“S-stop chasing me!”

“Die!”

“…Hmm.”

What should I do? Should I help?

Various thoughts swirled in my mind.

Investigator Lee Ha-Yul is overwhelming the person who looks like a rabbit, and Iris is fighting evenly with the person presumed to be a chicken.

The problem is Lyla. She seems to be in danger.

It wasn’t even a fight. She’s just being chased around like a game of tag.

“The inferior student setting, did I include it for nothing…”

The setting I included to use her as a villain ended up being a hindrance.

The investigator over there made good use of an almost forgotten setting.

As I was thinking about how to deal with him, I suddenly remembered something.

The setting that investigator Lee Ha-Yul and teacher Claire were close friends in the past.

Thanks to that setting, I could easily recruit him as an ally.

I recalled that Claire suffered from PTSD due to some incident and retired from the front lines.

…If the investigator is a close friend of teacher Claire, he must have experienced that incident with her. With that thought, I asked the Author, and sure enough,

The answer was that it was possible, so I convinced the Author to modify the setting slightly.

There’s no way the investigator could avoid the PTSD that teacher Claire also suffers from.

The investigator is human too.

Three close friends from school days.

What if they were doing well together on the front lines, and two of them became investigators?

And what if that person was attacked by a villain due to a moment of carelessness and lost his life?

What if teacher Claire was shocked, suffered from PTSD, and retired from the field, and the other chose to chase down the killer in revenge?

I thought of that, so I had it created.

The existence of a friend who was closer than anyone else, who was no longer here.

And the mastermind who made the friend disappear.

“I was just happily thinking the setting was well made…”

A sigh escaped.

Like a snowball that grew from a single setting of Claire, this time, too, a single setting was rolling like a snowball.

Lyla is weak.

This is firmly established as a setting. The Author has mentioned before that she can forcibly twist the setting, but will she take the risk for Lyla’s sake?

Probably not. She was reluctant when I tried to save her.

From the Author’s perspective, Lyla is just someone who doesn’t matter whether she lives or dies.

I felt upset.

“…Author-nim. Did you say you can forcibly twist the setting?”

[Well… It’s possible, but if I twist it too much, it becomes neither this nor that, so I can’t overuse it and have to push it a bit.]

“What do you mean by neither this nor that?”

[Well, if it’s a setting that fits the context like the investigator, it’s not a burden…]

The Author’s explanation was not very difficult.

It’s a simple story.

A setting inconsistency.

…For example, what if there was a description of Amelia eating a meal, and then in the very next scene, she’s having a lunch date with Siwoo?

It would feel awkward. To me, to the Author, and to the readers who are reading the novel.

[I don’t really know what will happen if the context is severely broken. I’ve rarely tried it because it’s dangerous.]

“I see…”

I was convinced.

The Author probably has no intention of taking a risk to help Lyla.

It was strange that I felt down about such an obvious fact.

“It can’t be helped. The employee’s risk is…huh?”

[Oh, that. She hasn’t taken it yet.]

Lyla, who had been running away, hastily swallowed something from her bosom when she had a brief moment of respite.

I think that’s what I gave her last time.

The medicinal pill I gave her as a reward, saying she would become stronger if she ate it.

She still hadn’t eaten it?

“I thought she ate it and was still weak.”

I was about to move to help Lyla, but I decided to watch a little longer.

… That’s right. No matter how weak she was, she was about to get a little stronger now.

No matter how slow she is to learn, she’s bound to improve a little if she consistently practices.

Her fighting style changed, and her movements were better than when I first saw her, so I absentmindedly thought she had eaten it.

“…Interesting. Don’t you think so, Mr. Monkey?”

“Ugh, ugh…!”

“Don’t worry. It’s too early for you to die yet.”

It would be easy to kill everyone, but you never know.

It should be fine to have a few hostages.

I adjusted my posture and decided to watch what Lyla was trying to do.

I wonder what will happen.

“…But Author-nim, what does that strengthen?”

[Hmm, who knows!]

