For three weeks, Shinjuku Ward became a statistical anomaly.
The Japan Anti-Kaiju Defense Force prided itself on data. They tracked Kaiju appearances, types, frequencies, and casualty rates with religious fervor. Their predictive algorithms were the best in the world.
And Shinjuku was breaking them.
The alerts still came. Yoju and Honju-class Kaiju continued to claw their way up from whatever hell spawned them. But the outcomes were all wrong.
"Report," Mina Ashiro commanded, her voice a flat, tired monotone that betrayed the countless sleepless hours she'd endured.
An intelligence officer, a young man with dark circles under his eyes, clicked a button. A graph appeared on the main screen of the Third Division's command center.
"This is Shinjuku's projected casualty rate for the last 21 days," he said, pointing to a jagged red line that trended upwards. "And this," he clicked again, and a second line, a perfect, flat zero, appeared, "is the actual casualty rate."
The room was heavy with a tense, bewildered silence.
"Every single Kaiju appearance in the ward has been neutralized before our squads could even engage," the officer continued, his voice wavering slightly. "The Kaiju are always found dead. Clean kills. No collateral damage. Not a single civilian injury."
Another image flashed on screen: a compilation of the kill sites.
A spider-like Honju, Resilience 5.2, was found with its legs all neatly severed and stacked in a pile, its torso impaled on a traffic light pole.
A swarm of winged Yoju were found mid-flight, frozen solid in blocks of unnaturally black ice that did not melt.
A burrowing Kaiju was found half-emerged from the ground, its entire body turned to stone, a silent monument of terror.
Soshiro Hoshina leaned forward in his chair, his fingers steepled, studying the images with an almost manic intensity. His blades lay across his lap, and he idly polished one with a thumb.
"The methods are all different," Hoshina mused, his voice a low hum. "Decapitation. Freezing. Petrification. But the result is the same: absolute efficiency. No mess. It's surgical. No, it's more than that. It's… artistic. Arrogant, even."
"Arrogant?" Mina questioned, turning her gaze to him.
"To kill is one thing, Commander," Hoshina explained, his eyes glinting. "To kill with such specific, tailored methods for each target… that requires a level of power and control so vast that the act of killing itself has become trivial. A form of expression. Our 'Sovereign' isn't just killing Kaiju. It's practicing."
The thought sent a shiver through everyone present.
Kikoru Shinomiya stood in the back, her arms crossed. Her usual confident smirk was absent, replaced by a focused, predatory frown. Ever since Yokohama, she had pushed herself past her limits in training, chasing a ghost. She could still feel that pressure in her nightmares. Every strange new report out of Shinjuku was a clue, a breadcrumb leading back to him.
"This can't continue," Mina declared, her fist clenching. "We look like fools. More importantly, we have an unquantifiable power operating with impunity in one of the most populated areas on Earth. Find him. Use everything. Drones, thermal imaging, satellite sweeps. I want to know who is breathing in every shadow in that ward."
The urban legend of the "Shinjuku Phantom" had already spread like wildfire on the internet, but the Defense Force knew the truth. It was no ghost. It was the being they called Sovereign.
And he was a problem.
Sung Jin-Woo stood in the shadows of a rooftop garden, the neon glow of the city below washing over him in waves of red and blue. The tiny bits of life energy he absorbed from the plants around him were like single drops of water on a parched tongue. Pathetic, but better than nothing.
His regeneration was glacial. At this rate, he estimated it would take him fifty-four years to return to a tenth of his full power. Unacceptable.
[I need a proper source of energy. The cores of these… 'Kaiju'… might be the answer.]
His hunters used to harvest magic stones from the hearts of monsters. It stood to reason this world's creatures held a similar, if cruder, energy source. But to get them, he needed to be at the scene. And to be at the scene, he had to time it perfectly, so the Defense Force didn't get their hands on the corpses first.
Tonight was one of those nights.
A blip of emerging energy flared up on his internal senses, three blocks away. It was small, but angrier than the usual mindless beasts. He tilted his head. This one felt… different.
'Interesting.'
He stepped off the edge of the building, his body dissolving into the night as [Stealth] enveloped him completely.
Kafka Hibino felt like an idiot.
A lost cat. He was running through back alleys, looking for a goddamn lost cat for a little girl who lived in his apartment building.
"Being a monster-fighting janitor really has its glamorous moments," he muttered to himself, checking behind a dumpster that smelled of rotting ramen.
Suddenly, his internal "Kaiju senses"—the strange connection he had to the creature that lived inside him—prickled with alarm. Not a siren. Not an official alert. This was something raw. Close.
He rounded a corner and saw it.
In a small, derelict playground, a Kaiju was crouched over the whimpering form of the very cat he'd been searching for. But this was no normal Kaiju. It was humanoid, unnervingly so. Its limbs were long and spindly, its skin the color of curdled milk, and a mask-like bone plate covered a face that had far too many joints.
