In this cave that reeked to high heaven, red, white, yellow, and green rats came pouring out from deeper inside, surging toward Toyama Hiroki and the others like a tide. A barrage of shrill "squeak-squeak-squeak" cries was even more spine-chilling than nails scraping a chalkboard.
It was enough to make your skin crawl, but there was no way it was going to scare off four mechanized super soldiers.
At the end of the day, they were just ordinary rats. Otagawa Yuya unfolded a repulsion force field and stopped the onrushing swarm head-on.
"Why are there so many normal rats in a place like this?"
Takatsukasa Eika's expression was downright ugly. The rot-stink saturating the air had already made her miserable—now a flood of rats had come out of nowhere. She could honestly say that since becoming a super soldier, she'd never had a mission this agonizing.
"Yeah. This many rats is obviously not normal," Toyama Hiroki said gravely. "We're out in the wild, yet they haven't been infected by the virus and turned into Gastrea. One or two could be coincidence, but coincidence doesn't grow into numbers like this."
"What do you think, 'Coyote'?" Eika looked to Otagawa Yuya—clearly, "Coyote" was his codename.
The trouble with rats was usually the bacteria they carried in their bodies and teeth, and the way they came and went without warning. The Black Death that ravaged Europe for over three hundred years had been tied to rats. But in a straight fight, these little things were weak.
The teeming rat swarm couldn't break through Otagawa Yuya's defensive field at all. He even had the leisure to chat while it happened.
"Pretty obvious. A mass like this doesn't form naturally—it's man-made," Otagawa Yuya analyzed. "Don't forget what the secondary target said: where we were was near her home. We followed the traces into this cave, and we got hit immediately with a rat attack like this."
Eika mulled it over. "So you're saying this cave probably leads to the target's home, and the rats are basically some kind of deterrent set up here?"
Utsunomiya Taiji snorted. "That idiot—did she think a handful of rats could stop us? How naïve."
They kept moving forward along the straight path through the cave. Every rat in their way was dealt with by Otagawa Yuya—ground down by the repulsion force field. Utsunomiya Taiji and the others had no intention of wasting time on a bunch of rats.
The deeper they went, the dimmer it got. Their artificial eyes could see in the dark, but keeping them on too long would overheat them, so Toyama Hiroki and the others had to switch on flashlights inside the cave.
Then they saw Nursery Rhyme again—right behind the rat swarm. The rats around her acted as if they couldn't see the girl at all, doing nothing but hurling themselves at the four of them.
"What a waste, what a waste. You don't want the souls of the dead rats? You don't want the souls of your dead comrades? These white, yellow, red, gray, and black souls—they're currency, and they're offerings. You're just going to leave them on the ground and ignore them?"
The flashlight beam hit Nursery Rhyme, yet it couldn't light her face. Where her features should have been was nothing but pitch-black.
"The target's appeared!"
The moment they saw Nursery Rhyme, Utsunomiya Taiji and the others charged without hesitation. They desperately wanted to seize her and get out of this increasingly uncanny place, and they tossed everything she said straight into the wind.
Then Nursery Rhyme suddenly darted into a small side hole. Not wanting to be shaken off, the four of them jumped in after her.
When their feet hit the ground, the stench in the air intensified all over again.
"This… is a sewer?"
Before them lay a sewer passage far wider than the narrow path in the cave—clearly something built carefully by human hands. The mottled walls and rusted metal framework proclaimed it had been abandoned for years. Great swaths of dark, ink-green scum floated on the water's surface. In this enclosed space, the "drip, drip" of water echoed like something pounding on the heart, and the stagnant air reeked of damp, stale decay.
"No wonder there were so many rats…" Eika said with a grimace. "After this mission, I'm taking the longest shower of my life. This place isn't fit for humans. It's filthy…"
Toyama Hiroki shot her a glance and said flatly, "After fighting Gastrea so many times, I thought you'd be used to places like this by now."
"That's not the same thing."
"Where did the target go?" Utsunomiya Taiji scanned the surroundings impatiently, looking for Nursery Rhyme. He even switched on his artificial eye.
And sure enough—his artificial eye caught a small figure flickering in and out up ahead.
"She's up ahead! That little bastard can really run. When we catch her, we should just break her legs first—see how she runs then!"
