Special Hazardous Item - Pain Hound

"Woof..."

The gaze of that mysterious presence instantly triggered a qualitative change in the three hounds.

A series of cracking sounds came from within their bodies as an invisible force twisted them, making them larger and stronger. At the same time, the various colors of their fur rapidly faded, revealing tough, ugly skin. Thick, twisted blood vessels crawled all over their bodies, looking like terrifying spiderwebs.

Some kind of abnormal substance was being rapidly pumped into their hearts through the blood vessels, thumping like a drum.

The three hounds simultaneously let out low growls.

The air around their bodies was distorted by an intense aura of danger. Their forms became blurry, with only their dark red eyes remaining sharply visible.

Even their long canine teeth turned an eerie dark red, carrying a bloody scent, and nearly doubled in length.

"This effect..."

Xiao Xiao was shocked at this moment, feeling a strong sense of familiarity.

It was the nightmare of those four years.

With this enhancement, these three dogs no longer resembled anything that could exist in the real world, but rather twisted monsters that could only appear in nightmares.

This intense visual impact caused Xiao Xiao to pause for a moment.

As if some connection had formed in his mind, lines of new information clearly appeared:

[Special Hazardous Object: Pain Hound]
[Danger Level: Class C]
[Ability Description: Rampant Pain Substance has caused extremely twisted changes in them. From now on, they are no longer dogs, but special dogs.]
[Note: Damn, there's poison in the dogs...]
[……]

"What the hell?"

Xiao Xiao, who had been somewhat frightened by the appearance of the three hounds, was thrown into emotional turmoil by this somewhat irreverent introduction.

But he immediately turned back, meeting the eerie, terrifying eyes of the three hounds, or rather, the three Pain Hounds. Suppressing the discomfort of his frantically beating heart, he commanded with a completely expressionless, cold face:

"Tear these things apart..."

"Woof..."

The three hounds reacted simultaneously, immediately charging around him.

The force of their impact was so strong that it instantly knocked the distorted figures swaying around Xiao Xiao off balance. Countless fleshy substances were torn apart and swallowed by them.

Gulp, gulp...

Under their frantic and terrifying charge, the intertwined, surging dark red tendrils in the coffee shop were instantly torn to pieces. The figures crowded together were also knocked away. It was as if a monster was being torn into pieces by them. Even the tendrils that had spread thirty or forty meters outside the coffee shop seemed to sense something and began to rapidly contract towards the center.

"How long has it been?"

Little Four, who was rapidly searching for the group of people outside the coffee shop while cutting down the spreading vines of despair, suddenly noticed the contraction of the fleshy vines and was both surprised and delighted.

He knew that this was because the core of Pain was threatened, causing it to withdraw the spreading substance in order to protect itself.

But just how powerful was that newcomer to have frightened this Aberrant Creature in such a short time?

Inside the coffee shop, the space in front of Xiao Xiao had suddenly become spacious.

With three nightmare-like hounds guarding him, even the crowded, frantic dark red flesh substances were temporarily unable to spread to his front.

As if at the eye of a storm, he had found a moment of peace.

As he slowly walked forward, he saw the woman huddled on the sofa by the window.

The woman appeared completely non-aggressive, only trembling. Her body had undergone a large amount of Aberration. Her skin was torn, and faint dark red substances burst out from her wounds, sticking to the walls, sticking to the tables and chairs, constantly wriggling and spreading outwards. Everyone in the coffee shop, as well as the panicked and distressed crowd outside, were affected by this dark red substance.

Facing her directly, Xiao Xiao could feel the boiling of painful memories in his mind instantly increasing tenfold.

An invisible mental force affected his brain, as if he were seeing a series of illusions flashing before his eyes.

He saw himself being bullied at school, feeling despair and pain, dropping out of school, living in a mental hospital, taking medication day after day to numb himself, and mustering the courage to return to the real world.

She avoided everything that made her nervous, still intending to forget the pain and return to reality.

She picked up her coffee, looking at the world outside the window, a rare peaceful afternoon, as if all disasters would pass and the sun would finally begin to shine into her life.

As a rare sense of happiness descended, she suddenly saw the face of a demon appear before her, occupying her entire field of vision.

It smiled and greeted her kindly, as if nothing had happened.

"Huff..."

Xiao Xiao shook his head hard to clear himself from that deep despair and fear.

He looked incredulously at the woman at the core of Pain, unable to imagine that such a twisted and terrifying Despair Swamp originated from such a pitiful woman.