“…Sigh. You don’t intend to tell me again.”

[Because you’ll see it soon anyway! Spoilers are forbidden!]

***

“You…!”

“Huff, cough…”

The sound of her heartbeat was loud.

‘Is it a side effect of taking the medicinal pill?… Damn it. I should have eaten it when she gave it to me.’

She thought she was going to die from the pain the first time, so why would the second be any different?*

Feeling her body burning up, she gently closed her eyes.

It was so quiet that only her breathing could be heard, let alone any attacks… What’s going on?

She forced herself to raise her head and look at the guy chasing her and slightly regretted it.

‘What’s with those half-crazed eyes? It’s creepy.’

“…What is that medicinal pill? Where did you get it from?!”

“What…are you talking about?”

“Your body…! Until a moment ago, you only had ears and a tail!”

“…What?”

“What are those fangs? Where the hell did you get that medicine from!”

…Fangs?

Without thinking, she touched her teeth at his words. She felt something long and sharp.

What is this?

“The medicinal pills of Übermensch don’t increase compatibility no matter how many you take them!… Where did you get that medicine from!”

“Ha, haha. …Well. I’m sorry, but I don’t really know either.”

“If you won’t tell me, I’ll make you talk by force. If we have that medicinal pill, we won’t need to follow the plan!”

Forget running away. It seemed he had no intention of letting Lyla go because the medicinal pill she took was an important item.

Damn it, nothing’s working out.

“…I really didn’t want to use this.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t kill you!”

It was an ability she thought she would never use, but now that she was cornered like this, she had no other choice.

There were no allies around and no objects that she shouldn’t break.

The only thing that existed was the enemy threatening her.

Then, it was time for her ability to shine… She had rarely used it because she couldn’t control it, but somehow it would work out.

Whenever she used her ability,

Nothing remained.

“You said it was a medicinal pill that makes me stronger?”

“Uoooooooo!”

“I hope that monster-like guy is gone when I open my eyes.”

Crack, crackle.

Along with the sound of something cracking, her vision went dark.

***

Kwang!

A sound that doesn’t seem like flesh colliding with flesh.

Minos felt puzzled by the impact felt along with such a sound.

“…What?”

It was a dull impact.

A sensation as if he had collided with something solid.

This was a feeling he had only felt from superhumans with strong defensive abilities.

He didn’t think the woman who ran away at the sight of him would have that level of defense.

“What is this…”

He turned around. And immediately regretted it.

It was more shocking than he had imagined.

“A monster? No, that can’t be. She should have been human.”

“Grrr…”

“It seems she’s not in her right mind.”

“Raaaar!”

She’s human. But she’s not human.

She clearly walked on two legs like a human and had two arms.

But those crazed eyes.

The purple fur covering her entire body made it difficult to see her as human.

“…It seems she’s gone crazy. What the hell is this?”

“Awoooooo!”

She looked exactly like the creatures from the textbooks of his childhood.

A being that is human yet wolf.

The fearsome existence rumored to go berserk with bloodlust on the night of the full moon.

Despite efforts to coexist with them, everyone feared their ferocity that went on a rampage whenever the full moon rose.

“Werewolf…”

He looked up at the sky.

The brightly shining round shape of the moon evoked an eerie feeling.

If the old tales were true, he had to run away right now. It was an extremely dangerous situation.

…But Minos did not run away. Because he had something he had to do.

“I don’t know why you suddenly transformed like that and went crazy…! But I must find out! The true nature of that medicinal pill you took!”

“Raaaar!”

“Übermensch cannot overcome any more dangerous hurdles…!”

Sharp teeth and claws.

Eyes engulfed in madness.

He did not run away even when confronted with a monster barehanded and without any support.

Because there was something he had to find out.

Despite knowing the danger, Minos decided to fight head-on.

“Come at me!”

The time for the hunt had begun.

Ruminas, are you excited too?

Wouldn’t it be bad if we get attention by playing around like immature kids?

I think the results might not come out next week, either.

What if I eat it? It will be delayed even more, huh…