Chapter 145: Alarm!

A tiger locked in a cage, no matter how ferocious it appeared, could never frighten a person into losing control of his bladder and bowels.

But if they met again in the wild, the tiger would not even need to roar before the human’s legs began to tremble of their own accord.

In other words, psychological superiority could, to a certain extent, make one overlook the oppressive force of sheer presence.

But if... the gap between some creature and humanity was greater than that between a human and a tiger or leopard—

Would psychological superiority still be of any use?

Gawain was certainly no ordinary human.

In truth, anyone capable of entering the realm of supersonic speed with nothing but their physical body could hardly still be defined as human.

And his contempt for mindless beasts had given him a sufficiently powerful psychological advantage.

Yet before the strange aura filling the entire room, he was just like an ordinary man—

Helpless and terrified.

The posture in which he had been kicking the ball moments earlier had stiffened into ridiculous rigidity as his muscles tensed involuntarily.

“Creak... creak...”

Behind him, the alloy cell door was twisted open.

The slow yet determined groan of tortured metal rang out. For some reason, Gawain seemed able to hear a trace of something in that sound...

Unhurried?

Impossible! They were merely beasts ruled by their animal instincts!

Gawain emphasized this to himself once again.

Then a thick, hideous tail slowly emerged from the cell.

It dragged closer a corpse in a protective suit lying on the floor.

And then tore it apart in an instant!

“Riiip!”

Before that long tail, an ordinary human body was no different from tofu.

The pristine, airtight protective suit was instantly dyed crimson. The corpse, blood still pouring from it, was then hurled straight at the cell door opposite.

Gawain’s eyes widened in disbelief.

When the blood came into contact with the extreme voltage, the crackling disruption of the current traveled through the interconnected circuit and appeared on the doors of every cell.

Then everything fell silent.

The disruption triggered the alarm system. Ear-splitting bells rang out as scarlet warning lights began to flash wildly.

It was not merely this room. The entire underground base was plunged into the same chaos.

The lights in the room flickered violently beneath the erratic current.

And in the alternating darkness and brightness, a massive monstrous foot stepped out of the cell.

Unhurried.

Its body stood nearly three meters taller than that of an ordinary failed specimen.

Even hunched over, it looked capable of reaching the four-meter-high ceiling.

The calmness on its bestial face, together with the savage amusement in its eyes, shattered Gawain’s entire understanding of the world.

“This doesn’t match the experimental data. Wait! Something’s wrong!”

Swallowing hard, he hurriedly dropped the tablet in his hand and turned to sprint down the passage.

By transforming both legs into those of a beast, he could run at nearly the speed of sound. He would be out of the room in less than half a second.

But just as a glimmer of hope appeared in Gawain’s eyes—

“Shing!”

The air was cleaved apart.

The abnormally tall failed specimen swung its tail at a speed far beyond the limits of Gawain’s reaction time.

By the time the middle-aged gentleman realized what had happened, he could feel only the portion of his body above the chest.

He had already been severed in two.

As the monster seized his upper half and tossed it into its mouth, the Round Table knight who had despised ignorant beasts from beginning to end finally understood one thing:

The failed specimens that could not withstand the assault of their animal instincts had gone mad—not stupid.

On the tablet lying on the floor, the name of the first cell whose power had been shut off was displayed.

—Julius Reinhard.

~~~~~~

General Pankhurst knew where the problem lay the instant the alarm sounded.

There was only one damn place in the entire base capable of sending an alarm directly throughout the facility instead of merely notifying its departmental superior.

That godforsaken “Warrior Graveyard.”

“Warrior Graveyard” was the name Pankhurst himself had given it.

He was a soldier of the United States, and one of the rare few who possessed a genuine sense of military honor.

The desecration of the experimental volunteers’ bodies made him sick to his stomach.

But in the face of orders from above, all he could do was give the place a more dignified name in his own mind.

Respect did not mean he was unaware of how terrifying it was.

On the contrary, no one understood that better than he did.

“Forty-two failed experimental subjects, and one of them possesses exceptional value.”

Pankhurst rubbed his close-cropped hair and muttered to himself.

When they had first been locked inside, they were already capable of driving their bodies to supersonic speeds. A single sweep of their claws could unleash more than thirty tons of force.

They could withstand direct hits from anti-materiel sniper rifles, and could be killed only by striking a vital point.

There were forty-two bloodthirsty monsters like that!

And they had all been kept for a month in rooms saturated with radiation!

What would happen if they stormed the laboratory?

And if they reached the surface...

What then?

At the thought, even Pankhurst, who had always prided himself on being unyielding, could not help shivering.

“Move all heavy weapons to the Morgue! Then organize an immediate evacuation! Now!”

Pankhurst issued orders without pause from the command room.

“Morgue” was the facility’s official designation for the room.

As an enhanced soldier in the Beast Transformation Stage himself, he understood that without a detailed battle plan and coordinated support, ordinary people—no matter how numerous—were nothing more than wheat waiting to be harvested before monsters and enhanced beings.

The entire underground base abruptly accelerated into motion under the alarms.

In the military sector where the troops were stationed, armored vehicles crushed straight through the buildings where the soldiers normally lived as they raced toward their assigned positions.

In the research sector, the white-coated scientists scrambled to clutch every scrap of data they could get their hands on.

“My God. I hope they can hold them back a little longer—even just two minutes!”

Watching the heavy weapons and soldiers waiting in battle formation outside the Morgue on the monitor, Pankhurst prayed.

Then he thought of nothing more and turned away decisively.

The laboratory’s most important experimental data still had to be transferred personally by him.

But if prayer were useful, what need would there be for strength?

The security troops of the research facility, built at enormous expense by the United States, completed their assembly within five minutes and brought every piece of heavy firepower into position.

First, they blew up the passage.

The Morgue was buried more than a hundred meters underground.

All the armored vehicles, tanks, and infantry missiles were aimed at the ruins.

And then...

Half a minute later, they broke and scattered.

A gigantic monster roared as it swung a normal-sized monster beside it like a weapon.

It forcibly blasted its way through the passage from more than a hundred meters underground!

The flying rubble and pressure wave triggered the mines at the entrance.

Amid the thunderous explosions and flames echoing through the subterranean space, forty-two hideous figures whose every movement stirred violent winds crashed down upon the positions prepared by the American troops.

Then came the massacre.

The cumbersome cannons and infantry missiles could not keep up with their movements.

Even when a hit was possible, the monsters could nimbly remove themselves from the center of the blast at the very instant of impact.

And among the army composed of ordinary humans, even soldiers clad in heavy bulletproof armor...

Under the force of attacks exceeding dozens of tons, the difference was merely whether they became chunks of flesh or heaps of minced meat.

Just as Gawain had said, they were mad—not stupid.

The enormous beast known as Julius, together with several monsters around it, slammed into armored cars and tanks like cannon shells.

They could distinguish what posed a threat.

The reactive armor on the tanks detonated the instant the monsters struck.

Yet amid the smoke and flames, the reactive armor—which could deflect shells through its own explosion—left nothing more than broad scorch marks across the monsters’ bodies.

And as time passed, those injuries vanished entirely in less than half a minute.

After annihilating the security force, the forty-two monsters consumed by the desire to kill immediately howled and charged toward the remaining civilians.

But one of them seemed to have sensed a more alluring source of radiation and headed straight for a building resembling an indoor stadium.

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