Not being able to grab Nursery Rhyme made Utsunomiya Taiji feel like he was losing face. A "New Human," wasting this much time on a little girl—so he didn't hesitate for a second before sprinting after her.
The others couldn't just abandon Utsunomiya Taiji, so they followed.
Back in the cave, they'd still been able to see rats surging like a wave—but once they entered the sewer, they didn't see a single one.
That small figure vanished in the blink of an eye. Utsunomiya Taiji and the others ran for a good while, yet they still couldn't catch up.
Then, a clear, lingering flute melody drifted into their ears.
How could there be flute music in a sewer?
They exchanged looks and decided to find the source.
If there was flute music, that meant there was someone here—and anyone who'd appear in a place like this was very likely connected to Nursery Rhyme.
If Nursery Rhyme and Scorpio belonged to some organization, then the source of that flute might be another member of that same group… To get more information, Toyama Hiroki and the others pressed on.
The farther they went, the clearer the melody became.
Soon, they saw the one playing the flute… A bizarre figure dressed in green, absurdly costumed like a clownish acrobat—his very face was green.
Sensing their arrival, the piper stopped playing and glared over, annoyed.
"Where'd this pack of rude, clueless louts come from? Can't you see I'm busy? You dare interrupt my performance for the little reapers. Hurry up and vanish from my sight before my mood turns foul. I'm not interested in the souls of adults who've already rotted."
"The hell did you say, you bastard—?! I'm—"
Utsunomiya Taiji was about to rush in, but Otagawa Yuya stopped him.
Facing this mysterious person—someone very likely from the same side as Nursery Rhyme—three of them, excluding Utsunomiya Taiji, wanted to get information through conversation. They'd planned to collect intel from the ace soldiers' corpses earlier, too, but before they could, the bodies had spontaneously ignited.
Everything about it was eerily opaque.
Toyama Hiroki stepped forward and asked politely, "Hello. We're looking for a little girl named Nursery Rhyme. Do you recognize that name?"
But something unexpected happened.
"A little girl? A kid? You're looking for children?"
The piper's green face abruptly twisted into something savage and unhinged. His bloodshot eyes bulged as he stared at the four of them, like they were about to pop out of their sockets.
The madness in that gaze seemed contagious—just meeting his eyes was enough to make something insane begin to sprout in Toyama Hiroki and the others' hearts.
"Kukuku! Children! The children I snatched! You're here to take them back, are you? Dream on! Keep dreaming! They're already dead! And today you're going to die here too! I'll kill you and feed your remains to the rats!"
That laughter, utterly soaked in frenzy, echoed through the sewer.
The piper raised the flute to his lips again, and the lingering melody sounded once more.
Scattered little rats gathered at the call. They crawled out of pipes, dropped from above, and scurried out of the water.
Eika glanced at the rats converging, then at the flute in the piper's hands, and cried out in shock, "That flute can control rats?!"
"So what?" Utsunomiya Taiji said dismissively. "They're just rats!"
With Otagawa Yuya here, no matter how many rats showed up, they couldn't threaten them.
Under the protection of the repulsion force field, Eika raised her handgun, leveling the muzzle at the piper's head.
"You can see it yourself. Your precious rats can't hurt us at all. Cooperate—throw away the flute and stop resisting, then answer all our questions unconditionally. As long as you cooperate, we'll let—"
"Dream on!" the piper hissed, manic. His mouth twisted into a grin that looked ready to split his face open, his fingers spasming as they clamped onto the flute. "I won't give the children back to you! And I'm going to make you taste the pain of losing family too! I'll pay back my pain to you a hundredfold!"
Hearing that, Toyama Hiroki went still for a moment, then stepped to Eika's side. "'Bald Eagle'—this guy's gone insane. We're not getting any more intel out of him. Just kill him."
Toyama Hiroki had wondered earlier why someone would dress like that and squat in a filthy, disgusting sewer—having the ability to control rats didn't require coming here. Now he understood: the man was crazy. Crazy people didn't have logic.
"Kill me? Hahahaha!" The piper burst into a deranged cackle at Toyama Hiroki's words. "How rude—looking down on me like that! Watch me turn it around and kill you! They're not tender, juicy children, but I'll keep your corpses and souls all the same!"
