Every last one of them — Gastrea with the ability to fly.
The most conspicuous were several colossal moths, each body stretching over twenty meters long. Their two pairs of wings, heavy with thick, patterned scales, beat in slow, thunderous strokes — and with every downbeat, visible turbulent vortexes churned through the air below them.
From those enormous, intricately patterned wings, an endless cascade of grey-white scale powder sifted down like snow.
The powder drifted and fell in lazy spirals. Where it touched bare skin, it triggered violent itching and angry red welts. Breathed into the lungs, it brought on fits of choking, hacking coughs.
But that was not the most terrifying part.
For those with sharp enough eyes to look closely — what they saw next made the hair on the back of their necks stand on end.
Beneath the fur-covered abdomens of those giants, nothing was empty.
Look carefully enough, and the sight that revealed itself was enough to make the scalp crawl.
Clinging to the backs and bellies of those massive moths, beetles, and monstrous birds — packed in dense, seething layers — were countless smaller Gastrea.
Mantis-types with scythe-like forelimbs. Acid soldier ants with dripping mandibles. Countless bristle-covered spider-types.
They pressed against each other in overlapping masses, compound eyes glittering with crimson light, all of them staring with fixed, unblinking hunger at the helpless human city below.
Using hook-claws, barbed spines, or secreted adhesive, they clung in layer upon layer to the bodies of their flying carriers — motionless even when hanging completely upside down.
This sight.
Shattered every assumption humanity had ever made about Gastrea — that they were 'low-intelligence,' that they 'only knew how to charge on the ground.'
This was a premeditated, tactical three-dimensional airborne assault.
And furthermore.
These Gastrea — creatures that should by all rights have been crawling on the earth — were now riding on the backs of flying-types, and in doing so, had simply crossed over the towering stone monuments humanity had called its last line of defense.
Which meant one thing.
The Monoliths — those giant steles that every living person had clung to as their lifeline, the structures that generated the magnetic field suppressing Gastrea — had failed.
The powerful electromagnetic field generated by the metal.
That invisible barrier which had made Gastrea instinctively recoil in discomfort and keep their distance — had vanished completely.
The defensive line that had protected humanity for ten years was now nothing but a row of useless black stones.
The entire city was like an egg stripped of its shell — naked and utterly exposed to the fangs of the Gastrea.
—
Fzzt —
Several of the leading colossal demon-faced spider-type Gastrea adjusted their posture in midair, raising their abdomens high.
Streams of pale white silk erupted from the spinnerets at their tails. The threads hardened the instant they met the air, swelling on contact with the wind — and rather than scattering, they shot with terrifying precision toward the high-rise buildings below.
Thwack.
The viscous threads latched and held fast to the tops and outer walls of the landmark skyscrapers surrounding the Holy Residence.
But this was only the beginning.
Hundreds upon hundreds of silk-spinning flying-types began to move simultaneously. White threads wove together in midair, adhering and hardening. In the blink of an eye, the open sky was smothered beneath layer after layer of an enormous, intricate white web.
The morning light was blotted out. The city fell under a ghastly pale shadow.
This was the Gastrea's strategy.
Seal off the escape routes first. Then begin the culling.
The man in the business suit — the one who had been gripping a brick and screaming that he was going to smash the Holy Emperor's skull in — dropped it.
Clang.
It hit his own foot.
He didn't seem to feel the pain at all.
His head was craned back, jaw hanging open at an almost dislocated angle, his throat producing a hollow, bellows-like wheeze. His eyes bulged from their sockets, gorged with blood.
One second ago, he had believed himself a righteous crusader carrying out heaven's will. A hero passing judgment on a witch.
The next second, he was about to become Gastrea food.
The reversal came too fast. His brain simply could not process it.
BANG!
With that first wave of scythe-mantis Gastrea using the web as a buffer, they came crashing down from the sky and slammed into the roof of a police car!
The roof caved in instantly!
The mantis-type's razor-sharp scythe-forelimbs punched straight through the windshield in the same motion, pinning the driver — who hadn't managed to flee — to his seat.
Only at that moment!
Did the stunned crowd on the ground finally react!
"AAAAAHH—!!!"
