Demonkin (1)
“Seo-hyun, get down!”
Julia’s blade seized the surrounding air in an instant and shot forward on a current of gentle wind.
Slash—!
A spray of crimson blood followed the sword’s path as it grazed past the monster’s eye.
In less than a second the beast had lost its sight and thrashed wildly, yet the maids reacted even faster. Armor-piercing rounds punched through its carapace and buried themselves in the flesh beneath.
In the modern world those rounds had largely fallen out of favor—insufficient stopping power, rising protection on the tanks they were once meant to defeat—but against monsters clad head-to-toe in shell, nothing worked better.
“Hah…”
Barely ten seconds after the creature’s life had been snuffed out, the maids checked their weapons. Thankfully the barrels showed no signs of deformation.
“Why on earth are monsters—”
“It’s not over yet! More are coming!”
A maid whose unique ability let her visualize vibrations sensed the presence of another beast tunneling up for an ambush. Realizing its position had been compromised, the monster burst from the earth and lunged—straight at Isabella, the head maid.
It must have intended to eliminate the old and infirm first. That choice produced a result far from what it expected.
Crack—!
Isabella’s spinning back-kick folded the creature’s body in half and sent it flying. At the same moment a second monster waiting beneath her tried to exploit the opening; she simply seized its arm and slammed it into the ground.
“Hah. Not that dangerous after all.”
She flicked the blood from her hand a few times, then put a lead round through the face of the still-twitching beast to make certain.
So far the situation remained manageable. But three monsters had already burrowed in to attack them; their location was clearly compromised.
“…They’re still coming.”
“We move. Somewhere easier to defend.”
“Where, then…?”
They discussed the options with cold clarity. Everyone knew the outside was unsafe, yet once their position was known they had no choice but to relocate.
That was when I had an idea.
“Bukhansan…”
“Hm?”
“We go to Bukhansan.”
Someone might have argued that a mountain was more dangerous than the city. But Bukhansan held the densest concentration of unmanned gun batteries in Seoul, and parts of the range were solid rock—ideal for countering subterranean approaches. Fighting with the high ground was a bonus.
“Bukhansan… shorter distance than leaving Seoul entirely. Not a bad choice.”
“Then that’s where we go.”
Nearby shelters existed, but dragging monsters after them risked unnecessary casualties. Their combat strength was not lacking; so long as they did not unluckily run into an A-class monster, they would be fine.
He had been born in the heart of hell.
From the moment of his birth he knew what he could do.
Erosion.
That was the unique ability granted to him.
He grew by devouring countless monsters. Monsters possessed no unique abilities of their own—only powerful bodies. Razor claws and thick carapaces were fearsome weapons, yet to one who could erode, their weapons simply became his.
Sometime after three hundred years of life he acquired a kingdom of his own.
And then—
for the first time—he encountered something he could not erode.
Grrrrr—
The tentacles that sprouted from his back could not pierce even the thinnest layer of that being’s hide. When it flicked a finger, the monsters under his command shattered into thousands of pieces that scattered through the air.
Only decades later—or was it centuries?—did he learn that the being was the Demon King.
A demonkin who had received the Demon God’s oracle and descended into the human world, the one called the Eroder, reflected.
That was not truly his name. It was merely the closest combination of human words that could approximate the tongue of the Demon Realm. Yet no name could have suited him better.
The Eroder’s tentacles stirred.
Every time his fifty-meter bulk shifted, he felt the screams of the people. The sensation brought him pleasure. Those who fled in terror would all become his subjects; how could he not rejoice?
Tentacles lanced into their backs. Moments later an unknown fluid from his body seeped into their bloodstreams and the transformations began. Nails lengthened, muscle swelled, eyes atrophied; they no longer looked human. Watching his newly loyal subjects, he turned his gaze toward the mansion he had finally reached.
…A distortion in space.
Something that should not exist in this dimension.
He dispatched monsters to eliminate her. They had been specialized for underground infiltration—the first button in the invasion of Seoul—but now that the invasion had begun they were of little further use. Still, the demonkin judged them sufficient to kill a single human.
Not long after, their signals went dark.
Well… it hardly mattered.
Most affairs ended the moment he himself moved. Even weakened by his descent into the human world, that truth remained unchanged.
As always, the Eroder moved his tentacles.
“…!”
Just as we were about to leave the mansion for Bukhansan, a vibration unlike anything before rolled through the earth. At least magnitude seven. I squeezed my eyes shut and felt as though I were flying; when I opened them I was already airborne.
“What in the—!”
“Seo-hyun! I’ve got you!”
A soft tailwind caught my falling body. Gliding—the technique she had taught me only recently. I never imagined I would need it in actual combat so soon.
I landed safely and swept the surroundings with my eyes.
There’s nothing here. What just—
Still standing in stunned confusion, I felt my phone vibrate. Laplace’s message appeared.
[Get down!]
“!”
Whoosh—!
A black shape streaked over my head, continued for a long distance, and smashed through the building behind us.
“…!”
What just passed?
I stared in the direction the black form had come from, eyes wide.
A sphere roughly fifty meters across, woven from coiled tentacles, with more tentacles radiating outward. The mere sight of it made my knees weak.
A creature that led monsters and radiated that kind of presence could only be one thing.
“A demonkin…?”
Rulers of monsters. Beings judged to possess a certain degree of intelligence, yet incapable of communication with humans. Extremely high combat indices. Every appearance left tens of thousands to hundreds of millions dead. Hostile to humanity by nature.
Information I had absorbed long ago while researching the existence known as the Demon King.
“That can’t be…”
“Lady Isabella…”
The others had realized it too; their faces drained of color.
If A-class monsters stood near the top of the hierarchy—excluding a few true beasts—then demonkin stood above even them. They had existed alongside humanity since our earliest days. In eras without the current response systems they had been worshipped as gods in some regions or had simply erased entire nations.
These days a coordinated system existed: when a demonkin appeared, heroes from other countries were dispatched to help suppress it, so the damage was no longer as catastrophic. Even so, demonkin remained objects of pure terror.
“R-run…”
People tried to move their feet, yet their legs felt as heavy as lead and refused to obey no matter how hard they struggled.
The demonkin’s influence?
I too was paralyzed by the crushing fear, unable even to think of fleeing—until a single gunshot snapped me back to myself.
Bang—!
Isabella’s rifle round punched into the cluster of tentacles that had been crawling toward our ankles.
“Snap out of it!”
“Wha…?”
“I’ll cover you—run! There’s a twenty-seater truck in the garden garage. Take it and drive straight out along the road!”
She tossed the keys to Julia’s mother and settled into a firing stance.
The demonkin had shown no reaction; for a fleeting moment we hoped it had not noticed us. Then it simply reabsorbed the lost tentacle and attacked again.
Isabella’s muzzle erupted in flame.
Ratatatat—!
Within seconds an entire magazine was empty, thirty bullet holes stitched across the forest of tentacles. The precision would have been impossible even for special-forces marksmen, yet the damage appeared negligible.
Or so it seemed.
Crunch—!
The thirty armor-piercing rounds embedded in the demonkin’s flesh suddenly transformed into thorns that stabbed outward in every direction, shredding tissue as they burst free. Caught by the unexpected counter, the tentacles shattered into hundreds of fragments that rained onto the ground.