Aberrant

Biodata

Power Progression

Aberrants grow stronger through successive mutations. Devouring Awakened accelerates this process, and repeated mutation can eventually make conventional firearms ineffective 6 19.

• Rank is not a complete measure of combat ability. Xu Ye finds the school’s spider-type Aberrant substantially more dangerous than the stray dog, despite comparing them as creatures of the same rank 36.
• Energy readings are estimates, not guarantees. Investigators explicitly consider the possibility that an apparently weak Aberrant is concealing its strength 26.

Background / History

Aberrants first appeared approximately a hundred years before Xu Ye’s arrival. According to Meng Chengfei, an unidentified event contaminated 70% of humanity—more than five billion people—and caused worldwide aberrations. The Federation responded with a nuclear purge. This catastrophe became the 001 Contamination Incident, classified at the highest threat level, Annihilation 5 15.

The Federation subsequently collapsed, and some of the remaining population gathered in the Five Great Safe Zones. Memories of the original events were erased because knowledge of them could itself cause contamination and aberration. The surviving historical account presented the catastrophe as a nuclear war; Xu Ye later discovers that records had been rewritten 5 22.

The 001 incident also destabilized the Heavenly Dao. Since then, intense negative emotions have sometimes caused people to become contaminated and turn into new sources. Around seventy coded incidents occurred within Sky City’s jurisdiction over thirty years, with their frequency increasing markedly during the last decade 5 40.

Appearance

• No single body plan: Physical aberration can produce tentacle-like hands, freely rotating necks, additional limbs, or extensive changes to the entire body 5.
• Human–animal combinations: The stray dog has two heads, one bearing an elderly man’s face; human feet replace its paws, and bundled human hair forms its tail 2.
• Spider-like forms: Lin Aiqiao and several school Aberrants develop additional pale legs around the waist or abdomen and crawl with distorted limbs 27 33 34.
• Bodies need not appear alive: Zhang Jian’s true body is a preserved corpse embedded in concrete, with an opened torso and exposed organs. His apparent life outside the wall is a manifestation 47.
• Some remain outwardly ordinary: Contamination sources can work, attend school, and live among other people until a trigger causes them to erupt 6.

Personality & Behavior

Aberration affects both body and mind, but its manifestations vary. Meng Chengfei describes self-destructive tendencies, volatility, enjoyment of mutilation, and increasingly extreme hostility toward other people. Some individuals become mentally confused and incapable of communication; others retain substantial reason or enough intelligence to conceal their condition 5 6 11 26.

A person’s former obsessions can shape their behavior after mutation. The old-man Aberrant continues searching for his grandson, Lin Aiqiao targets men, and Zhang Jian’s resentment and guilt spread into his surroundings. These fixations can also provide a means of intervention: recreating the grandson’s image briefly restores the old man’s senses and stops his attacks 17 26 47.

Abilities & Skills

Contamination

• Multiple transmission routes: Blood, saliva, mental influence, sight, and hearing can transmit contamination to humans or nonhuman creatures 5.
• Source and secondary victims: An Aberrant may originate a pollution incident or be created through exposure to another source, as with the stray dog in FKC_066 5.
• Object-mediated infection: The old man spreads contamination through Missing Person Notices or direct contact, making affected creatures regard him as their grandfather 15 29.
• Targeted infection: The school outbreak spreads through Spider Silk and emotional appeals to struggling students, producing an obsessive compulsion to study 33 34.
• Variable infectiousness: Lin Aiqiao’s initial investigation finds no confirmed infected victims, leaving her identification as the source provisional 26 29.

Physical Mutation & Combat

• Enhanced strength and speed: Even after losing one head, the stray dog overwhelms an ordinary Xu Ye wielding an F-rank Taboo Object 2 3.
• Regeneration: The old-man Aberrant regenerates a finger shortly after Zheng Chengdong’s gunfire destroys it 17.
• Hardened bodies: Wu Xiuxiu’s spider-type form develops steel-hard limbs and tough, elastic skin 36.
• Specialized attacks: Documented weapons include bone spikes, elongated fingers and toes, toxic claws, and arrows formed from bonded spider silk 3 15 16 36.
• Unreliable weak points: Shooting the school spider Aberrant in the forehead releases small spiders rather than killing her; ordinary anatomical assumptions do not apply 36.

Illusions & Emotional Influence

• Spatial illusions: The stray dog’s ordinary head controls an illusion that traps Xu Ye on the fourteenth floor and makes the stairwell appear to contract like a digestive tract 2.
• Resonant illusions: The mountain outbreak uses a chorus of affected creatures to entrap the Ninth Team. Xu Ye’s disruptive singing breaks the chorus and shatters the illusion 14.
• Mental attacks: The old man releases a mental shock wave, while Wu Xiuxiu induces profound sorrow during combat 15 36.
• Emotional contamination: Zhang Jian spreads despair and other negative emotions; Xu Ye’s simulation warns that unchecked spread could affect all of Night Spirit City 46.

Manifestation

• Tangible projections: Zhang Jian manifests himself outside his sealed corpse and produces fish associated with the sewage pollution he remembers 47.
• Hidden source: Destroying his computer equipment does not resolve the incident; Xu Ye must locate his true body inside the wall 46.
• Persistent constructs: The fish heads cannot be permanently dealt with while the underlying body remains undiscovered 46.

Heavenly Dao Distortion & Defiled Domains

• Environmental consequences: Contamination sources can distort the Heavenly Dao, creating supernatural phenomena such as apparitions and Mirror Spirits. Only a minority of incidents produce this distortion 5.
• Irreversible effects: Meng Chengfei states that the distortion cannot be reversed and its resulting phenomena cannot simply be eliminated, though countermeasures exist 5.
• Third-mutation power: All Aberrants develop a defiled domain after their third mutation. The old man’s emerging domain begins sealing an area several hundred meters across before Xu Ye intervenes 16 17.

Detection & Countermeasures

Notable Aberrants & Incidents