Midnight in the Depths of Early Winter – The Frozen Fortress and the First Spark
The vast artificial cavern lay so deep that not even the wingbeats of the giant insects that had completely conquered the surface world could reach it. In the underground food warehouse of the hypermarket, where all power had been severed, the space slowly began to reveal its chilling true nature right after the beast’s horrific mating ended.
The season had already passed late autumn and plunged into the bitter cold of early winter. The concrete floor deep underground, untouched by even a single ray of sunlight, absorbed the surface’s freezing chill and transformed into something like a massive freezer.
—Sssssss. The icy gale that had slipped down through the ventilation shaft slithered like a snake between the steel shelves, mercilessly gnawing away at the warehouse’s temperature.
Eunha sat astride the giant beast’s back in pitch-black darkness, her trembling arms desperately clinging to his thick neck. The upper half of her body, pressed against his rough breathing, managed to retain some warmth thanks to the thick black fleece hoodie. The problem was her completely exposed lower half.
Only minutes earlier, the space between her legs had been burning from the beast’s scorching body heat—well over forty degrees Celsius—and the sticky flood of nearly three hundred milliliters of semen. Now, a knife-like wind sliced straight into that raw, vulnerable heat.
—Oso-so-so. Goosebumps rose across the pale, porcelain-like skin of Eunha’s thighs and buttocks.
The beast’s massive cock had brutally forced its way in, tearing her vaginal entrance and cervical membrane nearly to third-degree lacerations. Thanks to the healing properties in his saliva, the bleeding had barely stopped and new flesh was beginning to knit together. Every time the ice-cold air touched those hypersensitive membranes, Eunha twisted her waist in breath-stealing agony.
“Ah, ngh… Haa, it’s cold…”
White vapor leaked from between Eunha’s pale lips. The cloudy mixture of the beast’s semen and her own fluids that had trickled down her inner thighs onto his fur now cooled rapidly in the underground air, clinging to her skin. The unpleasant, skin-crawling sensation of those once-sticky fluids hardening into cold glue made her feel as if her entire lower body had been plunged into ice water.
Desperate to survive, Eunha pressed her frail fifty-kilogram body even tighter against Taeo’s broad back. She curled her slender one-hundred-sixty-two-centimeter frame as small as possible, burying her frozen toes deep into the dense, soft undercoat hidden beneath the beast’s long, coarse outer fur. But even the body heat of a ninety-kilogram giant mutated wolf was not enough to completely block out the cold that pressed in from every direction in the empty space.
—Clack, clack-clack. Clack.
Eunha’s upper and lower jaws began knocking together uncontrollably. Her nervous system was fighting for survival, forcibly convulsing every muscle in her body. Her blood vessels contracted to the extreme, and her thin, white skin gradually took on a ghastly purplish hue.
The early signs of frostbite. Sensation in her toes, where blood no longer reached, grew dull, replaced by stabbing pain like sharp needles.
“Taeo… Taeo… I’m… ugh, so cold…”
Eunha clutched the thick fur at the beast’s nape and let out a pained whimper. In her sightless world, there was nothing but merciless cold, darkness, and terrible suffering. A primal terror surged through her—the fear that her heart might freeze solid and stop at any moment.
That was when it happened.
—Grrrrng.
The giant beast, sensing the unusual trembling of the female on his back, turned his head with a low, heavy snort. Taeo’s sensitive olfactory cells relentlessly analyzed the rapidly changing scent of Eunha within the warehouse’s cold air. The sweet pheromone smell, once soaked in hot pleasure and fear, was fading. In its place came a bizarre, chilling odor—the scent of blood circulation slowing and cells beginning to freeze. The beast’s instincts were screaming that his possession was in mortal danger.
—Swish. Thud.
Taeo extended one massive forepaw and gently wrapped it around Eunha’s shivering body. The terrifying grip that could normally crush her ribs like dry twigs was now controlled with extreme delicacy, as if handling a fragile glass ornament.
He carefully lifted her from his back and laid her down on a thick pile of discarded cardboard boxes stacked in the corner of the warehouse.
“Ah, no…! Don’t leave me, Taeo… It’s cold, please…”
The moment the beast’s immense heat left her body, Eunha screamed as if struck by lightning and flailed both hands through empty air. But Taeo was resolute.
—Lick. Slurp.
He extended his rough, hot tongue and gave two strong licks along her purpling bare legs and frozen toes. The friction heat and the sedative substances mixed in his saliva seeped into her skin, creating a temporary numbing effect that made her forget the cold for a moment.
While Eunha caught her breath, Taeo immediately turned and leaped into the darkness.
—Tap. Tap-tap. Shuuuuk.
