"How did you handle the cleanup?"
As expected, the call on the other end was there to rake him over the coals.
Otagawa Yuya had crushed a man's head with his bare hands to silence him. That was even more eye-catching than shooting someone. There were no witnesses, but the heavy stench of blood had been discovered quickly, and the police had already started investigating.
Of course, someone over there would smooth it all over for Otagawa Yuya. With the influence Goshoukai wielded, even if they blew up a police station in broad daylight, their people could still suppress the heat around the incident in short order.
Even the Area's president was a member of Goshoukai. Naturally, they had plenty of high-ranking pieces planted inside the police as well.
Otagawa Yuya used the opportunity to explain what was happening to him.
He might have a psychological problem.
There was a long stretch of silence on the other end. The handler was probably reporting up the chain. When he came back, he spoke into the phone.
"…In that case, stop carrying out missions for now. Return to HQ."
Every cybernetically modified soldier was extremely valuable. Every super soldier represented a massive expenditure of resources and time. In exchange, these new-model super soldiers could completely outclass old-model super soldiers like Satomi Rentaro on performance alone.
Unless they had absolutely no choice, Goshoukai wouldn't dispose of or abandon a super soldier. At most, they would demote them, restrict their permissions, or move them away from core duties.
The reason Goshoukai had ended Otagawa Yuya's leave and sent him to assassinate the retired super soldier Hiramaika was because super soldiers like him were rare—and important. Especially since they'd recently lost two super soldiers, Toyama Hiroki and Utsunomiya Taiji, and were short-handed.
With permission granted, Otagawa Yuya returned to Goshoukai's headquarters and underwent psychological treatment for a period of time.
But it barely helped.
He was still the same—seeing blood flowing like a river, and swarms of rats chewing on rotting corpses.
He was always sleepy. No matter how long he slept, he never woke rested. The moment he closed his eyes, he had nightmares—and the nightmares didn't jolt him awake. They dragged him deeper, into something darker and more insane.
To clear his foggy head a little, Otagawa Yuya took a shower.
Hot water from the showerhead poured over his scalp, and he finally felt a trace of relief.
When he lathered shampoo, naturally he had to close his eyes. But when he opened them again, what was raining down from above was no longer clear, clean hot water—
It was murky, reeking blood.
And all around him, rotten rat corpses had piled up into little heaps.
"AAAHH!"
Terrified by what he saw, he screamed and bolted out of the bathroom on instinct—only to slip hard on the wet floor and crash down.
When he struggled back up, he realized there was no blood at all. Everything he'd just seen seemed to have been a hallucination.
"Da..."
Otagawa Yuya gulped air in huge, ragged breaths. It took him a long while to steady himself.
Hallucinations like this weren't new. They were happening more and more often. And it wasn't just visions—there were auditory hallucinations too. From time to time, his ears would fill with low whispers overflowing with madness. As time went on, those whispers grew clearer, venting hatred toward the church, insisting that rats should devour and slaughter everyone aboveground.
His symptoms were obviously getting worse.
Bracing himself on the sink, Otagawa Yuya stood up—and by accident, caught sight of himself in the mirror.
His hair was a mess, still beaded with water, foam clinging where he hadn't rinsed. Stubble had grown in from prolonged mental torment, making him look haggard. His eyes were bloodshot and bulged outward. His complexion was as bad as a corpse's—almost tinged green.
"Hey! How long are you planning to stand here spacing out? We still have things to do, don't we?"
Suddenly, the him in the mirror moved. Wearing a grin saturated with mania, he gestured wildly as he spoke.
"Revenge on that damned church! Make them pay for what they did! Wipe out the idiots sheltered under the church's protection! Feed their flesh and blood to the rats, drag their souls into the filthiest, most rancid sewers! And then the god of this faith—who abandoned us! Then the whole country, the whole world! Order the rats to carry plague to every corner of the earth—right now, we can do anything! As long as we take back the flute that was ours to begin with. You've felt that omnipotent power too, haven't you?"
