Kafka's mind became a razor's edge of focus. The black humor vanished, replaced by a cold, coiled readiness he hadn't known he possessed. He was the bait. And a good bait knows it has one job: look delicious.
He shut out the chittering feral Yoju, the concerned whispers on the comms, and the suffocating pressure of the dead zone. He reached into the sea of power within him, but instead of forming armor, he did as Hoshina ordered.
He rang the dinner bell.
He didn't unleash a wave of power. He let out a single, sharp, condensed pulse. It was the Kaiju equivalent of a sonar ping, a controlled flare of his unique, chaotic energy signature. Here I am, it announced. Come and get me.
For a half-second, nothing happened. The armadillo-anglerfish Kaiju, No. 10, remained perfectly still in the center of the ruined crossing.
Then, its entire body twitched.
The fleshy lure on its forehead, which had been pulsing with a soft, hypnotic rhythm, suddenly blazed with a blinding, aggressive crimson light. The matte black plates of its chitinous armor slid apart with a series of sharp clicks, revealing dozens of glowing red vents beneath, from which steam hissed furiously. A deep, guttural growl, a sound of pure, ravenous hunger, vibrated through the ground.
It had been dormant. A cleverly disguised predator in low-power mode. Now, it was awake. And it was staring directly at Kafka. It couldn't see him with eyes, but it felt him with every fiber of its being. Its creator's sole purpose for it was standing two hundred meters away.
"Target is active!" Haruta's voice crackled from her sniper perch. "Energy signature is skyrocketing! Resilience is climbing—8.5, 8.8, 9.1… It's a goddamn chameleon!"
"It was hiding its true power level," Hoshina growled. "Everyone, battle stations! Kikoru, on me! Hibino, fall back! Your job is done for now!"
But it was too late. No. 10 didn't care about the others. It only had one target.
With a speed that defied its bulky, low-slung frame, it launched itself forward. It didn't run. It moved like a terrifying, scuttling insect, its clawed feet digging into the asphalt, propelling it across the crossing in a blur of black and red.
Kafka's instincts, honed by Jin-Woo's torturous training and the recent fight, screamed. He threw himself backward, his biological armor flowing over his body in the same instant, a desperate, reactive shield.
He was a fraction of a second too slow.
SLASH!
One of No. 10's foreclaws, long and sharp as a surgeon's scalpel, raked across his newly formed chest plate.
The effect was instantaneous and horrifying.
Where the claw made contact, the sleek, black-green armor didn't just crack or break. It dissolved. A fizzing, sizzling reaction spread from the claw marks, the hardened carapace turning into a bubbling, green-black sludge that dripped onto the ground, emitting a foul, acrid smoke. The null-energy agent was working. It was a corrosive acid designed for his very essence.
"Hibino! Armor integrity is failing! Report!" Hoshina's voice was sharp with alarm.
"It's dissolving me!" Kafka yelled back, stumbling backward, trying to put distance between himself and the monster. The corrosive effect was spreading, eating away at his protection. He had to shed the affected section, letting a large chunk of his chest armor slough off like dead skin, revealing the standard black undersuit beneath. The attack hadn't touched his real body, but it was close.
[I warned you, my soldier. Its touch is poison.] Jin-Woo's voice was a cold, unimpressed whisper in his mind.
Kaiju No. 10, seeing the effect of its weapon, let out another hungry growl and charged again.
"Not on my watch!" a furious voice roared from above.
Kikoru Shinomiya came down like a golden Valkyrie, her axe's jets leaving a trail of fire. She brought the massive weapon down in a vertical cleave aimed directly at No. 10's head.
*KRA-DOOOOOM!*
The impact was earth-shattering. A crater exploded in the street. But No. 10 was no longer there. It had sidestepped the blow with that same impossible, insectoid speed, letting the axe spend its force on the innocent pavement.
While Kikoru was still recovering from the recoil of her own strike, Hoshina moved in. He was a phantom, his twin blades a silver web of death, striking at the joints between No. 10's chitinous plates.
Sparks flew. Hoshina was so fast the monster couldn't land a clean blow on him, but his blades, which could normally slice through Honju armor like butter, screeched and scraped against the matte black shell.
