“Keugh….”
Even though he was thrown onto a mattress-covered bed, the grip choking Nabin’s throat had been so crushing it felt like his neck might snap, and the force that flung him away was so fierce his eyes burst with bloodshot veins like Gong Min’s.
Tears slipped from his wide eyes, darkening the black sheets beneath him. Nabin crawled across the bed, trying desperately to put distance between them, but it was hopeless.
“Hhuuk….”
Gong Min seized his legs, twisting him around, and began tearing his clothes apart without hesitation. Nabin thrashed wildly, but his resistance was meaningless against that strength.
Compared to this, all the violence Nabin had endured until now felt like child’s play. Gong Min’s crushing force was beyond anything he could imagine.
“A-ahhhk…!”
Even without gripping with full strength, Gong Min made Nabin’s fragile bones snap with ease. Just pinning him down to stop him from escaping was enough to make his body break apart like brittle reeds.
“Khhuugh… a-ah, it hurts… huuhh…”
Maybe a rib had punctured his lungs—blood surged up with his cough, thick and dark. The metallic taste barely registered. Pain flooded in endlessly, half-shattering his consciousness.
Under Gong Min’s massive frame, Nabin was nearly invisible. Only his small, pale feet stuck out beneath that broad back, now bristling with sleek black fur.
Each brutal thrust of those muscle-bound hips sent his dangling feet shaking helplessly, their pallor turning bluish as circulation failed.
“Ah… uhh…”
Tiny, broken whimpers seeped past bloodied lips bitten raw, so faint they could barely be heard unless one strained to listen.
The sound filling the room wasn’t flesh meeting flesh. It was the violent thud of a boxer pummeling a sandbag with all his might, reverberating in the heated air.
Nabin’s wide eyes had rolled back, whites overtaking the irises. To survive, his mind detached itself. Each movement from Gong Min split flesh, cracked bone, shattered his body further.
The sight was unbearable, horrific. The black sheets were already dyed darker by his blood.
Shredded scraps of fabric, useless as clothing, lay strewn like trash on the floor—yet Nabin was treated worse than rags. As a Guide, as a person, he was granted no respect. The violation ground his psyche to pieces, mercilessly crushing his spirit.
In the den of a beast consumed by instinct, Nabin hung limp, powerless. There was nothing he could do.
Only a single hopeless wish remained: for time—dragging like days within each passing minute—to move faster. For anyone at all to make it pass more quickly.
Through the flickering dark and bursts of blinding white across his vision, he thought he saw his father weeping.
Dad… please save me…
Tears streamed down his cheeks in uneven trails. His body had long since been drenched in blood. Screaming didn’t ease the pain, so he gritted his teeth until his face was swollen red, like the burst veins in his eyes.
Once clear, his gaze was now stained red, warped into something inhuman, no different from Gong Min’s.
Despite Nabin’s ruined, pitiful state, Gong Min’s eyes showed no trace of guilt. Only the murky pupils of a beast, trembling with each movement.
“……”
Only when Nabin’s faint breaths nearly ceased did Gong Min’s reason slowly return.
“Why is this….”
He hurriedly pulled himself off. The condition of the one he’d just crushed was so terrible, he couldn’t believe he had done it.
This was a Guide he had never cared for. When told that some outsider was intruding into the home he shared with his friends, he’d felt slight discomfort, but nothing more.
That was the extent of it—no interest, no concern. Even when Han Jigang mentioned in passing that he had given the Guide the room tucked away in the farthest corner of the first floor, Gong Min barely listened.
Even when Tae Yishin warned him—saying the Guide was dangerous, that Jigang had already been half-bewitched—Gong Min ignored it. He never intended to receive Guiding anyway.
Among the three of them, Gong Min’s Outbreak Risk Index was the highest. Already past 60 at 62, the Center Director had ordered him to undergo Guiding first, but he ignored it.
The Guiding machine was enough. Better to die in an Outbreak than endure intimate contact with some stranger.
But that resolve began to waver because of Ryu Somin—crying, begging him to accept Guiding, saying he didn’t care about himself as long as he lived. Still, he resisted until his limits nearly broke.
When he went to the Center to use the machine, it rejected him. His unstable mana surged so violently, even the device refused him.
With no choice, he returned to the mansion. From that moment, his memories blurred. He faintly recalled Han Jigang and Tae Yishin panicking at the sight of him.
After that, he was locked in his room like a prisoner—restrained by his friends when he lost control.
With the last shreds of reason, he repeated to himself that they were his friends, crushing his own hand bones to stop himself from reaching for their throats.
Ever since his Outbreak Risk had passed 60, his mana had rampaged wildly, no longer recognizing its master—threatening even to devour him.
When he realized his body had slipped into Beastification without him noticing, he knew how dire it was.
Mana boiled in his veins, threatening to tear him apart. He thought he had to leave—because once his reason snapped completely, he would become nothing more than an animal ruled by instinct.
His last thread of reason was about to break. Then—the door opened, and someone was thrown inside.
The presence piercing his hypersensitive senses wasn’t familiar. Through blurred vision, he saw the Guide he had ignored.
His instincts knew immediately: prey. His rampaging mana craved the faint trace of Guiding mana radiating from the Guide. The pull was primal, hair-raising.
An overwhelming urge struck him—to pin the Guide beneath him, to tear into his body, and devour every drop of mana.
Whenever he used his ability, Gong Min moved by instinct. His silence and aloofness in daily life were nothing more than efforts to suppress the beast inside.
But the Guide before him was different. In Gong Min’s frayed state, the trembling figure—shaking so hard his clothes rustled—looked like prey found after a week of starvation.
His heart thundered uncontrollably, louder than ever, as his vision dimmed and reason slipped.
With the last fragments of control, he warned the Guide to leave. He was terrified of what he might do if he lost his mind completely.
But his reason had already collapsed. At some point, the desperate figure pounding on the door was suddenly right before his eyes.
After that, his memories broke into scattered fragments.
Whenever a shred of reason surfaced, he tried to stop himself. But the intoxicating sweetness of Guiding drove him insane.
Through their joined bodies, trickles of mana seeped into him, making his mind melt. The slowness of it only made his frenzy worse.
No matter how violently he forced the fragile body beneath him—barely half his size—the flow of mana stayed faint, never enough.
Only when that fragile stream of mana nearly snapped did his frenzy subside.
By then, Beastification had already receded. Gong Min stared at his own hands—tanned as always, trembling in his view.
The mana that had once threatened to tear his organs apart was now calm. His reason, once lost, returned just enough to perceive the devastation before him.
Thud.
With shaking fingertips, Gong Min touched Nabin’s limp body. Even that faint touch made his legs, spread too far, fall lifelessly onto the sheets.
His face, his eyes, were so thoroughly stained crimson it was hard to remember what he’d looked like.
Below that, it was worse. The marks of violence he had inflicted were carved deep into that pale body.
Where ribs had been, the bone had caved in, skin dark with necrosis. One arm was twisted grotesquely, bone threatening to pierce through.
His thighs and hips were torn open, soaked in blood. His ruined lower body was too horrific to look at.
“Haa…”
Gong Min dragged a sweat-drenched hand down his face. His body felt clearer and lighter than it had in ages—yet the one who had given him that clarity was on the verge of death.
Even his sharpened S-rank hearing barely caught the faintest breaths—so weak it wouldn’t be strange if they stopped at any moment. Crushing guilt filled him, and no matter how deeply he exhaled into the air, the weight remained.
