[ Pocket Alarm Toad – A tiny mechanical toad that croaks violently when danger is nearby. Can be set to silent mode, but… what's the fun in that? ]

It looked as ridiculous as he remembered: a tiny bronze toad with oversized red eyes, mechanical legs, and a crank on the side like an old music box. When he set it down, it blinked at him once… then blinked asynchronously.

Derek walked forward slowly, amidst the cautious gaze of the people.

Derek crouched beside a shivering boy huddled behind an overturned bench. His eyes were too wide, too dry—shock had set in. Derek reached into his inventory and pulled out a nutrient bar, holding it out casually.

"Here. Take this. Chew slow, breathe slower."

The boy didn't speak. Just nodded and took it with trembling fingers.

Croak!

The toad in Derek's coat pocket exploded with mechanical noise—an aggressive, warbling alarm that echoed through the tense silence.

Derek froze. Slowly, he stood, the mechanical amphibian still croaking like it had something to prove.

Then he smiled.

Without looking, he raised one hand behind him.

Ssshk—

A grotesque, razor-sharp tendril slashed through the air where his neck had been a moment ago—but Derek had already moved, his body vanishing in a blur of lightning-etched motion.

[Skill Activated – Flash Step (F-Rank)]

He reappeared ten feet away, crouched low. His eyes glinted with cold focus.

Behind him, the mimic beast had dropped its disguise. It stood on two many-jointed legs, twisted flesh flickering between fake skin and armoured chitin. Its human façade melted away entirely, revealing gleaming fangs and a face that looked like a corrupted baby doll torn apart and reassembled by a blind god.

Then it opened its mouth and screamed.

The sound wasn't loud. It wasn't even audible in the usual sense. But every mimic hiding among the people suddenly twitched.

And twenty pairs of eyes turned toward Derek.

"…Figures," he muttered.

He reached over his shoulder.

With a flare of azure light, Voltfangs snapped into existence, crackling with lightning.

The air warped.

And the shelter became a slaughterhouse.

The first mimic charged, then exploded mid-lunge, its torso cleaved in half before it could even register the blur.

[Mimic Beast Eliminated – +60 EXP]

" Just 60 EXP..." Derek sighed in his heart. Gone were the days when killing a D-ranked beast was enough to let him level up. As for them dropping other loot, it seemed impossible now.

" Die human,, an approaching mimic said.

" Oh, they can actually speak... or are they mimicking human speech?" Derek was surprised, but that did not stop the two blades in his hands

A pulse blasted out from Derek's last position, a shockwave of residual mana trailing behind his attack like an afterimage. Two incoming beasts staggered mid-sprint, their grotesque limbs faltering just long enough—

[Mana Echo Activated ]

—Shhk—shhk!

Derek slipped between them, blades singing, each slash cutting cleaner than the last.

[Mimic Beast Eliminated – +60 EXP]

[Mimic Beast Eliminated – +60 EXP]

Screams erupted behind him—not from the mimics, but from panicked civilians who finally saw what was hunting them.

A mimic disguised as a soldier lunged from the left—but Derek's foot slammed into the wall, flipping him sideways into a spinning arc. His blade met the mimic's skull with a crunch that echoed across the metal halls.

[Mimic Beast Eliminated – +60 EXP]

Another mimic, seeing its chance, leapt from above, aiming to pin him with brute force.

Too slow.

Derek twisted mid-air and drove his left blade straight up into its chest. The mimic froze mid-pounce, its many-limbed body hanging limp as he yanked the blade free with a flick.

[Mimic Beast Eliminated – +60 EXP]

The floor now bore streaks of blood. Mimics howled in every direction.

Derek grinned—wild, but controlled. Tempest Fury hummed through him like a heartbeat of wind and violence.

He vanished again.

[Flash Step (F-Rank) – Activated]

This time, he reappeared mid-fall, descending on a trio of mimics trying to break through a back hallway.

He came down like a meteor.

The impact turned the narrow hallway into a red mist. Only ragged chunks remained.

[Mimic Beast Eliminated – +60 EXP]

[Mimic Beast Eliminated – +60 EXP]

[Mimic Beast Eliminated – +60 EXP]

Mana Echo pulsed again, this time surging down the hallway in reverse—backwards feedback that slammed into two hidden mimics behind Derek, knocking them from their perches in the ceiling vents.

They screamed as they fell straight into a pair of spinning blades.

[Mimic Beast Eliminated – +60 EXP]

[Mimic Beast Eliminated – +60 EXP]

He landed on the balls of his feet, blades trailing blood, chest rising and falling just a little faster now.

One of the last remaining mimics tried something different. It shrieked, firing a burst of acidic bile at the civilians nearby, trying to cause chaos, a distraction.

Derek responded by hurling a blade.

It flew like a buzzsaw, whistling through the air.

