Tendo Civil Security Corporation.
Calling it a "corporation," in reality it was only two people—no, three people. One of them was a Cursed Child.
Those three were all that kept the place running, taking commissions to hunt Gastrea so they could earn enough money to survive.
And the "president" of the corporation, Kisara Tendo, was actually a high school girl. Her partner was also a high school student, while the kid was still in elementary school.
Business was brutal, because being young made them seem unreliable, and people rarely entrusted jobs to them.
Also, if someone knew Kisara's family name, they might be even less likely to hire them.
The reason was simple: the Tendo family was one of the most terrifying forces in this country. Her grandfather, Kikunojou Tendo, was Seitenshi's adviser, seated at the pinnacle of political power.
So, as the young lady of the Tendo family, Kisara should have been able to live in absolute comfort.
However, she refused to accept any resources from the Tendo family. She hated the family, and even hated her grandfather, because her parents had been killed by this family, by that grandfather.
She wanted revenge.
Enough of that.
It was cup-noodle time. You couldn't over-steep it, or it wouldn't taste right.
She peeled back the lid. The fragrant aroma made Kisara melt, and she twirled the noodles with her fork and brought them to her slightly pale, cherry-pink lips.
Slurp. Perfect.
She didn't swallow immediately. Instead, she lifted the cup to her lips and happily sipped the broth mixed with the noodles.
Right. She should log in and take a look. Maybe there was another livestream.
Missing Ms. A2's war stream earlier had honestly been a bit disappointing.
Log in.
Huh?
She stopped chewing mid-bite, because she really did see someone streaming, but it wasn't Ms. A2.
It was Mr. Golden Toilet.
So he had returned to his original world?
Streaming from his original world?
Did this stream mean something?
After all, ever since livestreaming started, new functions had gradually appeared. For example, she'd discovered that she could start her own livestream now, too.
So, she tapped his avatar, entered the room, and took a look at what was being shown.
The image popped up, and in an instant Kisara was so shocked that—
"Blargh—urk!!!"
She puked.
"Ahhh, my cup noodles!"
Snapping back to reality, she realized she'd thrown up straight into the cup.
What the hell was this, opening shock?
Good thing she wasn't some delicate ordinary girl. She'd seen plenty, and she'd been through plenty. Otherwise, that single scene just now would have given a normal person lasting psychological trauma.
If someone had a weak heart, it wouldn't even be strange if they died from fright.
But even Kisara—who had witnessed the horror of Gastrea in her own world, and had personally cut down those nightmare monsters—still couldn't withstand what she'd just seen on the livestream.
That was not normal.
That was hell.
Taking a deep breath, Kisara "detached" from reality again. The real-world scene vanished from her vision as her consciousness re-entered the Super-Dimensional Channel and returned to the stream, staring at the hellscape that made her skin crawl all over again.
Monsters with rotting flesh fused together with weapons and armored plating were attacking the fewer-than-twenty soldiers still alive.
Looking carefully, some of those monsters resembled "daemons," at least from a distance.
But up close, Kisara felt that even the daemons in her imagination looked better than these things.
Their flesh was rotten enough to make you sick. Some internal organs were twisted into unrecognizable shapes, and swarms of maggots wriggled everywhere.
There were also insects that weren't maggots, but were even more horrifying. Smooth and slick like earthworms, yet covered in legs like centipedes—no, not legs, tiny tendrils.
Their faces were warped beyond reason.
In some cases, an entire eyeball had fallen out of its socket, still connected by sinew, and behind that eyeball it even looked like a thick, oversized worm was attached, squirming as it moved.
And this dense army of monsters surged like a tide, swallowing the remaining defenders' position.
"Are you insane…?"
Kisara muttered, because one soldier operating a weapon like a close-in weapon system was spraying fire with no regard for whether anyone else lived or died.
One of the soldiers was shredded on the spot, torn into a blood mist together with the other monsters by that metal storm.
Even Mr. Golden Toilet was nearly caught by the sweep several times.
Watching him fend off the monsters' frenzied attacks while also avoiding the crazed gunner behind him had Kisara's heart in her throat.
Hm?
Her pupils widened.
Kisara saw one soldier suddenly convulse, and then—just like infected people in her world who rapidly mutated into monsters—this soldier transformed into an ugly, terrifying thing as well.
He was about to lose control and swing his weapon toward his own comrades, yet he seemed to retain a sliver of clarity.
"Damn monster, you won't shake my will! For mankind, for the Emperor!"
Like a fanatical zealot, the soldier roared those words and charged into the monsters ahead.
The monsters responded "warmly," welcoming him with endless bullets and beams.
In the blink of an eye, his body was riddled through, torn apart, and half his head was gone.
But even though his body looked dead, his will remained alive, forcing that ruined flesh to lunge forward one last time.
In the next instant, a massive bloom of flame erupted among the monsters.
The soldier detonated the explosives he carried.
That scene weighed heavily on Kisara's chest.
And then she began to think: if these monsters appeared in her world, how terrifying would they be?
What level of threat would they represent?
Ordinary humans could never handle them.
These soldiers—wearing little to no armor—judging from their combat movement alone, would be beyond the limits of normal humans in her world. They were elite among elites.
So the monsters they were fighting, judging by the exchange on the battlefield, were at minimum equivalent to Level 2 Gastrea.
Because these things weren't killed by destroying the head or heart. You had to destroy them completely.
Wait.
Their regeneration was actually comparable to Level 3 Gastrea.
They could re-fuse scattered limbs on the ground, patching their bodies back together whenever they were too damaged to move.
Kisara even saw a small mound of piled corpses and scraps writhing, gradually taking shape into something even more terrifying.
Suddenly, what looked like a grenade round slammed into it. A flash of intense light erupted, and the flesh-mound instantly melted and vaporized by more than half. Even the ground glowed red, almost like magma.
That shot came from Mr. Golden Toilet—fired as a micro-missile from his sci-fi-looking power armor.
Even though the flesh-mound was destroyed, the situation didn't look any better. The remaining soldiers were dying one after another.
Behind them was a metal cliff-face. They were surrounded.
There was no escape.
At this rate, sooner or later he would be drowned under the monsters.
Hm?
The monsters suddenly stopped advancing.
Then, as they parted to open a path, a figure stepped forward—about two and a half meters tall.
He seemed annoyed that some of the monsters were moving too slowly. Without a word, he swung the greatsword in his hand like a hammer, smashing several of them into pulped wreckage.
And then his appearance became clear.
A man fully encased in heavy armor, a walking iron-clad giant.
It didn't look like armor you "wore," so much as armor that had been forcibly nailed onto the body—like a horseshoe driven into a hoof—violently fused together with flesh, so that blood and meat oozed from the seams, as if even the armor itself were rotting.
The moment this figure appeared, every soldier's face changed.
Facing endless monsters, they had been almost fearless.
But when this figure emerged, they were afraid.
Some of them couldn't help muttering—
"A fallen Astartes!"
"That insignia… the Imperium's former Eighth Legion, the Night Lords."
"Traitors of the Imperium!"
As those words—clenched through gritted teeth—fell, the soldiers' fear vanished, replaced by eyes burning with fury, fixed on the abnormal existence before them.
So this "Astartes" was likely a boss-level enemy.
And that made Kisara feel genuinely worried for Mr. Golden Toilet.
Don't let him become a chat-group member for only a few days, and then go permanently offline.
(End of Chapter)
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