"We searched an area with a radius of about 400 meters, but we didn't find a single trace."
"Same on our end."
"We found a Ghoul corpse that had been torn apart and eaten. Looks like there are some crazy bastards out there practicing cannibalism."
Listening to the reports from the subordinates who had scattered and returned, Enji's expression twisted.
"This is insane... First two people disappear, and now cannibal Ghouls? Great."
They had finally forced their way out of the water through the first blockade.
There were plenty of Ghouls with injuries from being swept along by the torrent, but none had died. In the end, Koma's plan had worked.
The problem was that Koma and Eto were nowhere to be seen. If they had died because they couldn't withstand the current, their bodies should have washed up somewhere, but there was no sign of them. It was strange.
Enji, who was wrapping his wounds with the cleanest scrap of cloth he could find among the discarded trash in the sewer, turned to look at Katsura beside him.
"You're sure they were following behind you?"
"I'm telling you, boss! The kid among the two missing people had wrapped a human up in [Ukaku] like a ball, but when the current swept us along, he slammed into my back. My skin's been ripped clean off!"
Katsura turned around and showed his back, which was badly shredded as if it had been ground against a steel plate.
As he said, if he had last seen the two of them together, then they must have been swept along together at least partway.
Then Kaya, who had also been treating her injuries while listening, spoke up. "If he was wrapped in [Kagune], then at the very least he wouldn't be a corpse hanging somewhere."
"May I speak for a moment, ma'am?"
"What is it?"
Nomiya, who served Kaya, bowed deeply. "While we were being carried by the current, I remember seeing a small side passage beside a pillar. The water only split a little, so we all got carried here, but perhaps those two were swept that way?"
"Hmm..."
Kaya let out a low murmur, finding the deduction plausible.
She didn't know the sewer's full layout, but if it branched off partway through, then they were probably quite far away.
Kaya turned her head and looked toward one of the tunnels. Fresh air mixed into the damp, foul sewer stench—proof that an exit wasn't far away.
If they went that way, they could escape the sewer.
Koma's group also had a map, so they should be able to get out on their own. It was easy enough to assume that. The problem was the cannibal Ghouls still remaining in the sewer...
"Then let's go."
Enji, having finished his rough first aid, stood up. The Ghouls of [En] followed suit, rising to follow him.
But the direction they took was not toward the exit. It was deeper into the sewer.
Kaya asked, "You're going to rescue them? You've gotten soft since I last saw you."
In a world of survival of the fittest, the first to die is neither the strong nor the weak. It is the one with too much sentiment.
When it was already hard enough to keep his own body and his own group in order, moving to rescue someone else only invited unnecessary danger.
Sometimes, sacrifices had to be accepted.
This time, the entire organization was in danger, so they were moving. But if only a few had been surrounded by Ghoul Investigators, Kaya would not have budged. Trying to save them could have cost them even more.
Koma had Eto's strength and a sewer map; he had the means to escape on his own. If they went out of their way to rescue him, their subordinates could get hurt in a clash with other Ghouls.
There was no way Enji didn't know that. He was their longtime enemy, after all, and had lived in the closest possible environment to her. Even so, Kaya was dumbfounded by his decision.
"Ha! Soft? Me? Keep dreaming."
Enji shot back at Kaya's mockery with a sneer of his own.
"What matters to me first is my own survival. Second is the survival of my subordinates. If we're chased by Ghoul Investigators, I'll cut off a few of these guys cold and use them to cover our retreat. They know that and still stay loyal to me, and my role as their leader is to make sure as many of these bastards survive as possible."
Enji gritted his teeth hard enough that the sound seemed to scrape.
"But even a life that's only about surviving shouldn't be lived with a shred of shame. If you live while ashamed of yourself, is that really living? I owe Yoshimura-san, and now I even owe that Takaki guy. If I leave him behind like this, I'll feel so rotten I'll go crazy."
"You're hilarious. You really are soft."
Letting out a laugh of disbelief, Kaya stood and started walking, her subordinates following close behind.
The direction she headed was the same as Enji's.
"I don't care if you die of embarrassment or not, and I do think they'd be able to escape just fine... but the thought of you alone scoring points with those two is so irritating it makes my guts twist."
"You're in no position to talk, either."
With that sneer, Enji and his group charged deeper into the sewer, and the Black Doberman leapt after them as if refusing to lose.
The alliance still held.
"..."
Swish.
After confirming that the surroundings had gone quiet, Eto crawled out from inside the cut-open pipe.
There was no sign of Koma. Nor of that boy, Arima Kishou.
Koma, worried about a collision, had taken Arima and left the area.
"Will he be okay...?"
Arima had no reason to harm Koma, a civilian, but that only applied if he truly was an unrelated civilian.
If, by any route, Arima realized that Koma was connected to Ghouls, there was no telling what he might do.
But even if Eto chased after Koma now, there was nothing she could do.
She barely had enough strength left for one more fight, perhaps. Trying to fight that boy in this condition would be suicide.
Staggering slightly, Eto examined the corpses of the Ghouls that had been butchered to death. At the same time, Arima's attack flashed through her mind.
Koma had been lost in the chaos, but Eto had not missed what happened in that instant.
On the first strike, he cut through the [Kagune] as neatly as slicing a rolled rice cake.
On the second, he severed the lower halves of three Ghouls. On the third, he cut off the upper bodies and arms of those falling toward him.
And on the fourth, he finished them off completely.
It was a series of simple motions, so mechanical it was almost eerie. Yet none of the Ghouls could overcome that monotony.
