"Is it really all right to leave Kaigo like that?"
The mysterious man posed the question to the one walking ahead as they emerged from the sewer and left the abandoned building behind.
The man in the fedora, chewing gum, answered without even looking back.
"Once he starts fighting, he's the type you can't control anyway. Tch. Better to use him as a disposable piece here than keep dragging him around."
"The Ghoul Investigators from the CCG are going to take a beating."
"Tch, tch. Same goes for the Ghoul faction. Kuzen hasn't shown up either, so Arima will have to clean it up himself."
A Ghoul who had awakened into a Kakuja was powerful enough to be treated as a living disaster.
Yet they treated such a creature as nothing more than a disposable pawn, vanishing into the city's darkness as if they had always been part of it.
Just before they disappeared, only the fedora man's mutterings lingered in the air.
"Everything for the sake of balance...."
"Grrrrr!!!"
Kaigo. The Kakuja monster lowered the hand that had been covering its face. Barely thirty seconds had passed since it had screamed in agony from the loss of a limb.
White bone began to sprout from the vanished lower jaw, and from the socket where the eyeball had been ripped out, a red glow slowly began to seep forth.
At the sight, Enji and Kaya both looked genuinely startled.
"It's already regenerating? An injury that would take even my body an hour to recover from?"
"A body covered in Kagune.... Don't tell me that's the Kakuja I've only heard stories about."
"It is a Kakuja."
Koma answered after hearing the two of them mutter.
He had just shifted the direction of the metal shard he'd picked up as a makeshift tool, pricking the tip of his index finger. After confirming that blood was seeping from the small wound, he placed his finger into Eto's mouth.
It was emergency first aid to treat Eto's injury.
As the blood flowed into her body, Eto's face, which had been twisted in pain, settled into a calm expression. She looked like a baby nursing at its mother's breast.
Though she wasn't conscious, her body seemed to instinctively know it needed this to survive, and she continued to suck the blood.
Once he confirmed the first aid was working, Koma turned back to the two of them.
"That thing sees humans and Ghouls alike as the same prey. It's a cannibal. And its strength is more overwhelming and its speed faster than any Ghoul we've encountered so far."
"Ahh~ so that disgusting stare was that? The 'yes, you're food' look?"
"Did it gain power only to lose its reason? How pitiful. It can't even tell who it should or shouldn't pick a fight with."
"Kraaaah!!!!"
With his vision partially recovered, Kaigo spotted the two who had injured him and let out a shriek.
The armor of Kagune, linked together like muscle fibers, thickened further, swelling its already enormous body to nearly twice its size.
"Can we win?"
When Koma asked, the two looked back at him.
Enji lifted the corner of his mouth in a grin and asked in return.
"And if we can't?"
"Then we find a way to run. He destroyed the escape route, but luckily I brought the map. For now, we should pull back and look for another path...."
"Then sit there nice and comfortable and find a new escape route without going anywhere."
"Kaaaaaah!!!"
While Kaya was still speaking, the monster lunged. Charging forward and carving cracks into the concrete floor, it had the momentum of a dump truck barreling straight at them.
Just as Koma spotted the monster's brutal hands reaching in from both sides and was about to shout a warning—
Thud!
Enji and Kaya's figures blurred and vanished, shooting straight into the inside of the monster's reach instead.
"Don't underestimate the Maen of the 20th Ward."
"Tremble before Kuroinu."
Enji's fist slammed into the monster's chest, and Kaya's leg whipped into the monster's lower jaw just as it was reforming.
Puhah!
What followed was so astonishing it bordered on the miraculous. The monster's body shot high into the air as if it had been kicked by a professional soccer player.
Seeing that, Koma could not help but be stunned. The two of them spoke to him in unison.
""We'll handle that monster.""
The confident Enji and Kaya glared at each other when their voices overlapped. Their looks clearly said, Why are you copying me?
But there was no time to waste on each other, so they turned those same looks toward their subordinates.
"What are you gawking at? Why aren't you joining in already!"
"If you don't want to fight that thing with both arms ripped off, move!"
"Huh! S-sorry, boss!"
"I-I'm going now, sis!"
