The boardroom sat on the fortieth floor of what used to be a corporate headquarters, now converted into the Hunter Association's eastern command center.
Floor-to-ceiling windows stretched across one wall, offering a wide view of Safe Zone Seven a sprawling fortress of concrete barriers, guard towers, and thousands of souls clinging to survival in a world that had tried to devour them.
Inside, the look was aggressively modern: sleek black table that could seat twenty, holographic displays built into the surface, soft lighting that cast everything in a cool white glow.
The chairs were comfortable leather, designed for long strategy sessions. Everything about the room screamed efficiency, control, order a desperate attempt to impose structure on chaos.
Director Sarah Kim stood at the head of the table, tablet in hand, her expression carved from stone.
Around her sat the Association's key figures: three senior coordinators whose names carried weight in what remained of civilization, two A-rank combat specialists who'd survived gates that killed dozens, and someone new.
She sat near the middle of the table, posture perfect, silver eyes fixed on the holographic display with an intensity that made the air feel colder.
Her hair was white as fresh snow, cut short in a practical style that framed sharp features. She wore the Association's S-rank uniform black combat jacket with silver accents, fitted but functional.
Where others fidgeted or whispered, she remained perfectly still, radiating the kind of confidence that came from knowing you were one of the strongest people in the room.
"Director Kim," one of the senior coordinators said, adjusting his glasses nervously. "Are we certain we want to show this footage? Some of it is... extremely graphic."
"They need to see it," Kim replied, her voice allowing no argument. "All of you need to understand what we're dealing with."
She tapped her tablet, and the holographic display flickered to life.
The footage was drone-captured, high-definition and horrifyingly clear. A B-rank gate, somewhere in Philadelphia. The timestamp read four days ago three days after the Manhattan incident. A team of hunters moved through corrupted ruins, six of them: three A-ranks, three B-ranks. Professional formation, weapons ready, clearly experienced.
Then it appeared.
It emerged from shadows that shouldn't have existed, its elongated skull catching torchlight, curved horns casting twisted shadows across broken walls. Its robes moved with wind that wasn't there, radiating terrible intelligence.
"Are you seeing this?!" one of the A-ranks said over comms, his voice cracking with terror as he raised his weapon a massive war hammer crackling with lightning. "Command, what the hell is that thing?! Engage—"
Its body twisted.
It wasn't a transformation in any traditional sense. Its right arm simply... changed. Flesh rippled like water, bones cracked and reformed, and suddenly its arm wasn't an arm anymore. It was something worse. Armored and jagged, like it had been torn from some deep-sea nightmare and attached to a skeletal framework.
It moved faster than the drone could track. One moment standing, next moment behind the A-rank hunter. The claw swept through the man's torso like he was made of paper.
The hunter's top half hit the ground three seconds before his legs collapsed.
"Christ," someone muttered at the boardroom table.
The footage continued. The remaining hunters scattered, trying to establish distance, but it pursued with patient precision. Its left leg transformed mid-stride became something snake-like and elongated, launching it across impossible distances.
A B-rank tried to raise barriers, but its jaw unhinged, split, reformed into a lamprey's circular maw lined with rings of teeth. It bit through the barrier and the hunter behind it in one motion.
The sound was worse than the visuals wet crunching, screaming cut short, something that might have been laughter from itself.
One of the A-ranks managed to land a solid hit, a blade covered in flames that should have burned anything it touched. Its torso split open where the sword connected, and for a moment it looked like a killing blow.
Then the wound didn't just heal, it transformed. The burned flesh became armored scales, metallic and overlapping, immune to the fire. Its hand shot out, fingers stretching into bone spears that punched through the A-rank's chest, lifting her off the ground.
The footage showed it feeding. Its jaw expanded impossibly wide, and it consumed the A-rank hunter whole armor, weapons, and all. Its body pulsed with absorbed energy, muscles swelling, corruption spreading across its form in visible waves.
The last two hunters tried to run. They didn't make it twenty feet.
Kim paused the footage. The frozen image showed it standing among six corpses, its body a nightmarish mix of absorbed parts scales here, claws there, additional limbs sprouting from its torso.
"Six hunters," Kim said into the heavy silence. "Three A-ranks, three B-ranks. Experienced teams. Dead in four minutes."
"It's adapting," the silver-eyed S-rank said, her voice like winter wind. "Every attack that connects, it evolves a counter. Growing stronger in real-time."
One of the senior coordinators leaned forward, face pale. "It's not just adapting to attacks. Did you see how it moved? How it transformed? Every part of its body—arms, legs, jaw—it's changing them into different monster parts. Like it's cycling through a catalog of creatures."
"Correct," Kim said grimly. "Our analysis confirms it. It can transform any part of its body into parts from different monster species. That claw? Matches genetic markers from a deep-sea monster we've seen in oceanic gates. The snake-like leg? Similar to Class-A shadow serpents. The lamprey jaw? Unknown origin, but clearly designed for hunting."
"It's not one monster it's every monster it's ever consumed or studied."
"That's why we call it the Corpse Handler," one of the A-rank specialists added, his voice grim. "It doesn't just kill it harvests. Every body, every corpse becomes material. Parts it can copy, abilities it can absorb. It's building itself from the dead, wearing their forms like a collection."
Kim nodded. "Exactly. Every hunter it kills makes it more dangerous. More versatile. More adaptable."
She pulled up new footage. This was drone surveillance, probably recorded within the last few hours. A volcanic landscape stretched across the display, all black stone and rivers of glowing magma. The heat distortion made everything shimmer, reality bending in the thermal waves.
"Puerto Rico," Kim said. "What used to be, anyway. An A-rank gate opened there months ago when the fall started. Hunters couldn't handle it, and the gate broke complete dimensional breach.
The entire island is now overrun with salamanders. It's completely unlivable. Initial scans show the same corruption patterns as Manhattan and the Philadelphia gate."
The drone descended, revealing the gate's environment in detail. Massive salamanders each the size of a bus crawled across black stone plains. Their scales glowed from within, like coals barely contained by skin.
Volcanic vents poured out poisonous smoke, and rivers of magma carved glowing paths through the landscape. The temperature readings in the corner of the display climbed past 140 degrees Fahrenheit.
"The minions are fire salamanders," Kim continued. "A-rank classification, high heat resistance, pack hunters. Extremely dangerous in their natural environment. We haven't located the boss yet, but based on the gate's energy signature, we're estimating A-rank difficulty, possibly higher."
"And you think the Corpse Handler is involved?" the silver-eyed S-rank asked.
"We're investigating the possibility," Kim replied carefully. "The corruption signatures match. If it's there, if it's upgrading an A-rank boss the way it upgraded the C-rank Lizard Warlord..." She didn't need to finish. Everyone understood the implication.
"Which brings us to Manhattan," one of the senior coordinators said, pulling up another file. "The Corrupted Lizard Warlord incident. We need to discuss what happened there."