Several hundred meters away, atop the roof of a tall building,
Matsumae was observing everything inside the house in real time through a tablet.
"This guy… he's really bold, just walking straight in."
"Either he's absurdly confident in his own strength, or he's simply a brainless idiot."
"But since you went in on your own, you've saved us quite a bit of trouble."
...
Inside the house, Fushimi Kyo saw no one.
The room was completely empty.
At the center of the first-floor hall, resting on the ground, was a mysterious package.
What lay inside was impossible to tell.
With a casual motion of his hand, Bloodsong appeared in his grasp.
He walked up to the package.
Shhk!
A flash of blade light cut it open.
Before he could see what was inside
BOOM!
A deafening explosion rang out.
Chi chi chi !
Countless flying needles shot toward him in a violent burst.
At the same time, a thick gas rapidly spread out, engulfing the entire house.
"Such a crude trap,"
Fushimi Kyo mocked.
Bloodsong danced in his hand, forming a dense curtain of blade light before him.
Every single needle was knocked to the ground, none slipped through.
"This gas… it's RC gas?"
"Trash like this actually supposed to work on me?"
"Do you really think I'm a ghoul?"
RC gas was a poison gas developed by the CCG specifically to deal with ghouls.
It could effectively suppress the activity of RC cells within a ghoul's body.
Once too much was inhaled, a ghoul wouldn't be able to manifest their kagune.
Without kagune, even powerful ghouls became far easier to deal with.
Based on the intelligence they had gathered, the Tsukiyama family concluded that Fushimi Kyo was a ghoul.
Given that he had slaughtered over a hundred ghouls, they estimated his strength to be at SS-class.
Thus, this trap had been laid out according to SS-class ghoul standards.
"Is that all?"
Fushimi Kyo sneered inwardly.
"How boring."
Suddenly
BOOM!
The floor beneath his feet exploded.
A thorn-covered kagune pierced through the wooden planks from below, stabbing toward his lower body.
"Damn, that's dirty,"
Fushimi Kyo cursed.
He swung Bloodsong in a sweeping arc.
The kagune was severed instantly.
Next
Chi chi chi !
Countless kagune pierced through the floor, lunging toward him from all directions.
"Hmph. Dragon Cyclone Flash · Spiral!"
His body moved with the blade.
Spinning rapidly in place, he transformed into a vortex of flashing steel.
Clang clang clang clang !
Every attacking kagune was cleanly cut down.
Before he could even catch his breath
From the surrounding walls, the ceiling, and the floor
Thorny kagune surged in from all directions, stabbing viciously toward the center of the hall.
At the same time, as Fushimi Kyo fully triggered the mechanism, the entire house was flooded with RC gas.
Matsumae issued a cold command:
"All units put on gas masks."
"Move out with me."
"Exterminate that human bastard."
With that, she leapt down from the rooftop, charging toward the decrepit building.
In Matsumae's view,
even if this level of trap couldn't kill Fushimi Kyo outright, it would definitely cripple him.
All they needed to do afterward was close in and finish him off.
The plan was flawless.
No matter how one looked at it, there was no way Fushimi Kyo could survive.
However
They had miscalculated one crucial thing.
Fushimi Kyo was not a ghoul.
And his strength was far beyond SS-class.
He was someone who could fight the One-Eyed Owl head-on
and remain undefeated.