Sector F, The Junction.
Seth squatted on the ground, disheveled and covered in grime. He crushed the last empty soda can in his hand and tossed it into the nearby trash bin.
Thud—
The dull sounds echoed one after another, as relentless as this godforsaken cold wind.
Damn it!
Seth huddled in the corner of the narrow alley, bunched together for warmth with a pile of soggy cardboard boxes that were leaking an unidentifiable, sour stench. His empty intestines moved sluggishly in his abdomen, letting out wave after wave of famished growls.
At this time last year, he was on a yacht in Santorini opening champagne, lying amidst a shower of cash with a dozen blonde, blue-eyed babes.
The decadent imagery flickered in his numb mind like the final match lit by the Little Match Girl in the fairy tale.
But while Andersen wrote about a poor, hungry girl remembering happy times with her grandmother, Seth’s mind was blinded by the status, money, and Atlantic coast girls he once had. He cursed God and Jesus under his breath with fury.
Dammit! Dammit! What a clusterfuck of a world!
There was no savior!
He should have known! Ever since he was thirteen and used a bottle of Russian vodka to beat to death his lecherous stepfather—a man who would rape a boy whose armpit hair hadn’t even grown in—he should have known.
He should have known this world produced Satans, not Jesuses!
With hands caked in mud, he viciously ripped the crucifix from his chest and hurled it into a puddle in a depression in the concrete.
Damn it!
God damn it!
This small vent didn’t seem enough to quell Seth’s rage. Propping up his faint, starving body, he used his feet to desperately grind that once-golden cross into the dirt, over and over again.
It wasn’t until he had absolutely no strength left that he leaned against the wall, panting like a dead dog.
The puddle on the ground grew still again, reflecting his visage: a lean, fit, tall man with high brow ridges and deep-set eyes born of two bordering nations, and hair that reached his shoulders. Back when he rode the Atlantic in a suit, countless beauties had thrown themselves at him.
It took Seth seventeen years to transform from a street thug into a globetrotting entrepreneur smuggling firearms.
But luck never favors people like him for long.
Last year, Seth was arrested by Interpol. Despite exhausting his fortune to hire a lawyer who claimed to be omnipotent, he was still sentenced to life.
Life?
What did that even mean? It meant he was going to spend the rest of his days in Tasanya Prison doing needlework while guarding his precarious backside!
Seth thought that was the final chapter of his brief thirty-five years of life, but God’s eyes were still on him. On the day the verdict was handed down, Tasanya Prison exploded.
It was an explosion in the worldly sense—a boom—and then the entire North Wing was leveled by smoke and fire.
Seth had lived alongside heavy weaponry for over half his life; he knew for a fact that it didn’t belong to any existing arsenal in the world.
It was a miracle!
A miracle had truly descended upon him!
He, Seth Novikov, was a man chosen by God!
The prisoners in the South Wing were all released in the emergency. Seth took advantage of the chaos and easily experienced what it felt like to break out of prison.
On the eleventh night after escaping Tasanya, he saw his own famous “Most Wanted” poster on a bulletin board, though only half of it remained. The handsome, wicked face of this legendary arms dealer had been scratched away by fingernails until only half was left—the entire city had completely collapsed.
The stench of rotting fish and shrimp mixed with the scent of blood swept through this renowned resort city.
Seth followed the local survivors, trembling as they hid in a narrow basement. A week without water, food, or sunlight. The smell of urine and excrement swirled together with the airtight, chaotic stench.
Good God, it was a biochemical base!
Only when death is at the door does a person realize how intense their desire to live truly is.
Behind him, the girl who had pulled him into the basement to escape had already slumped into the corner, emitting a foul odor of decay.
Finally, one man couldn’t take it anymore. He began to hallucinate, losing his mind and going into a frenzy within the basement.
He was truly insane!
He bit down hard on the shoulder of the girl who reeked of death!
He even tried to open the terrifying iron door of the basement!
Seth, as one of the few survivors who still had strength, grabbed the madman from behind, holding him back with all his might.
“Are you crazy? If you open that door, the things outside will come in and kill us all!” he roared in fury.
Those terrible… those chaotic… those swarming things…
Just thinking about them made his whole body tremble, as if countless lice were crawling all over his skin from his back.
“Ah!”
A scream erupted from the crowd.
Seth looked toward the woman in confusion, only to see her eyes bulging almost to the point of distortion. She screamed and pointed at him, shouting: “He’s mutating! He’s mutating! Monster… monster!”
Seth’s head throbbed from her noise. He cursed in his mind: What is this bitch screaming for!
Suddenly, he was shoved aside by the man he had just held back. The man stared at him with trembling, fearful eyes, merging back into the group of sallow, emaciated survivors.
Son of a bitch.
How did they suddenly become a team again?
What are you yelling at me for!
