I couldn't believe my eyes. I even pinched my cheek, wondering if I was dreaming.
But the scene in front of me didn't change. If it had really changed, I would've been shocked in a different way.
Because it was Eto.
Eto had appeared. She was moving normally, just like always. The wound that had pierced straight through her abdomen was gone.
"E-Eto! How did you...?"
"I'm not really sure myself. By the time I came to, the wound was already healed."
Eto said, glancing back at me.
"I'm not certain, but I think someone fed me human flesh while I was unconscious. When I woke up, there was someone's blood nearby."
Human flesh. Had Eto healed herself with it the same way the Artist had eaten his comrade's corpse to recover from his injuries?
But who? In this abandoned building, the only people who could provide human flesh were me and Hitokawa... Ah!
"No way...?"
There was someone else. Someone in this abandoned building who could provide human flesh.
But she should still be tied up in the room on B2. Even if she had escaped, why would she help Eto?
"Dad! Watch out!"
Eto's voice snapped me out of my thoughts. Now wasn't the time to worry about that.
A [Kagune], swollen to nearly twice its size, surged down the hallway as if it meant to fill the entire corridor.
Eto kicked off the wall, swung around to strike its flank, and I dragged Hitokawa's collapsed body aside as I dodged.
BOOOOM!
The [Kagune], its path thrown off by Eto, slammed into the wall instead and then whipped back toward the Artist.
His face was twisted with veins, as if he'd been dealt an unforgivable insult.
"You little brat who should've died already...!! You had to butt in at the most important moment and ruin everything?!"
"Who was it that tried to wreck someone else's peaceful family first? Don't act like you've got the high ground!"
Huh? Eto's mouth had gotten sharper. Who had she been fighting to train it on?
Leaving the likely culprit, Hitokawa, tossed in a corner, I grabbed the hilt of the greatsword and my pistol again, then rushed forward.
"Eto! Can you pin down his movements? At least keep that [Kagune] from moving!"
"Got it!"
As I crossed the hallway, Eto kicked off the wall and ceiling and charged the Artist.
"You little brat!!"
The Artist unleashed his [Kagune].
She slipped between the whipping tendrils with quick footwork and closed the distance to him.
Using her [Ukaku] as a booster, she drove her foot down fast, but the Artist's reaction speed was no joke.
He leaned back to avoid the kick and grabbed Eto's ankle anyway.
When a dangerous cracking sound came from the trapped ankle, Eto's expression hardened.
At that moment, I threw the greatsword hilt.
"Pathetic!!"
Clang!
As the Artist knocked the flying hilt away, Eto seized the opening and slammed her opposite leg down on his forearm.
With a sickening crack, his hand let go of Eto's foot.
She tried to follow up with the freed leg, but the [Kagune], already withdrawn, came crashing in, forcing her to leap back.
After landing and tumbling once, Eto caught the greatsword hilt the Artist had just deflected.
She tossed it back to me and said, "Sorry, Dad! He's a lot harder to deal with than I expected."
"Yeah, he's definitely a pain if he can keep up with Eto's speed... How are we supposed to take this guy down?"
"How are we supposed to? We've got a perfectly good tactic called mobbing him. You planning to let that go to waste?"
""...!!""
Suddenly, a voice cut in from the side and snatched the greatsword hilt from my hand.
Eto and I stared at him in surprise.
"Hitokawa! You're awake! But are you sure you should be moving already?"
"You're bleeding all over the place. Don't push yourself."
"Shut up. A Ghoul kid and a civilian are fighting an S-rank Ghoul, and the only Ghoul Investigator here is lying around asleep? I'd be too embarrassed to show my face."
Hitokawa grumbled as he spoke.
He was acting like he was fine, but his pale face looked anything but fine. Still, if we told him to sit out, he'd refuse flat-out.
I started thinking of a way to talk him out of it, then gave up and looked at the Artist.
He twisted his arm back into its original shape, the one Eto had bent out of place, and turned his head toward us.
