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"You—"
"Shut up."
Rize had just opened her mouth when Tatsuki cut her off with a single word. She immediately clamped her lips shut, staring fixedly at him without saying a word—more precisely, unable to say one.
"Th-this…" Seeing everything clearly, Utaha's jaw dropped in shock. Why was that female monster listening to Tatsuki so respectfully!?
Tatsuki walked toward Rize at an unhurried pace.
The four kagune behind her swayed slightly, but Tatsuki just reached out and touched them without the slightest concern about getting skewered. He kneaded and squeezed them a few times.
In his hand they indeed had a scale-like texture, along with the warmth of living flesh. They felt a bit like a giant's partially hardened body.
"Retract your kagune."
Another command from the Herrscher of Dominance.
The four kagune obediently shrank back, and Rize's kakugan faded, returning her eyes to a normal human appearance.
Back in human form, her bloodthirsty, deranged state was swallowed by reason once more. She stared blankly at her own hands.
I really did turn into the man-eating monster from my memories just now… A feeling that defied description lodged in her chest.
"Don't be so pessimistic. At least the one you killed was a monster, and you haven't actually eaten anyone yet."
Tatsuki's words were, at the very least, a kind of consolation.
Rize lifted her head; she seemed to have something she wanted to say.
"Talk." He lifted the command, and the first thing out of Rize Kamishiro's mouth was: "Kill me."
She wanted Tatsuki to kill her.
Even though what Tatsuki said was true. She had only killed a monster. She truly hadn't begun eating people yet but she had already bowed her head to desire—and to the memories of Rize Kamishiro the ghoul.
If there was a first time, there would be a second, and then countless more. Right now, several flashes of the thrill of hunting and feasting were streaking through her mind.
The urge to eat people was surging, impossible to hold back.
Rize had already realized that she'd started to change, with no way back. She was destined to become the Binge Eater, Rize Kamishiro.
"Killing you would be a bit of a waste. This ghoul body of yours will make excellent material for Echidna."
Tatsuki had no intention of killing her. Her being pretty was one thing; she also hadn't actually committed any major crime yet—at most her mind was a bit unstable, on the verge of splitting.
More importantly, Tatsuki thought of Echidna's research.
If you could combine an Apostle of Sin, a Titan, a demon, and a ghoul, what kind of being would that create? And after that succeeded, if you kept fusing in other powers, what would you end up with?
This wave, it wasn't just Echidna whose thirst for knowledge was burning—Tatsuki's curiosity was lighting up too.
"Experimental… material…"
Before Rize Kamishiro could fully process what that meant, a surge of black energy was already pouring into her body.
Black wings spread out, and a dark halo bloomed above her head. An Apostle of Sin was born.
"!!!"
Rize's mind snapped completely awake—clearer than it had ever been. And with that clarity came the recognition of her identity.
Not human. Not ghoul. An Apostle of Sin! Her new existence.
An intense sense of fullness welled up in her. Even though she hadn't eaten anything in three days, she suddenly felt stuffed.
"From now on, you're my Apostle of Sin. With the Power of Sin inside you, you don't have to worry about your ghoul hunger anymore. I'll send you to Echidna first—she'll explain the situation."
The Power of Sin was potent enough to keep even a giant Godzilla-class beast fed without effort.
"..."
Still caught somewhere between clarity and dazed confusion, Rize disappeared as Tatsuki collected her into the Chaos Domain.
W-what was that…? Utaha didn't even dare to breathe too loudly; her whole being had gone numb. She had seen the entire thing from start to finish.
First, Tatsuki commanded that monster with just his words. Then black mist erupted from his body and poured into the monster, turning her into… a fallen angel?!
And in the end—with a wave of his hand, Tatsuki made the monster vanish right before her eyes, like some kind of living person being put away in a magic trick.
After dealing with Rize, Tatsuki walked over to the dead Parasyte and its host.
From the memories he'd already seized, he knew that unlike ghouls, Parasytes weren't a localized mutation—they'd appeared all over the world.
He couldn't tolerate such a disgusting parasitic lifeform existing for even a second longer.
He directly unleashed the Herrscher of Dominance, covering the globe. A Parasyte's inner voice was very easy to distinguish, and in just a blink Tatsuki had locked onto the position of every single Parasyte.
There were only about five hundred thousand across the entire planet.
"Let's grab them first." His gaze sharpened. The Source of Space activated.
In that instant, every Parasyte and every parasitized host on Earth was forcibly dragged into a separate pocket-dimension he'd created.
Then Tatsuki clapped his hands, compressing that pocket-dimension.
A bizarre cube, both illusory and solid, appeared in his palm. This was the space housing all the Parasytes.
"For now, I won't kill this trash."
Tatsuki didn't rush to wipe them out.
The Parasytes' accelerated cell division and their precise control over cells might be worth letting Echidna research as well.
Of those five hundred thousand Parasytes, more than four hundred thousand had hosts. Considering that the sudden disappearance of four hundred thousand people worldwide might trigger panic and accelerate the arrival of the Cognition Apocalypse—Tatsuki casually commanded everyone on Earth to automatically ignore these people.
Some of them had families, of course. All he could do was silently apologize to them in his heart.
He swept a glance at the corpse on the ground and stored it in the compressed space as well, then erased all traces of the pocket-dimension.
Snap.
With a crisp finger-snap, Utaha watched the damage to the street restore itself. A few pedestrians appeared on the road, and a car occasionally drove past.
The female monster was gone. The monster corpse on the ground was gone. The ripped-apart street was gone.
It was as if everything that had just happened had been nothing but a dream.
Only when a breeze blew past and slipped under her skirt—Utaha felt a chill creep across her lower body. Cold dampness spread across everything below her waist, and drops occasionally fell from the hem of her skirt.
All of it screamed that what had just happened was very, very real.
"!!!"
She instantly sensed disaster looming. If someone saw the state she was in right now—
"Here, tie this on first."
A gentle voice sounded by her ear as Tatsuki removed his jacket and wrapped it around her waist. The fabric hung down perfectly to cover the hem of her skirt down to just below her knees.
It also neatly hid her current predicament.
"Th-thank… you…" Her neck flushed red, and Utaha's voice was as soft as a mosquito's buzz.
"Are you going home by yourself, or should I walk you back?" Tatsuki asked, upholding his ever-helpful persona.
"I…"
The old Utaha would have undoubtedly chosen to go back alone but after everything that had just shattered her worldview—and her shame defenses—she clutched tightly at Tatsuki's sleeve and spoke in a trembling tone:
"P-please… send me home…"
Only with Tatsuki there did she feel the slightest sense of safety.
"Sure." Tatsuki didn't bother peeking at her memories and instead asked directly, "Where do you live?"
"XX Apartments, unit XX."
"That place…"
It sounded familiar to Tatsuki.
Wasn't that the exact same apartment building—and the exact same floor—across from Benio's place?
He decided not to overthink it.
Right there on the street, in full view of the public, he activated spatial teleportation, not the least bit worried about anyone noticing.
The two of them vanished from the road.
A passerby just happened to walk past the spot they'd occupied, but no one noticed that two people had disappeared from right under their noses.
....
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