Kenji stood completely isolated in the heart of the primitive settlement, the surrounding ink-black darkness surging toward his frame like a silent, relentless tide.
The environmental stillness was profoundly suffocating.
Within this absolute, pitch-black void where light was completely dead, it felt as though countless hidden eyes were methodically dissecting his every movement from the shadows.
Kenji swept his calm, calculating gaze across the perimeter, his fingers tightening their leverage around the hilt of his single-edged longblade.
Fwoosh—!
Out of nowhere, a sharp crimson Kagune tore through the shadow-choked atmosphere, charting a terminal trajectory straight toward his vitals.
Clang!
Kenji executed a crisp, fluid upward parry.
A violent shower of friction sparks erupted into existence, momentarily illuminating the dark corridor.
”So, you are the mysterious anomaly executing our frontline squads.
Slicing through that volume of our species…
who exactly are you supposed to be?”
”Evaluating your structural signature, you are definitely not a ghoul.”
A heavily built, middle-aged man standing nearly two meters tall stepped methodically out from the curtain of darkness.
He sported a thick, rugged beard, and his dead eyes locked onto Kenji with an eerie, unbothered composure.
”Commanding the capacity to infiltrate this deep into the bedrock…
are you an asset deployed by the CCG?”
The man maintained his level inquiry while slowly retracting his thick crimson Kagune back into his lower spine.
Concurrently, a massive, swarming wave of native ghouls began materializing from the surrounding mud structures, sealing off every viable escape vector.
At the vanguard of this blocking force stood Iruma Yuki, the sovereign commander of the Wild Dogs, alongside Fujiwara, the absolute executive of the Crimson Fire syndicate.
”I omitted my structural introductions.
My name is Washuu Munetoki—and I am the entity tasked with your biological termination.”
Kenji’s brow subtly furrowed at the vocal delivery.
The surname Washuu instantly forced his internal tactical modules into a state of high hyper-vigilance.
[System Ledger]: [The Oculus of Engagement] is officially active!
[Target Profile]: Iruma Yuki
[Strength]: 85
[Agility]: 90
[Constitution]: 81
[Spirit]: 27
[Charisma]: 19
[Threat Classification]: S-Rate Ghoul
[Target Profile]: Fujiwara
[Strength]: 91
[Agility]: 84
[Constitution]: 92
[Spirit]: 25
[Charisma]: 7
[Threat Classification]: S-Rate Ghoul
[Target Profile]: Washuu Munetoki
[Strength]: 127
[Agility]: 124
[Constitution]: 115
[Spirit]: 39
[Charisma]: 8
[Threat Classification]: SS-Rate Ghoul
Fwoosh—! Visit g.com for the full chapter.
The exact millisecond Washuu Munetoki finalized his statement, his Bikaku tail Kagune erupted forward, screaming across the space toward Kenji.
The four heavy, reddish-brown structural tentacles extended dozens of meters through the air, their kinetic velocity showing zero depreciation.
Iruma Yuki and Fujiwara exchanged a brief, unspoken tactical signal before simultaneously committing to their offensive sequences.
As for the surrounding horde of B-rate and A-rate grunts, the entire collective maintained a wide defensive buffer zone, choosing to monitor the engagement from afar.
Stepping into a high-intensity kinetic vortex of this caliber would achieve nothing but their immediate, accidental destruction.
Iruma Yuki wielded an Ukaku variant; anchoring herself to the high ground, she unleashed a continuous, high-frequency barrage of crystallized, arrow-like biological shards that rained down upon Kenji’s coordinates.
Fujiwara operated a dense, violet Koukaku armor matrix that rapidly metastasized to encase his entire upper torso.
His behavioral data indicated a clear intent to lock Kenji into a brutal war of close-quarters attrition.
”Even the CCG’s Special Class vanguards wouldn’t dare infiltrate this abyss completely unassisted!
A lone human baseline navigating straight into our slaughterhouse to embrace his termination!”
