Exit 69 (2)
By the following morning, a full night's rest had restored my strength.
"I'm heading out!"
Right. You haven't forgotten what I asked of you?
"The information on the anomalies, you mean? I'll dig up as much as I can."
"S-safe travels, Se-a…"
"You take care too, Yu-mi!"
After working off her pent-up lust through the Penislimes the night before, Se-a had thoroughly purged her stress. She left for the Management Bureau with a noticeably lighter expression on her face.
Time to head back.
"Y-yes, sir!"
Once I returned to the Nest, I threw myself into the problem that had been gnawing at me since yesterday.
Distinguishing the yin energy of anomalies from that of humans.
Color was useless — every starlight shone the same brilliant white. Size varied, but not enough to mean anything. Intensity, position, shape, distribution — no matter what I compared, nothing offered a decisive way to tell human from anomaly.
"A-anomalies are creatures that hunt humans by nature, right…?"
More or less.
"Then… maybe there are starlights that hunt other starlights?"
…That's a good point.
Yu-mi's words lit a spark in my head. Following her suggestion, I studied the starlights' behavior more carefully.
Ninety-nine percent of them simply drifted along whatever direction they were already moving, doing nothing else. But a handful sat perfectly still in one place. A human would have to shift at least a few times for basic bodily needs.
That could only mean one thing.
Found them.
I zeroed in on the motionless starlights — the anomalies.
Hmm. Most of these are probably the location-type anomalies Se-a mentioned. Nice work, Yu-mi. We've got our first lead on the hunt.
"Aah — n-no, it was nothing…"
Yu-mi's cheeks lit up at the praise.
Stillness meant fixed in place. In other words, those pockets of yin energy almost certainly took the form of a location or a space.
"We still can't pick out the ones that move around, like you or the little ones over there…"
Not yet.
My skills grew as they leveled up. Sooner or later, I might develop a way to identify anomalies outright.
Huh?
While scanning the anomaly starlights, something bizarre caught my eye. One starlight was pulling others toward itself like a black hole, devouring their energy.
What the hell is that?
I'd never seen an interaction like it, and my curiosity flared. Besides, it was about time I started hunting — so I decided that thing would be my first target.
Let's go.
— Byurut-hiiing!
— Byurut-byurut!
This would be my second encounter with an anomaly since the giant womb. I had no idea how strong it was, so I brought every last one of my troops.
Hold down the fort.
"L-leave it to me…!"
With Yu-mi seeing me off, I opened a passage to the location I suspected belonged to the anomaly.
Its body looked like an adult man's feet and head had been stretched until the whole thing stood three meters tall. A bewildered expression sat frozen on that grotesquely elongated face — something along the lines of Who are you…?, if I had to guess.
Beneath it, a woman sat masturbating with a vacant stare. Apparently I'd interrupted its meal.
Hmm. Looks pretty strong…
Compared to my rugby-ball-sized frame, the thing was a giant. Still, I'd come this far to hunt — so I steeled myself and stepped into its territory.
Dozens of Penislimes poured out of the passage behind me. Honestly, they were the real source of my confidence.
Me, a few dozen Penislimes, and the anomaly locked eyes.
— Kieeek!
Here it comes! Everybody scatter!
The anomaly moved first. It lunged, swinging razor-honed claws.
Yin energy surged through my entire body as I activated my skill.
Wave Emission Core
I slipped behind it the instant its arm came around.
— Byurut!
— Byuryuut!
My subordinates, unfortunately, were not nearly as mobile. The Penislimes were shredded to ribbons under the anomaly's claws. After reducing dozens of them to tatters, the creature looked at me and let out a high, cackling laugh.
Watch your back.
But the true strength of my troops lay in their survival.
— Bbyurut!!
— Bbyuryuut!!
They regenerated — and having lost a significant amount of yin energy in the process, they were thoroughly pissed. The furious Penislimes latched onto the anomaly's legs and torso, fouling its every movement.
— Kieeek!!
The anomaly thrashed, trying to tear them off, but the Penislimes' immortality was more than enough to keep it distracted.
Now.
A friction-scream tore through the air as I kicked off empty space and accelerated. My vision spun wildly; air resistance crushed against my body as if it meant to pulp me flat.
— Fwoom! Fwoom! Fwoom!!
I accelerated again and again, becoming a living cannonball.
— Kiek?
The anomaly, mid-rampage against the Penislimes, turned at the strange sound of something ripping through the air.
Too late.
— KRAAASH!!
My body was the size of a rugby ball. But what happens when a rugby ball that's accelerated half a dozen times smashes into your face?
— Kirrrrk!!
The anomaly's face burst open like rotten fruit. Its eyes were crushed, its nose shattered, its mouth torn wide. Its neck twisted at a grotesque angle, and whatever damage the vocal cords had taken left it producing only a wet, phlegmy gurgle instead of those earlier high-pitched shrieks.
But an anomaly was still an anomaly. Trauma that would have killed a human on the spot left it screaming and very much alive.
— Byurut-hiiing!
On the brink of death, the thing only grew more frenzied. In the middle of its mad thrashing, Byurut made its move.
