Chapter 28: And So in the Rainy Night, the Laboratory’s Past

“Don’t look at me with that expression. Once you know my sister’s true name, you’ll understand why I’m making this request.”

Kraken let out a heavy sigh. “The name recorded in the ancient chronicles of the Izayoi Family for Umizuki no Mikoto is Izayoi Du Shui¹.”

When exactly was she born?

Kraken couldn’t say for certain.

If life has a starting point, does it count from the very first moment one opens their eyes, or from the moment one possesses a complete set of memories?

Does a normal human’s growth involve these two processes? Being born in a dazed, ignorant state within a fluid pod, and then, after learning the concepts of life, humanity, and death, having another person’s entire life injected into you?

That couldn’t even be called a person. It was…

What was it? An Anomaly? But she was an Anomaly to begin with, so why call the memories of “herself” injected into her mind an Anomaly?

Shouldn’t the term Anomaly only be used for situations that differ from the norm? If that were the case, then by what right was she called an Anomaly?

Was she… not normal?

Kraken didn’t understand, just like all the other Experimental Subjects struggling between life and death in that laboratory.

They were girls created for a sinister purpose, all with identical appearances and physical data.

They were mass-produced, and even the manifestations of their spiritual power were identical: red or blue Siphonophores².

Only the individual known as Kraken was special. Her Spiritual Body was a Dumbo Octopus that looked weak, easily bullied, and utterly powerless.

Because she was different, she couldn’t be accepted by the group. In a hellish place like the laboratory, Kraken was the one who was absolutely ostracized.

No one wanted to move with her, study with her, or train with her, except for…

A certain girl who was equally special, whose Spiritual Body consisted of two jellyfish.

Her identification name was Umizuki.

Umizuki was completely different from her. She did many things Kraken didn’t dare to do. She would act spoiled toward those strange, silent adults in white coats to get the things she wanted, only to reveal eyes as terrifying as Kraken’s the moment they left.

Umizuki hated those people in the white coats too.

This realization brought Kraken peace of mind. She felt those people were truly loathsome; they forced the girls to perform difficult tasks just to get food, constantly drew their blood, and even made them kill each other.

She had once tried to struggle, to tell the others that the people in white were villains and that all the pressure of their survival crisis came from those bastards. However, those girls only stared at her quietly with blue eyes identical to her own, as if looking at an antisocial lunatic.

“How is that possible, Kraken? Without them, we wouldn’t even have food.”

“Drawing blood and all that… isn’t that just what we’re supposed to do? That’s the meaning of our birth.”

As if brainwashed, those girls accepted the future described by the white-coated researchers. Every time a girl was taken away, leaving their twisted group, only Umizuki’s eyes matched hers, harboring an irrepressible rage.

From that moment on, Kraken suddenly accepted it.

She accepted that she was an Anomaly.

After all, if being normal meant foolishly handing one’s life over to someone else, she would rather be an Anomaly.

And Umizuki felt the same way.

Drawn together by their similar souls, the two outcasts within the flock began to grow close.

Umizuki couldn’t stand seeing the others ostracize Kraken, so she always walked with the lonely girl. She would secretly share half of the candies she had wheedled out of the researchers with Kraken.

Kraken still clearly remembered the sensation from back then – the candy pressed into her palm, the fingertips cold yet conveying an unspeakable warmth.

When other Experimental Subjects intentionally knocked Kraken down, Umizuki would rush over and use her own frail body to shield her. Even if she was maliciously pushed down herself, she did it every single time.

Influenced by Umizuki, who was always looking for a chance to escape, Kraken stopped going to sleep early as the researchers required. Instead, she followed Umizuki in the middle of the night, wandering through the laboratory in search of a way out of that prison.

No matter what experimental torture they endured during the day, as long as she could run through the dark laboratory with Umizuki at night – where even the moonlight couldn’t reach – Kraken felt a dazed sense that true freedom was beckoning to her.

Perhaps one day, she would no longer have to follow orders here. She would seize her own body and the right to control it from the hands of those white-coated researchers.

Both she and Umizuki believed that such a day would surely come.

Occasionally, during their late-night wanderings, Kraken and Umizuki would see a youth in a deep blue uniform, his silhouette as fast as the wind, appearing like a ghost.

He carried an aura similar to the man who had visited the lab and was called the District Chief, yet he was younger and sharper.

Kraken didn’t know his name, but the omnipotent Umizuki managed to find out: he was called Izayoi Ame.

