I was small and thin, with skinny arms.
In contrast, those surrounding me were numerous, large, and armed.
But why didn’t they seem threatening? Surprisingly not at all.
I stepped forward, and they took a step back. It was like they were wild beasts turning their backs on me.
“Am I scary?”
No answers came. Their gazes felt piercing. Those trembling eyes seemed to look at something not human.
Am I not human?
A sprout of doubt that had been budding for days started to blossom into certainty.
I knew humans wouldn’t be fine after going days without food.
A human couldn’t catch an axe flying at them with one hand, nor would they have a raging appetite at the sight of blood.
Also, if I were human, my body wouldn’t have reacted so extremely to a small amount of blood I accidentally drank.
“Monster…”
One of them muttered as he looked at me.
He might be right. My current state was far from human, so I couldn’t deny his words.
My head throbbed like it was going to burst.
Perhaps it was because I had been starving to the limit and had blood to my lips.
Even though I knew my head couldn’t handle it, my body wanted human blood.
If I hadn’t even brought it to my lips, I probably wouldn’t feel as desperate—maybe I was feeling ravenous because I’d eaten so little.
My body was heating up, against my will.
Now, I felt like I clearly knew what my body wanted.
I wanted to eat humans. The original owner of this body, Iria, was a monster that lived by eating humans.
‘Just one… One should be okay… I’m really starving; eating one shouldn’t matter…’
Aren’t those people really bad people?
They were the kind of people who cut wrists as if it were a part of everyday life. They were part of an organization making money not only through gambling den operations but also through various other misdeeds.
They were basically humans who deserved to die. After all, they were the ones who nearly tried to cut my wrist.
Iria, heated up to the max, craved murder. With my sanity half paralyzed, I felt like I’d go insane wanting to kill someone immediately.
But…
“Ugh…”
I couldn’t do that.
The opponent was human. Not some other animal, but just like me—no, they used to be like me.
For whatever reason, I didn’t want to become a murderer.
I wanted to kill a human, yet I didn’t want to kill a human.
My body desired it while ‘I’ inside this body didn’t want that.
Crush!
To calm my itching fangs that wanted to bite, I bit my own arm.
Sharp pain surged, and blood flowed freely. I didn’t drink it. My blood, unlike others, was, frankly, really disgusting.
I just thought that if I felt pain, maybe my numbed sanity would come back.
It sort of worked. This was the first pain I felt since falling into this other world.
Iria’s fangs were painful. More than I expected.
“You’d better not move; it’d be a shame to see you lose your head.”
“Ah?!”
The man figured I wouldn’t move for a while and pressed a knife to the throat of a pink-haired girl he passed on to his subordinate.
It was Riana.
I had told her not to come inside the gambling den because it might be dangerous, to wait outside.
It looked like one of the guys grabbed her while she was waiting outside.
“Hehe, is this your friend? You two have been famous lately in Dusty Lane. One for cheating at gambling and the other for being a pickpocket.”
“…”
“You two orphan girls have been causing a ruckus trying to survive, huh? Sorry, but no one here is on your side. This is a Lawless Zone! It’s common for criminals to kill other criminals here!”
He laughed heartily.
He was absolutely right. We had committed petty crimes ourselves, though it was for survival.
We may have been slightly less guilty than them in nature, but from the perspective of the average person, we were the same kind of villains.
So, was it a bad thing for a villain to kill another villain?
From a righteous person’s point of view, it would just erase one piece of trash from the world.
In fact, it would be good if they fought amongst themselves and reduced their numbers.
That’s why we couldn’t expect the protection of the law. If we got caught and killed by them, no one would recognize it or mourn for us.
Perhaps I was never qualified to judge him from the start.
In a neighborhood without laws, there were only the weak and the strong, not good and evil.
They were strong, and we were relatively weak.
As a result, I decided to comply.
“…I’ll go, so please let her go.”
“You should’ve done that sooner.”
