I stared at the monster made of Kagune that filled my entire field of vision.
I'd seen monsters that ate people, and I'd seen other monsters that hunted those monsters, so I thought I was already used to every kind of absurd sight. But this was grotesque enough to feel unreal even to me.
It was unbelievably fast for something with a body so massive it filled the passage. Even my reflexes, sharpened by everything I'd been through, couldn't keep up.
All I could do was register the monster as it leaped from wall to wall at a dizzying speed; by the time it swung its arm, I had no time to dodge.
If I'd been here alone, I would have died right then and there.
Thoom!
"...!!"
I felt a surge of momentum so violent it felt as if my upper and lower body were about to split apart. The world flashed past in a blur.
Eto had sensed the danger and bolted deeper into the passage with me on her back.
By a hair's breadth, the monster's arm slammed down behind us.
KWA-BOOM!
The deafening impact shook the ground so hard I could feel the vibration through Eto's legs.
It had clearly struck the floor, but the cracks spider-webbed up the walls and reached all the way to the ceiling.
A bad feeling flickered through my mind, and then it became reality.
RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE!
"Damn it! The escape route!"
Dust rained from the ceiling, and then the entire section came crashing down.
It was a terrible situation for us, and even worse for Enji and Kaya's group, who would have to pass through here later.
But there was no time left to worry about the collapsed path. The monster came charging again, leaving the falling debris behind.
Even though my vision was blocked by the blanket, Eto must have sensed the Ghoul's attack from behind.
A dark red arm, thick as a log, dropped toward us. Eto kicked off the ground, clinging to the wall to avoid it.
The missed strike tore up the floor, and the other arm swung toward the wall, chasing after us.
Eto kicked off again and launched herself toward the ceiling.
She raced across the floor, walls, and ceiling without any regard for direction, and the monster pursued her relentlessly.
"Ugh...!!"
I barely managed to hold back the nausea rising in my throat.
The Ghoul's movement—darting wildly in every direction without any sense of up or down—was more than a human body was meant to endure.
The smell of the chocolate I'd eaten earlier mixed with something sour as it rose in my throat, making me feel even worse.
That didn't mean I could tell Eto to slow down, though.
If she eased up even a little, that abnormal violence would tear us to pieces.
Eventually, the frantic sprint—so dizzying it made a roller coaster look like a joke—came to an end.
The passage ended, and a huge cavity opened up before us.
"Dad, I'm sorry!"
"What!?"
The moment she spoke, my contact with Eto vanished and a sense of weightlessness wrapped around my body.
As soon as we burst out of the passage, Eto had hurled me into the air.
Left adrift in midair, I turned my head with a dazed expression and looked at Eto.
She had kicked off a pipe in the middle of the chamber and was throwing herself in the opposite direction—straight toward the monster that had just emerged from the passage after us.
I shifted my gaze downward. Far below, I could see the concrete floor. I wouldn't die, but it looked like it would hurt. ...A lot.
That was unlike Eto. She was the kind of kid who hated it when I suffered even the smallest injury.
She'd cut her finger while cooking recently, and after that, she'd started learning how to cook properly because she insisted on doing it herself to keep me safe. That pretty much said it all.
For Eto to throw me into the air while accepting a potentially serious injury herself meant she was out of room to maneuver.
In other words, she had judged that monster to be that dangerous.
"Damn it. I should've gone home sooner."
Regret came too late; the concrete floor rushed toward me, expanding rapidly until it was right in front of my face.
THUD!
**
After throwing Koma into the air, Eto changed direction and shot toward the Kakuja monster.
It was an action she absolutely should not have taken if she had been thinking only of Koma's safety, but her instincts screamed that the monster was dozens of times more dangerous to him than a fall from the air.
She had to land a fatal blow while it was still partially restricted by the passage and unable to move freely.
Her mind was calmly analyzing the situation, but at the same time, she could feel an unbearable emotion boiling up in her chest.
Deep hostility. Disgust. Revulsion.
The hostility was easy enough to understand. The monster was charging straight at her with an obvious intent to kill.
But what were the disgust and revulsion?
She found the answer the moment she swung her Ukaku wings like blades at the monster.
KRAK!
The blade-like Kagune dug halfway into the monster's arm and stopped. In that instant of stillness, Eto and the monster locked eyes.
Eyes glittered between the armor of Kagune that covered its entire body.
There was no reason in them at all—only the gleam of predatory instinct. Looking into those eyes, Eto felt a chill crawl over her skin.
This monster was looking at her, a Ghoul no different from a human, as prey.
