Became a Failed Experimental Subject-Chapter 1: Abandoned

“Help people... Help them, my darling... Mom’s okay now, so... that person...”

“...Excuse me?”

A voice echoed in my ear, pulling me out of the dream.

The same dream I’d had over and over again.

The moment right before I was left alone in this world.

Every sound hitting my ears now felt unfamiliar.

The wind.

The distant hum of passing cars, stirring up fading memories.

Voices of people talking nearby.

What filled the air wasn’t the mechanical noise of machines, the whirr of electric motors, or the buzz of scanners running beneath the skin.

When I opened my eyes, a bright light flooded my vision.

“Excuse me, you can’t sleep here.”

...Is this another illusion?

Did they put me in a room with some kind of hallucination-inducing test subject again?

Let them bite me. Let them hit me. I sighed and curled up.

But then—within the cracks of sensation, the kind no illusion could fake—I felt a presence.

“Hellooo~ Hey! I said you can’t sleep here!”

I felt something poke me.

Curious, I grabbed it.

It was real. Solid.

Not an illusion.

Finally, I looked up at the person in front of me.

He was wearing a uniform—just like the ones the police wore in my memories.

“Wh-What are you? A Hero...? Or a Villain? Were you some kind of Esper?”

Esper.

A word from memory.

When I opened my hand, a bent-up collapsible baton fell from it.

Was a baton always this soft? That’s strange.

I reached down and pressed my hand to the cement floor.

It felt like soggy cardboard.

When I pressed lightly, my hand left an imprint.

“W-Wait. Are you a Hero? Or... Uh, let me see your face, please. You’re... not in the database...”

When I slowly got up, the tattered blanket covering me tore apart.

The officer’s body tensed. He drew his gun as I rose.

“Halt! Stay right where you are! This is Sector 12—any nearby officers, respond! We’ve got an unregistered Esper, possible Villain! Identity unknown!”

His voice trembled.

He spoke into the radio clipped to his shoulder.

And then, a memory floated to the surface.

The drugs I was injected with every day—how they made me weak at first, but my body adapted over time.

So I killed the researchers. All of them.

After that came the green smoke—no, the tranquilizer gas.

I smashed the door and broke free. The words on it: Lab 3, Sector A.

So... there was another lab.

Did they abandon me?

“Tch—!”

Suddenly, something jabbed me in the back of the neck.

I grabbed it and tore it out.

It was a round, suction-cup-like device—some kind of machine.

A nauseating sensation tore through my body, as if something was crawling under my skin.

That feeling—similar to the battle stimulants they’d inject before throwing me at other monsters.

A cocktail of drugs meant to fire up the body.

But this? This ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) was nothing.

Fools. I’d already adapted to the tranquilizers.

Like hell this low-grade garbage would even faze me.

Still—bulging veins rose on both arms, throbbing.

The officer in front of me recoiled and raised his gun in terror.

“Wh-What the hell?! D-Don’t come any closer! Stop! Just—!”

BANG!

A gunshot rang through the alley.

The bullet hit my shoulder—and dropped to the ground.

I caught it mid-air.

It was soft. Flattened.

Holding it between two fingers, I crushed the deformed lump of lead.

It felt like squashing a boiled egg.

I dropped the mashed remains. The officer stumbled back in horror.

“H-Holy shit...?! The bullet—oh god—?!”

“Haaah...”

Suppressing the surging power, I left the officer behind and looked around.

This was a trash-strewn alley between buildings.

Ignoring the officer crawling on the ground, I stepped out of the alley.

From behind the buildings, I saw it.

A skyline I remembered.

That steel tower—symbol of City W.

No matter how many times it was torn down, they rebuilt it. The eternal communication tower.

“...So this is City W.”

I met the eyes of the onlookers staring at the alley, probably startled by the gunshot.

And then—I caught my reflection in the glass of a nearby building.

A mirror-like surface.

How long had it been since I’d seen myself?

I looked nothing like the person in my memories.

Taller than anyone else around me—like they were all kids.

A muscular body.

Wild, unkempt hair.

And on my neck... the recognition code.

CXI — that was my code.

My name...

I couldn’t remember.

“Outside...”

Looking into the glass, it finally hit me.

This really was outside.

Not a lab.

Not a test chamber.

This was City W—the place I used to live.

As soon as I thought of it, I remembered where I wanted to go.