”Regardless of whether you are a customized Half-Human anomaly engineered in the surface labs, your existence terminates in this sector today!”
Watching Fujiwara roar like a manic animal as he spearheaded the frontal assault, Kenji maintained a vice-like grip on his longblade, though his analytical focus remained locked almost exclusively on the distant form of Washuu Munetoki.
To command an authenticated SS-rate data profile within the savage ecosystem of District 24 meant this bastard had comfortably survived an immense volume of cannibalistic consumption loops.
He was a predator that required absolute, continuous tracking.
Executing a sequence of rapid, high-angle leaps to smoothly evade Iruma Yuki’s crystallized projectile arrays, Kenji found his immediate airspace heavily compromised as the four massive Bikaku tentacles swarmed in from multiple vectors to pin him.
Kenji torqued his right wrist, converting his blade into a high-frequency defensive shield to systematically deflect Munetoki’s incoming kinetic strikes.
Clang!
Clang!
Clang!
Upon making initial structural contact, a distinct, subtle numbness vibrated through the marrow of his palms.
What a persistent nuisance.
Kenji muttered internally, his expression hardening into an absolute, serious focus.
Once a predator scaled to the SS-rate boundary, its biological Kagune functioned precisely like a master-crafted military weapon, commanding immense structural density and devastating kinetic force.
Operating with nothing more than a singular alloy longblade meant his defensive coverage was being pressed to its technical limits.
”Do not dare treat my asset as an invisible variable, you arrogant worm!”
Fujiwara had successfully closed the spatial gap, relying on the absolute security of his Koukaku shielding to completely disregard personal defense as he drove a heavy, boulder-shattering fist straight at Kenji’s face.
Simultaneously, Washuu Munetoki’s offensive tentacles adjusted their tracking vectors, weaving together like four heavy iron chains to completely lock down and paralyze Kenji’s evasion matrix.
BOOM—area!
Kenji didn’t back down.
Abandoning defensive displacement, he fired his left fist forward, meeting Fujiwara’s incoming strike dead-center in mid-air.
The following millisecond, the hyper-dense Koukaku armor shielding Fujiwara’s fist violently shattered into a cloud of calcified shrapnel.
A sequence of crisp, agonizing structural snaps echoed through the corridor as Fujiwara’s entire hand and forearm were violently crushed into a deformed, mangled mess of bone and flesh tissue.
”Nani?!”
An intense shockwave of psychological horror rattled Fujiwara’s consciousness.
He had never calculated a reality where a human’s raw physical bone density could completely punch through his premier Koukaku defense—the absolute pinnacle structural asset he prided himself on!
But Kenji’s sequence was nowhere near its conclusion.
With his right hand executing a blinding flurry of defensive slashes that generated a continuous ping-ping-pong-pong acoustic ring against Munetoki’s lashing tentacles, Kenji unleashed his left arm like a lightning bolt, driving a high-frequency succession of devastating straight punches directly into Fujiwara’s face.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
The moment Kenji’s initial fist connected with Fujiwara’s cranium, the sheer concussive displacement plunged the syndicate leader into a state of severe vertigo, completely stripping him of any capacity to force a defensive reaction.
Flash—!
Intercepting a perfect structural opening, Kenji’s longblade carved a clean, high-speed horizontal trajectory.
A single head tumbled into the dark.
[Rewards Dispatched]: Sourced S-Grade Loot Chest (times 1).
Having finalized Fujiwara’s termination with a single, minimalist stroke, Kenji’s physical form completely blurred, vanishing from the coordinate.
A millisecond later, the hyper-dense artillery barrage of crystallized Ukaku arrows dropped by Iruma Yuki completely saturated the location, drilling through Fujiwara’s headless torso and pinning his cooling remains firmly to the stone floor.
Had Kenji’s extraction vector been delayed by even a single fraction of a second, his own physical frame would have been directly intercepted by that crystallized shard array.
”Not good!
The monster is tracking my vector!”
Witnessing Kenji’s sudden psychological disappearance from the floor, Iruma Yuki’s internal alarms triggered a massive spike of panic.