He looked thoroughly irritated. Between the repeated interruptions and the uninvited guests, he seemed to be in a truly foul mood.
I didn't think he'd be holding back anymore.
I let out a tired sigh and said, "Let's not die."
"Yes. I won't die."
"Yeah. We're not dying."
That was enough for a battle cry.
To put an end to this nightmare of a day, to make it home alive, to settle the bad blood that had been handed down from my father to me, we charged the Artist.
Baring his [Kakugan], veins crawling across it, the Artist growled.
"I don't need materials or anything else anymore... Die, all of you!!"
The Artist unleashed his [Kagune] on us.
Three massive [Kagune] tendrils, each one strong enough to crush an adult man's body without effort. There was nothing in their wild thrashing except killing intent.
Eto, moving the fastest, met one of the huge [Kagune] head-on.
A sharp, scale-covered tendril that looked like it would shred skin like a plane blade if it even grazed you.
Eto lifted herself with her [Ukaku], spun her body, and slipped past the tip of the tendril by a hair's breadth.
She didn't stop there. She stomped down on the side of the [Kagune] and, prepared to burn through a massive amount of stamina, unleashed her [Ukaku] at full output.
The force shoved the [Kagune] off course, sending it crashing over the second one.
KWA-GA-GA-GA-GA-BOOOOM!
The two [Kagune] tangled together and drove deep into the corner between the wall and the hallway.
Thanks to Eto's quick thinking, two of the three [Kagune] were pinned. The remaining one came flying at me and Hitokawa.
"Haaah!!!"
Hitokawa shouted and blocked it with the broken greatsword hilt.
BOOOOM!
The impact was monstrous here too.
A normal person couldn't have stopped a tendril as thick as a tree trunk, but Hitokawa was a Ghoul Investigator.
They were people who trained their bodies for the sole purpose of fighting monsters like this.
He looked like he might snap at any second, but he had still clearly stopped the [Kagune].
I slid across the hallway and slipped through the narrow gap between the floor and the [Kagune].
The pain of my back scraping the ground hit me, but it was better than losing and dying.
Once I got under the [Kagune] Hitokawa was holding back, the Artist's face came into view straight ahead.
I aimed the pistol, with only one shot left, at his head.
"Let's finish this!!"
"Takaki Komaaaat!!!"
The bastard screamed and threw his body back.
"Huh?!"
"Tch!!"
Thud!
The [Kagune] Eto and Hitokawa had been holding back knocked them away. Freed, the [Kagune] lunged from both sides like a Venus flytrap, trying to crush my throat.
Even so, I didn't run. I pulled the trigger at him.
He hadn't charged me with his body. He'd made the fatal mistake of simply flailing his [Kagune] around in a rage.
If I didn't shoot now, I'd never get another chance!
"Haaah!!!"
Bang!
BOOOOM!
**
"Huff... huff..."
I exhaled, my breath rising all the way up into my chest.
I had definitely fired a [Q Bullet] at the Artist. And his [Kagune] had definitely come down on me. That had happened.
But I was alive. The reason was Eto, who was holding onto me and panting just as hard.
"Dad, are you an idiot?! If you decide it's impossible, then run! What's the point of fighting to the end? Do you think you're the protagonist of a hot-blooded manga or something?!"
"I don't think that's something you should be saying..."
"What was that!"
Just before the [Kagune] crushed me, Eto had poured the last of her stamina into her [Ukaku], slipped between me and the [Kagune], and grabbed hold of my body.
Then, like a football tackle, she hauled me with her and barely escaped through the gap in the [Kagune].
Thanks to that passionate tackle that would've made a football player weep, my chest was throbbing like a rib had been broken, but at least I was still alive.
"What happened to him?"
I pulled myself free from Eto's arms and stood up.
The Artist stood there as if time itself had stopped. His [Kagune] lay sprawled on the floor, not moving.
Did I miss? I had definitely aimed for his head.
The moment I thought that, the Artist's body tilted.
He toppled forward like a rotten tree falling over, then—
Thud!
