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Last Embryo Volume 1 Chapter 2 Part 4

Translator: DarkHeartedAlchemist

Editor: Weasalopes

The storm outside the Hoei Private Academy was even stronger than Homura expected.

The entire public transportation system has become completely paralyzed, and the same could be said about the cars on the roads, so as a result, there was not a single soul outside at the current moment. The drainage grates were so overloaded with flowing water that it was flowing back onto the streets, raising to such levels that it reached all the way to Homura’s ankles, filling his shoes with the unpleasantly dump sensation with every step his running legs took. They also felt heavy and incredibly sluggish, but now was not the time to be worrying about such trivial things when his friends might have been in serious danger.

Panting and gasping for air, Homura finally reached the school’s main gate.

「Okay, the cabins made for breeding purposes are located at the side of the main building. It would be great if the animals for the dietary education purposes were being held there as well… 」

It was a good thing that it was around midnight now, so any of the security guards patrolling the school’s perimeter should have gone home a long time ago. However, one fundamental problem still remained: the main gate has already been closed, meaning that the fastest route to his destination has been cut off from him. Having no other option, Homura made his way towards the school’s back entrance while shielding himself from the non-stop assault of the heavy rain and the leaves that were being blown away from the trees that were neatly arranged on the way from the gate to the main entrance.

Despite the rain severely limiting his field of vision and the wind threatening to knock him off his feet with every step he took, he has somehow made it to the breeding cabins… only to stop dead in his tracks when his ears registered the most unsettling of sounds… the sound of flesh being torn away from the bone, as if some kind of beast was there, feasting upon the helpless animals.

「What… what was that sound just now?!」

It was a very disturbing sound, one that made his self-preservation instincts kick in in an instant. It wasn’t the relaxing sound made by the droplets of rain falling onto the ground. To give a concrete example, it sounded as if a pair of monstrous jaws was chewing on moist meat, except that sound was louder and it continued to clearly ring and reverberate in Homura’s ears without getting muffled out by the sounds of the downpour around him.

Every fiber of his being was screaming at him that staying here was dangerous and that he should just turn back and run if he values his life, but now that he heard that sound he knew that Suzuka and Ayato were most definitely in danger, and he had to get them out of here at all costs. Maintaining the highest degree of alertness and with his awareness of the surroundings cranked up to maximum, he approached the cabins while hiding in the shadow cast by the side of the main school building. There, he saw the slowly-moving shadow of someone… no, something that was large enough to cover all the cabins, making it impossible to see if someone else beside it was also there.

「!!!!!!?」

Shocked and scared shitless at the same time, Homura covered his mouth with his hands in an attempt to muffle out the sound of his breathing to conceal his presence from whatever that monstrous thing was. As it turned out, it was a smart decision on his part. Or maybe it didn’t matter at all, and the only reason he still remained undetected was thanks to the sound of the falling rain swallowing the noise made by both his breath and his footsteps. Either way, he was safe for now. If he was just your regular student, he probably would have fallen into a state of panic long ago. That is how terrifying the thing which was now sprawling before his eyes was.

「G e e e e y a a a a a a….. G E E E E E Y A A A A A A A A A…….!!!!!!!!!!!!」

That was the harrowing cry of the monster that devoured the livestock.

Whatever that monster was, it was able to bite off the entire back off of an adult pig and crush five chickens in the palm of its bulky hand as if they were made out of butter instead of flesh and bone. There was no light anywhere near so he couldn’t see it clearly, but it was most definitely three times taller than the regular adult human, or perhaps even bigger that that. Although it was standing on its hind legs, the overall balance of its body must have been greatly distorted, because there was no way for such thin lower body to keep its massive, muscle filled upper body in a proper upright position without it collapsing under its own weight.

「Oi oi oi, what in the living hell is this thing?!!!」

Homura continued observing the creature from the shadows. It was too dark to be absolutely certain, but he thought he saw a pair of horns on the monster’s head. Even though it was placed on a neck which was as thick as a tree trunk, it definitely resembled that of a human to some degree.

「Those horns and that cattle-like ears… is that some kind of bull monster? Maybe that’s some kind of biologically engineered weapon that escaped from its laboratory because of the storm?」

Trying to be as quiet about it as possible, he took the monster’s picture. He knew his reasoning was like the one taken straight out of all those B-grade movies, but that was the only possible explanation for the monster’s existence that he could have come up with.

If that was the thing both Ayato and Tokuteru had on their minds when they asked him all those strange questions before, then their earlier ambiguity could be understandable. Homura always thought about himself as a pretty flexible thinker, but the thing he had in front of him right now was well and truly beyond the realm of human understanding, fitting more into the realm of the unthinkable.

Though on the other hand, whatever that monster truly was, it displayed a very strange set of behavioral patterns, like right now when he was devouring the livestock whole, only to vomit the parts it was unable to digest moments later, pointing to the fact that it was not doing it to satiate its appetite. It was probably doing it purely on instinct.

Watching the monster, Homura concluded that the best possible thing to do now would be to call Tokuteru and inform him about everything that’s been happening, so he opened the list of contacts on his phone… but at that moment he heard the sound of the steps coming from the other side of the pens, which prompted him to lift his head in surprise. When he sensed the it was a presence of another human, a loud, metallic sound reverberated throughout the entire area.

「…….!!!!!!?」

Even though it was raining so heavily that he could barely see what was in front of him, he clearly saw the explosion of sparks that went off before his eyes. The sequence of metallic sound piercing his ears followed by a cascade of sparks repeated five more times in rapid succession. Was the monster fighting someone?! Those movements were too fast for him to follow with his sight, but he instinctively knew that such a such an exchange of powerful blows was enough to decide the outcome of the fight. As if to confirm his hunch, the monster fell on its knees with blood gushing out of its legs like a crimson fountain.

Homura tried his best to process what exactly happened just now, when suddenly a human figure crashed right into him at unbelievable speed, catching him completely off guard and making him lose his breath for a moment. But that wasn’t all. When he saw who the person that was blown into him was, he became even more shocked.

「Lady… Ayato…?」