Her plan... was not perfect. Saya admitted that she had not considered that the explosion would attract other creatures here and force her to hide. Damn it, the excitement of becoming stronger had made her too "high" and unnecessarily reckless.
Hiding behind the bushes, she saw terrifying monsters heading toward the parking lot.
First was the Human Centipede, Envy's Avatar. The moment Saya saw it, she immediately did her best to shrink herself down, trying to hide as neatly as possible behind her bush. The second time she saw it, she still felt just as nauseous as the first time. However, it was not the most terrifying creature here.
Another monster appeared, Gluttony's Avatar. It looked like a gigantic, naked, headless fat man over three meters tall, its entire body covered in layers of fat. Where its neck should have been was a wide mouth filled with teeth, and several other mouths had even split open across its body. Its skin was rough and covered in pus-filled boils, and every time it took a step, yellow fluid flowed from the mouths on its body onto the ground, making the earth smoke as if it had been doused with acid.
Next came a hairy monster with the head of a goat, constantly letting out strange, eerie laughter. It was called Greed's Avatar. It stood over two meters tall on two cloven hooves and carried a large sack made from human facial skin on its back. The sack was stretched tight, and no one knew what it contained, but the faces on the sack continuously muttered, "More, more."
Finally, another equally giant monster appeared, called Wrath's Avatar. It was no shorter than Greed's Avatar and was the most human-like of the creatures, with its face covered by an iron plate. One hand held a blood-soaked battle axe, while the other looked like the scythe-arm of a praying mantis. In terms of appearance, this was the least frightening monster of them all. Yet, for some reason, Saya had the feeling that she would rather face The Human Centipede than The Wrath's Avatar.
Four terrifying monsters, four bosses of the area. All of them had gathered in front of the burning parking lot, and Saya was hiding nearby. Why, damn it?! She had already been scared pale by just one centipede, and now three more creatures that were no less dangerous had gathered here. She was about to cry!
Lying still behind the bushes, Saya tried everything she could to reduce her presence. Using the Stealth technique she had learned in this hell, she breathed as slowly as possible, hid herself as carefully as possible, and barely moved at all, while continuously repeating in her mind:
I am air, I am air, I am air.
At the same time, she thought, if there was already Envy, Wrath, Gluttony, and Greed, then wouldn't there be three more Sin Avatars? So were the bosses of this School representatives of the seven sins of humanity? Thinking about the fact that there were still three other terrifying monsters somewhere in the school whose locations she didn't know, she felt truly lucky that she had not run into them yet.
Next time, she absolutely must not get so carried away again.
The feeling of becoming stronger when using Origin was like an alluring drug. Maybe she had not noticed it earlier, but now, when the Sin Avatars reminded her just how small she was, Saya seemed to snap out of her "high" and realized how reckless she had been.
No matter how hard she tried to hypnotize herself into believing that this was just a game and use the "player" way of thinking to clear stages and farm monsters, the truth was that this place was still a hell filled with danger, not some game where she could simply go wild. There was no "Retry" button here for her to start over. She had only one life…
While Saya was still lost in her thoughts, over at the parking lot, the four monsters were about to clash.
The atmosphere became tense. It wasn't like things hadn't been tense before, but now it's just a hundred times more intense, like the apocalypse was about to arrive.
And then the Wrath's Avatar let out a roar.
As if it were a signal, all four monsters immediately made their moves. The Wrath's Avatar swung its battle axe, cleaving out a pillar of fire toward the Greed's Avatar. Seeing the molten-hot pillar of fire rushing toward it, The Goat of Greed just let out a cackling laugh and raised its skin sack to block it. The flames disappeared the moment they touched Greed's sack, and the goat immediately took the opportunity to counterattack, throwing two skulls forward, one burning hot, the other freezing cold.
BOOM! BOOM!
The two skulls exploded, and two streams of air, one hot and one cold appeared, enveloping Wrath and forming a bizarre freezing-burning tornado.