She desperately attempted to force a high-velocity repositioning sequence, but an intense, cutting line of displaced air was already screaming directly toward her blind spot.
Sliiiit!
The longblade flashed through the dark, cleanly shearing through half of her Ukaku wing structure.
Yet, her primary torso managed to escape the lethal arc.
Kenji adjusted his line of sight, tracking her displacement.
Farther back, Washuu Munetoki had smoothly deployed his tentacles to constrict around Iruma Yuki’s waist, dragging her high-speed frame straight back to his immediate position.
But Kenji’s eyes locked onto a secondary detail: clutched tightly within Munetoki’s palm was a freshly harvested Kakuhou organ—viciously ripped straight from the corpse of the fallen Fujiwara.
”What a tragic waste of premium nutritional feedstock,” Washuu Munetoki muttered with absolute detachment before unhinging his jaw to swallow the raw biological mass whole.
Gulp—
Kenji’s eyes narrowed into cold pinpricks at the sight.
Without offering a single millisecond of breathing room, he shifted his weight and charged straight down the center line to close the distance.
Washuu Munetoki remained entirely unbothered by the incoming blitz.
Deploying merely two of his four Bikaku tentacles, he casually wove a fluid, high-velocity defensive grid to block and match Kenji’s advancing blade work.
”Iruma Yuki…
I have extended my personal protection over your pathetic syndicate for an extensive number of years, correct?”
Hearing the freezing, mechanical cadence of Munetoki’s voice vibrating right next to her ear, Iruma Yuki’s pupils contracted into microscopic dots as a dense layer of cold sweat instantly saturated her spine.
”Now…
the timeline demands that you deliver your absolute returns to my investment.”
The moment the directive registered, Iruma Yuki desperately mobilized her muscles to force a defensive breakout, but an intense, agonizing puncture wound instantly tore open her rear torso.
”Your independent flavor profile…
is fundamentally more refined than Fujiwara’s coarse assets.”
”Mmph—!
Mmmgh!”
She thrashed her frame with frantic, life-or-death desperation, but her entire physical body was already being ruthlessly compressed and crushed within the ironclad spiral of Washuu Munetoki’s tentacles, choking her frantic screams into hollow, muffled whimpers.
Tears of absolute betrayal and terror welled up in her eyes, tracking her failing sightlines until the ambient environment faded into a pitch-black, absolute void.
Across the field, Kenji’s expression didn’t experience a single shift at the display of underworld cannibalism.
While utilizing his right arm to maintain a flawless single-handed block against the two lashing tentacles, his left hand smoothly zipped down to his tactical holster, unsealing his high-capacity sidearm and completely dumping the entire magazine directly at Washuu Munetoki’s face.
A heavy cascade of brass casings rained down onto the stone floor.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
A continuous stream of hyper-velocity copper projectiles screamed through the airspace, yet every single round was cleanly intercepted by the remaining two tentacles, which Munetoki had deployed as an organic ballistic shield.
”Exceedingly tedious,” Kenji muttered under his breath.
Washuu Munetoki locked his gaze onto Kenji, casually shaking out his tentacles.
The fresh ballistic entry wounds instantly knitted themselves back together, forcing more than a dozen flattened slug fragments to clatter uselessly onto the stone floor while faint wisps of white cordite smoke drifted off his tissue.
Crunch!
Having completely consumed Iruma Yuki’s primary Kakuhou core, Washuu Munetoki tossed her mangled, drained corpse onto the stone floor like a worthless piece of industrial waste.
The moment the biological mass was fully digested, a horrifying metamorphosis triggered across his entire framework.
Thick, overlapping layers of dense, bone-hard scale plating began rapidly erupting across the surface of his Bikaku tentacles.
Concurrently, a grotesque, calcified mask composed entirely of hyper-dense Kakuja tissue systematically expanded across his skull, completely sealing away his human features to leave nothing exposed save for a pair of burning, absolute crimson eyes.