Because I'm Shooting Star's Son (3)
"......"
Deogi, who had been greedily devouring the corpse's shattered skull, whipped his head around toward the shutter, his mouth smeared with blood. And then.
Suddenly, Deogi clawed at his own head with his blood-soaked hands like a madman, letting out a crazed howl.
"Kraaaagh! Urgh! N-No...!"
Snap!
"They're alive... They're still alive..."
Zzzzt!
He finally tore off one of his dog-like ears, blood spraying all the way to the shutter. Deogi thrashed desperately, trying to halt his own footsteps as they dragged him toward the shutter.
"Hold it together... I have to hold it together! Huff, huff...! Fuck, I've already eaten too much! I can't eat any more! Urgh, uwaaaagh!"
But at his feet lay the corpses of the gang members whose heads had been blown off. As if mocking his pathetic human struggle, a phlegm-choked voice bubbled up from Deogi's lips.
"Kuhuhu... What bullshit, you pathetic fuck. You know it too, right? Every time you chew through a human skull and suck down their brains, our body swells up, wounds heal, and we get fucking stronger. Can't you feel this boiling power?"
The raspy voice extended a bloodied hand, beckoning toward the silhouettes of the children visible through the shutter gap.
"You already bashed in the heads of those cheater bastards at the majiang parlor with your bare hands because they were a waste of money. And on the way here, you killed your own neighbors with those hands! So why hesitate to rip them apart with your teeth now? Killing's killing either way. Don't play the hypocrite."
At the taunt, Deogi spat back like he was vomiting blood.
"No! Fuck, that wasn't what I meant to do!"
"O-Oppa, let's go inside...!"
"What do you mean 'no'? Aren't those the kids from next door, you idiot? You already took a bite out of that girl's head."
Creeeak...
In the meantime, the shutter had cautiously closed again.
"I said no! These dog bastards I just ate... I only ate them because they were already dead from the guns those fuckers shot! To survive! Because I want to live! Now I can escape... Those kids are still alive... I can't kill them... I can't eat them...!"
His human reason desperately rationalized his brutal cannibalism as self-defense and cleanup of dead bodies. But the raspy voice mercilessly crushed that flimsy morality.
"Self-defense? What a load of horseshit. Hey, open your eyes and look at reality."
Deogi's claws dug into the bullet holes riddling his chest, his voice a mad bellow.
"You think you can crawl through some rat hole to Incheon Port and survive like this? You ditched the money bag from the majiang parlor on the run—you're flat broke! No cash for identity laundering or even bribing the smugglers for boat fare!"
The raspy voice echoed chillingly through the underground mall.
"R-Rapidstar's in America...!" Deogi screamed in desperation.
"If it wasn't for that old bastard, I-I could survive capture... I can testify! If I just talk, they'll lock me up but spare my life! As long as that geezer doesn't catch me, no other hero can just kill me off! Even if Triple Axel shows up, capture comes first! Those guys are A-rank heroes!"
Ohoo's eyebrows twitched as he watched Deogi's pathetic drama unfold.
Testify? Testify about what? This fucker's tangled up in more than just the Bupyeong gang?
"Quit your bullshit. Capture? You wanna get your guts ripped out and die? Think the villain holding cells are safe? No villains in there connected to those guys? You'd be torn apart before a day passes!"
As questions swirled in Ohoo's mind, the raspy voice shattered his shallow hopes.
"Ah... Aaaah..."
The human ego's resistance faded away. His hands dropped from his torn scalp, and Deogi's back and shoulder muscles began to bulge.
The raspy voice seized control of the body.
"Kuhuhu... Yeah. Eat to survive. Eat to grow stronger."
Deogi's blood-red eyes fixed on the siblings huddled together, trembling beyond the closed shutter.
"If I chew up those small, tender little brats' heads... how much stronger will I get?"
The grotesque question hung in the air. Soon, Deogi's muzzle split into a grin all the way to his ears.
"Yeah. Brains are delicious."
And he shat out a nonsensical reply.
"Fuck, what a dogshit situation."
Ohoo muttered the curse under his breath and spotted the sashimi knife discarded on the floor by the gang member Deogi had chased and killed.
I didn't even plan to fight...!
But his mother Shooting Star's blood—and the self-awareness etched into him by the hypnosis app as a hero's son—refused to let him turn his back and flee while those kids got torn apart in the monster's jaws.
Punching would shatter my hand anyway. To minimize recoil, I gotta stab and blow past.
BOOM!!
Ohoo shot out of the darkness, snatching the sashimi knife's handle from the floor and charging Deogi's blind spot at explosive speed.
"Wha...?!"
The moment Deogi, mid-leap, sensed the shadow hurtling toward him and turned his head—
Stab!
"Grk!"
Ohoo didn't stop, slicing past Deogi's side. He drove the acceleration-charged sashimi knife deep into the thick, furry back and slashed downward in a long arc.
"Kraaaaaagh!!"
Shrrrip!
Thick hide and muscle tore raggedly. Blood pattered down.
Droplets soaked the underground mall floor. A deep gash exposing bone traced the knife's path along Deogi's back.
Crack!
