Grotesque Relief, Biological Terror, and Desperate Dependence
The hellish time of expansion and accommodation was drawing to a close. The enormous knot at the base that had been sealing Eunha’s narrow entrance without a single gap began to throb more slowly, gradually shrinking in volume as the beast’s prolonged pulses of release faded. When the rounded mass that had been tearing at her pelvic floor muscles from every direction finally collapsed, the sphincter and vestibular muscles that had been forced to clench around it spasmed violently before losing all elasticity and going slack.
—Sluuurk. Squelch. As the beast’s underbelly withdrew, the blunt penile bone that had been lodged deep against Eunha’s cervix dragged slowly outward, scraping along the swollen folds of her vaginal walls. The grotesque friction of bone sliding against flesh made her gasp and twist her hips.
—Plop. Sluuuurp. The moment the massive organ finally pulled free, the plug that had been holding everything inside vanished. Hundreds of milliliters of thick, scalding semen—well over 40°C—poured out in an uncontrollable flood, streaming down the insides of her thighs and the cleft of her buttocks to soak the thick cardboard spread across the floor.
Taeo’s potent saliva, the clear fluids Eunha had secreted in her desperate struggle to survive, and the beast’s opaque seed all mingled together, releasing a sharp, dense male scent into the cold air of the underground storage room.
“Haa, haa… aah…”
Eunha shuddered at the grotesque sense of emptiness left behind and the sticky foreign sensation now filling that void. Every muscle had gone slack; she lacked the strength to so much as twitch a finger. The heavy breathing of the massive beast, which had been sniffing with satisfaction in the darkness, moved away. Taeo gave her cheek one long, rough lick with his tongue before rising to his feet. Having marked his female completely, the predator now turned to search for the high-protein food surely stored somewhere in this vast grocery warehouse.
—Thud. Scrape. Thud. The sound of 90 kilograms of dense fur and muscle stepping across the linoleum floor gradually faded. Once those footsteps disappeared among the towering metal shelves, only a perfect, chilling silence remained in the storage room.
Eunha braced her trembling arms against the floor and forced her upper body upright. She tugged down the hem of the thick black fleece hoodie that had ridden up to her neck, covering her exposed lower half. The fabric clung unpleasantly to the sticky fluids on her thighs, but shame was a luxury she could no longer afford.
A space completely devoid of light. Though darkness was familiar to the blind, the hollow stillness of this vast artificial structure carried an alien chill that reached deep into her bones. Leaning against the wall, Eunha drew her knees to her chest and hugged them tightly. Her joints and muscles, chemically forced into relaxation, screamed as they tried to return to their proper positions. Suppressing her ragged breathing, she extended her sharpened senses of hearing and smell far beyond the underground storage room, all the way up to the supermarket’s ground floor.
She heard nothing.
Eunha’s brow furrowed slightly. In the world after the fall—after every human had been lifted into the air only to plummet and burst upon impact—the rulers of this horrific new reality were the giant mutated insects. The outside world should have been an endless cacophony: the sound of mantises the size of adult forearms spreading their wings, swarms of cockroaches large enough to swallow a person whole scraping across asphalt, the sizzle of acidic secretions eating through concrete. Yet within a radius of several hundred meters around this massive hypermarket, not even the faint vibration of insect wings or the friction of chitin could be heard. Only the cold wind whistling through the vents and the distant, crude sounds of Taeo tearing open cans and licking out their contents existed in this world.
‘Something’s wrong… It’s too quiet.’
Eunha swallowed dryly in the darkness. She recalled the nauseating stench that had assaulted her nose upon entering the supermarket—the reek of ruptured giant insects’ acidic fluids mixed with the stench of rotting flesh. At the time, she had assumed it was merely the aftermath of Taeo’s brutal slaughter of any bugs that had approached. She had believed the area was temporarily pacified because he had physically torn through every nearby threat and piled their corpses high.
But the mind of a former pharmacy student, steeped in biology and organic chemistry, began to form a colder, drier hypothesis.
‘Even if Taeo is strong enough to have killed every insect nearby… is that really all it is?’
Insect ecology was fundamentally different from that of mammals. Bugs did not fear the death of their own kind. On the contrary, the bodily fluids spilled by dying kin, the stench of decay, and the sharp scent of blood served as powerful beacons that drew more predators and scavengers. In any scene of massacre reeking of blood, every mutated insect within a several-kilometer radius should have swarmed in a frenzied mass to feast. Yet this place was deathly silent. Not even an ant—the lowest rung of the food chain—dared to extend its antennae into the supermarket’s territory.
Eunha’s slender shoulders trembled. Her keen sense of smell isolated a single, persistent odor saturating the empty storage room’s air. It was neither the scent of dry grain nor dust. It was the overwhelmingly dense male scent emanating from the beast that had just crushed and violated her body—the scent of Taeo, now seeping outward from deep within her own body.
‘This isn’t just an animal’s smell. This is… a warning.’