"Its armor is ridiculously dense!" Hoshina grunted, backflipping away. "And the null-field is weakening my blades' frequency! It's like trying to cut through lead with a scalpel!"
This was the Architect's genius. He hadn't just created a monster that could dissolve Kafka. He'd created a monster whose natural defenses also countered the Defense Force's primary weapon systems. It was a perfect, purpose-built anti-asset.
From her perch, Haruta's voice rang out. "Taking the shot!"
A high-pitched *VREEEEE* sound cut through the air, followed by a thunderous *CRACK!*. A specialized, armor-piercing round, the size of a fire hydrant, slammed into No. 10's flank.
The monster was knocked sideways by the sheer kinetic force. But the bullet, which could punch through a battleship's hull, ricocheted off its hide with a horrifying scream of tortured metal, leaving only a minor, spiderweb crack on one of the plates.
"No effect! Armor is too strong for AP rounds!" Haruta shouted, her voice laced with disbelief.
They couldn't hurt it. Kikoru's overwhelming power was too slow. Hoshina's surgical speed was ineffective against its hide. Their long-range support was useless. And its primary weapon was a hard counter to Kafka.
The ATU, the most elite unit in the Defense Force, was being completely and systematically dismantled by a single, specialized enemy. They were losing.
No. 10 ignored them all, its entire focus back on Kafka, who was trying to regenerate his dissolved chest plate, the process slow and sluggish under the dampening effect of the null-field.
It crouched low, its red vents hissing, preparing for a final, decisive pounce to finish the job.
Kafka watched it, his mind racing. They were going to die. This thing was designed too perfectly. It was a walking tactical solution, and they were the problem it was built to solve.
There was only one way. He couldn't fight it. Not directly.
He looked at its main feature. The one thing that seemed out of place. The fleshy lure on its forehead. The part that pulsed with energy. Every other part of it was armor and weapons. The lure… it had to be a weakness. A sensor array? A command node?
He couldn't get close enough to strike it. But what if he didn't have to?
He made a decision. A desperate, insane, and probably suicidal gamble. He stopped regenerating his armor. Instead, he channeled all his power, everything he could muster against the suppressing field, into his two legs. The biological armor formed there, thick and reinforced. He focused, remembering his first uncontrolled, desperate leap away from Kikoru.
"Vice-Commander!" Kafka yelled into his comms, his voice tight with strain. "I have an idea! I need a distraction! A big one!"
Hoshina didn't hesitate. There was a desperate edge in Kafka's voice he hadn't heard before. "Kikoru! Maximum output! Give him a light show!"
"On it!" Kikoru roared. She planted her feet, the jets on her axe firing not for a strike, but for stability. AXE OUTPUT AT 100%! DANGER! REACTOR OVERLOAD IMMINENT! her suit blared. She poured every ounce of her power into her weapon, the massive axe head glowing with the intensity of a small sun.
"Hey, Ugly!" she screamed at No. 10. "Look over here!"
She unleashed a massive, horizontal wave of pure destructive energy. It wasn't a cut; it was a cannon blast, a crescent of golden light that ripped up the entire street, carving a ten-meter-deep trench as it raced toward the monster.
Kaiju No. 10, for the first time, was forced to acknowledge another threat. It couldn't sidestep this. It braced itself, its chitinous plates locking down, turning itself into an immovable fortress.
The blast hit it in a titanic explosion of light and sound.
And in that split-second of distraction, Kafka acted.
He crouched low, the power in his legs coiling like a universe of compressed springs.
Then, with a roar of his own, he jumped.
He didn't jump away. He didn't jump up.
He jumped at it.
He wasn't aiming for the monster. He was aiming over it. He soared through the air, a black and green comet, flying directly through the lingering dust and smoke from Kikoru's blast, right over No. 10's head.
And as he passed over its apex, just for a fraction of a second, he manifested his third arm. Not a claw. Not a blade. He formed a hand. A clumsy, three-fingered Kaiju hand.
In that single, fleeting moment, he did the most insane thing he could think of.
He reached down.
And he grabbed the lure.
And he pulled.