"No! I'm not you!" Otagawa Yuya didn't dare look at the person in the mirror. His face drained as he shouted, "You're a lunatic! A lunatic! I'm not the same as you! You're dead! Bald Eagle and I killed you! This is all a hallucination… all a hallucination!"
"You idiot! Why refuse it?! Just think—think what you could do with that power!" The mirror-self kept tempting him, his voice carrying a bewitching pull. "You could hold the entire world in your hands. You could kill anyone you want. Any woman you set your eyes on—you can violate whoever you want. If they don't obey, kill them and violate them anyway. When that day comes, you'll be the one and only master of this world. You can throw away every shackle and every scrap of reason, and do everything you've always wanted to do but never dared!"
"I… I-I never thought about that! I'm not crazy… I'm not crazy…!"
"I need blood. It's been so, so long since I've tasted fresh flesh—whether it's a child's blood or a woman's blood, it's all so sweet… Aaaah! Why can't anyone understand me?! Why does everyone try to stop me?! They're going to die sooner or later anyway—then before they turn into stinking old people, they should just be eaten by me and the rats! One after another after another—always ruining my plans! Why didn't you show up before my family was destroyed by the church—why only now, to stop me?! I'm the victim! I'm the one on the side of justice!"
If anyone else had been in the bathroom, they would have been horrified to realize that from start to finish, Otagawa Yuya was the only one there—talking to himself in the mirror.
It was as if he'd split in two: one moment he wore a twisted grin steeped in mania, the next he clutched his head and howled in tearing, agonized screams.
Smash!
Otagawa Yuya's fist slammed into the mirror on the sink, shattering it.
Glass fragments flew everywhere. He slowly lifted his head. In the broken shards, his face reflected back at him—warped into something so extreme you couldn't tell if it was laughter or tears.
"The flute… the flute… the flute… right. I need the flute! That great power—surely it can help me right now!"
"These disgusting rats, these terrifying hallucinations… if it's a flute that can control all rats, then it can definitely drive off the rats in my hallucinations too, right? It has to be—it has to be—it has to b—!"
As if he'd finally fallen into full-blown madness, his voice climbed higher and higher, until it burst into a string of hysterical laughter.
"Heh… heh-heh… hahahahahahaha!!"
...
The man's name was Albrecht Grünewald.
He was the foremost of the Four Sages—the top person in charge of the mechanized soldier program. The Imaginary Device: Repulsion Force Field possessed by Hiruko Kagetane and Otagawa Yuya had originally been invented by him.
If the Four Sages were the pinnacle of this world's scientific field, then Albrecht was the crown placed atop that pinnacle… He wasn't merely an expert in his own domain; he had fully mastered—and improved upon—the core technologies of the other three sages as well.
Arthur Zanuck's "Horsepower Jet."
Ayn Rand's "Xianfeierde."
Muroto Mayu's "Type 21 Varanium Artificial Eye."
The technologies those three took such pride in—Albrecht had mastered them all, and refined them further.
No one would ever imagine that someone of his stature was a member of Goshoukai.
Every mechanized super soldier Goshoukai possessed had been modified by his own hands.
And it was precisely because he existed that Goshoukai could claim they held the world's most advanced scientific technology.
Yet even a man like that had run into a problem—rarely showing a heavy, even troubled expression.
Set before him were image records and all kinds of data on the Jabberwock.
After the Tokyo Area was completely swallowed by the white fog, countries around the world—and Goshoukai as well—had tried all sorts of methods to probe what lay inside. Even with losses, they refused to stop. Nursery Rhyme grew annoyed by their persistence and sent out several Jabberwocks to drive off their armies and Civil Security officers.
As a result, various combat logs, analyses, and images related to the Jabberwock had made their way into the hands of governments worldwide and Goshoukai's upper ranks.
In their understanding, something that grotesque could only be a Gastrea—and a Stage IV Gastrea at that.
The moment the world's leadership learned that, they were badly shaken. After all, it was Stage IV. Gastrea couldn't evolve into Stage V through self-evolution—meaning Stage IV was the natural limit ordinary Gastrea could reach. Their strength was nothing to scoff at.
