Became a Failed Experimental Subject Novel - Chapter 57

Human meat sausage? Did he prepare this because I’m a monster? I continued to chew, observing the man in front of me. The man didn’t smell like a villain. The subtle flow of his thoughts was also very peaceful. It spontaneously made me wonder if the man gave this without knowing it was human meat sausage.
“How is it? Does it suit your taste?”
“…Waong.”
The human meat sausage the man gave me was, how should I put it… perfectly tailored to a monster’s palate. The ratio of blood, fat, meat, organs, skin, and brain was just right, creating a rich, melting flavor. In particular, the combination of chewy organ pieces and soft, fatty brain was… unpleasantly delicious.
As I swallowed the human meat sausage deliciously and bristled my fur, the man smiled and pulled out something else.
“Here, there’s more.”
The second thing he offered me was a bright red jelly in a sealed container. The smell of blood. This time, it was jelly made by solidifying human blood and fat. To refuse it… the smell was too rich. I ate the blood jelly, which had a fishy umami and sweet fat, then glared at the man, drawing on my power. Offering me such a thing twice could only mean he knew it was food made from humans. Yet, despite offering me such things, the man was strangely very calm.
Feeling a peculiar sense of otherness, neither human nor monster, I used my ability to speak.
[…What are you?]
“Oh, oh-oh-oh…! Black Cat-nim speaks…! Ahh, indeed, Black Cat-nim is truly the Messiah spoken of in the prophecy…”
[Where did you get this meat?]
“Do you wish to eat more? I will give you more.”
At that moment, the man raised two fingers and used an ability. Swoosh, a blade of psychokinesis surged from his fingertips, heading towards his arm. Slice, with a quiet sound, the man cut off his arm and offered it to me.
“Here, Black Cat-nim… please, as much as you desire.”
For a moment, I was flustered and stepped back from him. What was this guy? He didn’t have regenerative abilities. A psychic, with a power level between C and B. His state was too strange to be an Esper.
“Black Cat-nim, please.”
[I don’t need it.]
The blood jelly and human meat sausage smelled unusually delicious, as if they were concentrated monster-favorite flavors, so I had accepted them. But the freshly cut arm didn’t make me want to eat it. When I refused the meal, the man who had cut off his arm, his face pale and bleeding profusely, looked disappointed.
“Ahh… please, I beg you, eat it. Black Cat-nim…”
[You… are strange.]
An unknown emotion, a faint reading of the surface of his thoughts, I realized what this emotion was. Worship and reverence. The man, bleeding profusely enough to die, bowed his head before me, offering his severed arm and head.
“God, salvation…”
God, salvation. The moment Starlight’s words flashed through my mind, thin white worms began to crawl out one by one from the severed cross-section of the man’s arm. Parasites. Feeling something was wrong, I kept my distance, leaped back, and threw a fireball at the man. Whoosh! Engulfed in flames, the man exuded a thick sense of joy and bowed his head towards me. The man died just like that. I stepped on the charred remains of the body. This texture, it was indeed human. But… to consider this human, many things were strange. This man felt not human in a different sense than a villain. What on earth was he?
After killing the man who offered me human meat, more and more strange people like him began to appear day by day.
“Black Cat-nim! Please enjoy your meal!”
“Wow! Black Cat-nim!”
“Ahhh… Black Cat-nim…!”
Among the people playfully calling me Black Cat-nim, there was a woman exuding feelings of worship and reverence. The sausage she threw at me smelled of human blood. Eating human meat like this wouldn’t allow me to devour fear-stricken thoughts or accumulate curses. It was simply a piece of meat that tasted incredibly delicious to a monster’s palate. When I licked my lips and finally gave in, a thick feeling of ecstasy and delight would emanate from the person who threw me the human meat sausage. Not just young women, but also elderly people, middle-aged women, and men.
Feeling disgusted by the increasing number of human meat sausages, I returned to the rooftop. Then, the humans who had thrown me human meat took their own lives nearby. Glancing down… there were more than a few in the alley who had stabbed themselves in the neck and cut off their limbs. From the wounds on their bodies, worms that had gathered in that short time were swarming. I saw the strange human corpses, conjured flames, and burned them one by one. And the next day, another strange human would appear from somewhere.
The strange humans would gather in deserted places and then be attacked by murder-class monsters. When the monster alert sounded, they would rush from far away, and when they arrived at a visible location, they would take out sausages and blood pudding from their bags and then cut off their own fingers, legs, and wrists.
“Ahhh… Black Cat-nim.”
“Salvation, salvation.”
“Messenger of God…”
“Please, eat this.”
“Please eat my body.”
White, string-like worms protruding from the severed cross-sections, a repulsive sight. If I moved away from the scene, they would commit suicide on the spot. After that, worms would swarm the corpses again, and feeling something was wrong, I repeatedly incinerated the worms and corpses. After incinerating the corpses, blood pudding and human meat sausage remained on the ground.
The blood pudding and human meat sausage were simply food made from human blood and meat mixed in the best possible ratio. The fact that this ratio was perfect for a monster’s taste was deeply unsettling. These guys, how many times have they made something like this? How many monsters had they fed humans to be able to create such a taste?
