Became a Failed Experimental Subject-Chapter 19: How Cute...

[Is Yu Anna insane? She actually caught Mirage?!]

[Starlight, who took down a Despair-Class monster that even Cage from City A couldn’t handle—shouldn’t we start calling W-City the new A-City?]

[Star Punch! Star Punch! Star Punch!]

The day after Mirage, the Despair-Class monster that had fled from City A to W-City, was eliminated.

Reporters swarmed the Hero Association of W-City after the official announcement that Mirage had been completely neutralized.

Yu Anna, who agreed to be interviewed by a local W-City broadcast station, was explaining the damage alongside the other heroes.

“Twenty-seven seriously injured, eighty-nine with minor injuries, zero fatalities. As for structural damage, fifty-two buildings...”

[Fifty-two buildings? For real? She didn’t mean 52 kilometers or something?]

[I live in Sector 2, it's true. My house is fine.]

[My house is gone tho? My house is gone? My house is gone?!]

[Breaking news: City A is in chaos. People are furious, saying City A's heroes should be fired after seeing the damage report from W-City.]

[Was this even a Despair-Class? Mirage did less damage than when Black Cat went wild.]

[Go look up how much damage Mirage caused in City A before talking.]

[City A Mirage damage: 3 sectors completely wiped, unknown number of deaths. W-City Mirage damage: 52 buildings on the outskirts destroyed. W-City Black Cat damage: 17 orphanage directors, one whole sector.]

[Wasn’t that sector blown up by Starlight, not Black Cat?]

The damage W-City took from Mirage wasn’t just a miracle—it was so low, it felt absurd.

Only about fifty-two buildings—fixable within a week—and even the casualty rate was shockingly minimal.

Considering how many heroes usually get chewed up just dealing with a single Despair-Class, it almost felt like the government might be manipulating the data to reassure the public.

“I have a question! City A took significantly more damage than W-City. What explains this outcome?”

“We believe it’s due to Mirage’s unique characteristics. Without identifying its true form, it’s the kind of monster that will inevitably cause massive damage.”

In response to the reporter, a staff member from the Association turned on a TV and began playing footage.

“The Mirage we took down this time was named for its elusive nature—but the name turned out to be a perfect fit. We’ll be releasing part of the battle footage for reference.”

In the footage taken from the hero cams on site, Mirage’s form constantly shifted.

At first, viewers were impressed by the heroes’ teamwork—

But when they saw that none of their attacks had any effect, and Mirage kept regenerating immediately, a sense of dread spread.

No matter how many times they attacked, it just crawled forward like it felt nothing.

People started wondering—how the hell did they even manage to defeat that thing?

When Mirage released its smoke screen and heroes began collapsing one after another, the footage finally gave some idea of how City A could’ve taken such a massive hit.

But right after that came the clip of Yu Anna grabbing a giant clam and beating the crap out of it.

The tone shift from serious to utterly ridiculous caught the reporters off guard.

Several of them raised their hands in confusion, wondering if the footage had been edited incorrectly.

“Uh... what’s with the clam? What even is that...?”

“That is Mirage’s true body. What you saw earlier were illusions it created.”

“...Excuse me?”

According to the government’s official report, Mirage was a clam-shaped monster.

Its shell emitted illusions, while its clam flesh generated telekinesis.

That allowed it to launch physically damaging illusion attacks to confuse humans—

Even its hypnosis ability, once thought to be a unique power, was actually just advanced illusion.

Its shell was so tough that nothing short of an S-Class could break it.

Which meant, unless you pinpointed the real body and hit it with overwhelming force, it was basically invincible.

In that moment, the reason why City A’s S-Class hero Cage failed to catch Mirage became clear.

He’d thought he had it pinned with his power—but Mirage had been toying with him from beyond his range the entire time.

With that revelation, the reporters’ interest shifted away from Mirage.

“How did you locate Mirage’s true body?!”

“What do you think of Cage, the S-Class hero from City A who let Mirage slip away?”

