“Alright, goddamn it! You've got some FUCKING explaining to do!!!!” Tilde grasped my bangs with her tiny hands and yanked them.  

We left Ria in a mad dash and didn’t stop running until we entered the mines. Even then, we sped past everyone until coming to a room with a single goblin, who soon died after Sekh had crushed its head with a powerful attack. The blood dripping down her stone mace was a silent listener to my short reasoning. 

“I’m not stupid. I know that dying means following me into the afterlife, Tilde. That was the only way to make her let go. She was about to find out about me! What should I have done?!” I grabbed Tilde. Her struggles against my grip were futile as I forced myself to turn my wrath down to 0. When you needed to make vital decisions, it was best to do so with an open mind. I couldn’t have anger influence my next move.  

“Gah!” exclaimed Tilde. She had no words other than to ask me why we came here.  

“It’s dark, we can be alone, and I can finally eat some goddamn monsters.” Sekh asked if I thought Ichiha or Irisa would get Bellerophon involved, and I just shook my head. 

---

Sekh once told me chimeras were feared because there was no limit to their growth, but after becoming one, there was another reason.  

Adaptability. Reacting to rapidly changing circumstances had to be one of the most fearsome attributes of chimeras. Take a High Elf and her companions fighting against a group of spiders that had spawned while investigating a corpse she found with her map. If she was pressed to the ground with her limbs disabled, what could she do? Nothing at all except struggle and wait for help. 

But what if she was a monster feared by the world over? 

The largest one pinned me down with its legs and lifted two. The foolish creature thought I was helpless, but I opened my mouth and birthed a spider leg from the back of my throat. It pierced true, causing venom to sprinkle on my face. When the appendage vanished, a boar’s head willed itself alive from my arm like a cancerous tumor and ate what it could.  

As Sekh dodged and directed a banquet of death towards the faltering arachnids, I fought back. Once my arm was free, I retrieved Reina’s gun, aimed, and delivered a charged [Fireball] to its underbelly. It roared in pain and tried to scamper away, but I took my spear from storage. 

It wasn’t much, but it was enough for me to poke and prod. The crimson inside its abdomen blanketed my stomach in warm liquid. Like butter, I seamlessly switched to devouring it while turning the tide of Sekh’s battle. All it took was a few uses of [String Shot] to unbalance the spiders attacking her by yanking them down. That was enough of an opening for her to crush their bodies. 

I went around this small chamber and ate a tidy meal. I did leave one untouched, though. But I grinned because [Web Bomb] and [String Shot] just became Lv. 10. I suffered minor wounds, but those were soon fixed. After assimilating the corpse, I joined Sekh in sitting against the wall.   

It's just another overzealous fool who didn’t even have a single skill. Congratulations, you died for nothing.  

Sekh was busy downing her canteen while wiping the sweat off with a rag. Tilde flew over and crossed her arms.  

“We’ve been down here for three fucking days! I’m starving! You’ve been fighting for like 75 fucking hours!!!!!!” 

“Stop lying. If I’m full, you’re full. We share feelings.” 

“Then what about her?” 

“I can still go on. The spider meat is more than enough to fill my stomach,” she said. Sekh had gotten extremely dirty. Thick dust and soot covered her cheeks.  

Almost like her… 

I threw that name out of my mind and brought the spider to Sekh with [String Shot]. I produced a flaming orb in my gloved hands. Sekh ripped the meat off while I cooked it. She mentioned she had survived many days on spiders back when she had to travel through a forest filled with them.  

She reminisced on those times before brutally chowing down, causing sickening juices to splatter across her lips. I wiped her chin and hugged her arm.  

“Sekh… Did I mess up?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Should we go back?” 

“It is up to you.” 

“I want your opinion. Should we just leave Ria and find somewhere else?” 

“I—" 

Sekh dropped her food and stood up because the dungeon produced a spider. Another red blip appeared on my map, but a group of white dots was moving this way.  

A couple of gunshots later, it was dead, but during the battle, I told Sekh to watch for trouble and wait for my signal. I stared as the dots turned red when a squad of undesirables snuck in during the bout. One put a blade to my neck, and his nasty breath smelled disgusting. 

"Oi! It seems like the rumors are true. The Dirty Elf and Black Lion exist! Are you the ones that oni has been shouting after? Eh, it doesn’t matter. Give us your cores, armor, and weapons, and we’ll be on our way. I won’t even tell that girl where I found you two since it seems you’re avoiding her. Bwhaha,” said a square-faced man with an uncomfortable twinkle in his blue eyes. He seemed to be the leader of this gang of hooligans as he walked right in front of me. “Oh, don’t look like that, Black Lion. If you raise that mace any higher, he might be liable to slit your friend’s throat.  

