She was saved…
Chloe’s heart pounded wildly, nearly leaping out of her throat, the edges of her pupils trembling in fear while electric currents of excitement surged through her brain.
“Who told you to meddle?”
She glanced at the girl and said stubbornly, “This little thing? I could handle it myself!”
A normal person would have exploded in anger at those words, but the girl’s refined face remained calm. Her black-and-white pupils made Chloe panic.
The girl knelt gracefully, her slender hand brushing her snow-white neck as she gathered her satin-like black hair into her palm, her posture elegant and beautiful. Tilting her head, she asked, “The first banquet is about to start. Aren’t you going?”
Chloe was stunned. “You’re an invitee too?”
“Yes. Next, I’m heading to the depths of the factory. What about you?” the girl asked.
“I’m going too,” Chloe said, proactively extending her hand. “Chloe.”
“Nina.”
The two shook hands, forming a temporary alliance.
The girl and the loli crawled forward along the pipes, hands and feet working together.
From behind, Chloe saw the girl’s seductive waist and hip curves—slim where it should be, impressively curvaceous where it shouldn’t skimp.
“Hey, I still don’t know what you’re planning,” she asked.
“To free my mother, then go back and kill my father, and burn down that villa in one go.”
Nina’s tone was as flat as if she were talking about something unrelated to her.
“Huh?”
Chloe was momentarily stunned, but she’d seen plenty, so she wasn’t overly surprised. She muttered, “You’re quite the filial daughter, huh.”
“Stop.”
The girl halted above a small room, peering down.
“What’s wrong?” Chloe whispered.
“His birth father was a pig, but he’s my half-brother from the same mother. Wordsworth, bearer of the cursed bloodline… We’ll cooperate: one distracts him, the other snatches the Hunger Key from his hand.” The girl explained concisely.
“Huh? Can we really grab it? What happens if that spike stabs you? And what’s with the holes in the pigs?” Chloe had a bellyful of questions.
“The holes infinitely amplify your strongest desire—the thing you want to do most. What’s your desire?” Nina turned her face, staring into Chloe’s eyes.
“What I want most… is to break a huge story.”
“Huh?” Now it was Nina’s turn to be puzzled.
“I’m a reporter.” Chloe shrugged.
“Then you must run fast. You’ll distract Wordsworth’s attention. I’ll grab the Hunger Key.”
“Alright. What a weird adventure.”
Since the girl had just saved her life, Chloe didn’t doubt her. She leaped down lightly, landed, dashed to the little giant, and kicked his big toe hard!
The little giant shuddered, his toe hurting like he’d kicked a table leg. He strained to look down, but his bulging belly blocked the view.
“Tch tch tch, stupid fatty. Can you even see your own toes?”
An annoying little girl’s voice came from the unseen spot.
“Ah… ah…”
The mountain of flesh quaked like an earthquake, waves of meat rolling, tiny sweat droplets flying through the air.
It wasn’t over. Chloe kicked the now-red toe again!
“Wah! Wah! Bad thing!”
Wordsworth swung his arm, tilting his body, his fan-like giant hand slapping down!
Boom!
With a deafening sonic boom, the floor shattered like an explosion, shards flying outward!
Chloe’s soul nearly fled in terror; she barely avoided being flattened into a meat patty and bolted away, escaping the little giant’s attack range.
Meanwhile, Nina seized the moment to snatch the Shepherd’s Crook.
Both retreated to the wall, while the little giant, unable to even shift his body, flailed like a tantruming child, desperately grabbing.
Gusts of wind buffeted Chloe’s face, forcing her eyes shut. Backed against the wall with nowhere to go, her heart in her throat—but the distance always fell just short.
The two hugged the wall as they left the small room, heading deeper into the slaughterhouse.
The conveyor’s end was a funnel-shaped plaza, the pit bottom piled with feed, teeming with ten thousand pigs.
Activated by the Hunger Key’s black holes, their feeding desire infinitely amplified, they vacuumed in the feed like a storm. The pigs sent earlier had grown to calf size, their meat yield absurdly massive.