But in this state, looking like this, I couldn’t show up there.

I turned toward the officer, still crawling in the alley, and reached out my hand.

“Eek?!”

“Can I borrow some money?”

****

The officer barely had any cash on him.

So, I had no choice.

I dug through a nearby clothing donation bin and put together whatever outfit I could.

Putting the clothes on was no easy task.

They felt like thin tissue paper—tear one wrong and it’d rip apart.

And nothing fit me anyway.

In the end, I looked like some pervert who’d left the gym wearing a half-ripped tracksuit.

Didn’t matter.

Better than being naked.

I walked to my destination.

It was crowded.

A massive memorial stone.

Covered in names.

Among them, I found the one I was looking for.

And standing a distance away, I closed my eyes in silence.

That day, it had rained.

Before the world was overrun by monster spores.

Back when everyone looked like towering utility poles to me.

Even as a kid, I’d sensed something was wrong.

I couldn’t always see him at night—but when I did, Dad looked exhausted every time he came home.

He smelled like alcohol. Said he couldn’t sleep. Said he was tired.

Sometimes, if I woke up and went to the living room, he’d ruffle my hair and say he couldn’t wait for me to grow up so we could drink together.

I liked him.

That scruffy man who always smelled of smoke.

In the photo, his face was decorated with black ribbons.

My mom held it in her hands.

“When’s Dad coming home?”

I had asked so innocently.

The other men I’d seen once or twice before began to cry.

And my mother...

She stood tall. Like a pole herself.

“Daddy’s... just tired. He’s taking a nap.”

Dad was always tired when he got home.

So I thought—he must be sleeping again.

I’ll ask him to play with me when he wakes up.

But I never played with him again.

My father had been a firefighter.

He died saving lives.

And my mother... she said she was proud of him.

That his death wasn’t meaningless.

Even as he was crushed under the rubble of a building brought down by a monster—

She told me,

even at the very end—

“Help people.”

This place was a mass grave, where my mother had been buried alongside other victims.

After paying my respects, a thought crossed my mind—there was a place where my mother’s keepsakes had been stored.

Carefully avoiding contact with people... thanks to my current appearance, people kept their distance, which made things easier.

When I arrived at the storage vault, I started to punch in the code I remembered—but I ended up breaking the lock instead.

With no other choice, I raised my fingers and slowly pushed them in.

The steel locker broke apart like bread dough.

Peeling it open with ease, I found a family photo, my mother’s necklace, and my father’s firefighter uniform.

The locker could no longer serve its purpose.

I took everything out and put on my father's firefighter pants.

Back when I was a child, they had looked huge—now, they fit perfectly.

The fabric was sturdy—far more real than those paper-like clothes from before.

Last, I carefully picked up the necklace, focusing all my strength just to touch it gently.

That’s when I realized how strong it really was.

I think they once said it was a custom-made item, melted down from broken firefighting gear my father used at work.

Must be a special alloy—it still felt like solid metal, even with my strength.

I wrapped it around my wrist, relieved that I could still carry it with me.

As for the family photo—I tucked it safely into my pocket.

Leaving the storage vault, I sat down by a nearby tree, lost in thought.

What... should I even do now?

The lab had thrown me away. Or maybe, technically, they had let me go.

But my hollow chest felt no motivation.

There wasn’t a single thing I wanted to do.

Revenge on the lab that experimented on me?

Killing those inhuman bastards... it was tempting, sure.

But to get to them, I’d have to fight the other test subjects who followed their orders.

Unlike me.

And I really didn’t feel like doing that.

Unless fate just handed me an opportunity, I didn’t even know where to start looking for revenge.

I had no idea where the other labs were, or even which one had kept me.

Even the one thing I might’ve wanted felt utterly impossible.

To someone like me, who no longer had a trace of humanity left, the world felt painfully empty.

Even the bastards who experimented on me—they knew how empty I was inside.

So they told me: destroy, kill, consume it all, swallow the world.

But why should I?

I don’t want to.

Even now, the instincts bubbling inside me—this hunger to attack people—none of it... tempts me in the slightest.

That’s why they called me a failure.

I didn’t want anything back in the lab, and now that I’ve escaped and finally reached the place I’d longed for...

I still don’t want to do anything.

Not a thing.

That’s when I felt it.

“...Mnh.”

Even in the depths of my emptiness, my sharpened senses never dulled.

