SSS-Rank Evolving Monster: From Pest to Cosmic Devourer-Chapter 160: First time

"How is that possible?!"

Rosary’s voice cracked, the disbelief in it sharp enough to draw every ear. Her knuckles had gone white where she clenched her staff, and her lips trembled—not from weakness, but from the memory of that suffocating presence.

She knew exactly what kind of creature they were dealing with. Its aura alone had driven them to flee without looking back, a crushing, primal warning that told even the bravest heart to submit or die.

There was no one here who could face that monster head-on. Certainly no one who could kill it.

Felicia, who had been standing slightly apart, gave the smallest of nods, her expression unreadable. Even she—someone who had faced more than her fair share of horrors—was sure of it.

Even if the Venom Fang Overlord himself appeared... she doubted he could do more than delay that thing, much less destroy it.

So how could—

Her thought froze, mid-formed, as something unseen coiled through the air. A faint, deadly chill seeped into the surroundings, subtle at first, but carrying the unmistakable scent of danger. It was the kind of cold that clung to the skin like damp shadow, the kind that made the back of your neck itch with primal awareness.

The change was immediate. A taut silence spread through the group, the kind that swallowed sound and demanded stillness.

Felicia frowned, confused. Every pair of eyes... was on her.

"What is it?" she asked, uneasy.

It took a single heartbeat for the truth to sink in.

They weren’t looking at her. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

They were looking past her.

Guided by the frozen expressions around her, Felicia’s spiritual sense surged outward, a wave of perception brushing against the space behind her.

The instant her senses touched it, her breath caught. She almost stumbled backward, her pulse spiking as if her body wanted to run before her mind understood why.

Standing directly behind her... was Ricky.

He looked different—not in form, but in presence. His figure was still lean, his posture deceptively casual, but the air around him was saturated with something that felt... untouchable. His two dark eyes, calm as a still pond, swept over her in a slow, deliberate motion.

It was not the glance of a friend greeting another, but the quiet evaluation of a predator measuring the strength—and weakness—of its prey.

For the briefest moment, Felicia thought she saw recognition in his gaze, as if he was weighing how much the Sun God’s inheritor had changed in the past month.

And then it was gone.

Finding nothing in her expression but fear, Ricky’s eyes drifted past her to the rest of the group.

His lips curled into a faint smile.

Compared to the easy, almost casual manner Ricky carried himself with, the hearts of those before him were already lodged high in their throats.

To their growing horror, they realized something deeply wrong—none of their spiritual fields, their most trusted means of perceiving the world, could sense him at all. The currents of Amma around them showed no distortion, no ripple, no sign of his existence.

It was as though he simply... wasn’t there.

If not for the undeniable fact that their eyes could see him, they might have dismissed his presence as a phantom born of fear and imagination.

A collective shiver coursed through the group, the kind that leaves your bones feeling hollow. In that instant, each of them entertained the same chilling thought:

If such a man chose to strike without warning, would any of them survive long enough to even realize they had been attacked?

Perhaps the most shaken of all was Forty-Two herself—the Undead Princess, whose sharp instincts and uncanny perception were a point of pride, even arrogance. To her, awareness was not merely a skill, it was her identity.

And yet... she had failed. Completely.

She had not felt him approach. She had not noticed his shadow until it had already swallowed her whole.

For someone like her, the humiliation was a wound that burned deeper than fear.

After the stunned silence came the inevitable instinct: to flee.

The thought settled into each heart like a whisper from their own survival instinct—run now, or you won’t get the chance later.

Fighting wasn’t even an option.

And yet, just as their bodies began to shift subtly, just as feet angled back in preparation to retreat, one figure moved forward.

"Big Sister Dark Shadow!"

Alexandria’s warning came sharp and urgent, her voice breaking through the tension like a snapped bowstring. She could not understand—why was her older sister advancing toward this unknown monster instead of withdrawing like everyone else?

Boar, who had only moments ago been demanding answers about the Venom Fang Overlord’s whereabouts, found his brows furrowing so tightly it felt like his skull might crack.

He might have argued with Dark Shadow, said things she didn’t like—but other than Alexandria, there was no one he respected more.

She had been the one who showed him kindness when no one else had.

The one who had taken the time to teach him, to show him how to survive in this dark, unforgiving world.

The very first skills he had learned, the ones that kept him alive to this day... had come from her hands.

To him—and to Alexandria—she was more than a companion. She was a teacher, a guide, and in her own way, a piece of home.

And the thought of her walking into danger that none of them understood... made his gut twist like a blade.

He didn’t want to see her hurt.

But contrary to everyone’s expectations, Dark Shadow’s steps didn’t slow.

They quickened.

Her stride lengthened, eating up the distance with the urgent momentum of someone chasing a truth they could no longer deny. In the space of a heartbeat, her steady advance had turned into something dangerously close to a run.

And then—her lips parted, and a single word slipped out.

"Thief."

The sound was sharp, almost accusatory, but carried beneath it a tremor of emotion that didn’t match the word’s bite.

"You’re finally here," she said, her voice trembling but threaded with a strange, unyielding resolve. "Where were you hiding all this time? Do you have any idea how much everyone worried about you? How much I worried...?"

The weight in her tone hung in the air like heavy mist, smothering the tension for a brief, surreal moment.

Silence settled over the group—not the wary silence from before, but something stranger.

Rosary, Valemont, and Felicia stared at Dark Shadow with open disbelief, their expressions caught somewhere between bafflement and shock, as though they had just witnessed a child greet a deadly serpent like an old friend.

But of them all, no one looked more stunned than Ricky.

He regarded the woman before him for a long, measuring moment, his dark eyes narrowing slightly, as though trying to peer through the veil of impossibility she had just thrown over reality.

After his recent evolution, not only had his features sharpened and his form refined, but the very essence of his presence had shifted—his aura warped, concealed, and rewritten into something entirely new. Recognition should have been impossible.

And yet... somehow, she had seen through it.

The faintest curl of amusement, or perhaps resignation, ghosted across his lips as he exhaled softly.

Silently accepting the absurdity of it, Ricky inclined his head in the smallest of nods.

"I’m back," he said quietly, the softness of his voice cutting strangely deep. "Forgive me... if my disappearance made you suffer."

He was about to say more, to bridge the impossible gap between them, when Dark Shadow suddenly closed the last step between them.

Before his disbelieving eyes, her arms wrapped around him, firm and unhesitating. The warmth of her body pressed into his chest, her lithe frame trembling with a relief she did not try to hide.

It was not the cautious touch of comrades, but the desperate embrace of someone who had held on too tightly to grief and finally—finally—found the one they’d thought lost.

"This..."

For once, Ricky found himself without words—without even a clear sense of what he should be feeling. His mind, usually sharp and calculating, faltered under the weight of the moment.

The warmth of her form against his, the steady thud of her heartbeat pressing through the layers between them, the faint, almost imperceptible tremor in her arms—it all spoke louder than anything she could have said.

After a breath’s worth of silence, he made his choice. Slowly, deliberately, he lowered one arm and drew her in even closer, the movement gentle yet final, as if acknowledging the truth in her embrace.

The surrounding onlookers were jolted anew, their earlier fear momentarily eclipsed by sheer disbelief.

They had always known the Venom Fang Overlord and Dark Shadow shared an unusual closeness, one that set them apart from the detached alliances of this dangerous world.

But this...

This was the first time they had seen such an open, unguarded display of affection—so raw and unrestrained it seemed almost alien coming from figures they thought they understood.

The moment carried a strange, almost dangerous intimacy, the kind that made witnesses feel like they were intruding on something far too personal to be seen.