The sound of ninety kilograms of massive weight kicking off the linoleum floor. The scrape of claws against the ground raced toward the exit at terrifying speed, followed only by the distant, heavy vibration of a massive iron door being smashed open as he ascended to the surface level.
“Taeo…? Where are you going…!”
Eunha curled up on the pile of cardboard boxes and cried out in despair. The monster had raped her and torn her insides apart, yet in this frozen apocalypse, without that monster’s fur she would surely freeze to death within an hour.
Perfect isolation. The underground warehouse where Taeo had left sank into a silence deeper and colder than a grave.
Eunha hugged her knees tightly with her slender arms and curled into a ball. Nothing was visible before her blind eyes, but every particle of cold air touching her skin felt like a razor blade. Come back… Please don’t abandon me…
Her rational mind—the knowledge of a former pharmacy student—was calculating the cell necrosis and fatality rate of hypothermia and frostbite. But deep in her heart, only the miserable dependency of a female craving the beast’s warmth remained, tangling like a black widow’s web.
The grotesque contradiction of having to cling to the beast who had forcibly violated her in order to survive. Eunha clenched her chattering jaw and shed tears. The temperature had dropped so low that even the teardrops froze as they slid down her cheeks.
How many minutes that felt like eternity had passed?
—BANG!Crash!
A deafening roar echoed from the warehouse entrance as the massive iron door was smashed apart. Eunha flinched and lifted her head. Terror that it might be a giant insect attack raced down her spine, but her keen sense of smell soon caught the familiar, overpowering scent of male pheromones.
—Thud. Thuuud. Ssssk.
Heavy footsteps accompanied the sound of something enormous being dragged across the floor. It was Taeo.
The beast who had swept through the surface-level hypermarket had returned with his mouth and back laden with bizarre spoils for survival.
—Thump. Clatter. Clang.
Taeo spat out what he had been carrying at Eunha’s feet. The heavy thud of wooden logs hitting the floor, the crumpling of thick paper, and the dull scrape of metal rang out in succession.
Eunha reached out with trembling hands and carefully felt the objects that had fallen to the ground. The first thing her fingertips touched were roughly broken wooden planks. They were clearly thick wooden pallets commonly used in the hypermarket’s logistics warehouse or under display shelves, torn apart and shattered by the beast’s terrifying strength. Deep tooth marks from the beast were gouged into the wood’s surface.
Beside them lay crumpled, bone-dry empty cardboard boxes, and soon her hand brushed against a cold, round metal cylinder.
This is… gas? And…
Her fingertips traced the plastic valve attached to the metal cylinder and the small plastic piece lying beside it. It was a large-capacity butane gas canister paired with a torch from the camping section. And a flip-top lighter.
Eunha’s cloudy silver-white pupils dilated wide in the darkness.
Taeo… brought these?
The being she had believed had completely lost human language after mutating into a ninety-kilogram giant wolf and was now ruled entirely by beastly instinct. The monster that had shown only the madness of a predator forcibly claiming a female and sowing his seed. Yet the objects now lying at her feet could not be explained by simple animal instinct alone.
Taeo had not only recognized that Eunha was shivering from the cold—he had precisely selected, from among countless items on the surface, the firewood and ignition tools needed to create fire.
It was either the remnants of his past human intelligence still lingering in bizarre fragments somewhere in the beast’s brain, or an extreme manifestation of the instinct to protect his female for the sake of survival and reproduction.
—Grrrr.Thump.
Taeo nudged Eunha’s thin shoulder lightly with the tip of his massive nose. It was as if he were urging her, Hurry up and make heat with those.
Eunha bit her frozen lip and nodded. She had no time to feel awe or fear. If she didn’t raise her body temperature immediately, her body would stiffen while still alive.
With trembling hands, she tore the cardboard boxes to shreds and spread them widely across the floor. On top of them, she carefully stacked the broken pallet pieces in a neat well shape.
For someone without sight, building the structure was an exhausting task that relied solely on the sense of touch in her fingertips, but desperation for survival drove her movements.
Once everything was ready, Eunha gripped the gas torch tightly with both hands.
“Haa… haa…”
But handling fire was an act that carried extreme terror for a blind person. She could not see where sparks might fly or how high the flames might surge. If her hand slipped and fire caught on her clothes or nearby objects, she could burn to death alive with no chance to escape.
Eunha took a deep breath and turned the torch’s valve with microscopic care.
—Hssssss.
A sharp hiss of escaping gas spread the nauseating smell of butane through the cold air. She carefully aimed the torch toward the pile of wood, then pressed the switch on the lighter in her other hand.
—Click. Fwoosh!
The moment the lighter’s small flame met the gas, a tiny explosion sounded in the air and a long, sharp pillar of fire erupted. Eunha flinched at the sudden rush of heat against the back of her hand, but she clenched her teeth and stubbornly pushed the torch’s flame deep between the paper and wood.