Only then did the subordinates, who had been dazed and distracted by something off to the side, snap back to their senses and rush at the monster.
Koma looked bewildered, realizing that he had been the one stealing their attention.
Even with a Kakuja monster right in front of them, had they really been distracted enough to stop and stare at him?
Of course, the fact that he was human was unusual enough. But what had truly shocked them was Eto in his arms.
A human not only holding an injured Ghoul child, but also drawing his own blood and placing his finger into the child's mouth to treat the wound.
To Koma, it was a perfectly natural thing to do for Eto's sake, but to the Ghouls watching, it was nothing short of a massive shock, as if the very world they lived in was collapsing.
For some, it was like a rabbit thrusting its own neck into the mouth of a wounded lion to save it; for others, it was like the Virgin Mary cradling a saint in her arms.
Each of them had been so captivated by the sight of the father and daughter pair that they couldn't move until their leaders shouted at them.
"Kraaaah!!!"
The monster that had been launched into the air by Enji and Kaya's strike came crashing back down.
It had been flung away with a loud impact, but the damage didn't seem severe. As expected, the thicker Kagune armor and abnormal regeneration were the primary obstacles.
To tear off that armor and deliver the flesh beneath it to their masters, swarms of red monkeys and black dogs bared their fangs and charged from all directions.
At the same time, the two leaders rushing with them gave absolute orders.
"We can skip the introductions for those two, right? Protect them properly and fight."
"If you let even one of those two get hurt, I'll personally rip your throat out."
"...."
Following the faint traces of wind, Arima stopped walking through the passage. The wind had changed.
He pressed his ear to a nearby pipe—a rusted iron pipe running vertically from above to below.
Noise and vibration reached him. It was close. Right below.
Something was happening on the floor directly beneath him.
Judging by the presence of multiple Ghouls, it was likely En and the Black Doberman, whom he had been searching for. Were they in the middle of an internal conflict?
Arima pulled his ear away from the pipe and thought for a moment.
The reason he had broken away from the extermination squad and come here was a single order from above.
"Do not allow any Ghoul to leave the 7th Ward sewer alive."
Since the extermination began, neither of the two Ghoul groups had been seen. And from the unfamiliar wind blowing in from somewhere, he had realized that an escape route had been opened.
From the moment he learned that, Arima had slipped away from the extermination squad and headed for the route the Ghouls were likely using.
The thought of reporting it to the other investigators had never even occurred to him. Even if he had, there was no chance they would have believed his claim that he had figured it out simply by sensing the wind.
Arima looked down the far end of the passage.
If he followed the passage and turned a few corners, he should be able to reach the lower cavern. But the problem was that there was no way to know how much longer it would take. If only he could cleanly break through the floor and cross over, that would be ideal.
From Arima's perspective, the thick floor in front of him was a greater obstacle than the Ghouls waiting ahead. With the Quinque he had brought, digging a hole would take too much time.
"I should have brought a heavy-type Quinque...."
As he muttered this while lifting the iron case holding his Quinque, a fierce presence rushed up behind him at high speed.
Arima tilted his upper body and dodged.
Whoosh!
"Oh? You dodged?"
The one who had kicked at Arima from behind was none other than Hitokawa, wearing a thoroughly irritated expression.
Behind him, about a dozen Ghoul Investigators, including Hoshino, were staring at Arima with exhausted expressions.
Arima, unable to understand why he was being looked at like that, tilted his head and asked, "What is the matter?"
"Wh-what is the matter? You've lost your damn sense of judgment! This sewer is still Ghoul territory! You came deep into their territory alone and thought nobody would say anything? The investigators behind me all came chasing after you because they were looking for you!!"
Hitokawa had returned after cutting down an annoying Ghoul, only to be hit with a wave of irritation when Hoshino reported that Arima had disappeared.
He had known the boy was unusual, but he never imagined he would ignore the chain of command and act on his own.
There were investigators who occasionally pushed ahead alone because they were confident in their own skill, but who would have expected that from a mere second-rank investigator—and a minor at that?
Arima was temporarily assigned to Hitokawa's team, and Hitokawa felt responsible for him. Thus, he had hurriedly gathered the available investigators and tracked Arima down.