I raised my hands above my head to show my surrender. The man grinned wickedly as he tied me up.
Then, I was moved somewhere with my whole body bound.
*
Contrary to what was promised, they didn’t let Riana go.
But I didn’t resist. Right now, the target of their anger was solely me. Riana was just tied up and watching me.
And I was hung from the ceiling with my hands chained.
Like a human sandbag.
Thud!!
The sound of heavy blunt objects hitting a person echoed around.
Surprisingly, it was coming from my own body. I was paying the price for biting one of their members.
I endured the waves of violence coming from all directions while being hung.
Of course, it hurt.
Despite my body having good durability, being struck unguarded sent pain right through me.
I was hit all over with a wooden bat embedded with a few nails.
Just getting hit hurt, but sometimes, being struck by the sharp parts of the nails caused blood to drip from me.
Nail-marked wounds were carved on my skin, and some pierced through. Naturally, most of my clothes had long been torn.
I felt quite miserable.
Thud!!
The booming sound spread, mixed with red splattered blood.
I lost track of how much time passed. Covered in blood, I wished for this time to end soon.
Would it be better to die here?
In truth, the hunger was more torturous than the pain of being beaten. The sheer intensity of starvation was enough to consume my sanity.
At this point, one of us had to die here.
But since I couldn’t bring myself to kill a person, maybe dying myself was the better option.
“You’re tougher than I thought. Not a single scream from you despite being in this state.”
Well, if I screamed, I’d just get hungrier.
I didn’t even have the strength to do that.
In the distance, I heard Riana’s crying scream. Even though she was caught, she worried about me.
If I die here, she might be next.
I felt a complex mixture of emotions.
I didn’t care much if I died, but I didn’t want her to.
After all, she was the one who helped me when I was lost shortly after I fell into this world.
She was good to me, at least.
I was okay suffering this alone.
I didn’t want to drag her into it.
“…”
Now, I had two choices.
First, to kill those here and escape, and the second, to die with Riana.
It was a tough fork in the road. I hated both options. In other words, I was in a situation where only the worst choices existed.
After a long time deliberating, I couldn’t bring myself to choose.
At least not in my current state.
Eventually, since I couldn’t decide, I decided to leave the choice to Iria, the owner of this body.
I was tired of holding back.
So I closed my eyes and killed my sanity.
As the reason suppressing my instincts disappeared, Iria’s body began to move on its own.
It felt for a moment like control over my body had shifted.
If all it led to was the worst, I would follow what my instincts dictated.
Just before losing consciousness, I heard the sound of chains breaking.
A place covered in red stains.
Human blood and flesh were sprawled about, painting everything around it red.
It was a brutal scene.
At least, that’s how it seemed to me.
When I regained my senses, everything was already taken care of.
My ravenous hunger had been quenched, and every human nearby besides Riana and me was dead.
It took a while to fully grasp and understand everything that had happened.
It was likely that I was the one who did it.
In the shattered window’s glass fragments, I could faintly see my reflection.
A monster stood there with blood smeared on its hands and mouth. The once vibrant red eyes were a bit calmer than before.
My lost sanity returned.
Upon regaining consciousness, I found myself standing in a pool of blood.
And…
“I-Iria…!”
Riana sat trembling before me.
Her eyes were filled with fear. However, this time, the object of her fear was me.
She looked at me with eyes that expressed terror. Just that made my insides twist.
I genuinely wanted to ask why she looked at me like that. What had happened while I was unconscious?
But I couldn’t do that. I felt that if I heard the answer, there would be no turning back.
I reached out my hand to help her up.
“Don’t come near!”
But I was rejected. Maybe it was because my hands were thickly smeared with human blood.
Terrified, she looked at me as if I were a monster. Communication was impossible.
Even after Riana ran away somewhere, I couldn’t move from that spot for a while.
This first act of murder felt dreamlike.
Everything felt unreal, and it was left as nothing but a faint memory.
I wished it had been a dream.
It was a dark nightmare.