Eunha’s cloudy silver-white pupils dilated wide in the darkness. Taeo, transformed into a massive, aberrant wolf. His sweat, saliva, urine, and the semen he had pumped so thoroughly into her womb surely contained unknown chemical compounds—overwhelming fear pheromones capable of directly assaulting the nervous systems of other mutated creatures and completely suppressing their predatory instincts. A chemical-biological weapon of terrifying potency that could instantly scramble the chemical signals detected by insect antennae, imprinting a genetic-level terror that any creature entering this marked territory would be torn limb from limb.
Eunha realized that the beast whose body she leaned against, whose belly she now carried, was no mere oversized mutant wolf. In this apocalyptic ecosystem where humanity had perished and insects reigned, he might well be the flawless apex predator that even the mutated laws of nature were forced to obey.
A hollow, chilling breath escaped between her lips. The grotesque paradox that the very thing she had wept and trembled before mere moments ago was, in fact, the safest and most absolute fortress in this ruined world.
‘Taeo… just how strong are you?’
As a blind woman, Eunha had no way to visually confirm the beast’s true combat prowess or size beyond what her hands could trace across his massive, furred form. Yet the overwhelming density of muscle that had pinned her down, the forepaws that could tear concrete like paper, and this suffocating pheromone scent that had claimed the entire building as his chemical territory proved everything.
Feeling the beast’s hot seed still heavy inside her, Eunha wrapped her arms around her lower belly. She had no choice but to acknowledge that the moments of mating she had found so shameful and humiliating had, in truth, been the process of donning the most perfect protective barrier imaginable. As long as the beast’s fluids remained within her body and carried his scent, no giant insect would dare approach to tear at her fragile flesh.
But the rational mind of a pharmacy student poured cold water on that grotesque sense of relief, reminding her of a terrifying truth. There was no eternal apex in nature. The mutated insects, undergoing explosive evolution in a collapsed ecosystem, wielded a far more terrifying weapon than individual strength: their immense collective nature and reproductive capacity, endlessly multiplying, adapting to the environment, and refining their genes. Though they were currently held at bay by Taeo’s apex pheromones and killing intent, this deathly peace was a ticking time bomb whose detonation could come at any moment.
Given time, the giant insects of the outside world would inevitably covet the supermarket’s territory in their expansion. It was only a matter of time before a new mutant resistant to Taeo’s pheromones emerged, or before tens of thousands of insects under the control of a queen powerful enough to overcome individual fear broke through this bloody boundary.
At that thought, an icy dread slid down Eunha’s spine.
‘What if… what if Taeo gets hurt, or is overwhelmed and killed by those bugs?’
That possibility represented a far more horrific end for her than any hell. A fragile, completely blind human woman, unable to run or fight, cast alone into a sea of giant insects. Her skin would melt while she still lived under acidic secretions; her entrails would be dragged out by hooked claws. She would be torn apart and devoured in the most agonizing manner the human nervous system could endure, all while listening to the horrific scraping of countless compound eyes gleaming in the dark.
“Aah, aaah…”
Eunha clutched her arms tightly and convulsed. The pain of being raped by a beast was, compared to the predation awaiting her outside, almost a merciful and compassionate salvation. Without Taeo, she would have been devoured at the hospital and become someone’s meal. She might even have become a host for parasitic organisms or a living incubator for insect eggs. She was a being so utterly powerless that she could not survive a single day—perhaps not even a single hour—in this world without him.
The beast’s irrational, possessive obsession with claiming her as his own was the only lifeline keeping her alive. If Taeo lost interest and moved on to another hunting ground, or if he was wounded and could no longer emit a predator’s pheromones…
Desperate despair and grotesque resignation tangled within Eunha’s empty pupils. For her to survive, this beast had to remain the unchallenged apex predator forever. And she had to ensure that the beast would keep her forever at his side as his most cherished female and breeding tool. Even if it meant enduring the physical terror of having her insides torn apart, even if she had to accept his massive bone-like shaft and the humiliation of being stitched together by his saliva thousands of times over—that was the only rational survival equation available to a blind pharmacy student in this nightmarish apocalypse.
—Thud. Sniff. Just as her thoughts reached that point, heavy footsteps began approaching once more from beyond the metal shelves. Eunha lifted her head with a start. A massive presence cut through the darkness. A thick, hot bestial scent struck her nose. And mingled with the beast’s odor came a new, unfamiliar fishy smell.
Taeo had clearly gone to the supermarket’s frozen storage and returned with either a massive piece of beast meat that had not yet begun to rot, or perhaps the still-living larva of a giant insect.
—Grrrn. Thud. Taeo dropped something heavy and wet at Eunha’s feet. Then he immediately shoved his massive muzzle beneath her hoodie, deeply inhaling the scent between her legs that he had so thoroughly filled moments ago. A low, satisfied growl vibrated across the storage room floor.
Eunha no longer tried to push him away or flee. Instead, her thin, trembling hands reached out and wrapped around the thick fur of the beast’s neck as he exhaled hot breath toward her.
“You’re back…? Taeo.”
The blind female’s voice had moved beyond mere resignation, soaked in a grotesque, desperate submission and dependence. It was the most wretched declaration of surrender—offering her body to the perfect fortress and monster she had chosen, all for the sake of survival.