Two arms, two legs, a head, six feet tall and bipedal... anatomically, it resembled a human, visually, it was a grotesque distortion of it.
That thing's flesh was bloated beyond obscene, at least 1000 kilos of incoherent fat, something that, by any reasonable law of nature, shouldn't have been able to drag its huge ass up that crater.
Still, it wasn't what held Lazar's focus the longest, what drew his eye and refused to let it go was the creature's lips.
Of all its features, it was surely the most absurdly proportioned, which was saying something.
They stretched in an unnatural pull all the way to the ends of its swollen cheeks, shaping a sinister smile that promised not a mouth behind it, but a pit wide enough to swallow a man whole.
Oddly, and thankfully, they had been sewn together.
Black stitches ran through the raw, inflamed flesh, oozing dark blood and pus, the injury refusing to heal.
Each loud and labored breath of the creature hissed through the stitching like air through a hole in a bellows.
Its eyes were also unlike anything Lazar had ever seen, two milky globes recessed far too deep beneath the facial fat to be easily distinguished, faintly glowing like dying embers.
Each blink was slow and wet, the eyelids producing a slick, nauseating noise with every closure.
Its massive belly, which seemed to account for half its bulk, hung down to the ground and gurgled incessantly, proof, if any were needed, that hunger was the only thing that governed that creature.
Indeed, its appearance was shocking and the stench it gave off was no better, a foul marriage of rotten eggs and burning plastic.
With the human traffic jam ahead making any quick crossing impossible, Viktor still hadn't made it around the crater, therefore, he was close enough to catch the stink, and it hit him like a fist.
He immediately gagged, sleeve over his nose, and Mamma, beside him in much the same state, took a step back before biting the inside of her mouth until it bled, trying to shock herself awake from the nightmare she desperately wished this was.
The creature turned its head from side to side, and the sewn corners of its mouth crept upward as if the sight of so many trapped people rejoiced it.
Its bloated feet, seemingly numb to the heat of the scorching asphalt beneath them, began to carry him toward the nearest person, the curious guy from before who looked over the edge of the crater, the later was petrified, butt on the ground and barely 5 meters ahead, an easy prey.
The creature wasn't sprinting, not even jogging, yet it was way too fast for a body that size.
As it moved forward, one of the stitches at the corner of its mouth gave way.
Flesh tore with a disturbing rip, and dark blood spilled down its countless chins.
Still advancing, it threw its head back and wailed as its other stitches popped one after another as if they were sentient and understood that it wanted to eat.
From that moment on, even Lazar started to despair, watching the first ripples of panic spread through the crowd and already picturing what would come next.
Some were simply petrified.
They weren't much of a problem, if they didn't snap out of it in time, their lack of survival instinct would at least buy the others some time.
"Move, for fuck's sake!"
"Hurry the fuck up!"
"Can't you see what's behind us?!"
"Keep shoving like that and we're all dead!"
No. The problem was the people in the jam.
Until now they had been weirdly restrained because they were aware that a bad shove could result in someone stumbling in the crater.
But once that creature was in the picture, the crowd's logic collapsed into a single instinct : me first.
They pushed and pushed, slamming into the people ahead of them in a desperate attempt to 'move things along', ultimately making it worse.
To Lazar, it wasn't a question of if people would start dying because of this, but when, and from where he stood, he figured his odds of surviving were better than theirs now.
The last stitch gave way, and the creature's mouth was now fully open, human teeth inside, but arranged in anything but a normal order.
Thirty-two was the norm. This thing had at least three times that, stacked in several disorderly rows.
STOMP
"URGH..." The man the creature had singled out ended up under its foot, and in the same instant his lungs surrendered every ounce of air.
One stomp did it, any limb powerful enough to bear that thing's weight could certainly erase a man's ability to move, if only his body had been able to respond before it was too late.
CRUNCH
The creature shifted its weight further onto his ribcage, and his body answered with a meaty crunch as ribs and organs burst under the pressure.
In the middle of that carnage, Lazar found a single consolation for that man : he could no longer be eaten alive.
With its meal no longer moving, the creature lowered itself to the ground. Lunch was served.
"So that's why you're here." Lazar whispered, eyes dropping to his weapon as he slid the blade free of its sheath.
He glanced left, then right.
If the walls weren't shaking, people would have been pressing their backs to them, holding their breath like that could make them invisible.
No one seemed willing to fight the creature, even though, like him, many had kept their weapons. So, that left only him.
And if there was ever an ideal time to kill a thing like that, it most likely was while it was busy eating.
Lazar crept forward without a sound, avoiding its line of sight as he circled the creature to come up behind it.
10 meters.
He adjusted his angle as he closed the distance, sliding from its left flank toward its back, inch by inch.
He didn't know how sharp the creature's hearing was, so he watched his footing nearly as closely as he watched it. Its slow, heavy shifts, the disgusting sounds of feeding, the lazy strength in the flex of its limbs.
5 meters.
Lazar stopped dead.
For a heartbeat, hesitation pinned him down : even hunched over its meal on all fours, those thick, powerful legs could end him with one sudden blow in his direction.
But it didn't stop him.
The creature was slow, if it tried something he should see it coming, he hoped.
Lazar moved again, shrinking the final gap until he was practically beside the creature.
If it could hear him, smell him, sense the intent at its back, this was the moment it would act, he figured.
But it didn't.
Lazar took that as proof it was so committed to its meal that the rest of the world might as well not exist, himself included.
He raised his blade, brought the edge an inch from the base of the creature's skull, and for a brief second anxiety tightened his grip, because if the nape wasn't as much as a weak point for this thing as it was for a human, then he might as well be dead.
And that was assuming he could even hit the right spot, hard enough when the route to it was buried under layers and layers of fat.
STAB
"Uhh." The creature collapsed with a groan, dropping onto the corpse it had been devouring a heartbeat ago.
Apparently, the method translated.
The blade sank in like butter and slid back out just as easily.
The sharpness of his weapon startled Lazar almost as much as what happened next.
[CONGRATULATIONS, YOU HAVE AWAKENED]