The Biter

by Reki Kawahara

It was just like how Takaesu had managed to recover perfectly—no, beyond perfectly—in that abandoned building with no food or water.

  He had taken light damage from the unforeseen counterattack, but he had gotten ahold of the boy in any case. No, he had gotten him between his teeth. At this point, he wouldn’t let the boy go, and he wouldn’t let the boy do anything. Like this, he would first tear off the boy’s right arm along with the shell. Takaesu would enjoy his screams as he was writhing in agony, and then he would devour the left arm as well. Next would be the right leg. Then the left leg. Since the boy could run so fast, Takaesu would be able to get a taste of great, solid bone.

  Once the boy was unable to speak because of heavy blood loss after losing all four limbs, Takaesu would eat the woman in front of him, too. To keep her alive, he had gone so far as to use his stock of barbiturate sleeping pills that had been so hard to come by. She was apparently the boy’s adoptive sister, but that actually might give things a stimulating and emotional flavor…

  When he thought this, a strange stab of pain shot through a deep place in Takaesu’s head.

  Ignoring this, he pressed down on the boy’s body with his right knee as he simultaneously yanked on the arm in his mouth, dragging the boy down to the left. Of course, he didn’t open his jaws. After straddling the boy and blocking a blow from his left fist, Takaesu unleashed the bite strength of tiger-shark mode.

  “Gugururu!”

  The savage war cry escaped from his throat. The muscles around his jaws creaked. His fangs quivered under the terrible pressure.

  However…

  Just like three days earlier, the boy’s shell neither strained nor bent. With a hardness that went beyond that of matter itself, it resisted the power of the tiger shark and refused to break down. The feeling in his mouth told him that he probably couldn’t break it even if he went on biting it like this for dozens of seconds.

  But you know, boy…I’m not the same as I was three days ago, either, he whispered to himself with the arm still between his teeth, the right corner of his mouth lifting in a sneer.

  In the back of the frozen building, Takaesu had been near death. Although the burns around his mouth were healing, the overconsumption of energy could have killed him. What saved his life were the stainless steel bolts and nuts that had fallen on the floor here and there.

  According to common sense, humans couldn’t derive even a single calorie from metal whether they sucked on it or chewed it up. But there were living things in the world that consumed iron. These iron-oxidizing bacteria derived energy from converting bivalent iron to trivalent iron, and then they multiplied.

  Takaesu didn’t know if the same kind of mechanism was at work in his body. But the reality was that every time he ate one nut, his hunger subsided and the healing of his burns progressed.

  Crawling around the dusty floor in the dark, Takaesu picked up the metal lumps one after another when his fingers brushed over them. Then he brought them to his mouth and devoured them. Like an infant with no self-awareness or a wild beast.

  It was humiliating, yet at the same time it gave him a perverse sort of joy.

  This was actually what eating was. Artfully crafted cuisine and decorated tables were nothing more than affectation.

  At some point, the metal nuts had started to seem as sweet as candy and the bolts as appetizing as cookies. Takaesu went on devouring the metal like mad and fell into a deep sleep once again, his stomach full. He didn’t have any more dreams of the past.

  When before long dawn broke and he awoke feeling refreshed, his jaws were no longer transformed; they had returned to their usual shape. His injuries, which had probably been bad enough to call third-degree burns, had completely healed, and even when he moved he felt absolutely no pain. That wasn’t all. All of his teeth had taken on a silvery gleam as if the metal had been incorporated into his tissue. When he flicked a tooth with his finger, it made a clear ringing sound.

  Disguised as a jogger, Takaesu returned to his hotel and checked out after taking a shower. When he clutched the steering wheel of his Maserati in the underground parking lot, he already knew what to do next.

  He was going to find that boy and locate his house. He would follow him and attack in a deserted area, or if that was difficult, he would take a family member as a hostage to lure the boy out. Considering the girl with the stun baton and the organization looming behind her, Takaesu knew it was dangerous to stay in the city, but he couldn’t let this go until he’d settled things with the boy.

