Chapter 6
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 6
Chapter Title: A Small Machine Lifeform
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No hostility was detected. All that could be felt was pure curiosity.
‘It doesn’t seem to have any intention of approaching… but I should give it a warning.’
Cheon Doun drew upon the monstrous energy he usually kept contained.
With a flutter, birds took flight from all directions.
The auras of over 500 different monsters poured out simultaneously, and in an instant, the surroundings fell silent.
The machine lifeform also seemed to flinch, retreating to hide behind a tree.
‘This should be enough to keep it from entering my home without permission.’
If it wasn’t looking for a fight, it would know to keep its distance. Cheon Doun glanced toward the machine lifeform before turning away.
* * *
Arriving at the waterfall, he took out the clothes sealed in a plastic bag.
Five shirts and five pairs of pants. If he washed these properly, he wouldn’t have to walk around dressed in animal hides like a caveman.
‘The powder has hardened too much. I don’t think it’ll wash out easily… Maybe I should soak them in water for a bit.’
He submerged the stiff clothes in the water. After weighing them down with a rock to keep them from floating away, the job was done.
‘Since I’m here, I might as well grab something for dinner.’
Cheon Doun stepped into the pool of water. No bait was needed.
As soon as he entered, several fish approached, intending to nibble on his legs.
Cheon Doun snatched one of them out of the water with his bare hands.
“Come to think of it, I have ramen at home.”
Cheon Doun looked at the fish in his hand. What if he put this in the ramen and boiled it together? He pondered the thought with a serious expression.
Fish in ramen. To make matters worse, the fish in question was an aquatic monster notorious for its strong, fishy odor. If anyone had been there, they would have tried to stop him.
But Cheon Doun, who hadn’t eaten a proper human meal in over 70 years, felt no sense of incongruity with his own idea.
‘That’s right. I have cookware and ramen now. I should try cooking.’
Cheon Doun looked at the fish with an intrigued expression.
“I’ll need the organs for their poison… so I should take those out.”
Cheon Doun’s fingernails grew long like blades. With his sharpened nails, he sliced open the fish’s belly, removed the entrails, and tossed them into the pool.
Splash. The organs fell into the creek’s pool, and a swarm of fish gathered, making them disappear in an instant.
‘The bones will be a hassle to eat, so I’ll take those out too.’
He yanked out the bones and tossed them aside as well. They, too, were quickly devoured by the swarm of fish.
‘How do I scale this? Should I rub it against a rock?’
The monster’s scales were jagged and sharp.
Cheon Doun drew a thread from his fingertip. He held it against the fish’s body, sizing it up.
‘Let’s give it a try.’
Having made his decision, he placed the thread against the grain of the scales and scraped upwards.
“It comes off easier than I thought.”
The thread of an S+ rank monster, the Silk Thread Caterpillar. A thread specialized for hunting was now being used as a kitchen knife for scaling fish.
Once the scales were removed, the flesh was exposed. Rinsing it in the running water to wash away the blood completed the preparation.
“I’m not sure if this is the right way to do it.”
Regardless of the method, he had acquired a fish to toss into his ramen.
‘By the way… why is that machine lifeform still following me?’
Cheon Doun looked beyond the bushes.
It had run away when he revealed his aura as a warning. But it had already returned and was lingering near him again.
The distance was 300 meters, just like before. A curious distance, suggesting it had no intention of getting closer, nor of moving farther away.
‘Did it realize I’m a Chimera? Or is there another reason?’
Whatever the reason, if it didn’t approach him first, he had no intention of approaching it either.
Cheon Doun took the prepared fish and headed home.
* * *
Cheon Doun laid out the ramen and cookware, then sat down in front of them. The ingredients were gathered. It was time to start cooking.
‘I think I had ramen at the orphanage before…’
It was when he was seven or eight, so he couldn’t recall the taste. Even so, the memory of it being delicious remained vivid.
“I’ll know once I eat it.”
He poured drinking water into the pot. While waiting for the water to boil, he read the “Cooking Instructions” on the package with a serious expression.
