The walk from Training Ground Gamma back to the main barracks was a lonely one. Kafka's flawless performance, his impossible victory, hadn't earned him cheers or slaps on the back from his ATU comrades. It had earned him a new kind of distance. The quiet suspicion they held for him before had now crystallized into a deep, unnerving awe, which was in many ways a far more effective form of isolation. They looked at him now like a man who kept a tamed black hole as a pet; impressive, but no one wanted to stand too close.
He sat on his bed, the silence of his monitored room a stark contrast to the chaos of the exercise. The red flag, the prize, lay folded on his desk, a souvenir from his bizarre victory. He had succeeded. He had demonstrated control. He had pleased one master, but in doing so, had deeply unsettled the other.
As if summoned by the thought, the now-familiar cold presence seeped into the back of his mind. The Monarch had been watching.
[Your performance was… adequate,] Jin-Woo's voice echoed in his head. Coming from the King of Shadows, this was the equivalent of a standing ovation. [Your application of the rudimentary shadow movement was clumsy, but effective. Your decision to use the tendril to retrieve the objective, rather than for a direct attack, showed a flicker of tactical restraint. There is hope for you yet.]
'You told me not to use it,' Kafka thought back, a hint of accusation in his tone. 'You said it was a tactical blunder.'
[Exposing an ability is a blunder. Demonstrating *control* over an ability you have already exposed is a necessary form of threat management,] the Monarch countered, his logic infuriatingly sound. [Hoshina suspected you were a bomb that could go off at any moment. You have now shown him that you can, at the very least, aim it. This makes you more useful to him, and therefore, safer for the time being.]
He was right, of course. The entire exercise had been Hoshina's way of measuring the leash he held. Kafka had just shown him that the leash was stronger than he thought, but in doing so, had also shown him the monster at the end of it was far more terrifying.
[Your growth is progressing,] Jin-Woo's voice continued, a new, colder edge to it. [It is time for the next phase. Raw power and esoteric skills are useless without a vessel capable of withstanding them. Your human body is still a fragile liability.]
'What are you talking about? My Kaiju form…'
[Your monstrous form is a blunt instrument. And what happens when that instrument is broken? When your armor is dissolved, your hide is pierced? What is left? A weak, pathetic human, easily crushed,] the Monarch stated with brutal honesty. [Your physical foundation is your greatest weakness. We will rectify this.]
A sense of deep dread washed over Kafka. He knew what "rectifying" meant in the Monarch's vocabulary. A new, more torturous circle of hell in his dreamscape classroom.
[Tonight, in your dreams, you will not be learning new skills. You will be introduced to my Royal Bodyguards,] Jin-Woo said. [Beru will teach you how to withstand pain. And Igris will teach you how to fight without relying on your monstrous tricks.]
Kafka felt a tremor of what could only be described as soul-deep fear. Beru. Igris. He had heard those names before, felt their immense, terrifying presence when Jin-Woo had almost summoned them in Yokohama. These were not his rank-and-file shadow soldiers. They were the marshals of his army, beings of immense power in their own right. And they were going to be his new tutors.
[Rest well, my soldier,] the voice finished, a note of what sounded like cruel anticipation in it. [You will need it.]
The presence receded, leaving Kafka alone with the terrifying promise of his nightly curriculum. His life had become a bizarre cycle: prove his humanity to his keepers by day, and have that same humanity brutally beaten out of him by monsters at night.
A knock on his door startled him. Before he could answer, the door slid open and Kikoru Shinomiya stood there. Her expression was conflicted, a war between her ingrained military discipline and a raw, nagging curiosity.
"The Vice-Commander wants your official report on the exercise on his desk within the hour," she said, her voice clipped and formal. It was a flimsy excuse to be here. She could have sent the message over a comm.
"Of course," Kafka replied, standing up. "I'll get right on it."
She didn't leave. She took a step into the room, letting the door hiss shut behind her. "How did you do it?" she asked, her voice dropping to a low, intense whisper. "The shadow thing. You controlled it. It wasn't a panicked reaction this time."
Kafka looked at her. He saw the genuine, desperate need to understand in her golden eyes. He also saw the shadow of fear. She wasn't just asking about his power. She was asking about the foreign energy she felt resonating within herself.
He decided on another partial truth. "He's… teaching me. In my sleep," Kafka admitted, the words feeling insane as he said them. "It's a… different kind of training. He forces me to face my own weaknesses."
Kikoru's eyes widened slightly. "Teaching you? Why? Why would a being like that take any interest in teaching anyone anything?"
"I think…" Kafka started, trying to piece together the Monarch's motivations, "…he hates inefficiency. And he thinks I'm the most inefficient thing he's ever seen. He sees me as a flawed tool, and he's obsessed with sharpening me."
It was a gross oversimplification, but it was a version of the truth. Kikoru seemed to accept it, her analytical mind latching onto the logic. Sovereign wasn't a benevolent teacher; he was an obsessive engineer perfecting his favorite weapon.
"Be careful, Kafka," she repeated the warning she had given him before, but this time it felt different. It was less of an order and more of a genuine plea. "My father always said that the most dangerous weapon is the one that believes it's in control. That's when it's most easily used by its master."
She turned to go, but paused one last time at the door. "For what it's worth… your movements in the garden today… they were impressive. You didn't move like a Kaiju. You moved like a true operative."
With that, she was gone. The compliment, coming from her, the prodigy of the Defense Force, should have made him feel proud. Instead, it just filled him with a cold sense of irony.
He was finally earning the respect he'd always craved. But he wasn't earning it as Kafka Hibino. He was earning it as the Shadow Monarch's prized pupil, shaped and honed by a nightmare pedagogy he wouldn't wish on his worst enemy.
He looked at his own reflection in the darkened window of his room. The face was his, but the shadow behind it felt long, dark, and impossibly deep. And he knew that tonight, two of the Monarch's most terrifying demons were waiting for him in that darkness. The price for his evolution was about to be paid in pain.