Even though every rat was being blocked outside the repulsion force field, and even though a madman's words shouldn't be trusted in theory… Toyama Hiroki still felt a sudden, sharp premonition of danger.
And very soon, he understood where that premonition came from.
"Something huge is approaching!" Eika shouted as she read the analysis from her artificial eye. "And it's not just one!"
With a heavy "BANG," a nearby wall was blasted through.
Dust and darkness hid their forms, but they couldn't hide the pairs of eyes flashing with cold red light.
"Damn it—it's Gastrea!"
"We're surrounded!"
Toyama Hiroki and the others realized: these were all Gastrea with rat factors inside them.
They were all low-level Stage I and Stage II Gastrea. The four super soldiers could easily wipe out huge numbers of them. But what their appearance meant sent a jolt of shock through their hearts.
Using flute music to control rats was one thing—using flute music to control Gastrea was something else entirely!
Those Unexplored Areas infested with Gastrea—if you could lure Gastrea away, you could seize every resource inside.
Enemy nations and Areas—if you could draw Gastrea toward them, you could swallow other territories without lifting a finger.
Without exaggeration, whoever mastered the technology to control Gastrea could become the ruler of the world!
Goshoukai had been researching exactly that, but for now they could only use hypnotic suggestion to make Gastrea "sleep" and "wake"—only those two commands worked. And even then, it only worked at the Stage level; if they wanted it to affect higher-level Gastrea, they had to plant the suggestion back when it was still Stage I.
And now, right in front of them, was a method that could control Stage I and Stage II… Even if it could only control rat-type Gastrea, it was already incredibly valuable!
If they could bring this method back, it would be a monumental achievement!
Utsunomiya Taiji suddenly thought, If it can control Gastrea with rat factors… could it control a Stage V "Zodiac" too…?
"Keep dreaming," Eika said with a scornful snort. "If any organization in the world had a technology that terrifying, they would've ruled the world already. Even controlling Stage IV would be enough to crush the vast majority of countries. So at most, they're controlling lower Stages."
"That's still terrifying enough," Otagawa Yuya said, obvious wariness in his tone.
"But." Toyama Hiroki rubbed his chin, puzzled. "Something this important, and it's in the hands of a lunatic. Didn't anyone in that organization think to retrieve it?"
Utsunomiya Taiji said excitedly, "Ha! Who cares? It's about to be ours!"
Those rat-type Gastrea only attacked Toyama Hiroki and the others, completely ignoring the piper. That scene also convinced them the flute really could control Gastrea—and it wasn't merely luring them the way "Legacy of Seven Stars" could.
It only hardened their resolve to seize it.
So Eika didn't hesitate. She pulled the trigger—one shot that blew through the piper's hands, breaking them both.
"Aaaah! Aaaagh, aaahhh!!"
The agony made the piper wail pathetically—and in the very next second, a Gastrea lunged at him. Under Eika and the others' eyes, it bit off his head and swallowed him whole. The scene was brutally bloody.
It took a bit of time, but the four of them killed all the rats and all the Gastrea. The foul, green water was dyed a dark red, with nauseating chunks of flesh sinking below the surface, and rotten blood splattered everywhere.
"Hahahaha! It's mine! It's mine!" Utsunomiya Taiji snatched the piper's flute, laughing shrilly, like he could already see himself rising through the ranks and striking it rich.
Toyama Hiroki, unable to watch anymore, warned him, "At best that flute is just an unexpected bonus. Our mission still isn't finished—we need to move. We've already wasted a lot of time…"
His words cut off.
Toyama Hiroki's pupils snapped tight as a violent chill poured down from the crown of his head.
"Utsunomiya! Behind you!"
He was the only one who noticed.
Utsunomiya Taiji was still lost in a beautiful fantasy of the future, completely unaware that a small chunk of Gastrea corpse behind him had suddenly split open.
The next instant, the piper's head—wearing a crazed, vicious grin—leapt out of the flesh. Below that head wasn't a neck at all, but a blood-slick, pink intestine!
"Pshk!"
Under their eyes—growing more and more alarmed, then outright horrified—the piper's severed head snapped forward and bit through Utsunomiya Taiji's throat.
Scalding, vivid blood erupted in an instant, mixing with the Gastrea gore beneath Utsunomiya Taiji's feet.