Chapter 107: The Storm Part 12
Francis frowned.
"What do you mean tolerated?" he asked.
Another flash of white lightning illuminated the ruined office.
Far outside, somewhere across the city, another section of the city vanished beneath Rynik’s breath.
BOOOOOOM!!!
The shockwave reached them a second later.
The floor trembled violently.
Aris kept staring at the sky.
"The story humans tell themselves is a lie," she said quietly.
Her voice was calm now, but Francis could still hear the tension beneath it.
"They say the beasts suddenly appeared one day and destroyed civilization for no reason."
Another distant rumble echoed overhead.
"But that’s not what happened."
Francis narrowed his eyes slightly.
Aris slowly continued.
"The beasts were here first."
For a brief moment, only the sound of thunder filled the room.
"They are the original rulers of this world. The guardians created to maintain it."
Her gaze lowered toward the burning city below.
"And humans?" she asked softly.
A bitter smile appeared on her face.
"We were the infection."
Francis stayed silent.
Aris crossed her arms tightly beneath the oversized blazer.
"Millions of years ago, humans were weak. Fragile. The Kings of the Beasts barely cared about us back then."
"They allowed humanity to spread across parts of the world as long as balance remained intact."
Francis looked toward the storm-covered sky.
"But humans are greedy," Aris said coldly.
"We always want more."
Her eyes darkened slightly.
"So eventually, humanity tried entering the center of the world."
Francis immediately noticed the way her tone changed when mentioning it.
"The center?" he repeated.
Aris nodded slowly.
"The domain of the Kings."
Even saying the words seemed to make her uneasy.
"It is the birthplace of the oldest beasts... the place where the world itself is supposedly connected."
Lightning crawled endlessly across the heavens above them.
"No human was supposed to go there."
Francis could already guess what happened next.
"But they did anyway," he muttered.
Aris laughed bitterly. "Of course they did."
Her eyes turned colder. "And the Kings answered."
"The beasts flooded the world. Three quarters of humanity disappeared within a few years."
Images flashed through Francis’s mind.
Collapsed nations.
Entire continents drowning beneath endless hordes.
Civilization breaking apart.
"The survivors were eventually pushed back into this continent," Aris explained. "One final territory the Kings allowed humans to keep."
"Allowed?" Francis repeated.
"Yes."
Aris looked toward him directly.
"If the Kings truly wanted humanity extinct, we would’ve disappeared long ago."
Francis looked at the devastation happening across the city and could not help but agree with her.
Such destructive power was so overwhelming that he could only guess the creature above them was a Category Ten Beast.
A peak existence.
Something standing at the absolute top of evolution.
Even the Category six creatures he had encountered before now felt insignificant compared to the monster hanging above the clouds.
No—
Calling it a monster was wrong.
Rynik resembled a natural disaster more than a living creature.
Every movement carried enough force to erase entire districts.
Every breath shook the heavens themselves.
Francis slowly clenched his fist.
For the first time since obtaining the parasite system, he truly understood how small he still was.
Even after reaching Category Five...
Even after gaining countless abilities...
Even after defeating the masked agent...
He still felt insignificant before that thing.
"So, what’s your plan now?" Francis asked while staring at the sky.
"Hope that thing doesn’t set its eyes on us?" he asked flatly. "Because I seriously doubt, we’re fast enough to outrun that lightning breath."
Aris remained silent for a moment.
Then she shook her head.
"No," she said quietly. "That’s not the problem."
Aris slowly clenched her hand.
"It already knows I’m here."
"I inherited fragments of its power."
Francis immediately remembered her lightning.
The overwhelming destructive force.
The storm manipulation.
Her beast appearance.
It suddenly made much more sense.
"That’s why your abilities resemble its power," he muttered.
Aris looked back toward the heavens.
"Rynik can sense me from anywhere inside the city."
BOOOOOOM!!!
Another beam descended somewhere in the distance, vaporizing an entire district in white light.
"Should I leave now?" Francis asked.
His body had already shifted slightly into a crouched position, ready to launch himself at any moment.
Honestly, staying here while a Category Ten existence floated above the city sounded incredibly stupid.
Far better to wait until the King finished venting its anger.
Then he could return afterward and scavenge whatever remained.
Considering the amount of death happening across the city—
The number of available livers afterward would probably be absurd.
The thought alone almost made him grin.
To most people, this was an apocalypse.
The fall of a city.
The appearance of a King of the Beasts.
The collapse of everything humanity believed kept them safe.
But for Francis—
This was opportunity.
A chance to accelerate his growth by multiple levels at once.
His eyes slowly scanned the burning city below.
Everywhere he looked, humans were dying.