Several Stage IVs emerging from the white fog and repelling their armies and Civil Security officers…
But what truly terrified them was this: those Stage IV Gastrea looked exactly the same.
The randomness of self-evolution was far too great. In theory, Stage IV Gastrea that were perfectly identical shouldn't exist. And yet several Stage IV Gastrea with the exact same appearance had appeared—so what did that mean?
It could only mean one thing.
They weren't self-evolved at all.
They were created—entirely—by human hands.
Their behavior supported that conclusion, too. They didn't chase fleeing people. They only attacked when someone approached the white fog.
In other words, they were mass-producible, obedient Stage IV Gastrea.
Watching the footage of Jabberwocks tearing through the army—so deadly that even mechanized soldiers couldn't handle them—Albrecht's brow knitted tighter and tighter.
"A new species of Gastrea with the ability to think… and a flute that can control Gastrea… I see. So this is the final product born from those two technologies?"
He thought of the flute lying quietly in the laboratory—an object even he couldn't analyze—and the white fog that had swallowed the Tokyo Area.
"Could it be… that back then, besides me, there were other survivors from Seven Stars Village?"
In truth, hardly anyone besides him knew this: he couldn't really be called the world's top scientist.
Back then, the finest scientists from around the globe had gathered in Japan, in a small village called Seven Stars Village, and carried out an experiment there.
He had been one of those scientists—and among them, there were plenty who surpassed him.
They gathered for a single goal.
To benefit all humanity. To reform the world. To usher humankind into a glorious evolution.
The purpose of that experiment was to have humanity gradually break free from the suffering of aging, disease, and hunger—to overcome every flaw, and step by step evolve to a higher level, becoming truly perfect beings.
But they failed.
Humanity didn't achieve a glorious evolution.
Instead, it nearly went extinct.
The Gastrea Virus was the product of that experiment.
When the Gastrea Virus erupted, it began at Seven Stars Village—the experiment site—and spread to every corner of the world at astonishing speed.
Only he escaped alive, carrying with him the experimental subject that had come closest to success.
With the cutting-edge techniques and experience he'd accumulated in Seven Stars Village, he became the foremost of the Four Sages and attained the status he held today.
And now, after witnessing the existence of the Jabberwock, he strongly suspected that within that mysterious organization, there might be survivors from Seven Stars Village—people like him.
Perhaps he should meet them.
But absolutely not right now.
They clearly possessed technology even he could hardly imagine. Meeting them rashly would only put him in danger, and he had no intention of doing something that risky.
"Maybe… I need to capture a new species of Gastrea."
Albrecht set his sights on the Jabberwock. He believed that if he could obtain a blood sample, it would be far easier to research than trying to analyze that flute.
Even if the Jabberwock's power surpassed every mechanized soldier he had, he still had more than enough confidence that he could capture a living Jabberwock.
Setting all his other work aside, Albrecht concealed it from everyone and went alone to a secret laboratory known only to him.
There, Albrecht met a little girl.
Crimson eyes—just like any of the Cursed Children.
But in truth, the girl's identity was far more complicated than that.
Everyone knew there were eleven Stage V Gastrea in total, taking as their codenames the eleven constellations of the Zodiac—excluding Cancer.
However, almost no one knew that a twelfth Stage V did, in fact, exist.
Unlike the other eleven, she hadn't mutated into a huge, grotesque monster. She still retained a human form.
Ten years had left no trace on her body, as if time had stopped for her alone.
Beyond that, the girl was also the Initiator ranked first in IP Rank—someone who, by her own strength, had killed one of the Stage V: Taurus.
Her name was…
"Eve."
In Albrecht's flat, uninflected voice was a coldness like he was addressing a tool.
"I have a new mission for you."
---
T/N: yeah no excuse this time :sob: WAIT NO I WAS STARTING NEW TLS SO HA! yeah sorrrey heres the 4 chapters!
bonus chaps
100 stones -> 1 chapter
200 stones -> 2 chapters
300 stones -> 3 chapters
and so on
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