That was how fast, brutal, and lethal Arima's attacks were.
"If it were me..."
If Eto had been the one to face Arima, and if she had been in top condition instead of this, she could definitely have avoided the third attack.
But she would not have been able to avoid the fourth.
No matter how many times she simulated it in her head, three was the limit. On the fourth blow, Arima's Quinque would have severed Eto's neck without mercy.
"He's terrifying."
She had fought many Ghouls and faced danger more than once, but compared to Arima, they looked almost cute.
It was unbearable to think of someone like that being near Koma, but for now, following Koma's intention and escaping with Enji and Kaya's group came first.
As Eto moved on, praying that nothing had happened, she met the eyes of a Ghoul's head rolling across the floor.
A face frozen in a grin, as if it hadn't even realized it was dead. Maybe it was still trapped in a dream at this very moment.
A Ghoul that had been eaten, lying near the mutilated corpses.
Cannibalism, was it? Did anyone who ate a Ghoul end up like this?
As if being drawn in, Eto's gaze fixed on the dead Ghoul's eyes.
Something thick and sticky draped over the gradually fading [Kakugan]. An indescribable agitation. Madness was the only word that fit.
Eto knew what it was.
Because she had already put the same thing in her mouth as these Ghouls. So she wouldn't eat Dad.
"Ugh!"
She clamped a hand over her mouth and forced down the nausea rising in her throat.
It would be fine. She had only tasted it once, long ago—so long ago she could barely remember it now. How much could that possibly affect her now?
It was fine. She would not become like these Ghouls.
Repeating that to herself, Eto fled the place.
"You're really an idiot, aren't you?"
"..."
Those were the words of the self-proclaimed homeless man she had just met, a man named Takaki Koma.
Plenty of people called him a monster for the way he butchered Ghouls, but this was the first time anyone had called him an idiot.
"Normally, no matter how stupid you are, you'd at least think about the way out before coming into a place this deep, right? But you got lost chasing Ghouls?"
Right now, on paper, they were lost.
Koma did have a map, but he had hidden it because it would look suspicious if anyone knew he had one, and Arima was not the type to memorize routes, let alone carry a map.
If there was a Ghoul nest, his method was to go in and keep butchering Ghouls until an exit appeared.
Thanks to that, the two of them were wandering aimlessly through the sewer.
When Koma asked what they would do if a Ghoul appeared along the way, Arima gave the absurd answer that they could just kill them all and keep going.
"You're confident in your skill, which is fine, but you should value yourself a little more."
"There's no problem."
"What do you mean no problem? If you keep throwing your body around like that, you're liable to die from some stray blade."
"I won't die."
"There's no such thing as someone who won't die."
"At least not today."
Arima, who had been walking ahead, fell silent as if thinking about something, then continued, "The Ghouls we fought today were all small fry, after all."
"...Small fry?"
Koma, following behind him, wore a deeply skeptical expression.
Who exactly had the Ghouls Arima fought been, as far as Koma had seen?
Three Ghouls who looked mentally unhinged, Enji and Kaya, and even that ferocious Kakuja monster!
And he was calling all of them small fry?
Was it arrogance, bluffing, or was it the truth?
He couldn't tell, but Koma only became more determined to keep this guy from meeting Eto or Enji and Kaya's group.
"May I ask you one thing?"
After walking for a while, Arima, who had been leading the way, spoke up. For someone who supposedly had a question, his voice was utterly flat.
Though he wasn't looking at Koma, Koma opened his mouth carefully, wary of showing even the slightest hint of suspicion.
"What is it?"
"In the end, who are you?"
"Me? I told you already. I'm a homeless guy whose house burned down, ended up sleeping near the sewer, and got chased in here by Ghouls."
"Why go so far as to hide yourself with lies?"
"...!"
Koma stopped walking. Arima also stopped, still without turning to look at him.
The sewer air suddenly felt suffocating.
It was impossible not to feel uneasy when one person had something to hide and the other would turn dangerous the moment that secret was exposed.
Could I be screwed here...?
"Lies? What are you talking about?"
Even while feeling the pressure, Koma kept his face calm. Since he still didn't know what Arima knew, he decided to play dumb.
At that, Arima turned to look at Koma.
His face was still as flat as ever, as if he didn't care whether Koma had lied or not.
Only now, however, there was a trace of curiosity mixed in.
"Your body is dirty, but not from grime caused by not washing. It's the residue of having gone through dirty water. Just like me. The tears in various parts of your clothes are also recent injuries."
"That's because I was running from a Ghoul in a panic..."
"You didn't come here because you were chased by Ghouls. There were no traces of a third party passing through, neither from the direction I came from nor from the direction those three Ghouls came from. More importantly, your feet."
Cutting Koma off as if there was no need to hear more, Arima pointed at his feet.
Koma followed the gesture. He had left his shoes behind inside the pipe, so he was barefoot now.
"If you lost your shoes while running, there shouldn't be a single scratch on them this clean. It's almost as if you took them off right before meeting me."
"..."
Koma kept a calm expression, but his heart was pounding hard, screaming over and over, This is bad.
And Arima still wasn't finished.
"Your upper body is also less dirty, which means you didn't just take off your shoes but your shirt as well. As if you couldn't allow the footprints from your shoes or your original appearance to be identified."
"..."
"Was that hard to answer? Then let me change the question."
What Arima said next was enough to make Koma's heart sink.
"Where is the Ghoul you were carrying then? I thought maybe you were luring me into lowering my guard and then ambushing me, but no matter how long I wait, he never shows up."