Suddenly—
Rynik moved.
The gigantic King of the Beasts spread its wings fully.
The heavens themselves seemed to split apart.
Francis’s eyes widened slightly as the creature finally revealed its complete body beyond the clouds.
It was unimaginably massive.
Its wings alone stretched across the sky like an island suspended in the heavens.
Blue lightning crawled endlessly across countless black feathers that resembled sharpened blades more than anything natural.
Every movement distorted the clouds around it.
The storm covering the city was not surrounding Rynik anymore.
It was creating it.
Then—
FLAAAAAP!!!
One flap of its wings shook the entire central area.
A shockwave exploded across the sky.
And immediately after—
BOOOOOOOOM!!!BOOOOOOOOM!!!BOOOOOOOOM!!!BOOOOOOOOM!!!
Countless small pillars of lightning descended simultaneously.
Not dozens.
Not hundreds
Not thousands.
More than that.
The entire city vanished beneath endless white light.
Francis instinctively raised his arm to shield his eyes.
Even with his enhanced vision, he could not see anything anymore.
Only white.
Pure, blinding destruction.
The ground shook violently beneath him as explosions continued endlessly across the city.
One second.
Two seconds.
Five seconds.
The bombardment did not stop.
The city was being drowned beneath divine punishment.
Even Francis felt genuine fear during those ten seconds.
Because he realized that if Rynik truly wanted to erase the entire area.
Nothing could stop it.
Then finally—
Silence.
The lightning disappeared.
The blinding white light gradually faded from Francis’s vision.
Smoke filled the air.
The storm above the city slowly dispersed.
Francis blinked several times before finally opening his eyes completely.
And froze.
The city was burning.
Skyscrapers leaned sideways while highways had been ripped apart completely.
The once-bright capital now resembled a massive graveyard swallowed by fire and smoke.
Even the air itself smelled burnt.
Rynik was gone.
Only distant screams and crackling flames remained.
For a brief moment, Francis simply stared at the destruction silently.
Then—
SWOOOOSH!!!
Without wasting a single second, he launched himself off the ruined capitol building.
The dark armor instantly spread across his body as he transformed mid-air into his beast form.
Massive claws slammed into the road before he leapt forward again at terrifying speed.
Aris blinked in confusion.
"...What is he doing?"
.
.
.
In the distance, Francis crashed through a burning street before immediately stopping beside a corpse.
His mouth split open. The liver disappeared.
Then he moved again.
Another corpse.
Another liver.
Another notification.
The place becomes a feast.
[Congratulations Host for reaching Category Six]
[+200 Energy]
Several new skills and traits were added to Francis’s arsenal.
The notifications continued appearing one after another before his eyes.
But he barely paid attention to any of them.
Right now, he was too busy eating livers.
Fortunately, the requirement for the next evolution was nowhere near as absurd as he originally feared.
After quickly checking the system once, Francis actually looked relieved.
[Requirement for Category Seven]
[Devour 250,000 Livers]
"...Only?" Francis muttered.
Honestly, after the ridiculous ten times from earlier evolutions, this number almost felt reasonable.
Especially after witnessing an entire city get half-erased by a Category Ten Beast.
The city alone probably contained enough corpses to reach a million. His enemy now was time.
Along the way, Francis began encountering resistance.
Small at first.
Then gradually more organized.
Remnants of the Defense Force.
Military squads that somehow survived by sheer luck or timing—buried under collapsed structures, or simply too far from the initial lightning strikes.
But survival didn’t mean readiness.
Most of them were shaken.
Some were trembling.
Others were barely standing at all, eyes still unfocused like they were trying to process what just happened to their world.
Francis slowed.
A squad of soldiers stood at the end of a shattered highway bridge.
They weren’t soldiers anymore.
Just survivors trying to pretend they still had control.
Another group emerged from a collapsed transport vehicle behind them, forming a loose defensive line.
One of the officers barked an order, but it came out weak.
"F-fire! Don’t let that thing get closer!"
A few shots rang out.
The bullets hit Francis’s armor and simply bounced off with dull metallic sounds.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
He didn’t even flinch.
Francis moved.
Not fast enough to look like lightning. Not slow enough to track properly.
Just a simple step forward—
And he was suddenly inside their formation.
The world seemed to freeze for them.
A soldier turned his head slightly—
Too late.
Francis’s claw was already on his shoulder.
Crack.
The soldier collapsed before he even realized what happened.
The rest of the squad broke instantly.
"RETREAT!"
"IT’S INSIDE THE LINE!"
Panic spread like fire.
But Francis didn’t chase them.
Not because of mercy.
Because there was no need to rush.
