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Geld didn't attack immediately.
He stood in the center of the town square, his new body trembling with barely contained power. The four rinkaku tentacles extending from his back writhed independently, carving patterns in the air, demolishing stone wherever they touched. His crimson eyes were wide, unfocused—not with mindlessness, but with overwhelming sensation.
"What did you do to me?" he repeated, louder this time.
Touka's kagune remained deployed, her stance ready but not aggressive. "I killed you. Lord Thanatos brought you back."
"Lord Thanatos." Geld's voice dropped to something between a growl and a whisper. The name seemed to trigger something in him—recognition, maybe, or connection through the resurrection. His tentacles lashed out reflexively, and one of them carved a ten-foot gouge in the ground between him and Touka.
The watching crowd scattered back.
"Why?" Geld's body began to change. The tentacles thickened, multiplying—four became eight, then twelve. His skin cracked and black carapace began forming over his torso and arms. "Why bring me back? I chose death! I chose to end it!"
"He doesn't need your permission," Touka calmly admonished.
That was apparently the wrong thing to say.
Geld roared, and his body exploded with transformation.
The kagune didn't just multiply—it merged, twisted, consumed itself and reformed into something else entirely. A massive centipede-like structure erupted from his back, easily twenty feet long and five feet wide at its thickest point. The segments were covered in black and red carapace that leaked death energy like steam. Dozens of blade-like protrusions extended from each segment, and the entire thing moved with horrifying speed.
A kakuja. Unstable, uncontrolled, but unmistakably a kakuja transformation. Powered by magicules.
"I didn't ask for this power! I- It's too much!" Geld's voice came from somewhere inside the transformation, distorted and echoing. The centipede kakuja whipped around, and one section smashed into a nearby building. The structure didn't just collapse—it disintegrated, reduced to rubble and dust by the death energy coating the attack.
Touka dodged, her wings propelling her backward. A crystal shard shot from her kagune toward Geld's core, and the centipede kakuja simply opened a segment and swallowed it. The shard detonated inside the carapace and did nothing.
"It's eating my attacks," Touka muttered.
The centipede lashed out again, this time targeting the crowd. The ogre prince grabbed his sister and dove aside. Goblins scattered. One of the Red Order soldiers was too slow—the blade-protrusion caught him across the chest and sent him flying thirty feet.
Rimuru moved.
A barrier of compressed magicules snapped into existence around the town square, forming a dome that enclosed Geld, Touka, and the immediate battle area. The centipede kakuja hit the barrier and recoiled, the death energy sizzling against Rimuru's magic.
"That won't hold long," Rimuru said, his voice strained. Maintaining a barrier strong enough to contain a disaster-class entity in kakuja state was not easy, even with his current base power. "Touka, end this quickly!"
The Red Order soldiers rushed toward the barrier, weapons drawn. The ogre warriors moved to flank them. Both groups clearly intended to intervene.
"Stay back!" Touka's voice cut through the chaos. She didn't look away from Geld, but her tone brooked no argument. "This is my fight."
"General, you're injured—" one of her captains started.
"I said stay back."
Touka landed hard, one knee hitting the ground. Blood ran from a gash on her shoulder where a blade-protrusion had clipped her. Her breathing was heavy, and her kagune flickered slightly—a sign of magicule strain.
Then she smiled.
Inside her mind, she reached out through the blood connection that bound her to her master.
"Lord Thanatos," she thought. "I assume this is a test?"
In the Underworld, Kaneki's attention sharpened. He'd been watching through Geld's soul-thread, but Touka speaking directly to him was unexpected.
"It is," he confirmed.
"Then what do I get for passing it?"
Kaneki paused. Most subordinates would ask for power, or resources, or permission to do something they wanted. Touka's tone suggested she had something specific in mind.
"What do you want?"
"A date."
Silence in the Underworld.
Kaneki stared at nothing, processing. A date. His first real subordinate, created from an Orc and named after a memory, wanted to go on a date with him if she passed his test.
It was so absurd he almost laughed.
"Fine," he said, and he was genuinely amused now. "But I have two conditions. Don't destroy the town. And don't kill Geld—he's still useful."
"That's going to be difficult," Touka thought back, her mental voice carrying a hint of excitement rather than complaint.
"I know."
"But I'd rather die than quit."
Kaneki smiled in the darkness. "Good answer."
The connection faded as Touka redirected her full attention to the battle.
She stood up, ignoring the blood running down her arm, and looked at Geld's kakuja form with new focus.
"Thank you, Geld," she said, loud enough for him to hear over his own roaring. "For giving me the chance to glorify Lord Thanatos with a showcase of power."
"Shuuut upp!!"
The centipede kakuja twisted toward her, all its blade-protrusions extending. Geld's voice came from inside it, distorted and rage-filled.
"I'll suck the magicules from your bone marrow! I'll devour everything you are and scatter the pieces!"
The kakuja gathered energy, death magic and blood magic mixing into something chaotic and destructive. Every segment began glowing with red light.
"Die knowing that your power was meaningless!" Geld screamed, and launched his strongest attack.