Its intelligence was obvious. It wasn't just raging. It was studying the terrified cat, a malevolent curiosity in its beady eyes.
'One of No. 9's creations,' Kafka realized with a jolt of ice in his veins. A sentient, man-made Kaiju. This was bad news.
He had no choice. He couldn't transform here, it was too public. But he couldn't just leave the cat—or let this thing roam free.
"Hey! Ugly!" Kafka shouted, picking up a rusty pipe. "Why don't you pick on someone your own size?"
The creature turned its head with a series of sickening clicks. It regarded him with cold, analytical eyes, and then it smiled—a horrifying crack in its faceplate that revealed rows of needle-like teeth.
It moved with blinding speed. Kafka barely had time to bring the pipe up to block. The creature's talons shredded the metal like paper, the force of the blow sending Kafka flying back into a chain-link fence.
CLANG!
Pain exploded in his chest. A rib, maybe two, were definitely broken.
'Damn it… strong! And fast!'
The creature stalked towards him, its long claws clicking on the pavement. It saw him not as a threat, but as an insect to be dissected.
This was a bad situation. A really, really bad situation. His secret was on the line. But what choice did he have? He braced himself, feeling the familiar, monstrous power begin to churn within him, preparing to partially transform an arm.
And then… the world got heavy again.
That same suffocating pressure he'd felt in Yokohama descended on the small playground. It wasn't as apocalyptic as before, more like a tightly controlled blanket of dread. But it was unmistakable.
The intelligent Kaiju froze mid-stride. Every ounce of its manufactured malevolence was instantly overwritten by pure, instinctual TERROR. Its head snapped up, searching for the source of the crushing aura.
Kafka's eyes went wide. 'It's… him!'
He searched the shadows, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm against his broken ribs.
Standing atop a nearby wall, as if he'd been there the entire time, was Sung Jin-Woo.
His presence was completely suppressed, yet the aura of a monarch leaked from him like radiation. He wasn't looking at the Kaiju. He was looking at Kafka.
His violet-black eyes seemed to peer right through Kafka's skin, his clothes, his bones. It felt like he was looking directly at the simmering, monstrous power coiled within him.
Jin-Woo's lips quirked in a microscopic, almost imperceptible smirk. He'd found something truly interesting. A human. But not. Something else, wearing a human shell. A fascinating dichotomy.
"Ku… ke-ke-ke…." The intelligent Kaiju let out a terrified chittering sound, taking a shaky step back. It didn't matter how smart it was. Its base instincts screamed that it was in the presence of an absolute predator, the final link in the food chain.
It spun around and tried to flee. It scrambled up a wall with inhuman speed, desperate to escape.
Jin-Woo still hadn't moved. He just lifted two fingers.
[Ruler's Authority]
A colossal, unseen hand of telekinetic force slammed down.
SPLAT.
The intelligent Kaiju was instantly crushed against the wall, its body flattened into a grotesque smear of ichor and bone fragments. No grand explosion. No sound. Just a quiet, absolute end.
Kafka stared, his mouth agape.
Jin-Woo then dropped silently from the wall, landing on the pavement with the grace of a falling leaf. He walked calmly towards Kafka, his footsteps echoing in the suddenly silent alley.
Kafka tensed. His body screamed at him to run, to transform, to fight. This was Sovereign. The S-Class threat. The world-ender from Yokohama. And he was walking right towards him.
"You're… different," Jin-Woo said. His voice was calm, a low baritone that seemed to absorb the sound around it.
He stopped just a few feet away from Kafka. His gaze was intense, analytical.
"Your body," Jin-Woo continued, tilting his head slightly. "There are two heartbeats. One human, one… not. Two souls crammed into one vessel. One is the cage, the other is the prisoner."
Kafka felt the blood drain from his face. His secret. His deepest, most terrifying secret, the one he guarded with his very life, had just been laid bare in seconds by a complete stranger.
"Wh-What are you talking about?" Kafka stammered, trying to sound clueless.
Jin-Woo let out a quiet sigh. "Don't lie. It's a waste of energy."
He held out a hand, palm up. A small, violet flame of pure shadow energy flickered to life, dancing on his fingertips. It gave off no heat, only an unnerving cold. "I can feel it. The power inside you. It wants to get out. It recognizes me."
And it was true. Kaiju No. 8 was thrumming inside Kafka, not with aggression, but with a strange mix of fear and… submission. The same way a dog acts when its true master enters the room.
Jin-Woo extinguished the flame.
"Tell me what you are," he commanded. It wasn't a request. It was the demand of a king. "And in return… I might teach you how to properly use the monster you're hiding."
The meow of the rescued cat, now cautiously peeking out from under a slide, was the only thing that broke the spell.
Kafka looked from the smear on the wall, to the quiet man who radiated death, to the hand that had just offered him the one thing he desperately craved: control.
He was standing before the most powerful being he had ever met. A monster far greater than himself.
And that monster was offering him a deal.