Somewhere in the mob, someone let out a shriek so raw it cracked their voice!
That single scream set the crowd ablaze!
The mass of bodies that had been frozen by sheer compression erupted in an instant!
Everyone was spinning around! Everyone was shoving!
"RUN! The monsters are landing!" "The Monoliths failed! HELP!" "Get out of my way! MOVE!"
The very same crowd that had been chanting in unison and surging toward the plaza to offer up their sacrifices — now, scrambling for the same single lane of escape, threw punches at the people beside them without a moment's hesitation.
The man in the business suit had barely turned to run before a heavyset rioter behind him grabbed him and shoved him to the ground.
"Get out of the way!"
The man cursed once, stepped directly on the downed man's back, and kept running.
Then the second foot.
The third.
Countless leather shoes came down hard on his back, his hands, even his face.
That face, which had been flushed red with righteous fury only moments ago, was now ground into a bloody pulp against the dusty concrete. The cries for help he managed to force out were swallowed whole by the chaos of pounding feet.
Chaos.
Absolute chaos.
Crack.
A sharp, clean sound of breaking bone.
Whether it was his ribs or his cervical spine that had given way was impossible to say — he stopped moving.
But this was only one insignificant corner of the plaza's carnage.
The larger tide of chaos was still spreading.
People were knocked down and instantly trampled by the wave surging behind them. Others tried to scale the surrounding walls, only to have their legs seized from below and wrenched back down. And in the worst cases — in the fight over the few cars that could still start — people were actually drawing pocket knives and burying them in the stomachs of people they'd been marching beside moments before.
CRASH!
More Gastrea with bodies exceeding ten meters in length came screaming down on howling winds, and slammed into the mass of people packed into the center of the plaza!
The concrete fractured on impact, chunks of it exploding outward!
The shockwave from the landing sent a dozen people flying through the air!
The man in the business suit — the same one who had been screaming that he was going to crack the Holy Emperor's head open — now had the bottom half of his body pinned beneath a thick, dark-green, segmented limb.
CRACK.
A ribcage crushed flat under several tons of weight in an instant.
Blood sprayed from both sides of his body with a wet hiss, pooling and spreading rapidly across the plaza stones.
The creature shifted its body slightly — and what remained of the business-suited man became an unrecognizable smear of pulped flesh.
And this was only the beginning.
SSSSCREEEE—!!!
ROOOOAAR—!!!
More and more monsters landed!
They paid no attention to the helpless women and children huddled at the center of the plaza.
Instead, with bloodlust burning in their every movement, they roared and surged toward the screaming, scattering rioters.
Those very same people who, just moments ago, had been hoisting rocks and rotting vegetables and chanting that they would 'sacrifice the witch' and 'kill the monster children.'
"AAAAHHHH—!!!"
Agonized screaming erupted from within the crowd.
A scythe-mantis swung its forelimbs and effortlessly bisected two men who were in the middle of shoving each other. Their upper bodies kept moving across the ground. Their lower bodies toppled separately in two different directions.
"Help! Stay away!"
"Why aren't they eating them?! They're right over there!"
Someone in their desperation pointed in the Holy Emperor's direction and screamed, trying to redirect the carnage — but the next second a massive spider's silk thread wrapped around their throat and dragged them bodily into the mass of monsters. Their scream was swallowed by the sound of chewing.
This was the judgment.
No need for argument. No need for a court's verdict.
All who have persecuted, despised, or turned away from my beloved children —
Are sinners.
Sinners shall perish in the jaws of monsters.
Only the pure of light shall be granted a place when judgment comes.
Every Gastrea was faithfully executing this divine decree!
"Shoot! SHOOT!"
Near the Holy Residence's side entrance, Guard Captain Hoyake Takuto — the very man who had been first to flee — was now cornered in a dead-end alley by several mantis-type Gastrea that had dropped from the sky.
A handful of equally pale-faced guards stood behind him.
Hoyake Takuto gripped his standard-issue handgun, finger hammering the trigger in a frenzy, the barrel gone scalding hot from continuous fire.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The muzzle spat brilliant tongues of flame.
