Beating the mantis half to death and interrogating it took roughly five or six minutes. Having learned the location of the House of Evolution's base, I finished off the monster, reported in to the Association, and was already preparing to leave the scene — when suddenly... I noticed something small and incredibly fast moving through the air... a flying camera, as it turned out when I caught it in my hand mid-jump.
"Aha..." — crushing the little surveillance device, I shook my head with a smirk. "So releasing that monster onto the streets was part of a monitored experiment? Okay then, no point in waiting — I'm joining in right now!"
Leaving the scene of the fight, I headed straight to my teacher's dojo. However confident I was in my own strength, the knowledge from canon told me clearly that I might not be able to handle the House of Evolution's final boss on my own. Asura Kabuto — that was the name of that monster — was a Dragon-level creature, and if you were to rank all members of that class in a column, his strength placed him somewhere from the middle of the list all the way toward the top, yielding only to the very strongest and most dangerous of beings. Simply put, at best five or six people from all of S-Class had any chance of defeating Asura in a one-on-one fight — the rest would lose to the monster without a single chance at success. That was precisely why I visited Bang, sharing with him the story I had heard from the mantis.
Long ago there lived a young genius scientist — Genus. Using his intellect, he made an enormous contribution to the advancement of science. However, before long he began to lose faith in the world. No one understood his ideas about artificial evolution, or treated them with obvious skepticism. And over time, that wore him down. Having secured funding from wealthy individuals to whom he promised immortality, Doctor Genus began his own research. Long and long years passed — and finally... his efforts bore fruit. After turning seventy, he completed his first major project and reclaimed his youth.
Then he created numerous clones of himself. Then, having severed his connection to the world entirely, he founded the House of Evolution and set about experimenting with the creation of new species. He achieved a certain degree of success, raising monsters of Tiger, Demon, and eventually even Dragon level...
"And it's precisely the base of this genius that I'm planning to destroy — with your help, Teacher." — finishing my account, I looked questioningly at Bang standing before me. "That sounds like sufficient justification for involving someone from S-Class, doesn't it?"
"Hm, the House of Evolution..." — scratching his mustache, Bang gazed thoughtfully into the distance. "A couple of years ago I already heard that name. There was some kind of sect preaching about a new world, new humans, something of that nature — fanatical young people, in short... but if they've now sent a monster into the city, we'll have to deal with them seriously."
"So we're heading out?" — I raised an eyebrow.
"In a moment, I just need to give these lazybones an assignment." — nodding, Bang returned to the training hall for a couple of minutes, then came back out to me in more appropriate attire — his customary black turtleneck. "Lead the way, Garou — and along the way you can tell me how you've been finding hero work."
"Oh Teacher, do I have stories for you." — smirking, I began descending the mountain with the old man. Simultaneously telling him about everything I had encountered over the past few months. "For starters, on the very first day I had to rough up a couple of fellow heroes. Imagine — they showed up on my doorstep and..."
Chatting about various matters, we soon left the city behind and continued through the dense forest surrounding City Z. Even at the extremely fast pace we set through it, the journey still took just over two and a half hours. Until the moment when a multi-story tower — hidden behind towering trees and an adjacent mountain — appeared ahead of us, the only thing we had encountered along the way was a fairly aggressive bear, which we simply frightened off with our aura.
However, the moment we found ourselves within a few dozen meters of the structure that was the main building of the House of Evolution, an entire group of animal-like monsters came out to meet us. A gorilla clad in armor. An enormous mole. A frog with a katana at its belt. A humanoid slug. And the one who emerged last — standing slightly apart and towering over all his companions — a giant human-shaped lion standing on two legs, approximately seven meters tall, with impressive musculature, oversized claws, and a fairly formidable aura. Based on my senses and the Association's rating system, the lion was high Demon level, with ambitions of crossing into low Dragon... yes, something like that, probably...
"This one's mine!" — I shouted back to Bang, having already pushed off from the ground and vaulted over the heads of most of the monsters. "He seems quite strong." — I added, already standing directly before the lion towering over me.
"Be careful. The monster is indeed fairly powerful." — the old man gave a quiet sigh and, without taking his hands from behind his back, began walking unhurriedly toward the stunned monsters. "I'll cover your back, young man — don't get distracted."
"GHAAAHAHAHAHA." — meanwhile, the lion stared down at me with his small eyes and laughed in a perfectly human voice. "YOU DARE CHALLENGE ME — THE KING OF BEASTS?! IT SEEMS I MUST MAKE YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'VE GOTTEN YOURSELF INTO! DIE!"
