"Stop!"
Amon shouts with a pale face. Facing the men being eaten by disproportionate mouths lined with teeth pointing inward from the outside, like the mouth of a leech...
And then a voice answers him, but the voice doesn't come from in front.
"Nah."
Amon goes still for a second when he hears that voice above him.
"Because you wouldn't stop either if I asked you to, would you?"
Amon and Mado look up at the same time, and there is the blue-haired monster, standing with his feet planted on the ceiling so that his head hangs below him, looking down at them like a bat. His arms are crossed and he watches them with two glowing red eyes, smiling a little.
Amon's heart goes cold in his chest. He whips his head back down toward the floor, toward where the body they had torn apart used to be.
He doesn't see a single piece of flesh or a single drop of blood, only the marks left by his Cursed Gear and Mado's, along with the holes in the floor from the hundreds of continuous shots.
He looks back up. To confirm a terrifying suspicion...
"Since... since when have you been up there?"
Amon asks that with cold sweat forming on his forehead and down his back.
"Since you looked into my eyes."
Arata laughs, showing his teeth.
"It was pretty fun watching you attack empty air so seriously. You drove a spear into something that wasn't there and fired at something that wasn't there. You really put your backs into it."
Amon's eyes go wide.
'An illusion... he created an illusion the exact moment we looked into his eyes?'
While they were attacking empty air like idiots, the mouths came out of the floor and swallowed the backup. Dozens of men swallowed by mouths that appeared out of nowhere, while he stood there fighting an illusion.
At that thought, his body shakes.
"What a terrifying power. Illusions and organic manipulation, capable of transforming the environment... It feels like fighting inside a giant building that's alive..."
That is a terrifying conclusion, because the walls, the floor and the ceiling, all of it together could be considered him. Which means they are standing inside his body.
"This monster... is he even still a ghoul?"
"I doubt it."
Amon hears Mado's voice.
"Mm, Amon-kun, I'd say he deceived us this whole time, the CCG and everyone standing behind it. He always showed us a kagune and let us believe he was a ghoul, but..."
Mado tilts his head, looking up with one large eye and a smile.
"Could he be a vampire? Hehe, no, he doesn't look like one of those either. What a strange thing, what a strange thing. I always knew you were strange~"
And then Mado coughs up blood.
"Mado-san!"
Amon startles and his pupils dilate all at once.
"Mado-san, you... you..."
Mado slowly lowers his gaze to his own stomach. Three bladed tentacles are coming out of it. They went in through his back and passed through his body until they came out the front.
'When did those appear?'
Despite the wound, Mado's mind is still working, and that is what he thinks in the middle of a heavy fog that seems to be slowly freezing his brain.
'No... Chimera is still on the ceiling. So the floor... the floor created these tentacles... That's what we're after, having ventured into the belly of the monster.'
The tentacles retract and pull out of his body in one rough motion, dropping Mado to the floor.
"Mado-san! Hold on!"
Amon runs to him and holds him up.
"Hold on, I'm going to get you out of here, just stay with me..."
"...Amon-kun."
Mado speaks in a low, weak voice, but he still has a smile on his face.
"Better to ignore me... and pay attention to your enemy... don't take your eyes off him, that's the mistake, fufu... and if you can, avoid looking into his eyes."
Amon bites his lips, his teeth breaking the flesh.
"I... looks like I'm not going to make it, Amon-kun..."
Mado coughs, and more blood comes out.
"So... if you can... look after my daughter, will you? That girl... she's going to be left alone..."
At that moment Amon hears the wet sound of flesh opening near him.
Cold climbs up the back of his neck, and taking that signal as his instinct warning him about imminent danger, he jumps backward. Right where he was standing two tentacles covered in blades shoot up from the floor. They're so fast that if he had hesitated half a second they would have gone through his head.
By then he sees that Mado is too weak to even keep his eyes open, let alone open his mouth to speak to him.
"Why?!"
Enraged, and knowing he can't speak to Mado because the monster is present, and knowing he can't carry Mado outside for treatment because the monster is present, Amon feels something strange settle into his mind.
Is this perhaps despair?
Facing a monster to which logic cannot be applied, and which lies beyond his comprehension. All Amon can do in that moment is throw himself upward and try to face that despair head on.
—Swooosh!
Swinging the spear with all the strength his arm can gather, he launches himself at the ceiling.
Against his attack, Arata takes a few calm steps across the ceiling and dodges. The spear couldn't land even a single hit, and yet the edge and the monstrous strength the Cursed Gear lends Amon cut the ceiling from one side to the other, and the ceiling comes down in pieces.
"Why do you have to kill people like this, without caring about anything?! Even Mado-san, who has a family, a daughter waiting for him at home...!"
Arata jumps and lands on the floor, and looks at him for a while. Then he speaks with a calm smile.
"Kill people like this... Huh."
"What?"
Amon raises his guard while his stern face shows surprise.
"My existence has made those idiotic organizations distrust me, the country included. Some try to control me and pull me into their ranks, like the Hyakuya Sect. And others want to capture me and study me, turn me into a lab rat, like the Hiragi family. And when they can't do one or the other..."
His shoulders shake, he looks up and laughs.
"Then those bastards start thinking about getting rid of me. In this case, since they couldn't control me or catch me, they decided to erase me. Your CCG organization is just one more of their tools for that purpose. So tell me, isn't it normal for me to defend myself when they come to kill me? Besides..."
Amon throws a furious slashing attack, especially after hearing that the CCG is only a tool. Is that true? A tool of the Hiragi family?
Arata dodges by angling his body, and stepping forward into Amon's guard, he raises his knee.
In that same instant Amon feels the knee sink into his stomach, and all the air leaves his lungs while his eyes go wide from the pain and the shock.
Arata leans in and speaks into his ear.
"Besides, actively going after the people connected to me... that kind of thing, I despise."