Hidden beneath the cover of the Invisibility Spray, the Omniscient Eye fed Chris a faithful preview of the next few seconds.
He already knew what Goto was planning: a feint at the front line, while splitting off Miki to target the rear.
Or more precisely — to target the one capture gun that Ichinose and Shiranami Chihiro still had intact.
Smart call.
Out of everything they've got, the capture guns are the nastiest weapons on the field. Zero-frame deployment — how do you even guard against that?
Chris gave a quiet, private nod of respect.
But he didn't rush to say a word.
Goto had been working hard as an instructional prop. The least Chris could do was give it a little dignity. Jumping in with a warning now would've just been rude.
So he held his tongue.
He waited — until Ichinose Honami had finished settling into her defensive stance — and only then, as if the thought had just occurred to him, spoke up:
"As a five-in-one composite Parasyte, it's going to be something different from what we've faced before."
"Speed, stealth, ambush capability — and on top of all that, genuine intelligence. It knows to prioritize whichever targets pose it the greatest threat."
His gaze sharpened.
"So — right now, in Goto's eyes... what's the single most dangerous thing in this room?"
"You?"
Ichinose answered on reflex — then caught herself.
Chris and she both had combat suits. That made them the hardest targets to crack. Which meant the remaining threats...
"It's going for Sakayanagi —!"
The warning never finished.
Screeeee——!
A sound like fingernails dragged across glass tore through the air — and Goto launched its offensive.
No direct charge. Instead, it drove both legs into the ground and used the recoil to launch itself up to the ceiling.
Then:
From the broken ventilation ducts overhead. From the shadowed gaps in the decorative plants lining the walls. From every angle imaginable —
Dozens of razor-edged bone-blade tentacles erupted like a detonating thorn bush, slashing in from all directions at once.
"Scatter!!"
Ryuuen Kakeru and the others — guided by the Black Sphere's radar and the X-GUN's targeting overlay, nerves already strung tight — weren't caught completely blind.
They roared, opened fire, tried to hold the line.
But they didn't have combat suits. They weren't like Ichinose — she could force her way through the barrage with raw enhanced physicality, weaving and surging forward even under a storm of blades.
Thwack. Slash.
"Agh!"
In the span of a single exchange, everyone without a suit had taken damage.
Katsuragi Kohei's arm was carved open to the bone. Kanzaki Ryuuji took a full-force lash and was sent flying, slamming into the wall hard.
"Everyone fall back!!"
Ichinose ducked under a sweeping tentacle — the X-GUN in her hands finally finished charging — and blasted a gravity wave that blew apart a section of ventilation duct. She shouted as she moved:
"Get to a safe distance! Find a new opening!"
The group scrambled back in disarray. But as they pulled out, their scattered fire was able to concentrate.
Every tentacle Goto had freed up whipped around in unison — and descended on Chris like a breaking storm. He was the only one who'd actually put points on the board.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Sparks scattered in the dark. Steel sang against bone.
Chris's blade spun and whirled — and from the outside, it looked like he was barely keeping up, purely on the defensive, on the edge of being overwhelmed. Like he might break at any second.
But he never quite did.
"Chris-kun! Hold on two more seconds —"
Ichinose threw herself into a roll under two slashing tentacles. The muzzle of her gun flared with building light:
"I've got the lock! Almost there!"
"It won't work."
From the shadow, Goto's voice came back — flat and without emotion:
"That heavy-yield weapon of yours — unlike the net launcher — requires roughly three seconds to charge. I've confirmed it."
"And as long as I keep moving at high speed, your targeting system is decoration."
Ichinose felt a cold jolt.
It's read us.
"So what?"
Chris laughed — cold and short.
Before Goto had a moment to process it —
The combat suit snapped tight around Chris's frame.
Instead of retreating, he surged forward — using the suit's burst to flip the exchange entirely, turning defense into a full offensive press.
"What —?!"
Goto's pupils contracted.
It made a snap decision — pulled back every damaged tentacle in one fluid motion, kicked off the ceiling to accelerate forward, and by a hair's breadth slipped out from under Ichinose's targeting lock.
Its gaze went hot as it fixed on the black material showing at Chris's collar:
"That equipment... that isn't power a human being should have."
"Want it?"
Chris's mouth curved slightly.
"You know the rules. Come and take it yourself."
Goto stopped wasting words.
It redirected every cell it could still mobilize — leaving only what was needed to keep its legs moving — and poured everything else into its left arm, forging it into a single massive bone cleaver.
"Die."
Goto roared and charged — speed pushed to its absolute ceiling.
Chris could only raise his blade to meet it.
CLANG——!!
The shockwave shattered the tiles under Chris's feet.
He braced like a man at an anvil — grunting, heaving, weathering Goto's relentless barrage of downward cuts. He looked like a wall on the verge of collapsing. Like the next blow would be the one that finally did it.
And somehow, he just... didn't fall.
"Ryuuen-kun! Katsuragi-kun!"
Watching the exchange, Ichinose remembered Chris's earlier warning. She called out at full volume:
"Bring the capture guns up now! Goto has nothing left for a multi-front fight — this is the opening!"
The words hit Goto like a stone dropping into still water.
Can't drag this out.
End it. Now.
It stopped holding back — threw the lower-body Parasytes into full mobilization as well — and drove toward a killing blow on the spot.
As for Chris —
Chris's trap card flipped.
Magic Cylinder and Water Barrier chimed in unison: We're ready when you are.
Honestly, he was a little curious what a trap card looked like in real life.
But he was also worried that Goto — high attack, low defense, textbook glass cannon — might just straight-up die from the backlash.
