that level of physical-enhancement power in City W who looks like you…”

The men grew wary of me and slowly began to channel their powers.

“Where are you from?! Are you an Esper?! How dare you come to Kuryong Fortress without fear…!”

“Ten million won.”

“W-what…?”

“…Are you not giving it?”

I looked at the men’s aggressive demeanor and thought, ‘Just as I expected.’ Similar things happened occasionally at restaurants… Some restaurants that held special events would put up signs saying things like ‘Free for winners of a lottery at the checkout after eating,’ but in reality, no one ever won after eating. Was this what they called exaggerated advertising? Thinking, ‘I knew it,’ I sighed and said, “I thought as much. As expected, society is cold.”

“What are you talking about, you bastard…?”

“Don’t worry, I have no intention of demanding money like those troublesome customers.”

While talking, I looked for a towel to wipe my hands, then gave up and rubbed my hand on a suitable surface. I rubbed my hand across the taut fabric of the tent, right next to where the men in suits were standing, leaving a clear red handprint.

“Instead, I’d like to consider the admission paid and look around inside a bit. I can wander freely, right?”

Shouldn’t I go look for my chain necklace and the thief now? When I spoke with that meaning, the man in front of me exuded a scent of fear and pointed his weapon at me.

“A-are you saying you want to fight…!”

“Hmm? You want to fight?”

“No, I’m not saying I want to fight, I’m asking if you’re saying you want to fight!”

“So you want to fight?”

“No! I’m not saying I want to fight! Damn it!”

“Is your intelligence perhaps low? Your speech is a bit odd.”

“Th-this bastard! Are you really saying you want to fight?!”

Hmm, his intelligence is definitely low… I placed my hand on the man’s shoulder, as if to encourage him to live diligently.

“H-Hiiiieek!”

At that, the man clutched his shoulder and collapsed, crawling backward on the floor. Now he was even having a seizure. As I looked down at the man with pity, a woman in a similar suit to the men, exuding a strange scent, entered from outside the tent.

“That’s enough, if you please. He’s my subordinate, after all. It would be troublesome if you killed him.”

“L-Lady…!”

“Hmm?”

As the smiling woman entered, the men in suits suddenly exuded a scent of tension, and I frowned at the strange smell. The woman, somehow familiar yet unfamiliar, adjusted her suit sleeve and said, “Where are you from? I haven’t heard anything about someone coming from the Villain Association, and there’s been no news from the Esper side either…”

“Hmm.”

I sniffed with my nose, sensing an unusual presence. The smiling woman’s scent was similar to those around her, yet distinctly different. And it definitely felt like the strangeness I knew, making me ponder.

“Excuse me, but our Kuryong Fortress operates on a reservation system for Espers of B-rank or higher. It’s not too late now… Could you tell me your identity?”

“I’m Park Deundeun.”

“Haa… Please drop that ridiculous alias.”

The smiling woman slowly raised her hand and extended it towards me.

“If you don’t intend to speak, I’ll have no choice but to resort to force.”

Snap. With the sound of fingers snapping, my vision flickered. This was the power of Confusion, a psychic ability that scrambles senses. It felt like hearing turned into sight, sight into smell, and smell into touch. However, with my monster’s inherent supersenses, I could perceive the woman in front of me without any difficulty.

“Take him to the conference room. I need to know what kind of bastard he is…”

“This certainly means you want to fight.”

“What…?”

When I raised my hand, the woman, who had been speaking in an annoyed tone, was startled and stepped backward. Then she snapped her fingers again, snap, snap, and a different power than before assaulted my senses. The power of Illusion: the woman multiplied into dozens surrounding me, and the power of Phantasmagoria burned my body.

Regardless, powers that confuse the senses can make a monster tired, but they cannot deal any damage at all. I grabbed the woman’s arm.

“W-wait…!”

Crumble, crumble, crunch. As I put pressure on my hand, the woman gasped and tried to pull her arm away. Just as I was about to burst her arm muscles, the woman’s arm transformed into a tentacle-like form in my hand and slipped away. Softening: an ability that changes the body’s composition.

Having already confirmed a third power, I sensed something strange and amplified my monster senses. At that, the woman in front of me blinked in surprise. Her startled reaction to the monster’s low-frequency vibrations, which humans couldn’t easily feel, puzzled me, but I couldn’t help but be surprised by the subsequent sensation.

“You, surely…?”

“Hmm?”

A faint, ultra-low frequency, undetectable even by superhumans, was emanating from the woman in front of me. This was impossible without a monster core.

“Everyone out!”

“Yes? L-Lady?”

“Get out now. This, I think I know who this is.”

“W-we… where should we wait?”

“Wait outside and go wherever you want!”

The smiling woman immediately drove everyone out of the tent as soon as she realized I was a monster. Now alone in the tent with the woman, I quieted my monster core and asked the woman’s identity.

“You, what are you?”

At my question, the woman unbuttoned her shirt and revealed the area below her collarbone. A tattoo below her collarbone, the letters G3 written above a barcode. The woman in front of me was an experimental subject from the same research lab as me.

“Alphabet series, huh?”

“What about you?”

I ran my hand through my messy hair and showed the area around my neck. At that, G3’s eyes widened, and she spoke in a surprised voice.

“C, CXI? That one from Romania?”

“Romania” was a term for experimental subjects numbered with Roman numerals, one of the common names for monsters created in the lab. I had learned this by eavesdropping on the researchers’ conversations. My number, converted to a digit, was 111. G3 of the Alphabet series was… 73.

“This is unexpected. To encounter another experimental subject.”

“You too… Wait a minute, why is an experimental subject here? To eliminate me?”

“What are you talking about?”

“So it’s not that. Then… what, you came looking for me just by chance?”

When I nodded, G3 sighed and sat on the bench. “Ha, I’m drained. I thought the lab sent the strongest one from Romania as an assassin to kill me.”

“What’s ‘strongest’? I’ve never heard that before.”

“It was famous among the Alphabet series. The lab used to make us fight sometimes, right? Every time, CXI wouldn’t do anything, but nothing they did would ever damage you.”

“To call that the strongest, it’s absurd.”

Knowing full well that the other monsters were also experimental subjects like me, I often just lay down because I had no intention of fighting. Then, other monsters would hit my back, and I would just avoid it or let them hit me. When I spent my time like that, the researchers would eventually give up and stop the experiments, so I did it every time… To think they called that “the strongest” or something strange.

“What are you talking about? You know very well what it means for a monster, no matter how much it’s attacked, never to go berserk, right?”

“Hmm.”

I see, so that was why. For a monster to be attacked countless times and not go berserk means the opponent’s attacks are not threatening at all. It seems my non-resistance was perceived as ignoring the other monsters. And indeed, most of them were weak enough to be ignored.

“If it’s that CXI… then it’s believable that you didn’t come to kill me.”

G3 seemed to relax her guard, perhaps because she knew me from the lab as the one who never fought any monster. Since there seemed to be no need for me to be wary either, I completely calmed the vibrations of my monster core, and G3 extended her hand to me.

“If you haven’t come as an enemy, shall we introduce ourselves? CXI? My name is Goo Seoryong. And you?”

Following the human custom of introduction, I took G3’s hand and stated my name.

“I’m Park Deundeun.”