What emerged from the dust cloud was...
"Haa! Haa! Haa! Haa!"
It was Eto, gasping like she was about to stop breathing any second.
Startled, I shouted without thinking.
"Eto?!"
Jolt!
Eto's body flinched.
She was in terrible shape—blood streaming from wounds all over her body, her face visible beyond the shattered mask, her pupils half-lost—but even so, she reacted to my voice.
"Da...ddy?"
Eto staggered forward. She looked as unsteady as a baby just learning to walk.
Then her body pitched forward as if she were about to collapse, and I rushed in and caught her before she could hit the ground.
"Eto! Are you okay? Snap out of it, Eto!"
"Da...ddy, Daddy...."
Eto reached out with trembling hands.
Her unfocused eyes and the blood smell leaking from between her parted lips and exposed teeth made me tense up reflexively, because she looked exactly like she did when she lost control.
But thankfully, the worst-case scenario didn't happen.
Eto wrapped her arms around my neck and leaned against me, visibly relieved.
"Thank goodness... Daddy was... safe...."
She hadn't lost her mind after all. Relieved by that, I answered her.
"Idiot. That's my line!"
She'd taken a lot of damage, but nothing life-threatening. She was just too exhausted to hold herself up properly.
Hitokawa, who had been checking Eto's condition, soon turned his gaze to the two Ghouls lying on the floor.
The fleshy middle-aged man they called the Foreman, and the bastard wearing the insect mask.
Hitokawa looked back and forth between them and Eto in disbelief.
"Good grief! I can't believe it even after seeing it. You took both of them down by yourself?"
"I didn't... kill them...."
Eto, still in my arms, glanced sideways at Hitokawa and said with effort, "I promised... so I just broke their kakuhou and knocked them out."
"You can do that? Take down two Ghouls while enduring the stamina drain of an Ukaku?"
"Of course... it was dangerous... but I changed my approach."
**
"Meat...♪"
At that moment, Eto was definitely on the verge of losing her mind.
If she couldn't eat Daddy, then she'd just eat the Ghoul in front of her.
Eto was about to actually carry out that dangerous change in thinking. But in that instant, the last shred of reason slammed on the brakes.
She sensed it instinctively. Eating any more Ghoul flesh was dangerous.
She'd be stepping into a swamp she could never climb out of.
Then what should she do? She didn't have the strength or stamina left to keep her Kagune up any longer.
Energy. She needed to eat something she could convert into energy.
At that point, she reversed her thinking once more.
The nutrients Ghouls needed. The cells that became a Ghoul's weapon. Those weren't necessarily limited to a Ghoul's own body.
She understood. What she needed to eat right now was...
"Die, you bastard!!"
Maybe the Foreman sensed the dangerous glint in Eto's eyes as her reason began to slip away, because he immediately hurled an Ukaku feather at her.
Even seeing the barrage of Ukaku feathers flying in like bullets, Eto couldn't dodge.
She didn't even try.
She crouched down and crossed her right arm and leg over each other, shielding her head and heart and other vital points.
The Ukaku fragments shot out like shards of glass and embedded themselves in the exposed arm and leg. She had protected her vitals, but that didn't change the fact that the damage was severe.
At that moment, Eto bit down on her injured arm as if she'd been waiting for it.
"?! That brat, what the hell is she doing!"
For a split second, it looked like she'd gone insane. But no.
She wasn't eating her own arm. She was eating the Ukaku fragments lodged in it!
"Ghh...!! AAAAAAAAGH!!!"
Eto screamed as she tore and ate the Ukaku fragments.
Like chewing and swallowing shards of glass, unbearable pain spread from the place the Ukaku had passed through and crawled up her nervous system.
"Stupid brat. Eating Kagune when you're cornered!"
"Kehahahaha!!"
Seeing Eto writhing in pain, the Foreman seemed to think this was his chance to finish her off and leaped high into the air.
He gathered the two lines of Rinkaku into one and swung down at Eto like a crushing blow.
KWA-BOOOOM!!!
Eto didn't even have time to counter before she was pinned beneath the Rinkaku and sent crashing down through the rooftop floor into the level below.
It was a strike from Rinkaku, the strongest of the four Kagune types. She'd taken it while barely able to keep her body together, so there was no way she could still be alive.
Judging it over, the Foreman withdrew his Ukaku. He was already badly worn out from keeping his Kagune out for so long.
That was his mistake.
KWA-BOOM!!!
In that instant, an Ukaku shot up from beneath the Foreman's feet and pierced his shoulder.
More precisely, it pierced the spot where his kakuhou was located.
"Ghk?!"
"I finally got through," Eto said.
The voice belonged to Eto.
After rolling on the floor in agony, she had fired her Ukaku from her back into the floor at the exact moment the Rinkaku came down.
The impact created just enough of a hole for her body to slip through.
The Rinkaku smashed only the surrounding floor left behind after Eto had already escaped.
"You... damn... brat...!!"
"Thanks to you, I can keep fighting a little longer. Thank you."
Smack!
Back on the rooftop, Eto thanked him and kicked the Foreman square in the jaw.