‘There are no instructions for adding fish. Should I put the noodles or the fish in first?’
It was his first time ever making ramen. To be more precise, it was his first time making human food at all.
After pondering for a long while, he tossed in the prepared fish first.
As the water began to boil, a distinct fishy smell started to spread.
Moreover, this wasn't an ordinary fish, but the flesh of an aquatic monster. It was a smell so toxic that any human would have covered their nose and fled, but Cheon Doun remained unfazed.
‘The smell is a bit unique. Is this what happens when you boil fish?’
Cheon Doun’s expression turned curious. When the flesh had turned white, he tore open the package and added the noodles.
“Ah, the soup packet. I forgot to add this.”
He tore open the soup packet and emptied it into the pot, and it was complete. As he stirred with his chopsticks, the fishy smell and the spicy aroma mixed and wafted through the air.
It was a smell that would make any normal person recoil in disgust. Cheon Doun, however, breathed it in and drifted into his memories.
“This smell… that’s right. I remember. This is the smell of ramen.”
If someone had been next to him, they would have screamed that he was wrong. Distorted by over seventy years of nostalgia, the ramen smell from his childhood had become strangely warped.
“Chopsticks… was this how you use them?”
With an awkward grip on the chopsticks, Cheon Doun transferred the noodles to the pot lid.
Just as he was about to take his first bite, the bushes in front of him rustled.
-Whine.
Parting the grass, a large brown poodle emerged.
A so-called Standard Poodle. A dog as big as a person. It seemed not yet fully grown, as it was slightly smaller than average, but it was definitely larger than a typical poodle.
Cheon Doun paused, his ramen halfway to his mouth, and stared at the dog.
‘There’s no way a dog could be in the Demon World.’
It was an environment where even humans couldn’t survive. A dog couldn’t possibly be roaming around unscathed.
The poodle limped forward on three legs. It staggered closer before collapsing. To top it off, it let out a whining whimper.
Seeing this, Cheon Doun had to suppress a laugh.
‘What is it doing now?’
No matter how he looked at it, that was the machine lifeform. The Chimera that had been circling him.
‘Changing into a dog instead of a monster… it must not know much about the Demon World.’
Was this why it had finally approached him after just circling around? Cheon Doun glanced at the bubbling ramen.
“Want some?”
At his question, the poodle’s nose twitched. Cheon Doun ladled some ramen into another bowl.
He cut the fish in half and added a piece, and the poodle’s tail began to spin in circles.
“Here. Eat up.”
No sooner had he set the bowl down than the poodle buried its face in it and began to eat.
Ramen deeply infused with a fishy smell. A normal person would have overturned the bowl, but the machine lifeform slurped it down noisily.
Like Cheon Doun, the machine lifeform had never eaten proper human food.
Having starved for a long time, the fish ramen was like rain from heaven.
‘I guess it’s dropping the injured-leg act.’
Lost in the ramen, the poodle stood firmly on all four legs, eating frantically.
After emptying the bowl in an instant, the dog glanced at Cheon Doun before turning to leave.
Limp, limp. As if remembering its act, it began to limp awkwardly toward the bushes.
“I thought you were limping on your left leg earlier.”
As he muttered to himself, the poodle’s movements froze. Its eyes, looking back at Cheon Doun, wavered uncontrollably.
The poodle discreetly switched its limping leg. At the clumsy act, Cheon Doun nearly burst out laughing.
‘Its behavior is childish. It’s either actually young, or… its mind was damaged by experiments.’
Cheon Doun had seen many of that type during his time at the research institute. Which one was this Chimera?
‘It’ll come back. Probably in human form next time.’
Having been given ramen, its wariness toward Cheon Doun had somewhat dissipated.
With curiosity and a bit of familiarity established, it was obvious it would want to try talking to him next.
‘What form will it take, I wonder.’
He watched the spot where the poodle had disappeared before eating his ramen. As the fishy taste filled his mouth, he smiled brightly.
“Yes, this is what ramen tasted like.”