“Martin, they’re eating spider. Don’t remember the last time I was that desperate.” The man who spoke to the one in front of me wore a leather helmet painted silver to match a necklace around his neck. With one behind and three in front, that only meant four. And I had the advantage.  

I mentally prepared myself for the fight as they talked about some half-breed with a dick they wanted to go fuck at the local brothel.  

I opened my mouth and launched a [Web Bomb], blinding the man closest to Sekh. She went to kill him while I transfigured a spider leg to launch from the back of my head, striking my captor in the neck, but he did not die. His knife danced across my throat, but I had grown accustomed to the sharp pain as I healed my wounds. Martin uttered a sentence in a haunting tone. 

"Fuck... She’s a chimera! The stories are true!” 

The fear in Martin’s eyes weakened his spirit. I spun around and shot my captor twice in the face, watching as a bloody mist sprayed from his neck and head. Bits of his pink brain and white skull flowed out before he even slammed into the ground.  

New Title: [Human Slayer (I)] 

My mind was as clear as ever, even after realizing I had gotten experience points from killing this foolish thug. 

He was dead.  

Criminal or not, I had killed something that wasn’t a phantom of the past or a monster. 

I turned back to face Martin, who tried to run for Sekh. She killed the man I immobilized, his head looking like a leaking bottle of grenadine syrup. Brutally, she ripped it off and threw it at Martin. He caught it out of reflex, stared at his friend’s dead eyes, then frighteningly screamed, but I stuffed his mouth with a thick load of [Web Bomb]. Sekh then charged at the last member of Martin’s gang and broke his arm, bringing him to me to decide his fate. I filled his mouth with web, half hoping he’d choke on it. A quick check of my map told me no one was nearby. 

As I walked to finish off Martin, I replaced my mouth with a pair of spider fangs. They loudly clacked while green venom leaked. He looked so scared, but he was so confident in robbing me a few seconds earlier.  

Torturing him to death wasn’t my style. The venom from a Lesser Araneae? That was well within my definition of killing. It was simple, really. I knew how painful it was to be attacked by these damn spiders, yet I hadn’t used it before. Monster skills differed from standard skills because they were easier to level. I had [Poison Fang] at Lv. 10 without using it, which proved how many spiders I’d devoured in the last three days.  

I didn’t stop at a little bit of venom. No, I flooded the bastard with so much toxicant that his heart literally stopped in seconds. Rigor mortis instantly kicked in, freezing his face to an expression of total fear.  

“Don’t worry,” I said, returning my face to normal and facing the man Sekh had restrained. “I’m not a torturer. Not now, but I might become one later. Let’s say you aren’t worth the effort. I’ll give you a quick death.” While devouring Martin and the two dead goons to regain some mana, I used a couple of Web Bombs to stick the survivor to the wall so Sekh could check out what they had for us to take.  

You’ve assimilated Martin and acquired 10 SP. 

You’ve assimilated George and acquired 13SP. 

You’ve assimilated James and acquired 9 SP. 

“It seems the quickest way to acquire SP is from assimilating pathetic goons like you,” I said, feeling better after recovering my mana after eating my meals. In total, I had 38 SP to spend as I pleased, and I used them to buy [Firearm], [Water Magic], [Weapon Creation], [Ammo Creation], [Sewing], and [Enchanting]. 

[Firearm] was a weapon skill and my primary weapon, so it was obvious I needed to get it. Having more magic and the [Water Blade] spell available would make me stronger, so that was another clear choice. The last four posed no real help to me at this moment, yet if I wanted to get stronger, I’d have to craft my own gear. I needed to eventually make my own ammo and sew clothes for Sekh and me while also using these cores we’d been collecting for weeks.   

“HHHHMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!” The restrained man struggled against his bindings when I used [Water Blade]. It worked by curling blue mana up my arm, and when I made a slashing motion, the water formed a sharp edge and launched out. I aimed for the man’s arm first, not because I wanted to torture him, but because I wanted to compare how [Water Blade] worked when used with [Chimeric Armatization]. 

