Fwoosh!!
She surged forward toward the Ghoul in front of her, spewing a [Kagune] that billowed like flames.
The plan was proceeding exactly as intended.
The fleshy middle-aged man had just finished a phone call with someone who seemed to be an ally. Soon, enemies would be gathering at the front entrance here.
While that happened, Hitokawa would slip in through the back door.
Once he got Koma out, he would call for CCG backup, and before long this place would be crawling with Ghoul Investigators.
Eto only had to leave when Hitokawa sent the signal. For that, she needed to conserve the stamina she would use to escape.
They were definitely the bastards who had taken her dad from her, the kind of people she wanted to smash their faces in on sight, but for the sake of the operation's success, she had to swallow her anger for now and move coldly.
As long as she didn't take damage beyond a certain point, she could fight just enough.
Just as she was about to commit herself to the fight with that thought in mind, the Ghoul charging straight at her vanished from view.
"...!!"
Her danger sense rang in her brain before surprise did.
She twisted her body vertically as it kicked off the ground, and a thick leg slammed down through the spot where Eto's back had been a moment earlier.
KWAAAANG!!!
The middle-aged man from before was a Ghoul the others here called the Overdone One.
With a speed that was impossible to believe for a body that fleshy, he had kicked off the ceiling and dropped down over Eto.
"Not bad movement. Did you dodge by experience? Or instinct?"
Red light burst like gas from around the Overdone One's shoulder as he pulled his leg free from the cracked concrete floor.
No mistake. That was [Ukaku].
It was the same type of [Kagune] as Eto's.
'This might be a problem...'
She had never fought against a [Kagune] of the same type before. No, to begin with, her combat experience could be counted on one hand.
Hitokawa had judged that if Eto kept to defense, relying on the mobility of [Ukaku], they could buy enough time.
But that was a misjudgment born from not fully understanding the Ghoul's side of things.
Fights between [Ukaku] Ghouls and fights between Ghouls with the same [Kagune] type are a little different when they're battling as investigators.
If neither side can make full use of their speed, it leads to a fatal opening.
To prevent that, [Ukaku] battles always have to maintain top speed.
It turns into a stamina war. Eto understood that the moment she faced another [Ukaku].
For Eto, who needed to conserve stamina for the operation to succeed, this was an extremely unfavorable situation.
She was young, and she only ate human flesh—the fuel for a [Kagune]—to the extent that it didn't interfere with daily life, so naturally her stamina was lacking too.
'Then...'
Eto lowered her stance.
The [Kagune] that had been billowing like flames stretched farther, taking on the shape of wings.
'I'll have to make him unable to fight before I run out of stamina.'
She couldn't take his life. Not for Hitokawa's promise, and not if she wanted to return to normal life.
Then the target had to be the [kakuhou].
She had to destroy the organ that generated the [Kagune] and strip him of his ability to fight.
She didn't have the luxury of conserving strength. Keep a little mercy in your hand, but when you fight, be as cold and precise as an owl snatching prey.
Fwoosh!!
The Overdone One's [Kagune] also burst out violently and took the shape of wings.
His wings were about one and a half times larger than Eto's. The tips of the feathers were sharpened like blades.
When the Overdone One swung his wings, the feather-like blades shot out like bolts from a crossbow.
Eto leaped to avoid them, and that became the signal flare.
Kwagagagagak!!!
Two red lines tore chaotically through the roughly 100-square-meter concrete space.
Floor, wall, ceiling—wherever the red lines passed, footprints, claw marks, and gouges left by [Kagune] were carved in, and their number kept multiplying without end.
Kwagak!!!
The clash in midair.
The two were pushed back by the recoil and landed on the floor, exposing the results of their exchange as wounds.
"Khh~ Have I been getting too little exercise lately?"
The Overdone One clicked his tongue, clutching the flesh torn from his side in a handful.
It was a wound made by Eto's claw, swung like a hook. He was lucky he had so much flesh there; if his subcutaneous fat had been even a little thinner, his organs would have spilled out.
"But it looks like you're the one who needs more exercise."
The Overdone One's gaze shifted forward.
"Hah... hah... hah..."
Eto panted beneath a mask that had cracked on one side.
Knife-like [Ukaku] feathers were embedded in her shoulders, back, and left knee, and blood was running down from them.
"Your senses seem excellent, but you lack combat experience. That includes keeping your [Ukaku] in an unstable form."
Crunch.
The Overdone One crushed the wound in his side with brute force.
As the tangled cells clumped together through a Ghoul's unique regenerative power, it wasn't healing, exactly, but it was enough to seal the hole in the wound.
"A common mistake for beginners. [Ukaku] sprayed out like gas allows for ultra-high-speed combat, but the stamina drain is extreme. You also need to fix the [Ukaku]'s shape to conserve stamina."
He spread out his [Kagune], which maintained a steady outline, as if to say, just like me.
"Can't you tell me who you are now? Depending on the circumstances, I might even spare your life."
"Hah... hah... kh!"
Eto caught her breath, then clenched her teeth and charged at the Overdone One. But she had already burned through a considerable amount of stamina, and her momentum was nowhere near what it had been at the start.
"I heard your answer. So you want to die."
The Overdone One kicked off the ground and wall in quick succession to slip out of Eto's line of sight.
