The world screamed. It wasn't just the alarms or the monsters. It was the air itself, vibrating with a pressure that felt like the sky was falling. Tachikawa Base groaned, its foundations cracking under the weight of the energy boiling out from the vault. A sickly, brilliant emerald light poured from the breached doorway, washing over the ruins and the battling figures, casting long, dancing shadows that felt alive and malevolent.
Soldiers froze mid-fight, their weapons lowering as they stared at the impossible aurora, their courage fracturing.
In Akira's mind, the warnings were faint, distorted, like a radio signal through a storm.
[Ravan: Assimilation… 17%… 23%… climbing. Energy saturation… catastrophic. Host advisory: survival probability… now under 2%. Recommendation: full… retreat. Override command… unavailable. System integrity… failing…]
"Get back! You're in no condition—" a medic yelled, trying to force Akira onto a stretcher.
Akira shoved the man's hand away with his good arm, his teeth gritted against a wave of nausea and pain. He used his katana as a crutch, dragging himself upright. "Have to… see… have to…" he rasped. To witness the end. To warn them. To do something, anything, other than just die waiting.
On the main front, Kikoru Shinomiya was a storm of rage and light. Empowered by desperation and a pride that refused to be ignored, she pushed her release force to its absolute limit. Her axe became a blur, each impact against the regenerated Clone B landing with the force of a small earthquake.
"LOOK AT ME!" she roared, not at the clone, but at the vault, at the thing inside that deemed her unworthy of its attention.
Reno's voice, weak and frayed with static, crackled in her ear. "Shinomiya… its left hip… the graft… it buckles on the pivot… now!"
She followed the call, her axe striking true, shattering a plate of alloy. But her fury made her reckless. She overextended, leaving herself open for a fraction of a second. It was all the clone needed. A backhand swipe caught her on the shoulder, spinning her around. Only her immense power kept the blow from shattering bone.
Vice-Captain Hoshina moved like liquid mercury, a dance of death against the hyper-fast Clone A. His blades were a silver web, each strike precise, aimed at tendons, joints, optic clusters. But the creature was learning, adapting. It began to anticipate his movements, its parries coming a millisecond faster.
"Tch." Hoshina's eyes narrowed, a flicker of genuine annoyance crossing his features. He disengaged, leaping back to avoid a spatial distortion. "They're learning off me too. Damn parasites."
Near the triage point, Reno was propped against a chunk of shattered wall, his scorched arm cradled against his chest. His vision swam, but his mind, his gift, remained ruthlessly clear. He watched the chaos, his voice a constant, low stream over the open comms.
"Proto-type seven… the spiked one… it coils before it strikes… three-meter range…"
"Derivative A… it flickers left before a true strike… feint…"
"Hoshina-sir… its guard is weak after a high slash…"
His calls were lifelines, buying the elites precious seconds in a battle they were slowly losing to attrition.
Beside him, Kafka lay still, but the blue energy under his skin was no longer pulsing. It was seeping, spiderwebbing across his flesh in glowing, cracked patterns. A medic checked his vitals and recoiled. "His core pressure is spiking into the red! If he wakes up…"
Headquarters: Command Center
"Assimilation at 41% and accelerating," a technician reported, his voice hollow with terror. "Energy signature is… it's off the scale, Captain. We have no classification for this."
Mina Ashiro's face was a mask of frozen calm. Her eyes were fixed on the main screen, on the blinding emerald light emanating from Sector 4-West. She placed her hands on the holotable, her knuckles white.
"Initiate orbital bombardment protocol," she said, her voice devoid of all inflection.
The command center fell deathly silent.
"Captain!" a senior officer protested. "We still have over sixty personnel in that sector! Hoshina! Shinomiya! The injured recruits! We can't—"
"The target is Kaiju No. 9," Mina interrupted, her tone leaving no room for argument. "The objective is the termination of a threat that will end Japan if left unchecked. The collateral damage is acceptable." She didn't look away from the screen. "Better half a base lost than the whole country."
Another officer, voice shaking, added, "Captain, the casualty list from Sector 4-West… it includes Akira Kurogiri. He's listed as critical, non-mobile…"
Mina's jaw tightened. A minuscule, almost imperceptible tremor went through her hands. But her voice never wavered. "The order stands. Prepare the firing solution."
Back in the hell of Sector 4-West, the proto-kaiju swarm was becoming a tidal wave. Defense Force lines crumbled. A new horror emerged from the vault—a hulking skeletal serpent, its bones reinforced with jagged alloy plating, its maw a void of darkness. It moved with terrifying speed, crushing a tank under its bulk and scattering soldiers like toys.
It zeroed in on the concentrated life signs near the medics.
Kikoru saw it coil to strike at the triage point. She tried to disengage, but Clone B hammered her back. "NO!"
Hoshina moved, but Clone A was on him in an instant, its attacks a frenzied blur meant to pin him down.
The serpent struck.
Akira was on his feet, his katana held in a shaking, one-handed grip. He stood between the monster and the unconscious Kafka. It was a pointless, stupid, human gesture.
Reno, seeing his friend make his last stand, dragged himself up beside him, his good arm raising his rifle. "NOT THE WEAKEST LINK!" he screamed, firing uselessly at the creature's skull.
The serpent's maw descended.
A dome of brilliant, crackling blue energy erupted between them and the monster.
It wasn't a controlled shield. It was a violent, desperate eruption. The serpent's head hit the dome and shattered, its body dissolving into dust and sparks. But the dome itself fractured violently with the impact, the sound like a glacier breaking apart. Unstable energy arced from the cracks, earthing itself into the ground and scorching the air.
Kafka hadn't moved. His eyes were still closed. But his body was rigid, back arched, every vein alight with raging, uncontrollable power.
[Ravan: Alert! Subject Kafka Hibino's core resonance destabilizing catastrophically! Containment failure imminent! Forced transformation probability: 91%!]
Headquarters
Mina's eyes snapped to a new alert on her screen. A massive, unstable energy spike—different from No. 9's—bloomed in the heart of Sector 4-West. Her ice-cold composure finally cracked. "Not now," she whispered, a rare, raw edge of desperation in her voice. "Not there."
On the battlefield, Hoshina saw the blue flash, felt the wild, chaotic energy. His flawless rhythm broke for a single, crucial second. "Damn it, Hibino—hold it together!" he snarled, barely dodging a claw that would have taken his head off.
Akira collapsed, his strength gone. He crawled through the dirt toward Kafka, his hand stretching out. "Not yet, big guy," he begged, his voice a broken whisper lost in the din. "Don't give it to him… don't give him what he wants…"
Inside the vault, the emerald light reached a crescendo, burning through the very steel of the structure. Assimilation: 80%.
Kaiju No. 9 finally turned. Its body was warping, the alloy fusing into its flesh, the canisters on its chest like captive suns. It looked out at the battlefield, at the flickering, fracturing blue dome, and its grotesque smile widened into a thing of pure, horrific delight.
Its voice slithered into every mind, a sound of infinite hunger and anticipation.
"Yes. Now the variable faces the monster within."
Its multifaceted eyes locked onto the convulsing form of Kafka Hibino.
"Show me your true evolution."
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T/N :
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