News of Kafka's breakthrough in 'The Cauldron' spread, not as a detailed report, but as a subtle shift in the base's atmosphere. The story, filtered through Hoshina's carefully curated briefings to the other ATU members, was that Special Operative Hibino had achieved a new level of synchronization with his bio-weapon. He had, they were told, mastered a "berserker mode"—a temporary, high-output state that was now fully under his conscious control.
It was another lie, a more refined one, designed to replace the fear of an uncontrollable bomb with the respect for a cannon that could be aimed.
And it worked. Mostly.
The raw terror that had followed Kafka through the hallways was replaced by a wary, professional respect. He was still an anomaly, still a monster walking among them, but now he was their monster. The troopers no longer flinched when he walked by; they straightened their postures and offered sharp, if hesitant, salutes. He was no longer a pariah. He was a weapon, and in the army, weapons are treated with a cautious, pragmatic reverence.
This new status was most evident in the training yard.
"He's not even getting tired," one of the ATU veterans, Kenji, muttered, watching from the sidelines.
Kafka was in the center of the steel garden, not just evading, but systematically hunting the combat drones. He moved with a terrifying, silent grace, his Blackwing armor a sleek, second skin. He would use his shadow-phasing to appear behind a drone, disable its legs with a precise strike from a hand-formed blade, and then melt back into the shadows before its companions could even register the attack. It wasn't a training exercise anymore. It was a predator learning its new hunting ground.
Kikoru watched him, her arms crossed, her expression a complex mixture of rivalry and awe. "It's not just his power," she said, her voice low. "It's him. Hoshina's mind-games… they didn't break him. They sharpened him."
She saw it in his eyes. The clumsy, apologetic uncertainty of the janitor was gone, replaced by a calm, focused, and incredibly dangerous confidence. He was still Kafka Hibino, but it was a version of him that had been burned in a crucible and come out harder, colder, and infinitely more lethal. He carried the weight of his monstrous secret not as a burden anymore, but as a mantle.
The final drone tried to flee, scrambling up a pillar. Kafka didn't pursue. He simply stood on the ground, raised a hand, and pointed a finger. A single, thin, black needle of shadow, a miniature version of his hangar-bay trick, shot from his fingertip, pierced the drone's central processor from a hundred meters away, and killed it instantly.
He lowered his hand, the exercise over. Not a single drop of sweat beaded on his brow. The sheer efficiency of his energy use, a lesson beaten into him by the Monarch, meant that a task that would have once left him exhausted now barely counted as a warm-up.
Hoshina, observing from his perch, said nothing. He just made a small note on his datapad, a slight, almost imperceptible smile on his lips. His gamble was paying off. His wild card was becoming an ace.
The call came that evening.
Kafka was in his room, meticulously disassembling and cleaning a standard-issue plasma rifle—a menial task Hoshina had assigned him, a humbling reminder that even monsters had to maintain their gear.
A quiet chime indicated a secure, priority-one communication. He tapped the wall-mounted console.
Mina Ashiro's face appeared on the screen. She looked tired, the weight of command a visible burden, but her eyes were sharp.
"Hibino," she said, dispensing with pleasantries. "We have a situation. A Kaiju has appeared in the Tachikawa residential district, less than five klicks from the base."
Kafka sat up straight. A Kaiju in their own backyard.
"What's the Resilience score?" he asked, his mind already shifting into combat mode.
"That's the problem," Mina replied, a deep frown on her face. "It's not registering. It's a ghost. It's not giving off any discernible Kaiju energy, yet it has already caused significant structural damage and casualties. It's fast, and it seems to be… phasing. Moving through walls. Local squads can't get a lock on it."
Kafka felt a chill. A phasing Kaiju. Something that operated like a ghost.
"The Vice-Commander and Officer Shinomiya are already en route," Mina continued. "But their weapons are designed for physical targets. If they can't see it, they can't hit it. You, on the other hand…" She trailed off, the implication clear.
'You can fight ghosts,' he finished for her in his mind. His shadow abilities were a perfect, if terrifying, counter.
"We need you, Private," Mina said, her voice softening for a moment, the commander giving way to the human. "Not the berserker. Not the cannon. We need the ghost hunter."
"I'm on my way, Ma'am," he replied without hesitation.
The scene in the Tachikawa district was one of controlled panic. Flashing lights painted the night, sirens wailed, and civilians were being hastily evacuated by overwhelmed police forces. The area of destruction was bizarre. It wasn't a wide swathe of carnage. It was a series of precise, inexplicable implosions. A hole torn through the side of an apartment building, as if a giant cannonball had passed through without touching the edges. A car, completely flattened, with no visible signs of impact from above or the side.
Kafka arrived in a high-speed ATU vehicle, leaping out before it had even come to a full stop. Hoshina and Kikoru were waiting for him.
"It's a nightmare," Kikoru said, pointing her axe at a building. "We know it's in there, but every time we try to corner it, it just… melts through a wall and appears somewhere else. Our sensors are useless."
"It's playing with us," Hoshina added, his expression grim. "It strikes, causes chaos, then vanishes. It's a pure guerilla fighter. We're losing civilians, and we can't even see the enemy."
Kafka closed his eyes. He didn't try to use his normal senses. He did as the Monarch had taught him. He reached out with the cold, shadow-essence within him. He searched not for an energy signature, but for a disturbance in the natural order, a spot where the world felt… wrong.
And he found it.
It was a flicker. A moving pocket of unnatural space. A whisper of another dimension, pressed up against their own.
"It's there," Kafka said, opening his eyes and pointing to a seemingly empty spot in a children's playground, fifty meters away. "It's… halfway between worlds."
Hoshina and Kikoru stared at the empty space. "There's nothing there, Hibino."
"There is for me," Kafka said. And he reached into himself, not for the monstrous power of No. 8, but for the cold, otherworldly magic of his master. His eyes began to glow with that faint, tell-tale violet light. "This isn't a job for a Kaiju. It's a job for a shadow."
He took a step, and instead of walking forward, he simply sank into his own shadow, disappearing completely from their sight.
Hoshina and Kikoru stood back to back, their weapons at the ready, completely blind in a battle their asset was now fighting in a different dimension.
Kafka had spent weeks being trained as a soldier, as a Kaiju, as a weapon.
But now, for the first time, he was being deployed as a Monarch's agent. And he was about to hunt another ghost in the machine.