As if performing magic, Izayoi Ame would pull warm rice balls wrapped in oil paper, fragrant toasted dried fish, or a few precious, cloyingly sweet fruit candies from his coat. He would quickly stuff them into the small gaps near Kraken and Umizuki’s nutrient solution delivery ports.

He never spoke. His gaze was complex, filled with pity and a kind of resolve they couldn’t understand.

Those foods were the most luxurious delicacies in their barren world, far beyond the standard laboratory nutrients. They were the hope that sustained them, the dream of personally going outside to see what the world was truly like.

In those moments, Umizuki would always give the best portions to Kraken.

To Kraken, Umizuki had become almost a part of herself, the only light in her dark world, and her everything.

Those days were so painful. The training, the blood draws, the experiments—everything pressing down on them was harsh to the point of cruelty. The shadow of death was never far away. Almost every few days, an Experimental Subject would die. Kraken always felt that those dead girls being carried away were also versions of herself.

But because Umizuki was by her side, because of that tiny bit of stolen warmth, even the abyss seemed to have a glimmer of light. Kraken had thought they would stay like that forever, huddling together in despair, waiting for an unknown and perhaps equally dark future.

But fate always takes away the last remaining scraps from the suffering, just like that night Kraken could never forget, even if her consciousness was a blur.

The shrill wail of alarms tore through the deathly silence of the laboratory. The roar of explosions, the sharp shatter of glass, the acrid smoke, and… an unspeakable, suffocating terror, like pressure from the deep sea, descended upon this laboratory converted from an ancient shrine.

The entire underground facility shook violently, as if seized and kneaded by an invisible giant hand.

Kraken shrank into a corner in terror. Her weak and useless Dumbo Octopus Spiritual Body wrapped tightly around her, transmitting an equally intense fear.

Amidst the screams of the Experimental Subjects and the chaos of the white-clad researchers, she saw Umizuki stumbling toward her, her face paler and more desperate than ever before.

Only the burning light in those eyes remained unextinguished, glowing faintly in the darkness due to the effect of her spiritual power.

“Kraken! Run! Run now!” Umizuki’s voice was hoarse, but it didn’t carry a sob.

“What happened?” Kraken grabbed Umizuki’s cold hand. Though she was even more terrified than Umizuki, she tried to offer some support.

“We… we are all ‘Vessels’!” Something was trickling down Umizuki’s forehead, mixed with dust and sweat. Kraken looked up and realized it was bright red blood.

“I just escaped, I got away from those madmen! I’m here to tell you what we really are… I was chosen, destined to be the Vessel for ‘Umizuki no Mikoto’! And you… you are the Vessel carrying the Kraken Anomaly Core! They want to… to awaken those ancient spiritual powers within us, then recreate history. They want Umizuki no Mikoto to become the hero who slays Anomaly Y008, and then use Umizuki no Mikoto’s influence to make the Third District the leader of the Seven-District Council!”

These words hit Kraken’s mind like a heavy hammer. She instantly understood what that creepy look—a mix of fanaticism and appraisal—meant whenever the researchers occasionally looked at her and Umizuki.

“No… no…” Kraken shook her head as a cold chill swept over her. They weren’t people, not even independent individuals. They were just… containers for some ancient, horrific power.

The spiritual power left behind by Umizuki no Mikoto had been crafted into a special Anomaly Core, and Y008 was a disaster that could destroy everything… They were Anomalies… Anomalies born solely for the sake of destruction.

Kraken’s vision began to blur; she couldn’t believe it.

“Listen!”

Umizuki grabbed her shoulders forcefully, snapping Kraken out of the daze of her collapsing worldview. Her eyes held a desperate, all-or-nothing resolve. “I overheard them! The experiment for Umizuki no Mikoto will start first. I’ll cause a riot over there to draw everyone’s attention, and then… you escape!”

“What about you?” Kraken could feel herself trembling.

“I have to stay… if I run first, they’ll realize we’re gone immediately! At least one of us has to get away!”

Umizuki smiled. She suddenly shoved Kraken away with all her might, pushing her toward a relatively intact corridor flickering with emergency lights used for transporting surgical equipment. “Go! Live, and then—”

Umizuki took a deep breath. “See for me what the world outside is really like.”

The moment the door to that emergency passage closed, a violent, hungry power originating from the depths of her soul was completely ignited.

“Umizuki…?”

Kraken murmured. She couldn’t control herself. Something was waking up in the depths of her heart.

It was no longer that harmless Dumbo Octopus. Her Spiritual Body expanded and twisted in an instant, turning into a greedy, colossal shadow.

