The walk back to his apartment was a blur.
Kafka moved through the pre-dawn stillness of the city like a ghost, his mind a maelstrom of disjointed images: the silent rush of the Shadow Army, the screech of bone against energy, the chilling, synthesized laughter of the Architect, and the cold, disappointed gaze of his new, terrifying teacher.
He'd clutched the gorilla-Kaiju's core in a piece of his torn jacket, the organ's grotesque, rhythmic pulsing a constant, grim reminder against his side. When he finally stumbled through his apartment door, the first rays of morning light were beginning to bleed over the horizon, painting the sky in shades of gray and pale pink.
He didn't bother turning on the lights. He dropped his keys on the counter, walked into his small bathroom, and stared at his reflection in the mirror.
The face that stared back was his own—thirty-two, tired, in desperate need of a shave—but it felt like the face of a stranger. He saw the faint, dark circles under his eyes, the new tension in his jaw. The eyes themselves were different. They held a haunted quality, a deep-seated weariness that hadn't been there yesterday. He had seen too much.
'You believe you still have a 'real life'?' Jin-Woo's words echoed in his head. 'Everything else is a ghost.'
Was he right? Was this small, cheap apartment, this life he'd cobbled together, all just a fading photograph?
A wave of defiant anger surged through him. No. He wouldn't accept that. He was still Kafka Hibino. He still wanted to stand by Mina Ashiro. He still had his friends. He would not become just a monster. He refused.
This resolve hardened him. He took the Kaiju core, still wrapped in cloth, out to his tiny balcony. He wouldn't consume it here. He wouldn't desecrate his home with another act of monstrosity. But he had to do it. He had a homework assignment. Form a full suit of biological armor without transforming. The idea was ludicrous. It was like asking someone to build a car with their bare hands just by thinking about it.
He needed the power. He needed the raw material.
With a grimace of profound self-loathing, he unwrapped the core and, for the second time in less than twenty-four hours, forced the disgusting, pulsating organ into his mouth and swallowed.
The pain was ten times worse.
If the first core had been a bomb, this one was a supernova. It came from a larger, stronger creature, and the energy it contained was exponentially greater.
Kafka collapsed to his knees on the balcony, a strangled scream caught in his throat. It felt like every molecule in his body was being torn apart and forcibly reassembled. His vision went white with agony. Green energy, the chaotic signature of Kaiju No. 8, erupted from his body, cracking the concrete floor of the balcony and shattering the glass of the sliding door.
This time, he didn't just feel stronger. He felt… different. He felt the raw biological data of the gorilla-Kaiju flooding his system. He understood its muscle structure, the way its bones were reinforced, the instinctual knowledge of how to use its four powerful limbs.
His own power, the sleeping beast within, greedily devoured this new information, this new source of fuel. It wasn't just refilling its tank; it was upgrading its entire engine.
When the agony finally subsided, leaving him a panting, sweat-drenched heap on the floor, he felt the change. It was a subtle, but profound, shift in his own biology. His human form felt… denser. Stronger. He felt as if his skin was tougher, his bones less brittle. He had absorbed the creature's inherent resilience.
And he was getting a headache. A strange, phantom limb-style headache... in his back.
He stumbled to his feet, leaning against the railing of the balcony, and took deep, ragged breaths of the morning air.
"Okay… Okay…" he panted. "Homework. Armor…"
He closed his eyes, concentrating. He didn't want the monstrous claws or the savage blade from before. He wanted protection. A shield. He visualized the energy within him, now a roaring, supercharged sea, and tried to draw it to the surface, to his skin. He pictured the tough, plated hide of a Kaiju, wrapping around him.
The green energy flared again, but this time, he guided it. It was still like wrestling a hydra, but he had a slightly better grip.
A thin, shimmering layer of green light coated his right arm. It hardened, solidifying into a dark green, almost black, gauntlet. It wasn't just a shell; it had texture, patterns, like overlapping scales. It felt as strong as steel.
He'd done it! A piece of armor!
Elated, he tried to do the same for his other arm. He pushed more power, more will. The energy surged, but it was unruly. It wouldn't form a clean gauntlet. Instead, two new, smaller arms—grotesque, emaciated parodies of the gorilla-Kaiju's limbs—erupted from his back, just below his shoulder blades, writhing in the air like tormented snakes.
"Whoa! No, no, no, bad! Put those away!" Kafka yelped in panic, stumbling back. He lost his focus, and the monstrous appendages dissolved back into his body with a sickening squelch, leaving his back tingling with a pins-and-needles sensation. The gauntlet on his arm vanished at the same time.
He stared at his hands in horror. What was happening to him? Was he losing his human form? Was this unwanted evolution the price of the power he had consumed?
This was going to be way harder than he thought.
Three days later.
Reno Ichikawa took a tentative sip of his coffee and nearly spat it out. "Ugh, this tastes like battery acid."
"You get used to it," Kafka replied with a weary sigh, pushing a mop across the polished floor of the Third Division's mess hall. He looked terrible. The dark circles under his eyes were now practically trenches. He moved with the slow, shuffling gait of a zombie.
"You look awful, Hibino-san," Reno observed, his brow furrowed with genuine concern. "Are you sick? You haven't said a word all morning."
"Just… didn't get much sleep," Kafka mumbled.
That was the understatement of the century. He hadn't slept in three days. Every time he closed his eyes, he was back in his apartment, practicing. The nights had been a litany of failures. He'd accidentally turned his feet into giant Kaiju stumps, sprouted a useless tail, and at one point, his skin had taken on the texture of slimy, pulsating jelly for a full five minutes.
His control was a disaster. The new power was too much, too volatile. He could barely form the gauntlet reliably, let alone a full suit of armor.
Worst of all, he was jumpy. Every shadow looked like it was watching him. Every whisper sounded like Jin-Woo's voice, critiquing his mopping technique. 'Inefficient. Your form is clumsy. You are wasting energy on that corner.' He was slowly losing his mind.
"—so then Hoshina-fukutaichō announced the formation of the new Anomaly Tracking Unit," Reno was saying, snapping Kafka out of his paranoid stupor. "And guess what? He picked Shinomiya as his lead field agent!"
Kafka froze, the mop still in his hand. "Anomaly… Tracking Unit?"
"Yeah! A new super-elite squad. Their only job is to hunt down Sovereign and that 'Jumper' guy you told me about," Reno said, his eyes shining with a mix of excitement and gossip. "Can you believe it? A whole unit just for them. They're saying these new things are a bigger threat than No. 9 now."
The mop slipped from Kafka's nerveless fingers and clattered to the floor.
A dedicated unit. Led by the two people he feared the most. And their primary target… was him.
His double life had just gone from hard mode to impossible. The net wasn't just being cast anymore. It was being drawn tight, by the most skilled hunters he knew.
"Hey, are you really okay, Hibino-san?" Reno asked, leaning forward. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Kafka couldn't answer. He was staring at his own reflection in the polished floor. And for a terrifying second, he thought he saw the faint, ghostly image of two extra arms sprouting from his back.
He wasn't just being haunted by the ghost of his old life. He was being haunted by the monster he was becoming.