Chapter 76: Boss Raid - 1
What emerged from the dust cloud was...
“Haa... haa... haa... haa!”
It was Eto, gasping for air as if her lungs were about to give out.
Startled, I shouted instinctively.
“Eto?!”
Eto flinched.
She was in terrible shape—blood streamed from wounds across her body, and her pupils were half-dilated behind the shards of her broken mask. She looked far from okay, yet she still reacted to the sound of my voice.
“Da... ddy?”
Eto staggered forward, her steps as unsteady and precarious as a toddler's first walk.
Eventually, her body pitched forward as if she were collapsing. I rushed forward and caught her just before she hit the ground.
“Eto! Are you okay? Stay with me, Eto!”
“Da... ddy, Daddy...”
Eto reached out with trembling hands.
Her unfocused eyes and the metallic scent of blood leaking from between her parted lips made me tense up reflexively; she looked exactly as she did when she lost her reason.
Thankfully, the worst did not happen.
Eto wrapped her arms around my neck and leaned into me, visibly relieved.
“Thank goodness... Daddy is... safe...”
She hadn't lost her mind. Relieved, I answered her.
“You idiot. That’s my line!”
Though she had sustained many injuries, none were fatal. She was simply too exhausted to support her own weight.
Hitokawa, after checking Eto’s condition, turned his gaze toward the two Ghouls lying on the floor.
There was the fleshy middle-aged man known as the Foreman, and the bastard in the insect mask.
Hitokawa looked back and forth between them and Eto in disbelief.
“Good grief! I can’t believe my eyes. You took both of them down by yourself?”
“I didn’t... kill them...”
Still cradled in my arms, Eto glanced sideways at Hitokawa and spoke with great effort.
“I promised... so I just destroyed their kakuhou... and knocked them out.”
“Is that even possible? To take down two Ghouls while enduring the stamina drain of an Ukaku?”
“It was... dangerous... but I changed my approach.”
***
“Meat...♪”
At that moment, Eto had been on the verge of losing her reason.
If she couldn't eat her father, she would simply eat the Ghouls in front of her.
Eto was a hair's breadth away from acting on that dangerous impulse. But in that instant, a final shred of sanity slammed on the brakes.
She felt it instinctively: consuming any more 'Ghoul flesh' was dangerous.
It would be like stepping into a swamp from which there was no escape.
Then what was she to do? She had neither the strength nor the stamina left to maintain her Kagune.
Energy. She needed to consume something that could be converted into energy.
Once more, she reversed her thinking.
The nutrients Ghouls required—the cells that formed their weapons—were not exclusively limited to the body of a living Ghoul.
She realized it. She knew exactly what she had to eat!
“Die, you brat!!”
Perhaps sensing the dangerous glint in Eto’s eyes as her reason slipped, the Foreman immediately hurled a barrage of Ukaku feathers.
Even as the feathers flew toward her like bullets, Eto did not dodge.
She didn't even try.
She curled her body, crossing her right arm and leg to shield her vitals, including her head and heart.
The Ukaku fragments embedded themselves into her exposed limbs like shards of glass. While her vitals were safe, the injuries were severe.
In that moment, Eto bit down on her own wounded arm as if she had been waiting for this very second.
“?! What the hell is she doing?!”
For a moment, it seemed she had gone insane. But she hadn't.
She wasn't eating her own flesh; she was consuming the Ukaku fragments lodged within it!
“Ghh...!! AAAAAAAAGH!!!”
Eto screamed as she tore away and swallowed the fragments.
As if chewing and swallowing broken glass, an indescribable agony radiated from the impact sites and surged through her nervous system.
“Stupid girl. To think you'd eat a Kagune just because you're cornered!”
“Kehahahaha!!”
Seeing Eto writhing in pain, the Section Chief saw his chance to finish her. He leaped high into the air.
He merged two strands of Rinkaku into one and swung down at Eto with a crushing blow.
KWA-BOOOOM!!!
Unable to counter, Eto was pinned by the Rinkaku and smashed through the rooftop floor, plummeting to the level below.
It was a direct hit from a Rinkaku—the most powerful of the four Kagune types. Having taken such a blow while barely able to move, there was no way she could have survived.
Assuming the fight was over, the Foreman withdrew his Ukaku. He was exhausted from maintaining his Kagune for so long.
That was his fatal mistake.
KWA-BOOM!!!
In an instant, an Ukaku spike erupted from beneath the Foreman's feet and impaled his shoulder.
More precisely, it pierced the exact location of his kakuhou.
“Ghk?!”
“I finally got you.”
The voice belonged to Eto.
While she had appeared to be rolling in agony, she had timed the Rinkaku's descent to erupt her Ukaku from her back into the floor.
The resulting impact had created a hole just large enough for her body to slip through.
The Rinkaku had smashed nothing but the empty space she had just vacated.
“You... damn... brat...!!”
“Thanks to you, I can keep fighting a little longer. Thank you.”