Pitch-black tentacles erupted from her body, lashing out wildly. The pale, reinforced alloy walls of the laboratory were torn like paper, complex instruments were crushed into powder, and terrified researchers and security personnel were easily swept into the darkness before they could even scream.

Under Kraken’s rampage, the entire laboratory was shattered like a school of fish thrown into the stomach of a deep-sea beast.

Using the power of the Kraken, she personally buried the hell that had imprisoned them. But the price was heavy. The uncontrolled explosion of Y008’s power nearly destroyed her. She lost her physical body, and her Spiritual Body was severely damaged. In the end, she could only barely survive in the weakest form of her Spiritual Body—that Dumbo Octopus. Her consciousness fell into a long period of chaos, and she was recaptured by the researchers of the Elder Council.

When she finally regained a portion of her lucidity, she had become a fragmented Spiritual Body attached to an Anomaly Core.

She could feel that Umizuki wasn’t dead. Umizuki’s memories must have been wiped, and she was living outside under the identity of “Du Shui,” just like the future Umizuki had wanted to give her.

But her time was up. The Kraken was waking up, and as a weak wisp of consciousness, she could no longer suppress this monster ranked in the top ten of the sequence.

As long as she existed—as long as she, fused with the true Y008 Anomaly Core, existed—then the future envisioned by those researchers would surely come to pass. The great Umizuki no Mikoto would personally kill Y008 and become the hero of the Third District.

Kraken could feel it. The memories from Y008 helped her see that in countless futures across countless timelines, every single time, she would die under Du Shui’s blade. After all, only Umizuki no Mikoto could kill the Kraken.

If that was the case… if that was the case…

“Then why doesn’t Sister just kill me right now?”

Kraken even managed a faint smile.

Liu Ming stared at her. “But she doesn’t even remember you right now.”

Yun Zhou and Ying Huo nodded; that was exactly what they wanted to say.

“Doesn’t remember? Ah, right. She really shouldn’t remember me. All Experimental Subjects have their memories wiped the day they leave…”

Kraken didn’t seem sad, however. “But it doesn’t matter. Because of that, she shouldn’t show any mercy when she kills me. That’s a good thing.”

A sincere smile appeared on the young girl’s face. She was truly happy for her sister.

“Now… take me to find Sister quickly. Otherwise, I really will kill you all.”

Kraken’s tone was serious. She wasn’t joking at all.

Liu Ming sighed. “Fine.”

He manipulated his mental power, spreading it outward like a carpet, and soon captured a trace.

It was a bamboo leaf.

“Let’s go.” Liu Ming looked a bit pained. “This clue cost a fortune.”

On the other side, at the Kanagawa Defense Chain.

Izayoi Ame’s Blue Whale hung high above the defensive line, surging through the gloomy sea of clouds.

Rain poured down, leaving faint ripples upon the surface of the raging, turbulent ocean.

The massive shadow of the beast remained at a fixed distance from the main body of the defense chain, neither approaching nor retreating. Perhaps because its form was too gargantuan, its movements were incredibly slow; even the most ordinary anti-anomaly aircraft could easily weave between its massive tentacles.

Those eerie, blood-colored eyes had been staring fixedly at something. Its gaze was not focused on the surrounding defensive works, but rather pierced through the engineering chain in front of it, looking toward a place far, far away.

“Kraken’s state is wrong. It isn’t showing the intense aggression typical of other top-ten Y-sequences. It’s just advancing slowly, as if its purpose… isn’t here?”

Hozuki lowered her specialized binoculars, looking suspiciously at the giant monster in the distance.

“It’s being held back by someone.”

Izayoi Ame looked at Kraken’s shadow and let out a knowing sigh. “So it really is like this. Everything is heading toward the worst possible conclusion. Everything the Elder Council did in that laboratory will…”

Kraken and Du Shui had both returned here. Everything was still proceeding according to the arrangements the Elder Council had made years ago.

The hero would become a hero, the monster would be killed. Under this manufactured drama, the Izayoi Family would emerge as the sole winner. The price was merely their morality and principles.

The Second Elder stood behind him, frowning at his words. The wind and rain were growing stronger, and he hadn’t heard the Family Head clearly. “What do you mean ‘it’s still like this’? At this stage, do you still have something to hide, Family Head-“

But the Second Elder was interrupted by Hozuki.

“District Chief.”