“Was the fight against Mirage easy for you?”

Comparing one S-Class [N O V E L I G H T] hero to another is always a guaranteed way to get clicks.

Yu Anna, who had no interest in entertaining that crap, let out a sigh and ordered the announcement to be ended.

Once the government statement concluded, the internet exploded with chatter about the incident.

[Damn, Mirage was actually a pain in the ass to deal with. How the hell did Yu Anna catch it?]

[You don’t know what happened in Sector 2, huh? Yu Anna probably zoomed around using that “Eraser” move and happened to land a hit.]

[You mean the one that shredded the underground in Sector 2?]

[She said it wasn’t “Eraser,” it’s called “Meltdown.”]

[“Homeless Generator” sounds more accurate, tbh.]

[So basically she just beat the shit out of it until she figured out what the real body was and smashed it?]

[Yeah, she wrecked Sector 2, but she did take the monster down.]

[But why can’t she catch Black Cat?]

[Yu Anna beat a Despair-Class that humiliated S-Class hero Cage—yet she can’t catch Black Cat?]

[But Black Cat runs off every time she shows up, even spits out whatever monster he’s eating.]

[Maybe Black Cat’s actually scared of her?]

[Black Cat: “If I hurt people, Yu Anna’s gonna come kill me-nya. So I only eat monsters-nya.”]

[Weren’t those orphanage directors technically people?]

[They had rumors around them. If those rumors are true, Black Cat didn’t kill people—he killed animals.]

[Anyway, what matters is W-City is safe with Yu Anna around~]

The 𝘮ost uptodat𝑒 novels are pub𝙡ished on freeweɓnovēl.coɱ.

Somehow, Yu Anna had gone from being the hero who couldn’t catch a Despair-Class and just chased it around all day,

to the hero who had become so strong that even Despair-Class monsters no longer dared to attack people and just ran away from her.

Public opinion, huh.

If it was going to flip this fast, why did they torture her so much to begin with?

Lounging on the couch for the first time in a while, enjoying some rare downtime, Yu Anna browsed a community thread about herself.

She typed a single anonymous comment.

[So where did all the “Starlight is weak” people go?]

Not because she didn’t know the answer—

But because she wanted a particular reaction.

And right away, the replies poured in, exactly as she hoped:

[Weren’t all the people calling her “Firefly” instead of Starlight the ones who got vaporized by Mirage? Why so quiet now?]

[The people who hated on Yu Anna were Mirage in disguise. They all vanished!]

[W-City Mirage casualties: 0.]

[W-City OP, lol. Time for all of us to say: Welcome back, Yu Anna. We always believed in you.]

[Star Punch! Star Punch!]

“Pffft...”

A gif popped up of a hyper-muscular man with Yu Anna’s face photoshopped on, punching the air repeatedly.

She must’ve made it herself. It even moved.

Feeling good for the first time in a while, Yu Anna hummed a tune as she opened the fridge.

Maybe she’d cook something tasty today.

Lately, monster activity had been relatively low anyway.

Kind of a funny thing to say, but Yu Anna had been getting more and more relaxed recently.

She was the only S-Class hero in W-City—

Which meant every time a powerful monster appeared, she had to run around constantly.

But ever since Black Cat started hunting monsters, it felt like W-City had two S-Class heroes.

Sometimes when she was about to leave, the monster was already dead.

Or she’d arrive just in time to see Black Cat munching on it.

After that, it usually turned into a Black Cat chase, but honestly—

He didn’t destroy random buildings or hurt civilians, so he wasn’t that stressful to deal with.

Well... okay, sometimes he’d rip apart some expensive object with his claws for no reason, which was annoying.

There were tons of posts online from people who’d suffered the same kind of damage:

[Black Cat cut another communication cable.]

[Black Cat left rebar stuck in my building. How do I even remove this??]

[Why is my car stuck in the roof...?]

[Fucking cat bastard. Yu Anna, please go catch and kill it already.]

[Star Punch! Star Punch!]