Thunk!

[Mimic Beast Eliminated – +60 EXP]

He retrieved it a moment later with a yank, clean spin, and slight flex of his glove's magnetic grip.

The last mimic tried to run.

It didn't make it far.

Derek used Flash Step again, reappearing directly in front of it.

[Flash Step (F-Rank) – Activated]

"Bad idea," he whispered.

Then carved a perfect X across its torso.

But he made sure it did not die...just yet

The silence afterwards felt louder than the fight. Broken only by the soft hiss of blood cooling on metal, and the faint mechanical croak from the toad in his pocket, now strangely content.

The people inside the shelter didn't cheer. They didn't move.

They just stared at the blood-slicked man breathing calmly amid the corpses of monsters that had nearly destroyed them all.

Derek exhaled slowly. Then sheathed his blades and approached the struggling mimic.

It was still alive—barely.

The mimic writhed on the ground, its limbs spasming like a puppet with severed strings. The illusion magic clinging to it broke down in flickering spasms, rippling through a dozen identities as if desperately seeking one that might spare it. A child's teary face. A sobbing old woman. A soldier gasping for help. All of them false, all of them grotesque in their warped mimicry. The truth underneath was far worse—raw, sinewy flesh layered with jagged chitin, veins pulsing with dark mana, and a face that looked like it had been melted and stitched back together with spite.

Derek stepped closer, blood streaked along his armour, the blades in his hands still humming with residual mana. He crouched without ceremony, placing one knee beside the creature's oozing form. His voice cut through the silence like a scalpel.

"Talk."

The mimic responded with a shudder, coughing up black ichor that sizzled when it hit the cold floor. Its chest convulsed as it tried to breathe through a throat not meant for words. Finally, its jaw twisted into something resembling a smile—a distorted curl that stretched too wide. The voice that came next was a sickening blend of many, layered and disharmonic, like someone drowning in a choir.

"You… think you've won…" it rasped, each syllable dragging like rusted gears. "You insects always do. But it's already too late."

Derek's eyes narrowed, muscles coiled and ready, his patience balanced on a knife's edge.

"Too late for what?"

The mimic's head jerked back, twitching uncontrollably. Then it settled, locking eyes with him. Its grin widened in a way no living mouth should. A foul stench radiated from it—sulfur, decay, and something ancient.

"You're not fighting beasts," it hissed. "You're fighting prophecy. We are the first wave, human. The gods are watching. And your world? It is already marked for cleansing."

The air itself seemed to shudder. A vibration ran through the walls, not sound, not touch—just a low, crawling pressure that squeezed at the edges of reality. Derek's ears rang, not from volume, but from something deeper, like his blood was rebelling.

Then came the last words—venomous, thick with malice.

"Die, hopebringer."

Derek's hand tightened on the hilt of his blade. His expression didn't change, but something in the room did. A shift. A silence heavier than before.

Derek ignored the shifting atmosphere.

He moved with finality, no hesitation. The blade plunged into the mimic's skull with a wet crunch, driving straight through the chitin into the pulsing brain beneath. The mimic convulsed once, a spasm of disbelief and fury—and then it was still.

[Mimic Beast Eliminated – +60 EXP]

He held the blade there for a moment longer than necessary, the hilt trembling faintly in his grip. Then he exhaled and pulled it free, the blood slick along its edge evaporating in faint steam. Around him, the metal walls echoed with the last breath of violence, and the faint croak from the toad in his pocket finally ceased. The mechanical creature was silent now, like it even understood the weight of the moment.

Derek didn't move right away. He stared at the body, breathing slowly, steadily. His fingers were trembling, not from fear, but from something deeper. His expression remained unreadable, but his eyes…

His eyes were alight.

Not with rage.

Not with hatred.

But with resolve—pure and focused, sharp enough to cut through fate itself.

Images of Lila burned behind his eyes. Her soft smile. Her fingers reaching for his.

His hand clenched into a fist, the gauntlet tightening with a metallic creak. His voice emerged from somewhere deeper than his chest, forged in the same crucible that birthed the storm.

"I don't care if it's prophecy."

He straightened, turning away from the corpse, his boots wet with mimic blood. His gaze swept across the shelter, where silence still reigned, broken only by distant cries outside.

"I don't care if the gods themselves are behind this."

The corridor ahead stretched on, smoke and flickering lights marking the trail of devastation. But Derek didn't hesitate. The blades slipped back into his inventory, replaced by the storm beginning to build beneath his skin.

"I'll tear down every single one of them."

He paused for only a second to glance at the tiny toad, now resting quietly in his coat pocket, its once-silly presence now a solemn witness.

"And I'll bring her back."

When Derek walked again, it wasn't just a step—it was a declaration.

A quiet promise that the world would soon learn to fear.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.