  He really was going to bite him this time. Because Takaesu had been reborn as a stronger, bigger, more beautiful shark.

  “Guh, guhg, guhgugooo!!” Takaesu roared with the boy pinned down and his right arm still held in Takaesu’s mouth.

  The red eye pulsed furiously in the center of his lower jaw. His teeth and the bones, tendons, and muscles of his jaw all grew as hot as a flame.

  With a strange crunch, crunch, crunch! sound, his jaws—no, his entire head—transformed. The burning pain and a pleasure many hundreds of times stronger pierced his body.

  At long last…in the end…he could finally become that shark. The biggest meat-eating fish in history. The absolute ruler that reigned over the sea. Takaesu’s second favorite shark. Scientific name: Carcharocles megalodon. English name: Megalodon.

  Minoru looked up in shock at the Biter’s face as it went through with its new transformation.

  The jaws, which had until now stuck out more than ten centimeters more than a regular person’s, grew bigger and longer. The bridge of the Biter’s nose merged with the end of his upper jaw, drawing a smooth curve from his forehead to the back of his head. His eyes moved to the sides of his face, growing small and round. His neck also became oddly thick, and his necktie and the buttons of his shirt tore and popped off.

  And his teeth, which had been double layered with a knifelike row and a sawlike row, became triangular like the points of huge, fixed swords.

  The creature holding Minoru’s right arm in his mouth was the perfected version of the shark man. From the neck down he was still a human wearing a suit, but all the skin visible to Minoru was dyed a bluish black.

  The jaws seemed to have reached a width of twenty centimeters, and thick bundles of muscle rippled on their sides. The teeth had a silver-gray, metallic luster, and they glinted in the moonlight.

  It’s no good. The shell is going to get crushed.

  The moment Minoru sensed that, he shouted, “Whoooooa!!”

  Up until now he had allowed his right arm to be bitten, but now he desperately thrust it deep into the man’s mouth. His fingers—technically, the protective shell wrapped around his fingers—buried themselves in the soft tissue of the man’s throat, and the shark man’s head moved backward slightly.

  In an instant, Minoru pulled his right arm back with all his might. He could feel the tips of the fangs grind against the invisible shell as he somehow managed to pull his arm out. In that moment, the upper and lower jaws crashed together with violent intensity and orange sparks flew through the soundless world.

  This time the massive jaws came at him determined to latch onto his head, but Minoru evaded them by leaning to the left. With the same force, Minoru dealt a blow to the Biter’s side with his right knee.

  The moment the pressure on him lessened, Minoru rolled out from under the man and freed himself. He stood up, ran like he was going to go around behind the shark man, and put some distance between himself and the other man.

  He could still breathe, but it was difficult. Was the oxygen inside the shell actually close to running out? He couldn’t lose consciousness now, so he was forced to remove the protective shell.

  The same moment the sole of his running shoe touched the steel sheeting, the thick stench of the Ruby Eye that had been growing all this time pressed in on him.

  “…!”

  It made him want to stop breathing involuntarily, but he endured it and took a deep breath.

  Finally, the
shark man staggered back to his feet and turned around. His height had grown as much as his head had enlarged, and he was probably at least 190 centimeters now. The muscles of his arms and legs had swollen as well, and the sleeves of his suit and the seams of his slacks were ripped in places. He had long ago lost his tie, and the buttons of his dress shirt had popped off all the way down to his stomach. The exposed muscles of his chest were just like that of a bodybuilder…no, a wild animal.

  Even with more than five meters separating the two of them, he was overwhelmed by the man’s physical power to destroy. Minoru picked up on it in the air. He inhaled another big breath and tried to activate the protective shell again.

  But just a moment before he could, the Biter gave a twisted smile and spoke.