The Acceleration's recoil mercilessly twisted Ohoo's wrist and finger bones gripping the knife. Skin split on his palm, blood bursting out.
Light out!
But with pain perception blocked, Ohoo didn't stop.
Screeech!
"Guh... Huff, huff..."
Ohoo skidded more than ten meters past the slashed Deogi before halting. His right hand couldn't withstand the recoil—fingers bent grotesquely.
"......"
Deogi staggered, blood gushing from his back, then twisted his neck 180 degrees backward to glare at his attacker. A human as burly as himself had ripped open his back.
"Kuhuhu... This fucker..."
Instead of a pained scream, Deogi stuck out his tongue through torn lips, licking the blood from his mouth.
"Those bones look pretty thick. Bet they'd be tough as hell to chew."
He asked himself, then smacked his lips greedily and answered.
"Do you eat tough beef for the flavor? Or because it's expensive."
"Done with your brain-melting retarded self-Q&A?"
Ohoo taunted, barely readjusting his grip on the sashimi knife with his broken fingers.
"Shut the fuck up and come at me."
His words were rough, but he had no intention of charging. Survive. At least five minutes. Treat this as training.
Dodge only. For five minutes. Thanks to Deogi's solo act, he'd already bought some time.
Park Ayoung had said hero backup would surround the underground mall in about five minutes.
Just hold out till then.
Slap!
Clang.
Ah.
Ohoo's right hand swung full force at his own cheek. The sashimi knife slipped from his opened grip as it struck.
"......"
Almost stabbed my foot...!
The second command he'd input into the hypnosis app: Exactly 15 minutes in, slap your own cheek full force with your right hand.
Signal that his self-imposed 15-minute timer had ended. But Ohoo grinned through the blood beading at his lips.
The hellish training ground echoed in his ears—the instructor Last Moment's devilish smile and merciless shouts every time he crawled on the floor, lungs burning.
One more set!
"Haha..."
Yeah. If today's training, then it's training.
"Kraaaaaagh!!"
Deogi roared, claws raised, lunging for Ohoo's nape.
"One more set it is."
Boom!
Ohoo forced strength into his buckling legs, barely dodging the attack.
* * *
Meanwhile, on the surface at Bupyeong Station Plaza.
"This way! Don't run! Hold the kids' hands tight and move in order!"
"You're safe once you're past the fences! No pushing!"
Thanks to the hypnosis-induced rescue team Ohoo had created underground, evacuees were pouring out in one direction toward the plaza.
Han Eunbyeol and Miyang shouted to control the chaotic hundreds, guiding them to safety without crushes.
"Haa, haa... So many people, nyang!"
Miyang wiped sweat, still directing the crowd. Han Eunbyeol, too, kept guiding without rest, eyes scanning the scene.
But amid the massive wave of people desperately fleeing the station—
"...Huh?"
Han Eunbyeol's gaze locked on one spot.
In the surging flow toward the exit stood a woman, stock-still like a rock in a valley, staring blankly. Her face was hard to see under the deep black trenchcoat, but she exuded an eerie calm utterly alien to the panicked crowd.
"Hey! It's dangerous standing there! Follow the crowd out!"
Han Eunbyeol waved urgently, about to approach and lead her by the hand.
But.
Stick to what you can handle. Just control and evacuate. Don't overdo it.
Ohoo's realistic advice from moments ago, gripping her shoulder after releasing the hypnosis, echoed in her ears.
Right. If I break formation to help one person and show a gap... the uneasy crowd might panic again and ruin the whole evacuation.
Han Eunbyeol halted, biting her lip. Regretfully suppressing her personal meddling to prevent greater harm, she refocused on the massive outflowing crowd.
"Slowly! This way, slowly!"
Thus, the rookie aspirant grew a little, prioritizing overall safety over emotion.
And as Han Eunbyeol's gaze averted and she concentrated on evacuation—
"......"
The trenchcoat woman turned her head. Leisurely bucking the fierce evacuation flow, she headed toward the Bupyeong Station underground entrance where gunfire and slaughter raged.
She bumped no one, and no one stopped her reverse path.
Finally, in the crowd's blind spot at the underground stairs' corner, she stopped. She pulled a slim smartphone with a radio function from her coat and made a discreet call.
Ring ring ring.
Click.
"Yes. Reporting observation results."
Even amid the nose-stinging blood stench, her voice held no emotional tremor—dry as a researcher reciting lab rat data.
"Half-successful. During heterotype mutation, musculoskeletal expansion exceeded limits and blood loss thresholds. Durability test: pass."
She gazed indifferently at Ohoo and Deogi's standoff below.
"However... for the next culture phase, remove the vampirism gene factor. It was added expecting rapid regeneration via blood intake, but it manifested as crude, uncontrollable cannibalism instead. Lowers product value."
The horrific slaughter—countless civilians and gangsters devoured—she defined in one phrase: product value drop.
She sighed faintly, then coldly concluded to whoever was on the line.
"Yes. If the failed product falls into heroes' or police hands, it'll be a headache."
Her trenchcoat fluttered in the darkness.
"I'll head down now and dispose of Test Subject No. 4."