Seth scratched his skin, which was exceptionally itchy from not being washed for so long, cursing under his breath.
Slowly, he noticed the sensation at his fingertips changed. His smooth skin had somehow sprouted several hard, swollen pustules, one after another…
The more Seth scratched, the itchier it became. The more he scratched, the more pustules appeared. He began to rub himself frantically against the basement wall, his fingernails scraping bloodily against his skin, wishing he could claw off the entire itchy hide.
He finally realized something was wrong!
Ignoring the puddle of excrement on the floor, Seth crawled on all fours toward the faint light. One look almost made him faint from terror.
Those densely packed, red, swollen things weren’t pustules at all!
They were suckers, growing out of his flesh like parasites breaking through shells, one connected to the next—the protruding suckers found on octopuses were growing all over his body!
Mucus mixed with blood stuck to Seth’s trembling palms. He almost screamed like the others, but his vigorous throat felt as if it were also lined with dense suckers, firmly blocking his cry.
Thud—
A wooden club struck him on the head, falling nearby and rolling away lightly.
Seth looked up viciously. He didn’t even realize how terrifying his expression was; his face, covered in suckers, left only his deep blue eyes visible.
The man who threw the club shivered, pulling a rusted kitchen knife from his belt. He gritted his teeth at Seth: “You… get out! Monster! Get out yourself, don’t kill us all!”
“If anyone’s leaving, it’s your damn self!” Seth finally found his voice, shouting at the top of his lungs.
He was beyond furious. The overwhelming fear had inexplicably turned into a fire that burned everything. He found strength from somewhere and walked toward the man.
The crowd scattered to both sides like startled birds, regrouping in the corner behind Seth.
The screams were non-stop.
The pairs of fearful eyes made Seth feel, in a daze, as though he had regained the feeling of dominating the Atlantic.
“Ah!”
The screaming intensified.
Seth turned his head sluggishly from his daydream. A rusted kitchen knife had easily sliced through Seth’s flesh, embedding itself firmly into his right thigh bone.
Intense, tearing pain surged through Seth. He let out a shrill scream.
The dense itchiness in his spine suddenly broke through his flesh. Octopus tentacles dripping with bright red mucus coiled angrily around the man’s body.
But Seth was too weak. The nearly two-meter-tall brute struggled with all his might, soon tearing away Seth’s newborn, small, pink tentacles.
The man, blinded by terror and out of his mind, screamed and crashed through the basement’s only iron door.
In an instant, a small sliver of sunlight leaked in.
But the iron door was at least as large as two men.
The next second, a giant catfish face wedged itself perfectly into the iron doorway. Its bulging eyes spun around. Mucus sprayed out as its fine teeth parted and closed at the corners of its mouth, drenching the man. Before the man could even react, he was coiled up by the four barbels writhing on the catfish’s jaw.
The fine teeth snapped shut. The nearly two-meter brute was instantly reduced to one meter; the remaining half-leg was still twitching on the ground.
Seth had never been closer to death than at this moment.
The catfish’s massive eye landed on Seth. He looked up, his whole body cold and sweating, like a dead ice sculpture. Ineffable terror finally dominated his body.
He couldn’t escape!
The giant catfish face opened its bloody maw toward him.
But from its bottomless throat, a snow-bright long blade thrust out.
The change happened in a flash!
The blade neatly carved a cross in front of Seth’s eyes. Warm, foul-smelling blood drenched him.
The catfish’s massive head, stuck in the doorway, collapsed with a boom.
Daylight flooded in.
“International Red Tower Rescue Team, found survivors… ten and a half.”
Everyone wept with joy at that moment. Even Seth had never imagined a day would come where he would crave the government so much!
They were rescued by a group of Easterners in military uniforms. The mutation on Seth’s body was too obvious; after some discussion, he was isolated to one side.
He sat numbly on a rock, eating dry, choking crackers.
This was the first time in months Seth had taken a good look at this city.
It takes a long time to build a livable city, but destroying one is remarkably easy.
He watched with his own eyes as this land turned to ruins, watching the swarming catfish, seahorses… giant, chaotic, writhing monsters devouring the city.
But now… it was terrifyingly quiet and peaceful.
“Commander, you might need to see this.”
Half an hour later, Seth looked up from his gluttony and saw that man again—the one who held the long blade and easily pierced the catfish face.
The man stood on an armored vehicle that had sped over. He jumped down holding his blade, scanned Seth once, turned his head to say something, and then turned to leave moments later.
“Great, you’re harmless.” A young Eastern soldier in uniform patted Seth on the shoulder, genuinely happy from the bottom of his heart.
Seth, however, looked dazed.
What?
Who’s harmless?
I’m harmless?
Go to hell.
I am Seth Novikov!
Later, Seth heard the man’s name from a doctor.
His name was Pei Qingshan.
He, alone, had wiped out every monster in this city