The black standard-issue rounds, carrying the special magnetic field designed to suppress Gastrea regeneration, screamed through the air.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
The bullets struck the carapace of the leading mantis-type squarely.
Once upon a time, even a Gastrea with extraordinary regenerative ability hit by a volley like this would have watched its wounds begin to immediately necrotize — the cellular regeneration around the wound suppressed instantaneously, turning it into an unhealable, lethal injury.
But now.
The rules of the world had changed.
Those rounds hit the carapace like they were hitting a steel plate.
They sparked faintly, left a few shallow white scratches, failed to penetrate the shell at all, and were deflected away.
And then.
The mantis-type Gastrea tilted its triangular head to one side. Something unmistakably human-like gleamed in its compound eyes — amusement.
It had felt no pain. And it had felt none of that magnetic field it was supposed to find so intolerable.
It had failed. The bullets had simply failed.
"How... is this... possible..."
Hoyake Takuto stared. His eyes nearly left their sockets. The hand gripping the gun trembled violently.
Nani?!
These were anti-Gastrea rounds!
Standard-issue! The only thing humanity had to fight these monsters with!
How could they be useless?
What kind of sick joke was this?
But the monster gave him no time to think.
The mantis-type raised one forelimb.
A bone scythe — honed by evolution to the sharpness of a guillotine blade.
It cut a blurred afterimage through the air.
Snick.
Hoyake Takuto felt a sudden coolness at his wrist.
He looked down.
His right hand — along with the handgun still clutched in its grip — had landed neatly on the ground.
The cut was mirror-smooth.
One second of delay. Then the blood came, gushing in rhythmic pulses from the severed stump of his wrist.
"AAAHH—!!!"
"My hand! MY HAND!"
Hoyake Takuto's eyes went wide as plates. He clapped his remaining hand over the stump and dropped to his knees, unleashing a scream that could have woken the dead.
Watching this, the remaining guards felt their last psychological defense crumble completely.
They threw their guns and turned to run — only to find the exit behind them already sealed by a web of spider-type Gastrea silk threads.
This was not the kind of webbing you could tear through with a tug.
Every single thread was as thick as a thumb. Viscous. Unyielding.
One guard, refusing to accept it, yanked out the tactical knife at his hip and hacked at the web with everything he had.
Clang!
A sharp ring.
The knife hit the silk like it had been driven into steel wire wrapped in industrial adhesive. It didn't cut through — it stuck fast.
He wrenched back with all his strength, and the reactive force yanked both his arm and his whole body off balance, sending him stumbling directly into the web.
Hssss...
The adhesive on the web began to corrode his uniform on contact, sending up wisps of acrid grey smoke.
"AHH! Help! This thing is eating me!"
He screamed in pure terror, fighting desperately to tear himself free, his skin and flesh sizzling and burning where the adhesive touched.
Above him, several enormous demon-faced spider-type Gastrea hung upside down on the building walls to either side, watching it all unfold.
—
And it was not only the Holy Residence.
At this moment, the entire Tokyo Area was falling.
Viewed from high above, the city that had been fortified as an impregnable stronghold by its Monoliths now looked like an anthill that had been smashed open.
ROOOOAAR!!!
Countless Gastrea poured down from the sky like a waterfall!
Countless black floods surged along the roads, across the elevated highways, even through the gaps between buildings — pouring into every corner of the city in a relentless tide.
They landed on the glass curtain walls of office towers — sharp limbs punching through the tempered glass with ease, dragging salarimen who had been working overtime out of their chairs. They descended onto the jammed elevated expressways, flipping cars and grinding the people who had abandoned their vehicles into the asphalt.
Districts 39, 40, even the core of District 1.
The bustling thoroughfares that had been choked with life just yesterday were now killing fields.
The glass facades of office towers shattered under the impact of enormous beetle-type Gastrea; multi-ton shards of glass mixed with office furniture rained down on the streets below. A commercial district billboard was knocked over, showering electrical sparks that ignited the shop beside it. Alarm sirens wailed into the sky, immediately drowned out by the roar of monsters.
Three blocks from the Holy Residence plaza, on a commercial street, the same chaos was playing out.
A uniformed patrol officer was cowering behind an overturned police cruiser.
In his hand, a standard police-issue sidearm.