It was the first time she'd ever been looked at like that. Like she was nothing more than food.
At the same time, an old memory flashed through her mind.
The memory of when she'd been gravely wounded by a Ghoul in police clothing and had looked at her dad, Koma, while desperately craving food.
So this was how Ghouls looked at humans?
This was how predators looked at prey?
—I was looking at Dad with those horrible eyes?!
This monster was a mirror to Eto.
A mirror reflecting her own disgusting nature. A mirror exposing the self she had been quietly rejecting all along.
The moment she recognized that, the disgust and revulsion twisted into unbearable rage.
FWOOSH!
The Kagune that had been held in a blade-like shape warped, then burst outward with the force and heat of flames.
Eto's Ukaku, which spewed RC cells at high speed, was itself a Kagune that generated heat.
Burning through cells like a high-temperature cutter, her Ukaku drove in as if to sever the monster's arm on the spot.
But the monster wasn't about to just stand there and take it. Before its arm could be cut off, it swung its other limb at Eto.
It wasn't that it feared losing an arm; it simply wanted to tear apart the prey in front of it and eat her as quickly as possible. But the result was the same: it managed to keep its arm.
KWA-BOOM!
The brutal hand slammed down on Eto, but she had already withdrawn her Kagune and slipped away. Clicking her tongue, she had intended to cut through the bone and disable the arm, but things hadn't gone as planned.
Still, it had definitely taken damage. Flesh had split open, bone had been exposed, and the Ukaku's heat had scorched the cells. Even if she hadn't managed to sever it, its movement should have been restricted.
That was what Eto expected.
Then her expression froze.
Ssssss…!
The monster's wound began healing at a terrifying speed.
It wasn't instant, but at that rate, it looked like it would be fully healed in a minute or two.
What kind of regeneration is that...!
No matter how strong a Ghoul's regeneration was, wounds inflicted by Kagune were normally slow to heal. That was true of every Ghoul she'd fought so far, and true of Eto herself.
But this monster's strength, speed, and regeneration were all on a completely different level.
While Eto was still stunned, the monster fully escaped the passage and entered the cavity.
"GRAAAAH!!!"
With a bestial roar, the monster charged at Eto.
Eto kicked off a pipe again and leaped into the air, and the monster followed, crushing the pipe as it sprang upward after her.
As Eto used her Ukaku like a tail fin to adjust her direction and dart around, the monster chased her, smashing everything in its path. What was astonishing was that even with a body that huge, it didn't lag far behind her speed.
Power, speed, stamina. Nothing about it was lacking. Everything about it was overwhelming and infuriating.
Eto didn't have much combat experience against Ghouls, but she could say with certainty that this was the toughest opponent she had ever faced.
Going head-on against a thing like that was insane.
With that regeneration, most attacks will be meaningless. Then...!
Feeling her stamina gradually wearing down, Eto sharply changed direction at a right angle. The monster hurled itself after her.
The monster's outstretched arm reached for Eto's back. And then—
KRAK!
"Ghk!?"
An alarmed sound. The monster, which had been chasing Eto blindly, suddenly felt resistance clamp down on its body.
The place Eto had leaped toward was the gap between two thick, overlapping pipes.
The space between them was wide enough for an adult man to slip through easily, but unfortunately, the monster's body had grown far larger than that.
The space Eto had passed through without trouble failed to let the monster through, and the pipes, bent by the monster's own strength, turned into a trap that pinned it in place perfectly.
"You've got plenty of power, but no brains to read your surroundings, huh!"
Without hesitation, Eto leaped straight up and dropped toward the monster's back.
Her target was the nape of its neck. If regeneration was the problem, then all she had to do was inflict a fatal wound before it could recover.
But a Ghoul's nape was also covered in thick Kagune armor. With the firepower of Eto's Kagune, it would be hard to pierce that shell.
So Eto took out a hard candy and bit into it. It was a special candy made by mixing corpse bone powder with Koma's blood.
She'd brought it just in case, and she could feel that now was the time to use it.
CRUNCH!
She crushed the candy with her teeth and swallowed it.
The dizzying pleasure that started on her tongue was enough to shake her reason for a moment. That formless pleasure turned into heat, passed down her esophagus, reached her stomach, and then spread through her entire body.
Eto caught that spreading heat and concentrated it into her shoulders.
FWOOSH!
She suppressed the Kagune, which was raging like flames, as much as possible. She focused every ounce of that force on a single point at the back of the monster's neck.
At this level of firepower, she could sever the monster's neck and take its life.
...Take its life?
"...!!"