The ramen he’d eaten at the orphanage. Thanks to the filter of nostalgia, the fishy ramen was transformed into a heavenly delicacy.
“This is delicious. So this is what ramen tastes like.”
He had finally eaten a proper human meal. He chewed on the aquatic monster’s fishy ramen, a blissful smile on his face.
* * *
After finishing his meal, he crumpled the ramen package in his hand.
A flame ignited in his palm, and the trash vanished without leaving even a trace of ash.
It was the ability of a Demon World lava-zone monster, the Fire Toad, which could convert ingested lava into flames and spew them out.
Having disposed of the trash, he gathered his cookware and headed for the waterfall creek.
After washing the bowl, he placed it upside down on a rock and took out the clothes he had left to soak. The once-stiff clothes had softened.
“A few more rinses should do it.”
He spread the clothes out on a wide rock. Gripping a stick he had prepared in both hands, he began to beat the laundry.
Thwack, thwack. Tat-tat-tat.
A rhythmic beating sound echoed at high speed. He swung the stick so fast it became a blur.
‘If I hit it too hard, the clothes will rip, so I have to be gentle… easy… hmm, controlling my strength is difficult. I heard this is how people did laundry before washing machines. Is that right?’
It was a washing method that would horrify even people from the era of washing machines. Having become a high-performance human washing machine, Cheon Doun beat the clothes and then rinsed them in the water.
After repeating this process several times, the clothes were spotlessly clean.
“Phew… that was tough. This is surprisingly hard labor that uses all the muscles in my body.”
One wrong move and the clothes would rip. Not just rip, but a slight lapse in concentration could lead to the clothes being pulverized.
To prevent that, he had to control not only his core muscles but also the strength in each and every one of his fingers.
His standard of “tough” was different from an ordinary person’s, but Cheon Doun still wiped the sweat from his brow.
“This should be enough. As for drying…”
Cheon Doun shot a thread toward the nearby trees.
Stretching the long thread between two trees, he created a sturdy clothesline.
The ability of a rare, S+ rank monster that Hunters avoided at all costs. It was now being used as a clothesline, after having served as a kitchen knife.
“Looking at them like this, the clothes seem a bit small.”
He hadn’t noticed when they were caked and stiff with pollen, but now that they were properly spread out, the size was slightly off.
He could probably force himself into them, but it was obvious they would be uncomfortable, so he lost the desire to wear them.
‘What a waste. It’s a shame to throw them out after washing them, so maybe I’ll just hold onto them for now.’
Even if he couldn’t wear them, he could tear them up and reuse the fabric.
As Cheon Doun hung the clothes one by one, he glanced beyond the bushes.
‘It’s gotten pretty close.’
The machine lifeform, which had been maintaining a distance of 300 meters, had now approached to within about 100 meters.
‘Judging by the footsteps… it’s in human form this time. It’ll probably try to talk to me before the day is out.’
Cheon Doun smirked and left the area.
About ten minutes after he disappeared, a silver android walked out from the bushes.
Its metallic, mechanical skeleton, like something out of a movie, glinted in the sunlight. A red, LED-like light shone from its eyes.
The android tugged on one of the shirts Cheon Doun had hung up.
Hugging it to its body, it raised its temperature, and steam rose as the shirt dried in an instant.
It smoothed the fabric with its palm, and the shirt became perfectly ironed without a single wrinkle.
“There. This shirt is mine now.”
The small machine lifeform put on the shirt with a proud expression. It looked like a child who had stolen their father’s shirt, but the machine lifeform was satisfied.
It was the first time it had ever worn human clothes.
“Now, I just have to act like we met by chance… Ah! Human form.”
The machine lifeform patted its own face. As its palm met its cheek, a metallic clanging sound rang out.
From that point, its surface began to change, taking on the appearance of human skin. On its shiny head, a full head of brown hair began to grow.
Curly hair, just like the poodle’s. The machine lifeform checked the hair that now grew down to its waist and smiled in satisfaction.
“I’m in human form. Now it’s truly perfect.”
This way, he would never know its identity. The android, now in the form of a young girl, trotted after Cheon Doun.