Hozuki looked at Izayoi Ame with a serious expression. The respect she had previously shown the Second Elder was gone from her face. She stared at Izayoi Ame, emphasizing every word. “Stop hypnotizing yourself. You once had two sisters, and now you have lost them. We cannot pray for a miracle to happen again, because a miracle has already happened once.”

Years ago, at the moment the laboratory inside the mountain beneath the Haiyue Shrine was completely destroyed, a miracle had indeed occurred. Kraken, the girl who had merged with the Anomaly Core of Y008, had maintained her human consciousness. She controlled her mental power to a precise degree, blowing up the entire laboratory while simultaneously protecting Du Shui’s life, giving Du Shui a chance at freedom.

But that was a one-in-a-million miracle. It was enough for a miracle to happen once in the Third District. It could not happen a second time.

Izayoi Ame paused. Usually respectful toward the Second Elder, he didn’t respond to the elder’s question this time. He sighed. “I just-“

He was simply indecisive, feeling pity for everything, yet he had been born into the Izayoi Family.

Hozuki gave a cold laugh. She pushed past Izayoi Ame and fixed her eyes on the Second Elder standing by the platform railing. “I know. You just can’t bear it, you’re unwilling. But no matter what, we can’t go on like this. If we delay any longer, there really won’t be any time left. To think the mimic Y008 created by humans has to be stopped by Y008 herself… it’s simply too ridiculous.”

The Second Elder narrowed his eyes. He looked at Hozuki, the Izayoi adjutant who had always been so exemplary. At this moment, it was as if she had finally torn off her mask, like someone who had endured years of hardship while biding her time, no longer hiding her dissatisfaction with the Elder Council and even the Izayoi Family.

“Adjutant Hozuki, you are mistaken. What? Is Du Shui without fault? If she hadn’t insisted on following Black Swan’s arrangements to pass through here at this time, that man-made Y008 would never have been born. Now Du Shui herself has vanished… you speak as if she bears no responsibility at all.”

The Second Elder sneered.

“What kind of nonsense is that?! It was your Izayoi Family that wronged her in the first place-” Hozuki gritted her teeth, wanting to rush forward and argue, but Izayoi Ame held her back.

“District Chief!”

Hozuki was clearly furious. But Izayoi Ame was not calm either. He looked up, his triple-blue eyes staring deeply at the Second Elder.

He and the Second Elder spoke almost simultaneously.

“The one who caused the massive losses in the laboratory was Kraken’s Vessel, and Du Shui is the Vessel of the great Umizuki no Mikoto.”

“The remains of Umizuki no Mikoto and the remains of Kraken are, in essence, no different. District Chief, do not let your personal feelings ruin the greater plan.”

Without any prior coordination, Izayoi Ame spoke the exact same words as the Second Elder, syllable for syllable. Even the rhythm, the cadence, and the pauses were identical.

The Second Elder smiled at the sound. “It seems the District Chief thinks the same as I do.”

Izayoi Ame sighed softly. His usually calm, rippleless voice finally carried a hint of emotion. “No. Quite the opposite. It’s just that I can guess what you want to say even with my eyes closed. Second Elder, you are now no different from those bastards in the Elder Council who desecrate life… I have been controlled by you for so long… and now, I don’t want to hear another word you have to say.”

What’s more, the invisible Plot Strings implanted by the Elder Council to influence his sanity had already been severed by Liu Ming.

He would no longer be controlled by these people.

The Second Elder froze in shock. “What are you saying? Lord Patriarch, have you gone mad? Are you still clinging to those unrealistic fantasies of cutting ties with the Elder Council? Don’t forget-“

Izayoi Ame didn’t stay to listen to his nonsense. Instead, he drew his blade directly from its sheath.

Clang!

Under Hozuki’s shocked gaze, he delivered a backhanded strike, thrusting the blade straight through the Second Elder’s chest without a moment’s hesitation.

The tachi pierced through his body, and blood gushed onto the ground. However, the moment the liquid hit the floor, it wasn’t a normal crimson. It was a mass of writhing tentacles.

They were clusters of incredibly thin tentacles, twisting together along the path of the flowing blood, squirming silently with a sickening, squelching sound.

The Second Elder’s face still held an expression of utter disbelief. He clutched the blade in his chest, dazed, as if he couldn’t fathom why the Patriarch he had always supported would actually strike such a lethal blow.

After all, he was supposed to be Izayoi Ame’s only ally within the Elder Council.

“…Even your blood has turned into this…” Izayoi Ame’s voice was hoarse. “Can you finally no longer hide it? Or rather, have you simply given up on hiding?”