Then he kicked off the ceiling again and dropped toward Eto's back, where she now seemed to have no room left to evade.
His foot fell toward the back of her neck to break her cervical spine, and—
CRACK!!
—he witnessed the bizarre sight of half his field of vision being ripped away.
"...!?!"
He couldn't even scream.
Starting from the jaw and tearing through the mouth and nose, then the left eye and forehead, his face collapsed horribly as if it had been ground apart by a chainsaw.
As he lost balance and toppled onto the floor from the shock, he heard a voice.
"You've been lecturing me like you're so superior since earlier. I'm fully aware of my own shortcomings without you pointing them out."
'A child's voice...?!'
The sound was distorted by the mask, but it was unmistakably a girl's voice.
"Ever since I learned someone had kidnapped my dad, I've been thinking about it. That I'd eventually have to fight. But I'm immature, I don't have much stamina, and I barely have any combat experience. So I kept thinking. And thinking. And thinking some more. About how to cover my handicap. I spent the whole trip here thinking about how to reduce the stamina waste from my [Kagune], at least in preparation for a long fight."
The Overdone One pressed a hand to the half of his face that was bleeding out, then looked at Eto with the other eye.
The [Ukaku] spread behind Eto's back like wings was no longer spraying out and scattering away as it had at first.
It was clearly maintaining its shape. Just like the Overdone One's own [Ukaku].
That was the thing that had split his face open.
"I'm glad I got to see your [Kagune]. It felt like peeking at the answer sheet while solving a math problem whose solution I'd set up but couldn't quite reach."
"Y-you... learned how to fix [Ukaku]... in such a short time...?"
"Honestly, I could've copied it the moment I saw it, but I didn't. Someone told me once, 'This is how we fight Ghouls: by deceiving them.' I figured ambushing you like this would waste less stamina than trying to wear down someone as guarded as you."
"We...? Who's 'we'?"
"Who knows. Why don't you ask the half of my blood that's flowing through this body?"
With that, Eto sharpened the tips of her [Ukaku] wings like blades.
She still needed more practice to launch them in knife form, so she intended to pierce the [kakuhou] directly with her [Kagune].
"Damn it!"
The Overdone One tried to move and escape. But his body didn't respond as quickly as he wanted.
Of course. The face is where the senses and vital points are concentrated.
Half of it had been ruined as if torn apart by a chainsaw blade.
The pain, the mental shock, the loss of sensation—any ordinary person would be unable to keep their head after that.
Thud!!
"Ghk!!"
The [Ukaku], now given solid form, pierced through the Overdone One's calf.
His body was lifted into the air like a fish hooked on a line and sent flying into the wall.
KWAANG!!
"Cough!!"
The Overdone One, half-buried in the concrete wall, spat out a breath.
Dangerous. He had no time to reset his stance, and no room to bring out his [Kagune].
Then Eto, wrapped in her [Ukaku], came charging into his field of vision.
'Target is the [kakuhou]. Position is the right shoulder where the [Kagune] came from!'
To pierce the [kakuhou], Eto sharpened the tip of her [Ukaku] like a spear and thrust it forward.
It was the instant before the [Ukaku] pierced the Overdone One's shoulder.
Kugugugugu...
A massive vibration. A roar.
Eto felt the floor beneath her feet tilting.
Cracks spread in all directions like a spiderweb, and two dark red tentacles burst out, blasting concrete apart as if breaking open a suffocating egg.
KWA-GAANG!!
Tentacles with sharp, fish-like scales surged up on both sides of Eto.
They looked like the teeth of an antlion waiting to catch ants drifting overhead.
"...!!"
Sensing the danger, Eto abandoned the attack, jumped back, and retreated.
At the same time, the two tentacles slammed together like closing jaws and viciously crushed the space Eto had occupied.
The missed tentacles withdrew back into the floor they had erupted from, as if disappointed.
Then a grotesque hand shot out from the gaping hole and braced itself on the ground.
"Kehahahahah!!"
A grotesque laugh followed just as grotesque as the hand.
Peering out from the hole was the same unpleasant insect-masked face Hitokawa had warned her about before.
"You're awfully fast, Vice Chief."
The Overdone One said this as he pulled himself free from the wall.
Honestly, he felt relieved. The appearance and behavior were strange, but this was a reliable ally showing up in a crisis.
By contrast, Eto's expression beneath the mask grew heavy.
'Tch. I wanted to take out at least one of them...'
The situation had become worse, but having all the attention focused on Eto was, in her own way, exactly what she wanted.
'Please take care of Dad, Mister Hitokawa.'
Thud! KWAANG! Distantly, loud noises were echoing from somewhere a little away.
It was proof that Eto was causing a commotion exactly as planned.
On the side opposite the front entrance, Hitokawa hurled himself through a broken window and landed on the floor as quietly as possible.
'I don't know how long Eto can hold out, so I need to hurry.'
After confirming there was no sign of life in the gloomy corridor, Hitokawa crouched low and moved forward.
Before long, he came upon a staircase leading to the upper floors and the basement, and beside it was a building layout that looked like it had been used back when this place operated as a pharmaceutical company.
Three floors above. Two floors below.
He didn't have much time. He had to decide carefully whether to search upstairs or downstairs.
'Where would Koma be?'
The hesitation was brief, and Hitokawa threw himself toward the stairs.