Well, his arm wasn’t severed, but it was barely hanging on. The sharp blade of water vanished since it was just temporarily created of mana, so I pulled out Reina’s gun. When channeling the spell, the grip became solid water—clear water, by the way, that rendered the internals visible. It was cool to the touch. When I pulled the trigger, a miniaturized [Water Blade] danced around the bullet. When it impacted my target’s head, the water lashed out in all different directions, inflicting damage from inside the wound. Unlike [Fireball], which was great for area-of-effect attacks, Water Blade] seemed more useful for single-target damage. 

With my enemy’s head lacerated to the point where the individual pieces were like the petals of a flower, I devoured his corpse and left nothing.  

You’ve assimilated Leon and acquired 9 SP.    

After eating those dumbasses, I definitely felt noticeably stronger and more dexterous after feeding on them. My mana pool was also larger. The blue bar was still the same, but it was just an internal feeling, and it was the same with my biomass. In fact, I thought the growth of power was too quick, but Tilde dashed that foolish thought by saying that was normal for a chimera since we assimilate everything about a person. Should one play their part like a maestro, a Lv. 1 chimera could slaughter a royal guard whose Lv. 50. Our power didn’t depend on levels. I suppose it went doubly for me since I gained fuck all from leveling up. It was just, overall, the higher leveled person would usually win a fight. Being a chimera threw chaos into that equation. 

I wonder if I could find someone that’s Lv. 80 and on their deathbed? Yeah, like I’m lucky enough to encounter that situation.  

“Is that your first time?” Tilde asked as we left that bloody chamber after Sekh collected some canteens, bread, and cores from those jackasses. I was getting close to my weight limit in [Storage], so I had to watch out.  

“Killing a man?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Counting the one I shot in the face?” 

“How do you feel?” 

“Now you care? That’s unlike you.” 

“Don’t be a smart ass.” 

“I feel normal. Killing those four… They’re dead. I’m not. They made the first move. I didn’t start the fight. I didn’t instigate anything. That’s it. Nothing else.” 

“Don’t lie to me.” 

“...” 

“Hmm… Hey, do you know how long you were in the void?” 

I shook my head. 

“In time relative to us, you spent two months there before being summoned. But because time isn’t stable in the void—it can flow forward and backward—let's just say you stayed in there long enough to imagine your revenge more times than there are stars in the sky. It’s not wrong to say you became the literal personification of Wrath. Kinda like an extremely lucid dream. I was just curious...” Tilde whispered. She flew to my shoulder and hugged my ear. “Come on, let’s get out of here, okay? We can leave this town behind us and move somewhere else.” 

“Let’s stay for a few more days. We have food and water,” I said. Tilde whined, but she never left my shoulder.  

“I know, but—” 

“LYUDMILA!!!!! SEKH!!!!!!! TILDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’M SORRY!!!!!!!!” I cursed under my breath and watched the approaching blue waypoint on my map with wary eyes. Irisa had been coming to the dungeon every day to search for us. If you knew where your pursuer was, you could evade them 100% of the time. I ran around with Sekh and Tilde to the furthest room I could find, which was blocked off by a minecart. There was a hidden corridor in the back that led to another room. We hid there until Irisa’s waypoint started heading towards Ria. 

"I’ll keep watch, so get some sleep.” Sekh nodded once, then sat beside me and leaned her head against my shoulder. Meanwhile, Tilde just hovered in front of me and put a small hand on my dirty cheek. 

“I can still see the fight when I blink. I see the moment before and after their deaths.” 

“Not feeling so fine, are you?” 

“I’m…not really feeling much of anything right now. In my world, murder was a heinous crime. Self-defense or not, taking a life is something substantial that changes everyone involved. Tilde?” 

“Yeah?” 

“Just how broken…can someone get?” 

“Broken doesn’t mean permanently ruined, you know. Things break all the time, and things are repaired all the time. You can lean on me, remember? I’ll be your glue and nails.” 

What she said made sense, I guess, but... “If I’m so broken...then what part of me is responsible for feeling numb about killing? Is it me—the soul that was once endlessly abused by my family and betrayed? Is it me—this Chimeric entity that only saw those four idiots as meat to grow my strength? Or is it a mix of both? Or maybe I just want to blame it on my Chimerism. Maybe I just didn’t want to feel anything for them because I’m trying to kill my sister, and I’m practicing apathy. Maybe I... Maybe I’ve been so engrossed in killing my family and those traitors in my dream that I can’t feel anything when it comes to death? Can you fix that, Tilde? Can you fix someone like me that’s becoming so numb to murder?” 

Tilde was shocked at my response, and her wings were droopy. She affectionately kissed me on the cheek and told me to get some rest. She would watch over us while we slept.