  “Hah-hah-hah… It’s too bad I can’t see myself…”

  It was an inhuman voice, a mix of hoarse bass notes and a lot of scraping noises. The form of the lips and teeth and tongue was indeed completely different from that of a human, so the words themselves were irrational. The monster, who seemed to have crawled out of a nightmare, went on speaking as he stared at Minoru with eyes that shone with a strange red luster.

  “It almost makes me want to have you take a picture of me with your cell phone. Even if I told you what I ate to become like this, you probably wouldn’t believe me, hah-hah.”

  The shark’s mouth sneered. The exposed fangs gleamed viciously.

  “By the way, ragazzo, I wonder if you know how many kilograms per tooth the occlusion strength…that is to say, the bite strength, of humans is?”

  “…”

  He gave his head a small shake. At this, the shark held up the index finger of his right hand professorially.

  “Well, then, I’ll tell you. For an adult male, it’s about sixty kilograms, although there are individual differences. For lions, it’s four hundred kilograms. For crocodiles and hippos, it reaches one thousand kilograms. Those are about the highest numbers for land animals.”

  “…Are you trying to say that your bite strength is around that much?” Minoru asked in a hoarse voice.

  The Biter sneered again.

  “Unfortunately, land creatures and such are irrelevant. The largest of the rulers of the sea, tiger sharks and great white sharks, have an occlusion strength of two thousand kilograms. You could say they are the strongest among modern animals… But as far as extinct species, there are some that surpassed them.

  “The well-known dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex apparently had an occlusion strength of five thousand kilograms. How extraordinary.”

  “What’s your point?!” Minoru shouted.

  He couldn’t stand listening to the scholarly lines coming out of the shark man’s mouth amid this nightmarish spectacle. He did have reasons to want to use up time, but he was also worried about Norie laid out there on the beam in midair. If the sleeping pills wore off and she woke up in a panic, she might fall from the beam.

  But the Biter wagged the index finger he was holding up and continued speaking further.

  “Don’t be in such a hurry, ragazzo… Now then, did the strongest occlusion strength in history belong to T. rex? The answer is indeed no. In the oceans 5.5 million years earlier, there was a king that boasted an actual occlusion strength of fifteen thousand kilograms, three times that of T. rex. That’s around fifteen tons per fang, probably enough to easily tear through even the thick skin of whales. Even you have probably heard of it. That absolute ruler was the most powerful shark and had a length of a little over ten meters…Carcharocles megalodon!”

  His voice suddenly growing louder, the Biter shouted, “And now! The extinct Megalodon has risen above eternity and been resurrected! …In other words, as me—!!”

  The man’s feet dashed against the steel plating with a bang.

  The Biter sprang at Minoru with a speed unimaginable for such a massive body. Bounding to the left to avoid him, Minoru activated his ability again.

  But this time, he wasn’t certain that the protective shell would be able to keep those fearsomely huge teeth at bay. He could no longer use the strategy of attacking with his fists as he let the man bite him as much as he wanted.

  If I make it home alive, I should find a way to look into just how many tons of force the shell can withstand.

  After considering this somewhere in the corner of his mind, he shook the thoughts away. Right now he needed to focus on ways to defeat the monster that was right in front of him.

  If the Biter’s weapons were jaws that could bite through even iron, Minoru’s weapons were his fists covered by the shell. On top of being able to punch without worrying about damage to his wrists or the bones of his hands, his fists were as hard as steel. Because of this, he could expect them to exert about as much power as a hit with a large hammer—if they connected.

  “Wh…whoa!”

  Minoru had stuck out a fist as he came around on the Biter’s right side, but it flew through only air. The Biter had jumped out of the way in an agile movement. Minoru narrowly avoided the fangs that came at him a moment later. He swung his fist at the man once more, but he dodged it again.

  He was aware that the big swings of his punches revealed him to be inexperienced. But Minoru, who really was a complete amateur, didn’t have the faintest idea of how to punch. Little by little, the Biter began to evade Minoru’s punches with room to spare, while Minoru began getting scraped by the Biter’s fangs.