Although it looked extremely deadly, the goat's ice-and-fire tornado seemed to be completely unable to do anything to Wrath, and only made it even more furious.
Inside the strange tornado created by the goat of greed, Wrath extended its mantis-like arm and slashed forward.
"GRRRRRRUUUUU!!!"
Wrath's slash, accompanied by its furious roar, tore through all the laws of physics and space, cleaving apart the shapeless tornado, and cutting the goat itself in half.
The goat of Greed's laughter finally temporarily stopped, but it was still not dead. As soon as it was cut in two, one of the faces on its sack began to melt, and then the two halves of the goat that had been cut apart instantly joined back together and recovered perfectly as before, as though nothing had ever happened.
The Greed's Avatar, having just revived, continued laughing. Even so, it did not continue attacking Wrath, but instead turned around and prepared to leave. Leave, not run away, because before turning around, it still didn't forget to provoke Wrath:
"Come here… Come here… If you dare…. Hahahahaha…."
It wanted to change the battle location.
Wrath didn't care what scheme the goat had. It only let out an angry roar and charged after its prey. Every step it took caused the road beneath it to crack apart, and in the blink of an eye, the two of them had disappeared.
At the same time, the Envy's Avatar and the Gluttony's Avatar also charged at each other. Envy was the largest of the lot, but its size now became a disadvantage when Gluttony clung onto its body, its mouths constantly gnawing away at Envy. Unwilling to simply take the beating, the centipede's body gradually began to change. The unfortunate humans stuck to the centipede's body suddenly sat up and grabbed Gluttony, relentlessly clawing and tearing at it, causing the yellow liquid inside Gluttony to splash all over Envy's body. Both monsters let out painful howls. The centipede writhed, desperately trying to shake the enemy off its back, but it was in vain.
Then the centipede charged into the parking lot that was still burning and rolled around inside it.
Both monsters had gasoline all over their bodies and continued to burn, but the centipede had the advantage in size. The flames on its body were nothing compared to its enormous body, while Gluttony was badly burned and was forced to release the centipede. The mouths all over its body began to switch to gnawing and eating the flames on its own body.
Seizing the opportunity while Gluttony was distracted, the centipede's "head" part opened up, and a large flesh tentacle from deep inside the centipede shot out, stabbing toward Gluttony.
"Graaaahhhh!"
All the mouths on Gluttony's body simultaneously let out painful howls as the flesh tentacle pierced deep into its right arm. Gluttony struggled, wanting to break free from the tentacle, but it was completely useless. Seeing that struggling was ineffective, the mouths on Gluttony's body began spitting that yellow acidic fluid toward Envy's tentacle, while some others stretched out and gnawed at it.
The hissing and gnawing sounds rang out, while the unfortunate humans on Envy's body screamed in pain. But Envy stubbornly refused to withdraw its tentacle. The tip remained firmly embedded in Gluttony's arm, while its enormous body continued closing the distance between itself and Gluttony.
Realizing that it could not eat the tentacle fast enough, one of Gluttony's mouths stretched out and bit through the arm that was wrapped in Envy's tentacle. After that, Gluttony's entire body began to smoke, then the mouths all over its body simultaneously opened and spewed out countless dark-orange flames.
Using smoke and fire to temporarily block Envy's vision, Gluttony turned around and ran away.
On the other side, the centipede Envy retracted its tentacle, pulling Gluttony's arm back with it before swallowing it whole. Immediately, near the centipede's "head," Gluttony's arm grew out and became a part of its body. Along with it, countless drops of yellow acidic fluid began dripping from the arm, but the fluid did not harm the centipede at all, unlike earlier.
Seeing that Gluttony had already left, the centipede rolled around a few more times to put out the flames on its body, then casually crawled away somewhere else.
In the end, the only one left here was Saya, still hiding behind the bushes, her face completely dumbfounded by what she had just witnessed.