Goto's defense was higher than an ordinary Parasyte's, but still not anything that broke the scale.
He thought about it — and went with the Magic Glove instead.
His fingertips moved — barely a twitch.
Goto felt a repulsive force materialize from thin air, as if it had tripped over something invisible. Its momentum buckled. The attack vector warped.
"What —?!"
Before it could piece together what had happened —
Chris landed three consecutive cuts.
He hadn't used the Time-Stop Watch this time. Instead, he'd drawn on the Acceleration Watch — another one from Doraemon's catalog — and with the combat suit amplifying everything on top of it, he achieved something that looked disturbingly close to Sasaki Kojiro's legendary technique without breaking a sweat.
From the perspective of Ichinose, Ryuuen Kakeru, and the others —
They saw Chris's silhouette blur.
Three jet-black slashes bloomed across Goto's body almost simultaneously.
No technique. No flourish. Pure, overwhelming numbers.
"Tsubame Gaeshi."
Splat——!!!
Blood sprayed.
The better half of Goto's prized tentacles were severed in one pass. A horrific gash split open across its chest.
"KIII——!!"
Every Parasyte inside the body raised a protest at exactly the same moment:
Can't win! We can't win!
This guy was holding back the entire time! He's a monster!
Run — run — there's no point fighting something we can't put down!
And then — footsteps, growing louder from behind. And the rising, heart-stopping hum of Ichinose's charging barrel.
Even Goto itself felt the urge to run.
But...
It had already scouted the entire floor. Every exit was sealed behind those damned invisible walls. There was no way out.
Which left exactly one escape route.
Using the window of its own recoil, Goto made a cold, decisive move — it forcibly separated Miki, the dying Parasyte in its left arm, and hurled the detached limb at Chris like a grenade.
Then, in the same motion, it shed the Parasyte in its right arm — lobbing it with surgical precision directly into the path of Ichinose's firing line.
"Sacrifice is the price of survival!"
BOOM.
The gravity wave detonated, reducing the decoy on Ichinose's side to pulp.
Chris brought his blade through in one clean swing and bisected the incoming Miki in midair.
In the brief window those two blocking moves bought —
Goto moved like a lizard shedding its tail — terrifying speed, zero hesitation — driving straight for the undefended rear of the group.
"It's coming this way!!"
Kamuro Masumi screamed.
Ryuuen Kakeru and the others couldn't pivot and aim fast enough.
"Oh no you don't."
Chris's eyes went cold.
He didn't chase.
Instead, he leveled his blade at Goto's fleeing back.
"Shoot him dead — Sharpshooter."
The katana extended — spanning dozens of meters in an instant.
Thud.
Just as Goto cleared Ryuuen and the others, the lengthened blade punched clean through its torso and pinned it in place.
"Kh..."
Blood welled up from Goto's mouth as it strained against the blade — struggling, desperate to pull free.
"Now's my chance!"
Sudou Ken — who hadn't made it far on his injured leg — spotted the opening, and his eyes lit up.
He bent down and reached for the capture gun Sakayanagi had left on the ground.
"Idiot."
Watching from a distance, Sakayanagi Arisu gave a cold smile. Without explaining herself to the confused Kamuro Masumi, she grabbed Kamuro's arm and yanked them both down flat against the wall in a corner with cover.
Goto saw the situation was hopeless — and abandoned the body without hesitation.
Three surviving Parasytes broke in three different directions and fled.
"Sudou! Move!"
Ayanokoji Kiyotaka's brow furrowed. He was already backing away, and he called the warning out as he went.
Sudou Ken, consumed entirely by the thought of revenge, wasn't listening.
He spun around, raised the gun, and prepared to claim his glory.
But what filled his vision was a flash of edge.
Goto lunged — and then found that Sudou Ken was visibly vanishing before its eyes.
"What the hell—" Goto swore.
Of course. Parasytes need a human host to survive. Spend too long outside the body, and death is inevitable.
The three remaining Parasytes felt despair close around them all at once.
Three thick, muscular tentacles thrashed and tore through the confined space — no longer the broad, controlled sweep of a full composite body, but faster now, more volatile, running on pure explosive force.
Ryuuen Kakeru and Kanzaki Ryuuji didn't react in time — they went down.
Katsuragi Kohei, with those two to absorb the first hit, got lucky — he was already being pulled clear by Chris before the strike connected.
The surviving remnant of Goto turned its attention to the rear — Shiranami Chihiro and the others who had been staying out of the fight.
Even at this degraded state, as the strongest Parasyte on record, its reach just barely covered the distance.
"If I can't live... then let's all go together."
A shared loss beats a one-sided win. Doesn't it?
Kaneda Satoru and Machida Koji caught it first — their positioning working against them.
Then — as the blade punched through Shiranami Chihiro's chest and continued toward the face of Shiina Hiyori — who had been reaching for the second capture gun in Shiranami's hand —
"— Chihiro!!"
Every rational thread in Ichinose Honami's mind snapped at once.
The combat suit clamped down in sync with her — fabric pulling tight, muscle definition pressing through the material.
She moved at a speed that made even Chris turn his head.
She crossed the distance in an instant — shoulder-first — and smashed through both already-weakening tentacles with her body.
Then her fist connected with what remained of Goto.
That's a hell of a punch, Chris thought quietly. Not bad at all.
——End of Chapter——
Note ①— Acceleration Watch: When worn, allows the user to adjust the speed of their own movements at will.
Note ②— Magic Cylinder: A Yu-Gi-Oh! trap card. Its effect: when an opponent's monster declares an attack, negate the attack and inflict damage to the opponent equal to that monster's ATK value.
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