  If things went on like this, he’d get caught eventually.

  A weapon. Didn’t he have any other weapons aside from his fists?

  Kicks would probably be more powerful than punches, but they were out of the question. He’d either fall over the moment he kicked or his leg would be bitten.

  If things were going to be like this, should he have brought a kitchen knife from home? No, if he put on the shell while holding a knife, it would be flung inward and he might cut himself.

  What am I going to do? What can I—

  As he barely continued to attack and defend, Minoru had at some point been driven to the eastern edge of the huge roof.

  He couldn’t go back any farther. Possibly realizing this, the Biter spread his arms wide and closed the gap between him and Minoru little by little.

  He wouldn’t be able to dodge the next attack. If he jumped back, he would fall to the terrace on the highest floor or to the road surrounding Saitama Super Arena if he really messed things up. From this location, it would probably be about a sixty-meter fall…

  Wait.

  Hadn’t he already thought this through earlier? And from the other way around?

  That was right. He did still have a weapon. A huge one that left no chance for escape.

  Squatting down, he glanced to the right.

  As if sensing that Minoru would try to escape that way, the Biter shifted his center of gravity as Minoru dove at him in one leap.

  Norie, I’m coming right back, so just stay there for a little bit longer!!

  As he spoke to his beloved sister inside his heart, Minoru bent his knees and pounced on the Biter. Pushing off from the plating of the roof as hard as he could with both feet, he leaped straight back.

  Right on the verge of sinking his teeth into Minoru’s face, the Biter’s eyes grew huge. He stuck his left hand out behind him, but it was already too late.

  Intertwined, the two men who possessed Third Eyes shot off the edge of the roof.

  Absolute faith in his own power.

  Takaesu in Megalodon mode had that unshakable faith, but he hadn’t thought that the boy did as well. His reason for thinking this was that the boy had made awkward escape after awkward escape, not allowing his shell to be bitten.

  That’s why Takaesu hadn’t imagined this. He hadn’t imagined that the boy would actually fling himself off a roof sixty meters high, taking Takaesu with him.

  “Graaa!” Takaesu roared in a mixture of rage and horror as he desperately tried to grab hold of the roof’s edge.

  But his outstretched fingers
only grazed the concrete beam.

  Directly below the roof, there was a terrace on the top floor that connected to the emergency stairs. But with this amount of force, they would fly past it and fall all the way to the ground dozens of meters farther down.

  When he’d chosen the roof of Saitama Super Arena as the location for the battle, he had of course considered the risk of falling. However, be that as it may, the roof was about thirty thousand square meters wide. As long as they fought in the center of it, there would be no way to fall, and the boy wasn’t likely to go near the edge, either.

  He couldn’t believe that, despite his predictions, he’d gotten so absorbed in the hunt that he drove the boy to the edge…or that the boy had sprung on him without Takaesu seeing through his plan to take them both down together.

  How foolish. How foolish. Had even his brain actually become that of a shark?

  It was too late for regrets. Somehow, he had to minimize the damage from the fall. To do that, he could use the boy as a cushion…

  No, no, that wasn’t right. The boy was wrapped in a shell harder than iron. If Takaesu fell on top of that it would double the impact. He had to get away from the boy. He had to get away and fall on top of the bushes or the trees lining the street.

  After running through all of those thoughts in an instant, Takaesu tried to push off the boy who clung to him. But the boy’s arms had a tight hold on him and Takaesu couldn’t peel them away.

  The ground was coming up fast already. The spot where they were falling was a wide sidewalk bordering the eastern edge of Saitama Super Arena. He wouldn’t be able to avoid smashing into the asphalt. The only thing he could do now was believe in the power the eye had given him…no, in the power he had found on his own within himself.

  He would endure it. He would survive.

  “Grrooooo!!”

  As he released a fierce roar at the rapidly approaching ground, Takaesu stiffened all of the muscles in his body.

  Impact.

  First, everything he could see turned a pure white, then immediately went black.