Chapter 374: This Is That… Kitten?

“Forget it. No point dwelling on it… one step at a time.”

The assistant squad leader sighed, forced a bitter smile, and said no more.

He knew his own situation better than anyone.

Even though the cleanup missions had bought him some extra buffer time, he had already failed his advancement three times.

His potential had been severely eroded by the backlash, his foundation riddled with cracks.

The chances of future success…

Were vanishingly slim.

No one knew this better than he did.

The group fell silent. The heavy topic pressed down on them like a boulder.

The earlier lively debate about the relative strength of the Rank-3 masters no longer interested anyone.

In the end, who among the Rank-3 was stronger or weaker was never theirs to judge.

They couldn’t even be certain whether they themselves would ever qualify to become such existences.

That reverence for the strong had now curdled into deep anxiety over their own futures.

The squad leader quickened his pace again, swinging his weapon with renewed force, as if venting his frustration on the black fur and monsters blocking their path.

Each strike landed harder than the last.

The team followed in silence, with only footsteps echoing through the empty, dim corridor.

………………

Before long, the cleanup work was nearing its end.

The black fur in the building remained thick, but the scattered “hunched humanoid” monsters that emerged from it could no longer pose a meaningful threat against the support squad’s practiced coordination.

The moment one appeared, multiple attacks struck simultaneously—before it could even hiss, it crumbled into shattered bone and residue.

The initial caution the squad members had shown was long gone, replaced by a kind of weary momentum.

Killing had become mechanical repetition.

However, just as everyone was preparing to clear the final two floors and then turn back toward the basement to regroup with Lady Poppy—

The squad leader suddenly stopped.

He snapped up his right hand in a “halt” gesture.

The movement carried a hint of stiffness. His expression was more solemn than it had ever been.

The squad tensed instantly.

In the same instant, everyone tightened their grip on their weapons. Six pairs of eyes swept toward the still-uncleared area ahead.

There, the black fur was unusually dense—so thick it had nearly formed into a solid black wall.

Far denser than anything they had seen on the floors below.

The black fibers churned violently, as if something were struggling within them.

And inside that black wall, something… was writhing.

The next second, the squad leader’s pupils contracted sharply.

Before he could even cry out a warning, the black wall split open from the center.

A massive, hideous silhouette slowly peeled itself from the shadows at the end of the corridor.

It was a monster… difficult to describe with any single word.

Its body was built upon the smooth skeletal frame of a feline.

Elongated limbs, towering shoulder blades, a curved spine—everything pointed to some kind of large feline predator.

But onto what should have been sleek lines, the bones of many other felines had been grotesquely “embedded.”

Extra ribs jutted from both sides of the spine, splayed like bone spurs.

Redundant limb segments extended from the joints, bending stiffly in the air.

Shattered shoulder blades were stacked atop the original ones, layer upon layer, forming asymmetric humps.

The most horrifying part was its head.

Beside its original ferocious skull, another, slightly smaller skull had been forcibly squeezed into place.

The two skulls shared one twisted spine, as if they had been crudely stitched together.

At the seam, along the boundary where the bone fused, remnants of black fuzz and dried paste still clung.

Because of all this, the beast’s skeleton had completely lost any biological sense of streamlined grace.

Every bone was twisted in an unnatural way. The chaotic, overlapping arrangement instead lent it a crushing sense of pressure.

And within one of its four hollow eye sockets, there was an eyeball formed from bone fragments.

The surface was rough and riddled with fine cracks, yet it rotated with eerie life, like a true pupil sizing up its prey.

Entwined around the bone eyeball was a ribbon of mottled pigment.

Its colors were difficult to identify in the dimness—only vaguely visible as interwoven dark red and pitch black, sketching out some incomprehensible symbol.

The Anomaly stood there in silence.

It merely stood, its four hollow sockets and one rotating bone eyeball all fixed on the direction of the support squad.

A suffocating presence had already drowned the group like an invisible tide.

It was not fear.

It was something deeper than fear.

The Rank-2 peak squad leader’s brow furrowed to its limit, his complexion turning grim.

His hand trembled faintly. His body instinctively refused to meet that thing’s gaze.

And standing behind him, the assistant squad leader could not suppress the deep terror rising in his eyes.

His lips had gone pale. His throat bobbed once, but no sound emerged.

This was instinct.

The uncontrollable shiver of a lesser creature facing a higher predator.

This Anomaly was at least Rank-3.

And among Rank-3s, it was by no means weak.

Normally, an Anomaly of this level would require Lady Poppy or Lady Ophelia to handle personally.

But now…

There was only them.

Someone swallowed hard.

The last trace of moisture squeezed from a parched throat—the sound rang out with startling clarity in the silent corridor.

“Could this… be the ‘kitten’ Lady Poppy mentioned?”

The voice trembled beyond recognition.

A Rank-3 Anomaly so powerful it made the entire squad despair? How could this possibly be a “kitten”!

It was nothing short of a joke!

Not everyone was capable of crossing ranks, killing a Rank-3 while still at Rank-2.

Stories like that existed only in rumor, with no connection to reality.

A Rank-3 Anomaly of this caliber spelled certain death for them.

Its danger was no less than a group of unarmed ordinary people facing a starving lion head-on.

“Probably… Lady Poppy misjudged.”

The squad leader’s voice was strained, each word forced out through gritted teeth.

But he knew Lady Poppy would never deliberately call a Rank-3 a kitten.

The only explanation was that before Lady Poppy and the Remnant Sovereign had left, those child-Anomalies had indeed only been Rank-2—at most, barely entering Rank-3.

But after Poppy left, for some unknown reason, the suppression had vanished.

The lingering Anomalies had not dispersed. Instead, unknown to anyone, they had begun a new round of slaughter.

The strong devoured the weak, plundering similar powers to strengthen themselves.

Like a snowball rolling downhill, it had ultimately given birth to this monster—one far beyond the support squad’s ability to handle!