To laugh away hatred upon meeting again – for some, it might be the cruelest phrase in the world, right?

Stepping back, Xiao Xiao gripped his gun.

During the initial rush into the cafe, he had tried his best to knock people unconscious or let the three hounds wound them, avoiding killing anyone.

But facing the core of this despair, there was no other choice.

He had to kill her.

Or rather, she was already dead. Reason and humanity had long been extinguished, leaving only a twisted, maddened memory, spreading like tendrils of pain.

But...

Xiao Xiao had already raised his gun, but he didn't pull the trigger.

He glanced sideways at the woman in front of her – the terrified clerk. She still seemed to retain her sanity, even though her body was enveloped in dark red Pain Substance, trembling in fear.

She was desperately pleading for help with her eyes.

Having sensed the memories of the Pain Core, Xiao Xiao naturally recognized who this woman was.

The instigator, the source of the nightmare.

However, the Pain Substance emanating from the Pain Core was causing countless people inside and outside the coffee shop to experience pain, even plunging them into deep chaos.

Yet, the very instigator, the one closest to it, still retained her sanity.

It was almost unimaginable...

But feeling the aura emanating from them at close range, Xiao Xiao vaguely understood the answer.

Pain Substance could affect a person's mind, making them involuntarily recall painful events and suffer attacks. But there was one exception: someone like this clerk.

She and the Pain Core had shared a period of time together, but without similar experiences.

The Pain Core's desperate, even maddening experiences were, to her, just some minor jokes, not worth mentioning, so naturally, she couldn't feel them.

She didn't even understand how she had suddenly encountered a monster.

No wonder he had disliked this woman from the start; it turned out she was a monster herself...

Xiao Xiao suddenly found it laughable.

The differences between people were too great. Even if you turned into a monster, you couldn't expect the other person to feel the pain you once felt.

Silently tightening his grip on the gun, he looked at the clerk, whose mouth was taped shut, but her eyes pleaded, pleading for him to quickly shoot and kill the monster, to save her.

Xiao Xiao looked at her and suddenly smiled.

Then, he reached out, pulled her over, and pushed her onto the broken woman's body.

Countless hostile Pain Substance instantly pierced the female clerk's body, and a desperate, terrified muffled roar rose from her throat.

And Xiao Xiao aimed at her and continuously pulled the trigger.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Xiao Xiao had brought six bullets in total, and now, without hesitation, he emptied the entire magazine.

The bullets pierced the clerk's body, flew out from her front, and struck the Pain Core's body, destroying the remaining physiological functions of her broken form.

All the Pain Substance seemed to scream in despair as if it had a life of its own, swelling to its extreme, then slowly subsiding.

Inside the coffee shop, all the writhing dark red substance stopped moving at that moment. Those who were being tormented by the dark red substance to the point of near madness also felt a sense of relief at that moment.

Although the dark red substance still existed, and their bodies were still trembling from the pain, it seemed that the pain had reached its peak at that moment, no longer intensifying, but slowly beginning to recede from their minds.

Xiao Xiao didn't care about the changes around him; he only looked at the Pain Core through the clerk.

In the instant before her life was about to end, she seemed to briefly regain her sanity. She saw the clerk dying tragically in her arms, saw the fear and despair frozen on her face.

Her pupils dilated slightly, and a sense of relief seemed to quietly emerge.

The way to alleviate one's own pain wasn't just to silently heal alone, but also to make the other person feel one's pain and despair...

She might not have empathy and would never know how intense the harm she had caused was.

But it didn't matter; he could use other methods to make her feel pain.

It was all the same.

"Solved it?"

Just as Xiao Xiao emptied his gun and slowly lowered it, Little Four's voice sounded from behind.

Seeing that the Despair Tendrils had quickly retracted, he hurried back to the coffee shop, only to see Xiao Xiao slowly lowering the empty gun.

Looking at the female clerk twitching as she died, he was a little stunned. "Why did you kill her too? That's going to deduct points..."

"Oh..."

Xiao Xiao regained his composure, looked at the female clerk whose body was almost shattered by his bullets, and thought of many reasons.

But in the end, he just smiled and said, "It's nothing, I just wanted to test if bullets can penetrate a person's body..."

Little Four instantly froze, looked at Xiao Xiao's pale and relaxed smile, and took a step back...

Damn, he's a real pervert...

I'm in a good mood today. If you give me tickets, I'll be in an even better mood.