—suddenly stepped forward and braced himself, stopping his own fall.
"You...! You bastard...!!"
The Artist's voice was badly shredded. When he turned his head toward us, the damage became clear.
From his left forehead to his right temple, the bullet had carved a deep groove through him.
His skull had cracked open, exposing a faint glimmer of white brain matter to the air, and the pressure of the bullet had pushed his left eye so far out it looked ready to fall from its socket.
It was a wound anyone would call fatal, but he wasn't dead.
"I-I'll... kill you...!! I'll kill you!!"
He was even stuttering, as if the shot had rattled his brain, but he was definitely alive. And he was still overflowing with killing intent!
The [Kagune] that had lost its strength began thrashing again.
'Oh no! Did Eto's impact shake my aim when she saved me?!'
Even knowing the cause, there was nothing left I could do.
I was out of bullets, and Eto had exhausted herself saving me.
With no way out left, I swallowed hard.
"Dieeeeeee!!!"
The bastard screamed and swung his [Kagune].
At that moment.
Crash.
A bottle flew in.
Not from anywhere else, but from the open ceiling directly above the Artist's head.
The bottle shattered, and the liquid inside soaked the Artist's body. I realized right then that the liquid was anything but ordinary.
Sssssssssss!!!
The liquid began to bubble and hiss. The Artist's skin where it touched was burning away in an instant.
"Kraaaaaaagh!!!"
'Hydrochloric acid...?!'
The Artist screamed in agony, and I could tell what the shattered bottle had contained.
Hydrochloric acid was burning through his body in real time, and some of it even seeped between the cracks in his skull.
Writhing in pain, the Artist lifted his head. His eye, the one untouched by the acid, turned toward whoever had dropped it.
"You...!! How dare you betray me...?! How dare you...!!"
Baring his teeth at someone, the Artist changed the direction of his [Kagune].
It was aimed straight at the floor above, as if he intended to drag whoever was up there down to hell.
But that final wish of his was never granted.
Thud!
One short, dull sound.
At that single sound, the wildly thrashing [Kagune] stopped moving.
The Artist's eyes rolled back as if he had died on the spot, and he pitched forward.
Between the back of his neck and the back of his head, around the medulla, the blade of the broken greatsword hilt was buried deep.
"Huff... huff..."
The one who had driven the greatsword hilt into the back of the Artist's head was breathing hard, utterly exhausted.
Thud!
Then he collapsed in the opposite direction from the Artist. Eto and I barely managed to steady ourselves before rushing to Hitokawa.
"Hitokawa!"
"Mister Hitokawa! Are you okay?!"
While Eto and I stopped the bleeding from Hitokawa's wounds, we looked up at the hole in the ceiling.
Now it was flooded with the bright light of morning, but there was no one there anymore.
"...What the hell is this?"
Hitokawa, who had somehow managed to stay conscious, muttered as he looked at the bottle in my hand.
It was a bottle of hydrochloric acid. The same kind used for cleaning and industrial work. The one that had been thrown down from the floor above to burn the Artist alive.
"Who the hell threw this?"
"I don't know. But whoever it was, they saved us."
Hitokawa frowned and looked up at the ceiling again.
"There was definitely someone up there."
"Yeah. And they vanished before we could see them."
Eto, who was sitting beside me, hugged her knees and stared at the ceiling too.
"Maybe they were helping us from the start."
"Maybe."
But I couldn't shake the feeling that this wasn't just a random act of kindness.
Someone in this building had helped Eto before. And now someone had thrown hydrochloric acid at the Artist from above.
There was only one person I could think of.
The woman tied up in the room on B2.
"...We need to go check downstairs."
Hitokawa's voice was low and rough.
"If she really did this, then we owe her."
I nodded.
"Yeah. But first, let's make sure none of us die from blood loss."
Eto gave a small, tired laugh.
"Dad, you say the weirdest things at times like this."
"You're one to talk."
We exchanged a look, then all three of us started moving again.
Whatever was waiting below, we were going to find out.