The Flesh-Bound Abomination
Mutant #5: The Garden Vigilantes. To put it simply, these guys are like flies swarming around an outhouse. If you leave them alone, they’re a headache, and they’re surprisingly quick, making them hard to swat.
“Die, you bastards!”
With a savage roar, a vigilante swung his axe. Whoosh— Mitchell was forced back two steps by the sheer momentum.
“You pointy-eared bitch, aren’t you the one from the tavern—”
“Tavern? What about it? Do I know you?”
“Aha, so it was you cocky little shits after all. Perfect. I’m going to slaughter every single one of you right here!”
The vigilante’s breathing grew ragged. Between the look in his eyes and his state, he was on the verge of losing his mind. Judging by his condition, he was soaked through with poison. He might not have much life left in him even if we did nothing, but you can never afford to let your guard down against someone like this. The desperate flailing of a wounded beast is always dangerous.
Whoosh— Whoosh—
The vigilante continued his frenzied axe-swinging, burning through the last of his fading life force. Mitchell, who had been calmly backing away to maintain distance, found her back pressed against the wall. There was nowhere left to retreat.
Mitchell muttered a curse under her breath.
CRASH—!
In the next instant, Wagner appeared with impeccable timing, blocking the axe that was headed straight for Mitchell’s head.
“I’m joining the fray, Mitchell.”
“You gotta be kidding me— I had it handled!”
“Don’t bluff. This isn’t the time to worry about your pride.”
“Ugh, you’re so annoying, you big bear!”
Leaving Wagner and Mitchell to their bickering—their teamwork surprisingly functional despite the constant sniping—I turned my attention to the other vigilante with Flora.
“You little rat-faced brat!”
The man roared, standing over the corpse of his fallen comrade. I’d put a hole in his friend’s gut with a Magic Missile, and he seemed plenty pissed off... but there’s no need to be so sad. I’ll be sending you to join your friend soon enough.
I began casting my next Magic Missile.
“Not on my watch!”
The vigilante crossed his arms and hurled a dagger. As expected, these vigilantes had a bit of class. They actually knew how to deal with a mage. His judgment was sound; you absolutely have to interrupt a spell-cast. However, he overlooked two important facts.
First, his own condition wasn’t normal due to the poison. With hands that could barely hold steady, he’d have a hard time throwing that dagger accurately. And second, even if the dagger were lucky enough to hit me...
“Estelle-ssi, don’t worry!”
A sturdy shield of magic protected me.
Clang—
Most of the daggers flew harmlessly into the distance, and the one that actually came my way was blocked by Flora’s shield, rendering the attack useless.
“My turn now, right?”
In that moment, my Magic Missile finished charging. I pointed my index finger at the vigilante.
“Ugh...!”
He raised his buckler. He clearly intended to protect his most vital point—his head. It wasn’t a bad call, but he should have realized that such a half-hearted choice wouldn’t save his life.
“Who said I was only aiming for your head?”
CRACK.
A single beam of light blew the vigilante’s knee apart. There was no way that tiny buckler could cover his entire body. The target area was just too large. If he wanted to use a shield, he should have brought one as big as Wagner’s. But it was far too late for regrets.
“Argh...! You fucking bitch! Aaaaargh—”
The vigilante collapsed to the floor, writhing in agony and spewing curses at the top of his lungs. The shadow of despair was already thick on his face. It was the look of a man who knew death was coming.
“...”
Slice.
As I drew my frost-blade across his throat, he went quiet. The unpleasant sensation of taking a life left a deep, branding mark on my fingertips.
“Ah—”
Flora, who had been watching, froze with a look of shock.
“If we hadn’t finished him, we would have been the ones to die, Seonbae.”
“Ah, yes. You’re right, of course...”
Flora muttered incoherently and took a deep breath. She was trying to calm her racing heart. Everyone finds the first time difficult. I was the same. When I used the power of the Night Wolf to take down a highwayman in the forest, my stomach had churned, and my head felt numb all day. Now, the shock was far less than it had been then. I simply felt that I had done what needed to be done. As Flora continued her life as an adventurer, she would eventually get used to it.
“Looks like they won over there, too.”
I saw Mitchell shaking the blood off her fists. Unlike Flora, the novice adventurer, Mitchell and Wagner didn’t seem to be new to this kind of situation. The two of them silently recovered the vigilantes’ gear and belongings before sinking the bodies into the waterway.
“Hey kid, you okay?” Mitchell said, tapping my shoulder.
“Yeah. As you can see.”
“Doesn’t look like you’re hurt... That’s a relief.”
The people were gone, but the gear they used remained. A rough estimate suggested the value of the equipment we’d looted from the three vigilantes was quite decent.
‘Selling their gear might actually be more profitable than dungeon hunting.’
I could finally understand why some adventurers abandoned their main profession to focus on hunting humans. Rather than going through the trouble of killing a hundred or a thousand monsters, it might be more profitable to hunt down a single party of adventurers in the same amount of time. Of course, easy money comes with a price. If you keep killing people for profit, you’ll eventually lose your humanity forever. Dawson and the vigilantes were living proof of that outcome. In the end, they would just degenerate into monsters wearing human skin.
“Three vigilantes. That’s strange. I don’t know why these guys would set foot in the underground waterway.”