Around this time, I realized the problem with my own method of distinguishing humans. I could distinguish villains who harbored murderous intent and malice while also holding expectations, but I couldn’t distinguish strange people who harbored nothing. And the strange people gradually began to resemble W City citizens. Their scent, the scent of other cities, disappeared, and their clothes and smiles became like those of W City citizens. Clearly, they were W City citizens, but suddenly they would go to a corner, pull out a knife, stab themselves in the neck, and die. If I burned the swarming worms again, the next human would approach with a new sausage.
Mentally exhausted by the continuous suicides, I decided to refuse all food. So, when I stopped accepting anything other than the meat Espers gave me, the locations where those guys appeared changed. On top of building rooftops, they would position themselves in various places, look up at me flying in the sky, and then commit suicide one by one. In front of their corpses, human meat sausages and blood pudding were neatly arranged as if in a ritual… After they committed suicide, small insectoid monsters that had been hovering in the sky for a moment would gather around the corpses and begin to devour them. The insects would chew up the dead bodies down to the bone and then return to the sky without attacking other humans.
Feeling something was off, I decided to examine these strange humans more closely.
“Ohh… Messiah…”
“Salvation, salvation…”
The thick ecstasy at the moment of facing me, and the simultaneous feeling of emptiness. Seeing the humans cutting off their fingers and holding knives to their throats, I grabbed their bodies with psychokinesis and spoke.
[What are you?]
“We are… your servants.”
“Your food, lambs born to die for you.”
“Please.”
“Please.”
However, even with psychokinesis, I couldn’t stop them from dying. The humans, whose eyes suddenly turned red, died bleeding from their mouths. Had they swallowed poison beforehand? Again, after a short while, white string-like worms burrowed out from their blood-soaked mouths and severed fingers. Hearing a buzzing sound from the sky, I burned their corpses before the worms could swarm them.
“Messenger of God, we are grateful for the reality of being able to face you.”
[Why are you committing suicide?]
“Because that is the path to salvation. It is to be chosen by the Messenger of God.”
[Where are you from?]
“We are from Samwonkyo, your home, Samwonkyo.”
My home? They continued to utter incomprehensible words and commit suicide. Why on earth were humans taking their own lives?
“Salvation.”
“God!”
“Please, choose us!”
Exhausted by the continuous suicides, I fled and hid underground. Yet, the suicides didn’t stop. As if to announce their deaths here, monster worms swarmed the corpses of those who had committed suicide. At that moment, something tore the monster worms apart.
“Nyaoo? There are a lot of worms!”
“Honey, some really strange guys are swarming around here, aren’t they?”
Under the dark night sky, Goo Seoryong appeared with Sagugu. Sagugu dealt with the monster worms swarming the corpses, and Goo Seoryong looked down at the shadow where I was hiding below the rooftop and spoke.
“Why don’t you come up and talk for a bit? I came out because these things were making too much noise around my house too.”
[Hmm.]
I ascended to the surface and landed in front of Goo Seoryong. Goo Seoryong, who was undergoing monsterization, looked down at the half-torn human corpse and chuckled with interest.
“This tattoo, so they’re Samwonkyo kids after all?”
[You know about them?]
“Of course I do? They’ve been completely crazy ever since I escaped the research lab four years ago.”
“Nyaaa~!”
While Sagugu, transformed into a similar form to me, happily chased and played with the monster worms, Goo Seoryong poked at the mangled corpse with her fingertips. I transformed into my human form beside Goo Seoryong.
“Madmen who believe they are saved by dying at the hands of a monster. They must have believed… the monster era was the time of divine punishment, Armageddon. Was it?”
“Armageddon?”
“The time of the end. So… monsters are messengers of God and divine punishment, so the more you resist, the more your sins increase, and if you submit, your sins decrease. Dying by a monster leads to heaven, otherwise hell. Something like that? It’s a religious group with quite a few believers, surprisingly… but honey, don’t you smell something delicious?”
“They tried to feed me these sausages, blood puddings, and their own bodies.”
“Oh? What is this? Smells like human! Human meat sausage?”
“Nyao? Nyaooo!”
Slurp, Goo Seoryong swallowed the sausage whole, mumbled, and gestured for Sagugu. Next to her, Sagugu, who had finished clearing the worms, also ate the blood pudding and her eyes sparkled.
“It’s delicious? What is it, like bait?”
“Bait?”
“Monsters find it hard to resist even just smelling things like this. They’re trying to stimulate the instinct to eat humans as much as possible, so they can be eaten.”
Suddenly, the words “choice” and “salvation” that those guys had been rambling about flashed through my mind. Being eaten by me is being chosen by the Messenger of God. The human meat sausages and blood puddings offered to me are both a bribe for salvation and a tool to stimulate a monster’s instincts. But why on earth is being eaten by a monster salvation? It makes no sense at all. No wonder Goo Seoryong called them crazy. If even a strange person calls them strange, they must be truly strange.
“But honey, you didn’t eat those, did you?”
“I didn’t eat them.”
What Goo Seoryong meant by “those” were the human corpses. I told her I ate some of the sausages and puddings, but burned all the worm-infested corpses, and Goo Seoryong mumbled.
“Oh, that’s a relief.”
Goo Seoryong, with her mouth full of thick acidic venom, fwoosh, spat out the venom, and the corpse melted. The chunks of meat dissolved in the venom, and white worms writhed in pain within the brownish slime.
“I came all the way here because of these worms.”