Using the spring of its own flesh, Byurut bounced high and dove straight into the anomaly's ruined face. It burrowed into the toothless mouth and dumped a full load of aphrodisiac fluid down its throat.
— Kehek! Kerehek!
The rest of the Penislimes scrambled up the anomaly's body, trying to force their way into its mouth the same way. As Penislime after Penislime poured into its stomach, the anomaly's belly began to swell. It gagged and heaved, trying to vomit them back up — but the ones glued to the stomach lining were not coming out easily.
In the end, the anomaly tried to flee. Clutching a belly swollen as if full-term pregnant, it staggered toward the elevator.
But an anomaly was made of yin energy, and Penislimes were creatures that consumed yin energy to multiply.
The belly swelled, and swelled, and—
— POP!
The anomaly's lower abdomen couldn't hold. It burst. Penislimes cascaded out in a waterfall, coated in rancid blood and shredded organs. The little things looked up at me with bright, sparkling eyes, celebrating their victory through layers of gore.
Yeah, yeah. Good job, you little bastards.
I reached out to give them a congratulatory pat — then noticed the organ scraps stuck to them and quietly withdrew my tentacle.
— Byuryuut…
They looked disappointed, but come on. That stuff was disgusting.
As I prodded the anomaly's corpse, a question suddenly occurred to me.
The anomaly is dead. So why is the space still holding together?
— Ding!
At that exact moment, a cheerful chime rang from the elevator, and the doors slid open in a wash of bright light.
So the real master of this space was still elsewhere.
I gathered the Penislimes and carefully stepped inside. The doors whispered shut, and a sensation of weightlessness took hold. The floor numbers climbed past 69 — 70, 72, 73…
Floor 74. Doors opening.
When the doors opened, an entirely different landscape stretched out before us. Where the previous floor had felt like a hospital corridor, this one was closer to a school gymnasium. And floating at the very center of the space was a grotesque sphere.
Is that this anomaly's core?
Drawing closer, I could make out the details — dozens of wombs clustered together like a bunch of grapes.
Time to finish this.
I drove a tentacle into the core and began absorbing its yin energy. A sweetness that soothed my endless hunger. I shuddered with the pleasure of it, greedily devouring every drop.
At last the core, drained of all its yin energy, shriveled to nothing — and the space began to collapse.
We're done here.
I opened a passage through a crack as the walls crumbled, and the Penislimes and I slipped leisurely out of the dying anomaly.
At that same moment, the Management Bureau had descended into pure chaos.
On the monitors, the blinking coordinates of an anomaly had turned gray in an instant and vanished. That could mean only one thing: the destruction of an A-rank anomaly.
"A-rank anomaly Exit 69 — all readings have gone dark!"
"What…? Location!"
"Last known position confirmed. Sending coordinates now!"
"Deploy the special response unit to the site immediately!"
Minutes later, the team on the ground secured a single woman found inside a building, staring blankly into space. Her entire body had been sensitized to the point of functioning as one continuous erogenous zone, and her mental state was extremely unstable.
The Management Bureau administered an A-rank sexual desensitizer and a sedative before they could get a coherent account of what had happened.
"…At the end, a red button appeared. I — I wasn't in my right mind by then. So without thinking…"
"I understand. A great many people never manage that final step."
"…The door closed, and then it appeared."
"The male-form anomaly, correct?"
"Yes…"
Listening from her seat in the interrogation room, Hong Yu-ra — Information Management Team 3 Leader — recalled that the creature was a parasite anomaly nesting inside Exit 69.
"Right before it could violate me, a monster appeared."
"Suddenly? No warning signs?"
"None. It just came out of the toilet."
Yu-ra jotted notes on paper. Everything was being recorded, but she preferred having something to reference as the conversation continued.
"Oh — and there were these strange little creatures too. Like… slimes shaped like male genitalia."
"…Phallic-shaped?"
"Yes. The tentacle monster and those slimes killed the male anomaly and went into the elevator. And the next thing I knew, I was back where I started."
Hong Yu-ra spent another hour extracting information from the woman. Then she compiled everything and sent it up the chain.
"So it took down an A-rank anomaly… Territorial warfare?"
"We can't determine the motive. But it's clearly expanding its forces."
"And it has spatial relocation abilities on top of that. Makes it all the more troublesome."
The Supreme Council — the body that deliberated the Management Bureau's most critical affairs — fell into a collective murmur over a single report.
"It's a Calamity-class anomaly. We need to mobilize every resource we have and eliminate it."
"Aren't we already mobilizing everything? And we still can't find it."
"What are you suggesting?"
"We request assistance from the Association. Or the Demon King's Army."
"Absolutely not."
Voices rose as the assembled figures argued. Amid the clash of opinions, one person spoke up.
"The creature hasn't made any major moves yet, has it? We continue pouring everything into locating it, and we stay ready to respond at a moment's notice. That's all we can do."
"Haa… If another organization makes contact first, we'll have a much bigger problem."
"Nothing for it. We'll proceed as discussed."
And so, while the Management Bureau drafted its response protocols—
I was at Se-a's place, meeting a certain woman.
"Heh heh… You're cuter than I expected."
Long black hair, crimson eyes, a red dress. The anomaly known as the Red Woman — and this was our first contact.