“Three? No.”
Mitchell shook her head at Wagner’s words. Now that I thought about it, even though the battle was over, Mitchell hadn’t let her guard down. Her sharp, elf ears, sensitive as antennas, were twitching repeatedly.
“Over there... there’s still one left.”
Mitchell muttered, staring intently into the darkness.
We continued to head back up through the Polluted Waste Deposit. I couldn’t remember the exact number—whether the vigilante search party had been six or seven—but I was certain there had been a leader. Max? Mac? Anyway, it was a name similar to a neighbor’s pet dog... The fact that he was nowhere to be seen bothered me.
‘They could have been caught in a trap, but...’
A premonition flashed through my mind. The mysterious lurker Mitchell had sensed. If the one waiting for our party in the darkness was him...
Could he have transformed into ‘that field boss’?
‘I don’t know yet.’
Anxiety and anticipation churned in my chest. Without realizing it, I picked up my pace. After walking diligently for about ten minutes—
“...So this was the smell. That dog-like stench that’s been wafting over since earlier—”
Mitchell, who had been leading the way, stopped dead in her tracks. The smell of blood and rotting meat. The foul stench piercing our nostrils made everyone wince.
“What the hell is that?”
The entire passage of the Polluted Waste Deposit was blocked by a massive lump of flesh. A horrific sight of flesh, entrails, and bone mixed together and swollen out of control. It looked grotesque, like a tumor removed during surgery that had grown to a massive size all on its own.
“A monster...?”
“Looks like it. Shit, ugh—”
Mitchell couldn’t hold it back and retched. For an elf with senses far keener than a human’s, the stench the creature emitted must have been unbearable.
‘It really appeared.’
Only I knew. That bizarre lump of flesh was the hidden boss of the Polluted Waste Deposit. A field boss that appeared when a human who had fallen into toxic wastewater mutated with a low probability: the Blessed Experiment. As you could guess from its spawn conditions, you had to offer a living human as a sacrifice to summon it. And not just one or two—you had to keep sacrificing them until it appeared. I’d decided to skip this boss because I couldn’t sacrifice my entire party just to kill one, but to think it would appear like this.
‘Lucky me.’
Grrr-rumble—
Soon after, one side of the experiment’s flesh bulged, and a human head burst through, tearing the skin.
—Oh ho, so it’s you lot—!
Although there were almost no traces left of his human days, I could recognize who he was.
“...Max of the vigilantes?”
—It’s Max! You need to remember people’s names correctly, you little brat...!
“Aren’t you Dawson’s lackey? Why are you acting like that?”
—Ha, who are you calling a lackey? Can you really say such nonsense after seeing this mighty flesh? You must be envious of this beautiful body, reborn anew...!
Every time Max shouted, the massive lump of flesh pulsed like a heart. Beautiful? I didn’t think so. People’s tastes really are all over the place. Even if everyone else thought it was a horrific monstrosity, the person involved was satisfied with it.
—I don’t need Dawson anymore. I am the strongest. This body is the King of Garden...!
Max shouted, his eyes wide with madness. Whoosh— An intestine stretching out from the flesh swung like a whip.
“What a piece of shit!”
Mitchell leaped nimbly, dodging the intestine. She followed up with a sharp, fluid kick. Mitchell’s axe-like strike severed the creature’s intestine, but...
—Kwahaha! It’s useless!
Max nonchalantly inflated his flesh and pulled out more intestines like threads of yarn. Cell Division. The boss Blessed Experiment was notorious for its tenacious regenerative ability. No matter how much you hit, cut, or attacked it until you were sick of it, it regenerated endlessly. It wasn’t an all-you-can-eat buffet.
“Be careful! This thing uses acid attacks too!”
Wagner, who had barely dodged Max’s dissolving liquid, caught his breath.
‘Tricky, as expected.’
At this rate, a war of attrition would be disadvantageous. I already knew the strategy for how to take him down. However, the problem was that I felt a physiological revulsion at the thought of actually executing it.
‘But this isn’t the time to hesitate.’
After spitting on the ground, I stepped out from behind Wagner and ran toward Max.
“Kid, what are you doing!”
“Wait, Estelle!”
My party members called out to me in panic, but I didn’t stop. Sometimes there are moments when you have no choice but to do things you don’t want to do. And there are urgent moments when you have to take action without seeking others’ understanding. This was that moment.
“Estelle-ssi!”
Flora’s scream followed long behind me, and Max’s hideous body loomed before my eyes.
—Foolish brat, did you come here on your own feet to be killed!
The flesh-monster, no longer human, burst into wild laughter. Then, its belly ripped open vertically like the mouth of a giant beast.
—I’ll digest you just like this.
A mass of bright red meat engulfed my body in an instant. The creature’s other attack pattern: Swallow. It was a type of instant-death pattern where it would shove a nearby enemy into its belly and slowly dissolve them with acid. Literally, a Special Move. Generally, it was a threatening attack you had to avoid at all costs, but... hadn’t someone said it before? A blessing in disguise. That the moment of crisis is the true opportunity.
‘Came here to be killed?’
Max, you’ve got it all wrong. Not a chance. I came here to kill you, you bastard. I know the strategy to defeat you that even you don’t know.