Fortunately, following his trail was easy. Wherever Arima had passed, Ghoul corpses were strewn about.
After finally finding Arima, Hitokawa had first felt relief that he was safe.
He had often seen people who trusted their own strength, ran ahead, and came back as lonely corpses, so he had worried Arima might have ended up the same way.
And now that he had confirmed Arima was fine, all the irritation he had been holding in exploded.
Veins standing out on his forehead, he shoved his face close to Arima and said, "I'll give you a choice. Do you want to take one clean hit from me here and be done with it? Or go back and handle a pay cut and a hundred written apologies on your own?"
"I'll take the pay cut and a hundred written apologies."
"The fact that you chose that without a shred of remorse or hesitation makes me even angrier...!! Just take one hit here already!!!"
Just as Hitokawa, now fully over the edge, clenched his fist—
KWA-BOOOOM――!!!!
Everyone there staggered at the sudden impact.
It felt as though a massive shock had erupted from beneath their feet, and then the floor a short distance away rose up as if swelling from below.
Sensing danger, Hitokawa grabbed Arima by the shoulder, pulled him back, and shouted to the investigators behind him.
"All units, battle formation!!"
Shing! Shing!
At Hitokawa's signal, the investigators drew their Quinque in unison and completed their battle preparations.
After confirming that, Hitokawa looked forward again.
The raised floor cracked apart like an eggshell being peeled, and a monster revealed itself inside.
"Kraaaah!!!!"
It was a monster of enormous size. It had a human shape, but what showed on the surface was nothing like human skin.
A mass of dark red, writhing cells. Recognizing it, Hitokawa shouted in alarm.
"My God! It's a Kakuja!?"
"Kraaaahhh!!!!"
The Kakuja monster screamed and raised both arms. It looked like a child furious at annoying flies buzzing around it.
It lifted both fists over its head and swung them down like war hammers.
KWA-GA-GA-GA-BOOOOM!!!
The monster's fists sent the passage floor trembling violently. And that was only the beginning.
The concrete could not withstand the shock spreading through its structure and cracked apart, and the damage soon reached the investigators as well.
"....!!"
"Huh...!?"
"What the hell!!"
As the ground beneath them suddenly sank, the investigators screamed. But no matter how they flailed and grabbed at anything nearby, the sensation of falling did not go away.
The entire floor was collapsing!
Seeing the vast cavern's height revealed as the floor gave way, Hitokawa shouted, "When we get back, you're getting two hundred written apologies, Arima Kishouooooo!!!!!"
Apparently, he was more furious about the one punch he never got to throw than about the monster's sudden attack.
"Ghoul Investigators?! Why are those bastards falling from above!!"
Katsura Akihiko, one of Enji's subordinates, stared in shock at the investigators falling with the collapsing ceiling.
The Kakuja monster that Enji and Kaya had launched into the ceiling had come back carrying an unexpected bomb.
"Tch! We're already struggling against one Kakuja monster, and now investigators too!"
Nomiya Seiichi, one of Kaya's subordinates, clicked his tongue while pressing down on his injured shoulder.
Because the opponent was so powerful, even a slight graze had resulted in a severe wound. And now they had to deal with investigators on top of that—could they even manage it?
"Um...."
At that moment, hearing a voice from behind, Katsura and Nomiya turned around.
There stood Takaki Koma, carrying the still-unconscious Eto on his back. For some reason, even as he called to them, he was covering his face with a map.
"What is it... no, what is it, sir... no, that's not right either.... What is the matter?"
He was human, yes, but also someone their leaders had ordered them to protect.
Wavering between whether to speak casually or respectfully, Katsura ended up blurting out a surprisingly old-fashioned, formal way of speaking.
"Do you happen to have a spare mask?"
"A spare mask?"
Nomiya, unable to understand why he was asking for that in the middle of all this chaos, raised his voice.
But Koma was dead serious.
"Just now, when the investigators fell, I heard a voice I shouldn't have heard. If you have one, please lend it to me quickly! If they find out Eto and I are here, I won't be able to deal with the aftermath!"
Koma's voice was as grave as a human being being hunted by Ghouls.
How ironic that the target was not a Ghoul, but his own friend among the investigators.