“I’m Thumper~ The happy baby rabbit~! La, la, la!”

Thumper hopped along Broadway, the place with the largest floating population in the Capital, on Middle Earth with a vanilla ice cream in his hands.

People chatted with each other as they watched the hopping Thumper.

“Wow! Look at that rabbit! It’s so cute!”

“How does it look so much like a cartoon character?”

“I wonder if it would let me pet it?”

“You idiot! Weren’t you paying attention during the race theory class? Beastfolk are an intermediate race!”

“Yeah. However cute it may look, it could easily kill even a C-rank human.”

“Really? No wonder its buck teeth looked so sharp.”

Thumper’s ears twitched. He put strength in his legs to jump high and landed in front of the three chatting women.

“Kyaaah!” the women yelled.

“Hi, human friends! I’m Baby Rabbit Thumper! My buck teeth are sharp because the adults make me eat carrots!”

“Huh?”

“Oh, and you can pet me as much as you’d like!” Thumper said as he brought his head toward the women.

They stared at each other in confusion. They were Lambs, meaning they had not been in the Mirror World long. A Baptist would never have even entertained the idea of touching a beastfolk.

One of the women mustered up the courage to pet Thumper’s head.

“Wow! His fur is so soft!”

“Really? I want to touch him too!”

“Me too!”

The Lambs, who had never met a beastfolk before, pet Thumper in fascination. Thumper giggled as he licked his vanilla ice cream.

Humans are so kind! I’m glad I followed Seong-Hwi here! Thumper thought.

He was relieving all the stress he had accumulated from being stuck in Carrot while being treated like a troublemaker, in the Capital.

The Baptists who saw the women petting Thumper expressed dissatisfaction as they walked past them.

“They’re insane.”

“Lambs don’t know better.”

Beastfolk lost control and destroyed everything around them if their wildness exceeded the threshold. Letting one’s guard down around beastfolk because they looked cute was no different from asking to die.

Just then, a building wall blew up, and a bloody human tumbled across the street.

“Kyaaah!”

“W-what the hell?”

“Gurgh! Urgh!” the human groaned as they writhed in pain and passed out. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

An individual walked out of the hole in the wall and the dust cloud, picked up the human, and placed them over their shoulder.

They were not human. They had white fur around their chin, and red fur mixed with brown everywhere else. Their slit eyes gave them a sinister appearance, as if they were smiling nastily. They had two perked-up ears with black fur around them, and so did their hands. Behind them was a fluffy tail mixed with reddish-brown, white, and black gradients.

More like the individual walked out of the building’s broken wall; there were around twenty, all exuding piercing mana and red Beast Force. Humans backed away from them in fear, but Thumper’s eyes shone after noticing them.

“Wow! Fox friends!” Thumper hopped toward them and waved his hand. “Hi, fox friends! I’m Baby Rabbit Thumper!”

“A rabbit beastfolk?” The fox beastfolk standing at the front of the group with the human on his shoulder scanned Thumper and smiled—no, it only looked as if he were smiling. He was expressionless.

“What are you doing here? What are you doing with that human?” Thumper asked.

“Do I have a reason to tell you?” the fox beastfolk responded coldly.

Thumper noticed the fox friends were in a bad mood and replied, “Well... I suppose not.”

Another fox beastfolk approached the leader and remarked, “Boss, he’s small for a rabbit beastfolk. He’s still a baby.”

“That’s impossible. Rabbit beastfolk are extremely overprotective of their young because there are so few. They would never allow one to roam around alone,” the boss said.

Thumper shouted proudly with his chest puffed out, “I told you, I’m Baby Rabbit Thumper! The adults aren’t with me because I ran away from Mr. Pippin’s devilish clutches!”

The fox beastfolk boss narrowed his slit eyes even more. “Pippin? The High Ranker, Killer Rabbit Pippin?”

“Yeah! I’m from Carrot!”

The fox beastfolk momentarily stared at Thumper, then looked around. He answered, “I see. We’re from Fox Village. We were chasing the culprit behind the disappearances of our village’s residents, and ended up here.”

“What? Disappearances?” Thumper hopped in place in surprise.

The fox beastfolk asked, seemingly smiling, “Thumper, was it? Are you familiar with this human city, Capital? We only arrived yesterday, and this place is too complicated.”

Thumper’s ears perked up as he answered, “Of course! I walk around this city every day! I have friends here, too!”

The fox beastfolk smiled, revealing his sharp teeth, and requested, “I see. In that case, could I ask you to help your fellow beastfolk, Thumper?”

“Of course!” Thumper happily agreed because he had been getting bored.

***

It was the third day of the Garapan reclamation operation. Clan One Tree defeated the Lucanids one after another and finally entered the city. The clansmen chatted as they looked around the city.

“The city is more intact than I thought it would be.”

“Yeah. I thought it’d be a wasteland with those giant insects crawling around.”

“We’ll be able to restore the city much faster than expected.”

The streets were wide. The palm trees and the blue signs on the ivory buildings calmed the mind. It was likely because on Earth, Garapan was the center of tourism on the island of Saipan.

“Stay focused! We’re not done yet! Think about the restoration after we survive!” Ho-Geun shouted, noticing the clansmen were letting their guards down.

Lack of focus during battle led to mistakes, of which even one could jeopardize the operation and put the clan in danger.

“But we reached this far without major losses. Let’s be more optimistic than pessimistic,” Seong-Tae said.