The impact sent him sprawling, and Eto turned her gaze toward the insect-masked Ghoul, who seemed to still be trying to make sense of the hole in the floor and the perfectly fine Eto.
"Keh?"
"That leaves only you."
"Kehhehe!! Kehhehehehehe!!!"
The man let out his usual grotesque laugh and charged at Eto, and she met him head-on with a fierce burst of Ukaku.
Only after the battle carried them from the rooftop down to the lower floor and back again did it finally end.
**
"Isn't that guy completely insane?"
Koma muttered with a disgusted look after hearing Eto's story.
"A Ghoul's Kagune exists for hunting, but it's also a weapon used in competition against other Ghouls. The components themselves act like poison to any Ghoul other than the one they belong to. It's basically the same as eating poison and using it as nutrition."
"What? Then Eto's okay?"
"Luckily, what she ate was Ukaku, so she survived. Ukaku itself has the property of scattering Rc cells. The fact that it was the same type of Kagune probably reduced the backlash too. Still, I can't say it had no effect at all. She'll probably have aftereffects for a while."
The word aftereffects made me worry, but apparently it wasn't severe. Just a fever or a temporary drop in bodily function.
I looked down at Eto in my arms.
She looked pitiful, but as her parent, I had to say what needed saying.
"If you decide it's too much, you run. What were you thinking, fighting to the end like that? Are you some hot-blooded manga protagonist?"
"That's not really something you should say, Dad...."
"What was that?"
"You're both the same, so let's stop there. Hey, Koma, I've got something to ask you."
Hitokawa pointed at the two unconscious Ghouls and spoke.
"Is the 'Artist' one of them?"
"...No. I didn't see the Artist's face, but I know those two. They're the Foreman and the Section Chief. The Artist is the boss."
"Yeah, that figures. Even if it's Eto, if she had to deal with the Artist too, it wouldn't have ended at this level."
After muttering that, Hitokawa fell into thought with a hand on his chin.
"What is it?"
"Something feels off."
Hitokawa said it while looking down into the basement through the gaping hole in the floor.
"When we searched the basement, the only ones down there were you and Minami. The insect-masked Ghoul came up through this hole right when he entered the basement. Hey, Eto. Was there anything strange on the upper floors?"
At that, Eto lifted her head.
She was still weak, but after resting for a bit, her breathing had steadied.
"I was fighting like crazy all the way up to the rooftop, but I didn't see anything suspicious. If someone had been hiding there, wouldn't they have attacked me long ago?"
"That's what makes it strange. From what Koma said, the Artist was definitely here when we first broke into this building. But now he's gone. Where did that bastard disappear to?"
Come to think of it, it was strange.
The Artist, who had definitely existed when Eto and Hitokawa appeared, had vanished from both the upper floors and the basement.
Unless there was some secret room like in a movie, where the hell had he gone?
Hitokawa thought it over too, but he seemed to have no clue at all and scratched his head hard. In the end, he decided to give up on the Artist for now.
"It's still bothering me, but let's pull back for today. The fact that the Artist isn't here is actually in our favor. Especially in this situation, where we can't even request CCG backup."
"What? Weren't we going to request backup as soon as we rescued Dad?"
"That crazy bitch you know so well smashed the phone."
"That woman is really..."
Thinking of Minami, who seemed to have nothing but bad blood with everyone, Eto ground her teeth. It would probably be best to keep those two away from each other from now on.
I stood up with Eto in my arms.
"We'll get another chance to settle things with that deranged artist someday. Let's go home today. Honestly, I don't want to stay in this place for even one more minute."
As if agreeing with me, the other two nodded.
By then morning had apparently broken, because bright light was already seeping in from the front entrance. Seeing that, it really hit me that we'd somehow survived such a chaotic day.
The moment we started walking toward that light, Eto's eyes changed.
She noticed it first, before anyone else in the room.
Before the scar on my right arm reacted, before Hitokawa's Ghoul Investigator instincts kicked in, Eto sensed its presence.
And she judged that it was too late.
Before she turned her head, before she could make a sound, Eto crouched and planted both feet against my chest as I held her.
Then she shoved me away with all her strength.
As I lost my balance and fell after losing Eto, I saw it.
A dark red halberd flying toward the space I had just vacated.
SPLCH!!
It pierced Eto.
A dark red object as thick as two adult arms speared straight through Eto's abdomen.
Before I could even be horrified, before Hitokawa could react and swing his greatsword, a grating voice reached my ear.
"You can't leave. Not a chance."
It was a voice I knew.
The same voice that had been hiding in the shadows back then.
But when I looked to see where it had come from, I could only doubt my own eyes.
It was the place where the two Ghouls Eto had knocked down were lying.
One of them had stood up.
The Ghoul wearing the insect mask.
There was no grotesque laughter. No grotesque gestures.
With the graceful movements of a stage actor, he simply removed the insect mask.
"Losing good material is something your father has already done once."
A man with red [Kakugan] smiled unpleasantly.
=======================A completely unrelated bonus image==========================