Posts like that always came with a meme that was currently trending—

Photoshopped images of Yu Anna punching kittens.

As if she was some kind of animal abuser.

Yu Anna scowled, and thought of Black Cat.

The monster known as Black Cat—

A creature completely unlike any other monster.

Someone she should be on guard against, someone she’d have to capture eventually—

And yet, she was starting to feel a strange kind of trust.

Even when she spotted someone falling behind while chasing Black Cat,

she never had to worry that a monster would attack them.

He always dodged around people on his own,

And if it looked like the wind from his passing might knock someone over,

he would even turn the other way, risking a hit from her in the process.

Whenever he did that, Yu Anna would bite her tongue and hold back from punching him—just that once.

“What the hell is he thinking, seriously...”

Why, exactly, did Black Cat never attack people?

Yu Anna was more and more convinced—

He wasn’t pretending. He really didn’t want to hurt humans.

She kept her thoughts to herself—

If she said anything out loud, people might start thinking other monsters could be like Black Cat too,

and that would be dangerous.

But Black Cat... really did seem like he had no intention of hurting anyone.

If anything, he even protected heroes from her,

As if he thought she was the monster killing her own teammates to hunt monsters.

Yu Anna typed into the search bar on social media.

The auto-complete filled in:

#WCityBlackCat♡

And once she searched the tag, a flood of posts appeared—

Images of Black Cat saving people, and being rewarded with meat.

What kind of monster was this even supposed to be?

If she could really get a monster exterminated just by tossing it a few slices of ham,

Yu Anna honestly wanted to assign him jobs.

Photos and videos of Black Cat disappearing after finishing off monsters—

Among them were plenty of clips of girls petting his fur and squealing with joy.

[Kyaaaa! It’s so soft!]

[Look at that shine! Waaah! Oh my god!]

Petting a monster...

That was obviously a dangerous thing to do—

But even Yu Anna was starting to feel too tired to get mad about it these days.

In fact, recently, whenever she saw Black Cat,

She found herself wondering just how that fur would feel—

Thinking maybe... just once, it’d be okay to pet him too.

And then she scrolled down a little further,

Only to find a video that completely floored her.

“...What the hell is this...”

In the video, Black Cat was carrying a fully butchered cow in his mouth.

Was this a theft video? Was he stealing it?

And how the hell was the monster siren not going off?

From what she’d figured out the last time they encountered each other,

Black Cat had probably evolved the ability to avoid being detected by sirens altogether.

If any other monster had that power, it’d be pure nightmare fuel—

But in the video, Black Cat’s behavior was just... absurd.

The video series, titled ‘I told Black Cat I’d give him a whole cow, and he came to my house!’, had three parts in a row.

[I gave you what I promised, okay~ If you don’t leave, my dad’s gonna yell at me!]

A girl’s voice came from inside a dim fridge.

When she told him to go already, Black Cat bit into the beef inside—

Then set it down again.

As if to say, I’m not NOT taking it,

He pulled the meat out of the fridge and placed it outside.

A few moments later, Black Cat returned from outside the building—

Carrying something strange in his mouth.

[What the... is that a gas stove?]

A portable gas burner.

Black Cat nudged it with his front paws—

and to anyone watching, it was obvious he wanted the meat cooked.

Had someone grilled meat for him before?

Animals that get used to cooked meat sometimes don’t like it raw anymore.

When the girl hesitantly sliced off a piece and grilled it for him,

Black Cat let out a weird, waong-ong-oh sound as he accepted it.

“When he’s eating meat, he makes such cute noises...”

In the final video, it looked like her parents had caught her in the act—

But seeing the monster peacefully eating grilled meat,

They all started slicing it up and cooking it for him too, looking amazed.

“Thanks for saving us. Please come again,”

The video ended with those words.

Yu Anna watched the whole thing, then immediately contacted the government and had the video taken down.

If videos like that spread, people might start thinking it was okay to approach monsters.

That was dangerous.

...Still, after a bit of hesitation,

Yu Anna saved a copy for herself before it got deleted.