The monster's already enormous claws extended even further. With a single sweep of his paw, the beast sliced through the air in four places at once — right where my head had been a moment before. Even though I managed to dodge, the shockwave from each claw traveled many dozens of meters and simply sheared away an entire layer of trees and a slab of earth somewhere behind me... along with killing a couple of monsters who hadn't managed to clear the trajectory of the strike in time. The King of Beasts clearly didn't care in the slightest.
"DON'T STAND IN MY WAY, WEAKLINGS! SUCH IS THE LAW OF THE JUNGLE! GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAR!!!"
Claw strikes rained down on me with incredible intensity. Thanks to his size, the lion could attack from three directions at once: left, right, and of course from above.
For the first couple of seconds, I let him lead the exchange entirely. Deflecting and redirecting the most dangerous blows, I retreated a couple of steps each time. Then I abruptly planted my left foot into the ground and began redirecting the strikes to the sides without moving from the spot at all. The beast also stopped advancing, forced to remain in place while continuing to attack me with his claws. Then — suddenly, though only from his perspective — one of his own attacks sliced open his paw, barely stopping short of severing it entirely. A split second of confusion from the King of Beasts, and my fist was already driving into his lower abdomen. Doubling over, he tried to reach me again with his still-intact limb and even used his leg for an attack for the first time. But it was already too late. Spinning around my own axis at incredible speed, like a tornado, and constantly "lifting off the ground," I simultaneously redirected his lunges back at him — cutting the beast with his own claws — while delivering my own strikes. To the lower abdomen, to the middle, to the upper body, to the sternum, to the neck, and finally the last blow — the hardest one — a heel strike to the massive fanged jaw.
The monster's skull shattered to pieces, spraying blood and brains across the surrounding area...
"A technique from the Void Fist style, unless my eyes deceive me..." — at the moment I landed on the ground, almost simultaneously with the thunderous crash of the massive carcass, Bang's interested voice came from beside me. "Have you really managed to master it to this level and combine it with my Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist in such a short time?"
"Teacher, I didn't take this break from your lessons just to idle about." — giving a brief smirk in response, I looked around the area. "I see I wasn't wrong in my choice of opponent — were the rest all weaklings? Or did you simply not hold back?"
"Most of them were killed by your opponent's claws." — nodding toward the body of the monster lion and shrugging, Bang turned toward the tower rising above the surroundings. "Let's move — if we dawdle, the instigators of this mess may try to flee."
"Right." — nodding, I followed along. "Teacher, I have a strange feeling that we shouldn't be heading upward, but looking for a way to get to the very bottom..."
Disguising my knowledge of the canon as a suddenly sharpened instinct, I fairly quickly stumbled upon a well-reinforced hatch leading down into a basement... or rather, into a proper underground base, with numerous corridors, rooms, and laboratories. Among other things we didn't understand much of, there were entire halls filled with capsules of green liquid, inside which various creatures were visible — clearly not yet developed into their final form. Some looked more like humans, others like obvious monsters... in one of them I found the Mosquito Girl known to me from canon. At this point she was already developed enough to be easily distinguished from the others, but had clearly not yet been released... interesting — perhaps if we could get the owner of this place back on a righteous path, we might be able to make something less dangerous for ordinary people out of her? Remove the gene responsible for the desire to exterminate humanity, or something...
Moving through the empty corridors of the underground complex, Bang and I hadn't found a single fully-formed living being — until... we suddenly sensed a rapidly approaching murderous aura.
"Be ready, Garou." — the old man warned me as a precaution, frowning barely noticeably. "Something is approaching."
Directing my attentive gaze into the depths of what had previously been an empty long corridor, I fairly quickly made out two figures rapidly closing in on us. One enormous, humanoid, and simultaneously resembling a rhinoceros beetle in many ways: a carapace, a horn on its head, a pair of thin wings. And the second — a perfectly human-looking figure — a young, beaten-up young man in glasses, with sharp facial features and black hair.
Him the monster was carrying along beside it, gripping him firmly by the neck...
Apparently these two had been talking about something between themselves, but we couldn't make it out. And in any case, barely a second later, the giant rhinoceros beetle dropped its cargo onto the ground and loomed over Bang and me with an extremely bloodthirsty grin.
"Yo, the name's Asura Kabuto." — he introduced himself as casually as one could imagine, spreading his limbs to either side. "There's a special room for combat trials here. Shall we settle this there?"