Though Chloe didn’t know where Nina was headed, as an investigative reporter, she’d risk her life for a big scoop. She smelled the sweet scent of traffic, her eyes gleaming strangely.
Nina occasionally checked her blueprint, taking the shortest path straight to the destination.
Minutes later, they reached an elevator.
The old wooden compartment descended with clanging vibrations. Chloe trembled with excitement—the Breeding Farm had underground structures! It must hide terrible secrets!
“You…” The black-haired girl side-eyed the loli beside her. “Whether you use the Hunger Key or not, you’d be like this, right?”
“Of course! Breaking big news is the drive of my life! I won’t stop unless I die!” Chloe said smugly.
Clang!
The elevator stopped before a leaky passage made of mesh iron plates, a labyrinth of twisting paths lined with closed doors on both sides. The air was damp and dim, reeking of wet mold and fecal stench.
At the passage’s end was a room. Their eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dark when they spotted a writhing shadow mass, accompanied by terrifying gasps and scorching heat!
“What is that…”
Chloe recoiled two steps in fright.
Nina silently hung the lantern on a high iron grate. The reporter loli finally saw it clearly—a monster combining a pig’s body, even more massive and bloated than little giant Wordsworth, fused with a woman’s head!
Its skin wasn’t thick and tough like pig hide but an extremely thin human skin faintly showing veins. The excessive fat made the skin abnormally soft, like melted cheese. The woman’s features were distorted by dragging fat, flowing toward the neck and merging with layered neck flesh into a grotesque, ominous melted-candle shape.
A primal fear rose in Chloe’s heart, hammering her rational foundation. She wanted to scream desperately, but only trembling breaths escaped.
The woman was still young, but inhuman torment aged her decades. Her hair was nearly gone, leaving only a few strands of pale, limp fuzz.
The massive pig body lay sideways on the hay pile, its chest and abdomen sagging with hundreds of udder sacs like a fungus-eaten beehive—some elongated, some bruised and wrinkled, some necrotic into rotten sores. Beneath, a group of piglets bared huge flat teeth, gnawing and suckling pus.
On closer look, these piglets all had human faces!
–
In a dark alley, Ashley wrapped her black robe tightly, adjusted her mask, then headed to the Boothslot Family Villa with the Silver Ram Horn in hand.
Her build was similar to Chloe’s, and with the mask and robe, she wouldn’t arouse suspicion.
Back in the second-floor guest room, Chloe’s suitcase remained. Opening it, she found the little demon wore cotton panties printed with a stupid frog face. Heh heh, next time they met, she’d tease her properly.
Ding-a-ling…
Soon, the intercom rang—the butler calling that departure time had arrived.
Ashley had just gone upstairs, so she headed back down.
Several carriages waited at the door.
She scanned the passengers: six including herself.
Strange…
Two were missing?
Ashley had counted at the station: eight black-robed people total.
The invitees varied wildly in size—some so huge the carriage roof had to be removed to fit—and she and another small one rode a two-wheeler without crowding.
The butler emerged, now in a brand-new tailcoat, patent leather shoes gleaming, hair slicked tight with pomade.
“We won’t wait for late guests. Let’s depart now. The first meal is just the ‘appetizer.'”
In the carriage, Ashley occasionally stole glances at her small neighbor. From the faintly visible slender figure under the black robe, she seemed female, with tiny gloves and shoes. A loli?
Huff… huff…
After some distance, the neighbor’s breathing grew heavy. She turned, staring at Ashley. A soft, sweet voice said, “You smell fragrant… so fragrant…”
Then, the small body leaned over, mumbling, “I wanna eat.”
Her voice sounded so pitiful it was hard to refuse.
“Huh? This?” Ashley pulled out her bento box. “Is it okay to eat a stranger’s food?”
“Not this… big squid… I want big squid…”
The girl lifted her mask atop her head, revealing a lazy, pretty little face: thick curly lashes, eyes misty with enigma, below a cute slightly upturned nose with plump, meaty lips.
She grabbed Ashley’s wrist, fixated on the Squid Sleeve Sword, drool trickling from her mouth.
Ashley froze. “Huh? That’s poisonous!”