— A police sidearm loaded with ordinary lead-core rounds. Against Gastrea, this was marginally more effective than doing nothing.
Directly in front of him.
A crocodile-type Gastrea — body exceeding five meters in length — advanced toward him step by unhurried step, its jaws hanging wide open, a severed human arm dangling from between rows of teeth.
"Damn it— DAMN IT— ALL OF YOU, JUST DIE—!"
The officer's eyes were a brilliant, bloodshot red. His mind was balanced on the edge of a complete breakdown.
He knew he was dead.
It was at that moment.
Something caught the corner of his eye — a tiny figure.
A little girl who looked no more than seven or eight. Wearing a filthy dress. Clutching a ragged stuffed doll. Standing in the middle of the road with a completely blank, lost expression.
Her eyes.
Were a vivid, brilliant red.
— A [Cursed Child].
The moment he registered those red eyes.
A surge of violent, irrational malice erupted through him.
"You people..."
"It's ALL YOUR FAULT!"
The officer's face twisted instantly.
Extreme terror had curdled, mid-breath, into extreme hatred.
In his mind, every catastrophe that was happening came back to this — these monsters. If these little freaks didn't exist, the Gastrea wouldn't have come, the god wouldn't have gotten angry, he wouldn't be dying!
"YOU'RE THE ONES WHO DID THIS TO US!!"
The thought alone sent a howl tearing from his throat. From somewhere, he found the strength — and raised the police sidearm with shaking hands.
If he was going to die anyway.
He was taking someone down with him!
Might as well make it count!
He leveled the gun at the little girl who was crying and looking for somewhere to hide.
Less than ten meters away.
At this range, even a hand shaking this badly couldn't miss.
"GO TO HELL, you little monster!"
The muscles in his face spasmed into a grotesque, bared-teeth grin. His index finger began to squeeze the trigger.
But.
Just as his finger began to apply pressure.
A single drop of thick, viscous liquid.
Plop.
It landed on the badge on his chest.
The drop was strongly corrosive. The badge immediately began to smoke, emitting a quiet hisss.
The officer blinked.
Rain?
On pure reflex, he tilted his head back and looked up.
The moment he did.
His body locked up.
That grotesque expression froze on his face and stayed there.
He was looking at the last image he would ever see in his life.
Directly above his head.
On the pole of the streetlamp overhead.
A jumping spider-type Gastrea — jet-black body, four compound eyes — was hanging upside down from it.
Less than two meters directly above the head of the man about to pull the trigger.
All four compound eyes blazed with crimson light, fixed immovably on him.
Its enormous chelicerae were spread open, and from within them, corrosive digestive fluid continued to secrete in slow, oozing pulses.
That drop of thick liquid just now had been its saliva.
"Gh — AAAHH—!"
A strangled, choked sound forced its way out of the officer's throat.
The next second.
The shadow fell.
No opportunity to fire. Not a single one.
The jumping spider dropped directly onto his face. Its razor-sharp chelicerae punched clean through his skull in an instant.
Crack.
This scene.
Was broadcast in real time to every corner of the world through the surveillance cameras blanketing the city.
—
Osaka Area.
Outside of the Tokyo Area, this was Japan's largest heavy industrial zone — and it was under the iron-fisted rule of its sitting President, Qiwu Xuanzong.
Inside the president's office, the lighting was dim. The only illumination came from the cold glow of an enormous display screen that covered an entire wall, washing over the man seated in the high-backed leather chair.
Qiwu Xuanzong held a glass of whiskey on the rocks. The condensation on the outside of the glass trailed down his fingers in cold beads.
That face of his — heavily lined but still radiating a fierce vitality — wore an extremely complex expression.
On the screen, the hellish carnage of the Tokyo Area played out in real time.
He showed not one trace of sympathy. Not one trace of fear.
On the contrary — his body was tilted slightly forward in his chair, and within those eyes of his flickered an excitement unlike anything he had felt in years.
Holy Emperor. So this is our first meeting.
"Now that... is a sight to behold."
Qiwu Xuanzong took a slow sip of his whiskey. His throat worked as he swallowed.