Eto's motion to fire the Kagune stopped for an instant.
In that sliver of time, countless hesitations passed through her mind. The words of Hitokawa she'd heard before. The words he'd said when Eto killed someone for the first time.
—Listen carefully! To me, you're just a Ghoul, but there's one person who's different: Koma. The affection Koma has shown you, from everything I've seen, was definitely real! That's why he fought me when I said you had to be sent to Cochlea, and protected you anyway! He was trying to protect the everyday life you shared together!! And now you're going to try to break out of that life yourself!?
The more often you take a life, the more numb you become to killing.
Whether you want it or not, your nature changes little by little, like clothes getting soaked by a drizzle. That means you can never return to an ordinary, peaceful life.
It was a warning only Hitokawa, someone who bore the burden of killing Ghouls, could have given her.
She remembered the heat of the first time she'd killed someone. Back then, Hitokawa's scolding had pulled her back.
But this time? Could she get out of it?
After killing this monster, would what remained be Takaki Eto, or another monster?
Her hesitation lasted only a moment—truly, only a fleeting instant.
And that was enough time for the monster to violently tear through the pipes and break free of the restraint.
"...Huh!?"
"GRAAAAHHHHH!!!!"
The monster swung its arm amid flying fragments, and Eto, finally snapping back into focus, detonated her Kagune at maximum output.
KWA-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM――――!!!!!!
**
"Ghk! Cough!"
Face-down on the floor, I wiped away the saliva dripping from my mouth and forced my breathing back under control.
Falling from the air on my back had left me unable to breathe properly for a while.
On top of that, I'd slammed into a concrete floor that had no kindness to absorb the impact, and my whole body was creaking.
"Tch... Eto...?"
Once my body had recovered just enough to move, I hurriedly looked for Eto. At the same time, a dark red light stabbed at the edge of my vision.
KWA-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM――――!!!!!!
A split second later, a blast that seemed to shake my very stomach rolled over me.
Covering my ears, I followed the blast and the light. What I saw was a dark red blaze burning in midair—no, something that looked like flames, but was actually a massive explosion of RC cells.
Having seen Eto's Kagune many times, I knew it was an explosion caused by her Ukaku, which had a scattering nature.
Something burst out from within the afterimage of the explosion.
Realizing it was Eto, I rushed forward to catch her as she fell headfirst.
"Eto! Gah!! Hot!!"
I barely managed to catch her, and I screamed—not because of the impact, but because of the heat pouring into both my arms.
The shoulder area of Eto's clothes had been completely burned away, and the skin exposed beneath looked as if it were melting from a severe burn.
I tried to cool the heat somehow—touching her, fanning air at her, anything—but it wouldn't go down easily, and my hands picked up light burns where they touched her.
"Damn it! What the hell did you do? Why do you look like this!?"
I shook her and called out, but she only groaned, unable to wake up.
Holding Eto in my arms, I searched for the monster. Where was it? It looked like it had been caught in Eto's explosion, but—
I found the monster sooner than I expected.
KOOOM!
More accurately, it showed up first.
At the vibration from behind, I stiffened and slowly turned my head.
The monster, its breathing ragged as if it had taken a heavy hit, was staring at us from right behind. There was a severe burn on the left side of its neck and shoulder, similar to Eto's.
Its flesh had been burned away to the point that bone was visible, but the monster was still moving just fine, its gaze fixed on us.
"What the fuck...."
"GRAAAAH!!!"
Before I could even finish cursing, the monster bared its hideous teeth and lunged. There was no room to dodge while holding Eto.
I grabbed a piece of scrap metal lying nearby just to put up some kind of resistance, but compared to the monster's ferocious charge, it was nothing.
Was I going to die here?
The monster's shadow swallowed my vision and everything went dark.
CRUNCH!
The horrible sound of flesh and bone being torn apart stabbed into my ears.
But the source of that sound was neither me nor Eto.
"GRAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!"
The monster screamed, clutching its own face with both hands.
Between those brutal hands, I caught a glimpse of its face: its lower jaw had been ripped clean off, and both eyes had been slashed open in deep diagonal cuts as if furrows had been carved into them, spraying blood everywhere.
"I thought we were almost at the exit, so I let my guard down. What the hell is this thing?"
In front of me was Enji, casually toying with the monster's missing lower jaw in one hand...
"Mr. Takaki. Mind explaining what's going on here? Why is the escape route collapsed?"
...and Kaya, brushing away an eyeball hooked on her fingernail with obvious disgust.
And around them stood rows of Ghouls wearing red monkey masks and Ghouls wearing black dog masks.