The clan had battled against the Lucanids without rest for three days and defeated most of them in this area. The clansmen grew stronger by opening cubes with the Karma they gained from the battles, boosting their confidence.

“Carrombus has yet to appear. Where the hell could it be?” Maximilian said as he sniffed around.

He used to be a German police officer on Earth. He obtained his police dog partner, Wiley, as his D Weapon, and was currently using Beastification. Wiley was a Rottweiler with floppy ears, a strong body, and glossy black fur everywhere but his feet and snout, where it was yellowish-brown.

“Am I congested or something? Do you smell anything, Rin?” he asked Ha Rin, sniffing with Chocho’s nose through Partial Beastification.

They were both transformers. Although they both had canine D Weapons, Maximilian was a combat specialist, while Rin was a search specialist.

Rin shook her head. “Hmmm... A powerful scent is spread throughout the city, so it’s difficult to pinpoint its location.”

Shin Jun turned to the man filming various parts of the city with his DSLR camera and asked, “Anything, Bill?”

“Mmm... Forget Carrombus, I don’t even see a single Lucanid. I’ve taken hundreds of pictures with See-Thru Photography, but we’re the only ones in this city,” the observer, Bill, answered.

Jun frowned and thought, What’s going on? Why are there no Chaos monsters? Could they have run away in fear?

That would be the normal thought, but Jun found it doubtful. Other clans would have reclaimed Garapan long ago if they were so easy to scare.

“Carrombus, Lucanid. Their names may draw you away from the fact that they’re beetles. Stag beetles, at that,” Seong-Hwi mumbled beside Jun.

Jun asked, “What do you mean, Smith?”

Seong-Hwi smiled and continued, “There used to be a trend of raising stag beetles on Earth. They go underground to avoid the warm sunlight in the morning.”

The Calasanz Home for Children used to keep a stag beetle cage on the window frame. The children gathered around the window to admire the stag beetles, but they did not show themselves in the morning.

The children lost interest and dispersed. Once evening arrived, Seong-Hwi checked that no one was around before he sneaked toward the window to admire the active stag beetles.

“Underground... to avoid the sun...” Jun trailed off as he thought about what Seong-Hwi said. His eyes widened as he looked down and shouted, “THEY’RE UNDERGROUND! THEY’RE RIGHT BELOW—”

Hundreds of giant stag beetle mandibles sprouted from the ground before Jun could finish. Legs were severed, some clansmen fell into the holes created in the ground, and others were blown into the air after being struck by the mandibles. The diamond formation the clan had been maintaining was instantly destroyed.

***

A black mansion sprouted from the ground—no, it was a colossal stag beetle.

“Exterminate the intruders! They will serve as feed for the larvae!” Carrombus, the colossal stag beetle, shouted.

Named Chaos were uncommon; a name simply distinguished them from the others. In other words, Chaos were only named when they were far stronger than those of the same rank, requiring them to be distinguished.

Carrombus was such an example—an Invasive Chaos who used to be a regular Lucanid, a former stag beetle insectoid corrupted by Chaos Mana. However, it hunted countless fellow Lucanids to absorb their os, gaining an ego and Chaos Mana. He breezed through the ranks from Shen to Uluhatu.

Carrombus slowly opened its mouth, and a tentacle resembling an amber brush sprouted from it. This mouthpart of a stag beetle absorbed nutrition from tree fluids, its bristles allowing it to lap up liquids. However, Carrombus used it for a different purpose.

[Activating Race Skill: Evaporating Poison Gas.]

Grey smoke exuded from its mouth, filling the surroundings.

Jun shouted, “That’s Carrombus’s poison! Get away from it! Fire skill users, attack!”

“Okay!”

“Let’s do this!”

One Tree clansmen with fire skills stepped forward to activate their skills against the poison gas.

[Activating Unique Skill: Fiery Gloves - Fire Fist.]

[Activating Skill: Barraging Blaze.]

[Activating Item Skill: Song of Fire.]

The flames endlessly flew toward the poison gas. The gas devoured the flames to extinguish them, while the flames, powered by the skill users’ mana, burned the gas. As a result, the Evaporating Poison Gas, which had been as large as a tsunami and was about to engulf the humans, stopped its advance.

“Drag them all to me!” Carrombus commanded.

The Lucanids that crawled up to the surface brandished their mandibles as if aiming a rifle at the humans. Stag beetles had six legs; Lucanids supported their massive bodies with four legs and extended their front two legs at the One Tree clansmen. Their extended legs suddenly lengthened like a portable radio antenna and grabbed the humans.

“H-huh?!”

It was difficult to escape from the ends of a stag beetle’s legs, which looked like a hook. The humans hooked to the Lucanids’ legs were dragged into Carrombus’s Evaporating Poison Gas.

“AHHH! Kurgh! Gurgh! Urgh!”

Their bodies slowly dried up as they experienced searing pain. Red gas leaked from their pores and was absorbed by the poison gas. It looked as if the water inside them was being extracted.

Evaporating Poison Gas was a skill that forcibly evaporated the water inside an individual, which all lifeforms contained. The heat generated from that process caused the individual to experience searing pain as they dried up, and eventually became a mummy.

The Lucanids’ hooks grabbed the One Tree clansmen one by one, like a fisherman hooking bait on their fish hook.

“NOOO!”

“S-SAVE ME!”

“GURGH!”

The humans dragged into the Evaporating Poison Gas were incapacitated and began drying up slowly. A living hell descended on the beautiful tourist attraction, Garapan.