As a man who had spent years scheming to annex the Tokyo Area and build himself an absolute dictatorship, he had always had nothing but contempt for the Holy Emperor — a frail little girl ruling over Tokyo. In his view, Tokyo's fall was only a matter of time. He simply hadn't imagined it would happen like this.
"The Tokyo Area's Monoliths have failed... and the Gastrea are operating under complete command discipline..."
"Isn't this exactly the technology the Goshōkai has been chasing all these years?"
Qiwu Xuanzong muttered under his breath.
Those lunatics in the Goshōkai had been researching 'Gastrea dominance' for years — and all they'd managed was basic behavioral luring. Nothing remotely close to the kind of precise, arm-extending-from-body-of-commander control he was watching on screen. They couldn't even make them ignore the [Cursed Children].
If someone could master this technology — forget Japan. With an army of Gastrea at your back, you could unify the entire world. Who would dare defy that?
"Whatever the cost. I want this technology."
"Someone, come."
Qiwu Xuanzong set down his glass and bellowed toward the doorway.
"—!"
But.
No one responded.
The secretary who would normally come rushing through the door the instant he raised his voice — was nowhere to be found.
The entire office was dead quiet. Eerily so. Only the screaming and the roaring of monsters from the screen filled the silence.
"Where the hell has everyone gone?"
Qiwu Xuanzong's brow creased. He raised his voice with an impatient edge.
These useless subordinates — daring to fall apart at the worst possible moment.
Cursing under his breath, Qiwu Xuanzong turned and strode toward his desk, reaching out to press the red emergency call button in the corner — the direct line to the security room.
...
But.
The next second.
Plop.
A soft sound.
Qiwu Xuanzong froze.
A glob of thick, stringy, dark green liquid — reeking with a nauseating stench — landed on the back of his outstretched hand.
That smell. To anyone who had survived in this post-apocalyptic world, it was not unfamiliar.
— That was the distinctive reek of Gastrea body fluid.
Hssss —
Qiwu Xuanzong drew a sharp breath. His pupils contracted to pinpoints.
The brain that had been slightly warmed by alcohol was, in that single instant, as if doused with ice water — stone cold and absolutely clear.
This was the Osaka Presidential Palace!
The most heavily defended location in all of Osaka!
How in the hell had something like this gotten in here?!
An extremely bad premonition made every hair on Qiwu Xuanzong's body stand up at once.
He snapped his head up. He looked at the ceiling.
"?!!!"
What he saw in that single upward glance.
Made this iron-fisted President — ruler over millions of lives — convulse in expression. He forgot to breathe entirely.
There.
Directly above him.
On the ceiling, with its beautiful painted murals.
A jet-black Gastrea, body length exceeding three meters, was splayed wide with all four limbs, suction cups on its feet adhering it completely to the ceiling above.
But now.
It had finally revealed itself.
A chameleon-type Gastrea.
At minimum, a Stage I-ranked individual.
It clung there, all four limbs extended, suction-cupped feet anchoring it tight against the ceiling.
Directly above Qiwu Xuanzong's head.
Those protruding, emotionless yellow eyes moved independently of each other.
One was trained on the doorway. The other was fixed, unmoving, on Qiwu Xuanzong below.
Its mouth opened slightly, and from within it emerged a long tongue coated in glistening mucus.
That tongue pulsed slowly in and out with each of its breaths.
The drop of mucus from moments ago had dripped from the tip of that tongue.
Plop.
Another one fell.
This time.
It landed precisely on Qiwu Xuanzong's face, already contorted with sheer terror.
Directly between the brows.
Tracing a slow path down the bridge of his nose.
Qiwu Xuanzong's body went rigid in an instant.
The acrid, rank stench went straight up his nostrils and sent his stomach heaving — but he didn't dare vomit. He didn't even dare breathe.
Because now he could see clearly.
From the corner of the chameleon-type Gastrea's jaw hung a scrap of black fabric.
It looked like a fragment of uniform from his most trusted head of security.
— So that was it.
The people outside that door had been gone for quite some time already.
Gck...
Qiwu Xuanzong swallowed hard.
In this dead-silent room, the sound was startlingly, grotesquely loud.
"!!!"
Qiwu Xuanzong was devoured.
____
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