The Second Elder had been normal when Izayoi Ame was young. Or rather, he had been normal before the accident in the shrine laboratory deep within the mountain.

As the guardian of Izayoi Ame after the previous District Chief’s death, he had always fiercely opposed the experiments conducted by the Izayoi Family. However, his influence was limited. At that time, the Second Elder could only try to instill normal values into Izayoi Ame—the future District Chief who was then completely controlled by the Elder Council.

Values such as the idea that desecrating life was wrong.

But in recent years, the Second Elder had begun to act increasingly strange in certain details. After Liu Ming released him from the control of the Plot Strings, Izayoi Ame had pondered deeply and finally arrived at the only explanation.

In the Anomaly sequence list, there was only one Anomaly capable of usurping a human’s body and consciousness.

“Y007, Ghost of the Earth—Hela.”

She was also the culprit behind the Elder Council’s descent into the abyss.

Boom!

A bolt of red lightning tore through the heavy clouds, illuminating the faces of the three people in the confrontation. Amidst the rain and the roar of thunder, the Second Elder, pinned to the railing by the tachi, suddenly laughed.

It wasn’t a faint smile, but a look of relaxation, as if he finally didn’t have to pretend anymore.

Cracks spread from the corners of the Second Elder’s mouth, traveling down his body all the way to his feet, tearing his entire form apart.

His human shape collapsed rapidly as tentacles flowed out from the fissures. Soon, the Second Elder who had stood there was gone, replaced by a mass of viscous tentacles pinned in place by the Umizukigiri.

Izayoi Ame frowned deeply as he stared at the mass of twisting tentacles. This was a partial husk of Y007. This was how the King of Anomalies, who wandered the earth like a ghost, used strands of proliferating tentacles to occupy human shells and achieve her goals.

Under the control of the Plot Strings implanted by the Elder Council, he hadn’t noticed a single thing wrong with the Second Elder.

“Don’t look at me with those eyes. As the most sentimental existence among the Kings of Anomalies, I naturally had to come and see Y008 now that she’s finally about to wake up after being tortured like that by you humans.”

The viscous, slender brown tentacles twisted into a humanoid shape, coiling like snakes into an eerie posture as she looked at Izayoi Ame and the wary Hozuki.

The thunder continued to roar, as if it wanted to burn everything in this sea to ashes.

“Hahahaha! What wonderful thunder. It’s a pity it’s not yet time to witness the most beautiful end.”

The mouth of Y007, composed of twisted tentacles, smiled with pure delight. “The world is ending, not with a bang, but a whimper.”

Izayoi Ame didn’t want to hear any more of her nonsense and swung his blade in a decisive arc.

He rarely used such a straightforward cutting technique. High above in the clouds, the Blue Whale let out a mournful cry, as if seeing off the long-dead Second Elder.

The blade, carrying the absolute power to slay Anomalies, turned all of Y007’s tentacles into a continuous curtain of rain. Y007’s body shattered and crumbled, but this was only a clone after all. Before dying, she even laughed happily. “You cannot resist. Because humans are the vessels for Anomalies; all the Kings of Anomalies were once a part of you.”

Izayoi Ame’s eyes widened suddenly.

“Hee hee-” The last of Y007’s tentacles turned into a mist of rain, drifting toward the boundless Kanagawa with the gale over the sea. The black seawater churned into white foam, carrying her final joyful voice.

“District Chief… your sister can’t hold on much longer. I want to see if you can last in front of Y008 until your other sister arrives.”

Izayoi Ame and Hozuki turned sharply toward the massive shadow of Y008. They saw that those giant eyes, which had been lifeless just moments ago, had shifted from dull to bright, as if she had finally reclaimed her soul.

“Hozuki…”

Izayoi Ame’s voice was slightly raspy. He leapt lightly onto the platform’s railing, that familiar conflict and indecision reappearing in his eyes.

Perhaps there was still resentment. Why was he born into the Izayoi Family? Why was he unable to help those he wanted to help? Why had he failed to save those two Experimental Subjects… and why did the sins of the Izayoi mean he had to die?

But it lasted only a moment before vanishing.

“I’ll have to rely on you in a moment. I know what I can achieve is limited, so if… please give me a hand.”

“Help me stop Du Shui, if she still tries to come over.”

Izayoi Ame took a deep breath and hesitated no longer. He threw himself off the platform, leaping into the bottomless depths of the sea.

“…I’m leaving the Izayoi Family in your hands, old classmate.”

Translator’s Notes