—Crackle. Crackle-crackle. Whoooosh.
The paper caught first, burning bright red and spreading the fire. Soon the flames leaped to the dry fragments of wooden pallet. The acrid smell of smoke and the pleasant popping sound of burning wood shattered the underground warehouse’s silence.
Eunha closed the torch valve, tossed it aside, and carefully extended her trembling hands toward the blazing campfire.
“Ah… aah…”
The intense heat radiating from just thirty centimeters away slammed into her frozen fingertips and face. Even the exposed folds of her pussy and the insides of her thighs—unprotected by any clothing and helpless against the cold air—began to receive the warm radiant heat of the flames.
The thrilling yet painful sensation of constricted blood vessels expanding and blood beginning to flow again. The frozen fluids slowly melted in the heat, once more releasing a fishy scent.
Eunha closed her eyes in relief at having survived and absorbed the campfire’s warmth with her entire body. In the hellish darkness of the apocalypse, this small bonfire was the only sun, the only lifeline.
But that peace did not last long.
—Grrrrng?Sniff.
Taeo, who had been quietly watching from behind, began to push his massive head toward the flames with a curious snort, apparently stimulated by the heat and light of the burning fire.
—Swish. Whoosh.
As the ninety-kilogram mass of fur approached, the campfire’s flames flickered violently as if robbed of oxygen. The heat that had been touching Eunha’s skin momentarily cooled beneath the beast’s enormous shadow. When Eunha flinched and sharpened her hearing, she caught the sound of Taeo’s hot, heavy breathing right in front of the fire—he had pushed his snout right up to the flames.
Wild beasts instinctively feared fire, but this grotesque mutant with lingering human intelligence seemed fascinated by the fact that the objects he had brought were producing heat.
Yet Taeo’s entire body was covered in the beast’s dense, coarse fur. If even a single spark caught on that dry coat, he would instantly become a towering pillar of flame and suffer horrific burns.
“No!”
Eunha screamed reflexively. Bracing herself on the floor, she reached out and shoved the beast’s massive nose away with a slap-like push.
—Thwack.Grr?
Her small palm met the damp, enormous tip of Taeo’s nose.
“It’s dangerous! If your fur catches fire it’ll be a disaster! Stay back, Taeo!”
The blind female had forgotten that the being she was pushing away was a terrifying monster standing at the apex of this world’s food chain. She was driven solely by the desperate need to keep him from getting hurt.
The male who had forcibly held her and mercilessly torn her apart. Yet in this moment, inside Eunha’s mind, the horrifying dependency and protective instinct—that she could not survive without this beast—had taken root far more strongly than hatred or fear.
If Taeo were to burn and be injured, she would be doomed to starve to death or be torn apart by insects in this dark, cold underground warehouse.
The moment Eunha’s frail hand struck his nose, Taeo’s movement froze.
—…….
For an instant, only the crackling of the campfire echoed inside the warehouse.
If it had been an ordinary giant insect or wild predator, the instant its prey dared lay a hand on its body, it would have sunk its sharp fangs into her throat. But Taeo was different.
The fragile female he had completely marked with his scent and fluids. His grotesque intelligence and instincts simultaneously understood that she was not attacking him, but trying to protect him from the burning heat by pushing him away.
—Fuuuuh.
A huge snort blew Eunha’s bangs back violently. Then came the sound of his heavy footsteps retreating.
—Thud. Thump.
As if obediently accepting Eunha’s warning, Taeo settled his massive haunches on the floor about a meter away from the campfire, at a safe distance.
The most ferocious and cruel ruler of the ecosystem had meekly obeyed the command of a blind, fifty-kilogram female and stepped back.
Only after confirming that the hot breath Taeo directed at her had stopped at a safe distance did Eunha let out a deep sigh of relief and collapse to the floor.
“Haa… Thank goodness…”
The red glow of the burning campfire made the shadows of the two bizarre beings facing each other in the darkness flicker and dance.
A pale, slender human woman sitting with her lower half bare, hugging her knees before the fire. And behind her, like a giant guardian deity, a ninety-kilogram colossal wolf crouched in the darkness, watching over both the flames and the female at once.
Eunha felt the warm heat seep into her frozen pussy and thighs. Beyond the small spark she had created, she sensed Taeo’s enormous presence with her entire body.
The only sanctuary permitted in this hellish world. The only monster who tore her apart, yet also kept her warm and allowed her to keep breathing.
“Thank you… Taeo. For saving me…”
The whisper that flowed from Eunha’s lips was a terrible yet sweet first confession, proving that she had burned away the last remnants of her human reason and fallen completely as a beast’s female.