A killing intent wormed its way into the void of my blank mind.

Left side.

A fair distance away.

Something rising from underground.

Monsters.

I could feel a swarm of them.

The cemetery was full of people paying respects.

And monsters—they love people.

It’s their food source.

So, of course they’d come to a place like this.

It was only logical.

And there were systems in place for it.

The blaring sirens rang out, and the people around me moved in a panic.

“Monsters!”

“R-Run! Get to the shelter!”

I sat quietly by the tree, watching the desperate crowd flee.

The sensors had picked up the monsters’ cores, and everyone rushed toward capsule shelters—fortified pods that could hold up even under monster attacks.

Just before the monsters could fully emerge from the earth, nearby heroes launched into the air, powers blazing.

The monsters—Soil Drakes—twisted abominations that had evolved from worms.

Their threat level... Lethal class.

Dangerous enough to kill a person easily.

“It’s Soil Drakes! Watch for their toxic mucus!”

“Got it!”

“Set up a barrier! Don’t let them near the civilians!”

Unofficial Espers and licensed heroes charged at the drakes erupting from the ground—spitting fire, slashing with swords, shocking them with electricity.

They’d probably wipe them all out soon.

Even the fleeing civilians must’ve known that.

But still...

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A single mistake. One tiny mishap—and someone could die.

One person, maybe two. Sometimes ten or more.

That’s how monster attacks go.

Until the heroes take down all the monsters, people have to run.

Hide.

Just to avoid being swallowed by misfortune.

“Heesoo!”

“Aaaaahhh! Waaaahhh!”

While watching from the tree, I heard a child’s cry and turned my head.

A little boy had tripped on uneven ground just past the hero’s defensive line.

The earth quaked beneath him.

A straggler—one of the weaker monsters, too slow to keep up with the pack—was headed his way.

A natural predator of humans.

The Soil Drake burst out of the ground, its round, slimy mouth aiming for the child.

The child’s mother screamed, running toward him.

The heroes were too far away.

Out of sight.

It was a hopeless hunt.

Another innocent about to become prey.

Before I could think—my body moved.

That strength born from the lab’s experiments—the monster core embedded near my heart—it awakened.

Violence surged through my body.

My mind was drowned in a beast’s thoughts.

What I needed now... was speed above all else.

Firepower strong enough to evaporate even the toxic slime.

Destructive force that could swallow the enemy whole.

My body transformed—fur covering my limbs, bones twisting.

A beast’s form.

A wolf’s head.

The upper body of a bird of prey.

The lower body of a tiger.

As humans ran and screamed, I dashed forward—right in front of the child—and stomped my paw into the Soil Drake’s gaping maw.

“Grrrrrr....”

“ScreeEEEE!”

A burning sensation near my heart.

Electricity surged through my front paw like a thunderclap.

The lightning, controlled by my ability, shot straight through the beast—burning the ground into a circle and reducing the Soil Drake to ash.

I had used the power of Thunderfang—the tiger that swallowed lightning.

Looking down, I saw the mother and child trembling in fear.

“H-Hiiieee?!”

“Waaahhh!”

To them, I was a monster far worse than the Soil Drake.

Then came the wailing sirens—far louder than before.

Through the monster’s senses, I could feel it—fear and caution from a strong opponent.

Delicious.

Turning my gaze, I saw them—heroes aiming their weapons at me, pale with dread, as the remaining Soil Drakes fled underground.

“D-Despair class! Despair-class monster has appeared! Requesting backup! NOW!”

The hero who had been leading the student Espers screamed into his radio.

I crouched, adjusting my stance—ready to leap at any moment.

Despair-class monster, huh?

That was their evaluation of me now, after I activated the monster core and tapped into this power.

Monster threat levels, from lowest to highest:

Lethal, Crusher, Calamity, Despair, and Obliteration class.

If I were an Esper, Despair-class would be equivalent to S-rank.

It’s said that if there’s no hero of the same class on site, the only option is to abandon the city.

Obliteration-class is worse—you abandon the country.

I watched the tense heroes carefully, knowing it was probably the core’s energy setting off their sensors.

Then I pushed off on all fours—and leapt over them.

“Wha—?! H-He’s fleeing?!”

I never planned to fight.

Never even meant to transform.

As the urgent backup requests echoed behind me, I slipped out of the cemetery—before things got too annoying.