The centipede kakuja split into dozens of separate tentacles, each one crackling with compressed power, and they all shot toward Touka simultaneously. A barrage of chaotic death and destruction that would overwhelm any defense through sheer volume and force.
Touka took a breath.
"True Kagune Form," she said quietly. "Azure Burial Wings."
Light detonated.
Blue and red, mixing and separating and mixing again, exploding outward with enough force that Rimuru's barrier cracked immediately. Every monster in the vicinity except Rimuru himself was forced to look away or be blinded by the sheer intensity.
The light was cold. Not temperature—something deeper. It felt like standing at the edge of a grave and feeling the finality of death reaching up.
When it faded, the town square had changed.
Geld lay on the ground, his kakuja form collapsed and dissolving. His arms and legs were gone—cleanly severed, already regenerating but slowly. He was breathing, unconscious but alive.
Above him, Touka floated.
Her appearance had transformed completely. Six wings extended from her back, each one made of layered azure crystal that pulsed with inner light. The edges of each wing glowed crimson, as if the blue crystal contained red fire barely held in check. Behind her head, a radiant red halo rotated slowly, stabilizing the enormous power flowing through her body.
Her eyes had changed. Still blue, but now they glowed with the same cold light as her wings. A red shroud of pure concentrated magicules surrounded her like a aura, distorting the air with its density.
She looked down at Geld with an expression of complete calm.
"I won," she said simply.
Then she looked at Rimuru's barrier—which was now covered in cracks spreading from a dozen impact points—and raised one hand.
The barrier shattered. Not violently, but in a controlled collapse, as if Touka had dismissed it rather than destroyed it.
She descended slowly and landed beside Geld's unconscious form. Her wings folded but didn't disappear, and the halo continued its rotation.
"He'll live," she announced to the watching crowd. "As Lord Thanatos commanded."
Then her power cut off. The wings dissolved, the halo faded, and Touka dropped to one knee, breathing heavily. The transformation had clearly cost her significantly, but she'd maintained control throughout.
The Red Order erupted in cheers while she grinned, happy that she bagged a date with her Crush.
In the Underworld, Kaneki sat forward against his throne.
"Great Sage," he said, having quickly figured out a way to connect the system with this dimension, though Kaneki still retained full control. "What was that?"
[Analysis complete. Touka has achieved a unique evolution state. Her Ukaku kagune has mutated into what appears to be an Angelic Armament—a fusion of Blood Orc physiology, ghoul kagune structure, and high-density magicule manipulation.]
"Show me her status."
The screen appeared, and Kaneki read through it carefully.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ INDIVIDUAL STATUS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Name: Touka Race: Blood Orc/Angel (Mutated/Awakened Variant) Threat Rank: Disaster-Class (Edge of Catastrophe) ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ UNIQUE RACIAL SKILL ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ True Kagune Form: Azure Burial Wings – Aosōyoku (Crimson Ascension) Type: Ukaku-based Angelic Armament (Partial Kakuja Equivalent) Description: A superior combat manifestation formed from ultra-densified blood-crystal energy. Six-layered azure wings edged in crimson annihilation aura grant absolute aerial supremacy. A radiant red halo functions as auxiliary core, stabilizing energy flow and preventing mental collapse. User maintains full self-identity. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SKILLS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • Requiem Feathers → High-speed homing crystal shards with delayed internal detonation • Silent Wing Blades → Close-combat crescent slashes capable of severing magical armor • Crimson Counterburst → Automatic retaliatory explosions upon wing damage • Burial Halo → Continuous energy regeneration and sustained long-term combat capability ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ULTIMATE TECHNIQUE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Azure Burial: Final Wing → All deployed shards suspend space-time vectors and execute simultaneous omnidirectional annihilation ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[Combat Role: Aerial Extermination / Area Suppression]
[Note: If full awakening is achieved, evolution into Catastrophe-Class Blood Angel is highly probable within six months to one year.]
Kaneki leaned back, impressed despite himself. He'd named Touka expecting a competent soldier. What he'd gotten was something approaching a strategic asset.
"Great Sage, how does studying her help my evolution?"
[Touka's transformation represents a successful fusion of multiple power systems—ghoul essence, Orc physiology, blood magic, and pure magicule manipulation. Analyzing the mechanism by which she achieved stable kakuja-equivalent power without losing self-identity would provide valuable data for Master's own evolution path toward Demon Lord rank.]
[Additionally, her Angelic Armament structure suggests a potential development route for Master's own draconic wings and blood constructs. Cross-referencing her techniques with Master's abilities could yield significant advancement.]
So she was useful beyond just military command. Good to know.
And he owed her a date.
Kaneki stood from his throne and focused on the soul-thread connecting him to Geld. The newly resurrected Orc Lord's blood was spread across the town square—on the ground, on the walls, even some splattered on Touka's armor.
It was more than enough.
"Let's go congratulate our subordinate," Kaneki said.
He stepped into Geld's blood and let his body dissolve into it, traveling along the connection between the Underworld and the physical world.