SMACK!!!
Leaping back onto the rooftop, Eto delivered her 'thanks' with a vicious kick to the Foreman's jaw.
The blow sent him sprawling. Eto then turned her gaze toward the Section Chief, who was tilting his head in confusion, looking back and forth between the hole in the floor and the perfectly fine Eto.
“Keh?”
“Now, it's just you.”
“Kehhehe!! Kehhehehehehe!!!”
The Section Chief let out his usual grotesque laugh and charged. Eto met him head-on with a fierce burst of Ukaku.
The battle raged, carrying them from the rooftop down to the lower floors, until finally, a victor emerged.
***
“Is she completely insane?”
Koma muttered, a look of sheer disbelief on his face after hearing Eto’s story.
“A Ghoul’s Kagune is for hunting, but it's also a weapon for intraspecies competition. The composition itself acts as a poison to any Ghoul other than the owner. She basically ate poison and tried to use it as nutrition.”
“What? Is Eto going to be okay?”
“Luckily, she ate Ukaku. Ukaku has a property of scattering Rc cells, and since it was the same type as her own, the rejection reaction was minimized. Still, it's not without effect. She'll have aftereffects for a while.”
The mention of aftereffects worried me, but Koma assured me it wasn't severe—mostly just high fevers and a temporary drop in physical function.
I looked down at Eto in my arms.
She looked pitiful, but as her parent, I had to be firm.
“If you decide it's too much, you run! Why on earth would you fight to the bitter end? Do you think you're the protagonist of some hot-blooded manga?”
“That's not really something you should be saying, Dad...”
“What do you mean?”
“You're both the same, so let's just leave it at that. Hey, Koma, let me ask you something.”
Hitokawa pointed toward the two unconscious Ghouls.
“Is the 'Artist' among them?”
“...No. I haven't seen the Artist's face, but I know these two. They're the Foreman and the Section Chief. The Artist is the boss.”
“Figures. Even for Eto, if she had faced the Artist, it wouldn't have ended this cleanly.”
Hitokawa muttered, rubbing his chin in thought.
“What is it?”
“Something's wrong.”
Hitokawa looked down through the hole in the floor toward the basement.
“When we searched the basement, only you and Minami were there. The insect-masked Ghoul came up through this hole just as he entered the basement. Eto, did you see anything strange on the upper floors?”
Eto lifted her head. She was still weak, but her breathing had stabilized after the short rest.
“I fought my way to the roof in a blur, but I didn't see anything suspicious. If someone had been hiding there, wouldn't they have attacked me already?”
“That's exactly why it's strange. According to Koma, the Artist was definitely in the building when we broke in. But now he's gone. Where did he vanish to?”
It was indeed strange. The Artist, who had certainly been present when Eto and Hitokawa arrived, had disappeared from both the upper floors and the basement.
Unless there was some secret room like in a movie, where could he have gone?
Hitokawa scratched his head, unable to find an answer. Eventually, he decided to let it go.
“It leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but let's retreat for today. The Artist's absence is actually a lucky break, especially since we can't request CCG backup right now.”
“What? Weren't we going to call for backup as soon as you rescued Dad?”
“That crazy bitch you know so well smashed the phone.”
“That woman, I swear...”
Eto ground her teeth at the thought of Minami, with whom she shared nothing but bad blood. I decided it would be best to keep them apart from now on.
I stood up, still holding Eto.
“We'll have our chance to settle things with that deranged artist eventually. Let's go home. Honestly, I don't want to spend another minute in this place.”
The other two nodded in agreement.
Morning had arrived, and bright light was seeping in through the front entrance. Seeing it made the chaos of the past day feel real.
But as we began to walk toward the light, Eto's expression changed.
She noticed it before anyone else.
Before the scar on my right arm could react, and before Hitokawa's instincts as a Ghoul Investigator could kick in, Eto sensed the presence.
And she realized it was already too late.
Before she could turn her head or make a sound, Eto curled her body and planted both feet against my chest.
She shoved me away with all her might.
As I lost my balance and fell, I saw it.
A dark red halberd flying through the space I had just occupied.
SPLCH!!
It pierced Eto.
A dark red mass, twice as thick as an adult's arm, speared straight through Eto's abdomen.
Before I could scream, before Hitokawa could react and swing his greatsword, a grating voice reached my ears.
“You can't leave. Not a chance.”
It was a voice I recognized.
The voice that had been hiding in the shadows.
But when I looked at the source, I couldn't believe my eyes.
It came from where the two Ghouls Eto had defeated were lying.
One of them had stood up.
The Ghoul in the insect mask.
There was no grotesque laughter. No erratic gestures.
With the graceful poise of a stage actor, he simply removed the insect mask.
“Losing a piece of fine material is something your father has already done once. Once is enough.”
A man with red [Kakugan] smiled unpleasantly.
=======================A completely unrelated bonus image==========================
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