The concrete stairwell leading out of the Scrapper’s Market was narrow, spiraling upward in tight, claustrophobic circles. It smelled of stale urine and wet ash.

  Shin took the steps two at a time, his breathing quiet and controlled. Behind him, the scuffing of leather shoes against concrete grew louder. The two men in the dark windbreakers were no longer trying to hide their pursuit. They were closing the gap.

  Shin stopped on a small landing between the fourth and fifth floors. The only light came from a caged, yellow bulb buzzing weakly overhead. He turned around and waited.

  A few seconds later, the two hunters rounded the corner. They stopped a few steps below him, blocking the only way down. Up close, Shin could see the cheap, shiny fabric of their jackets and the jagged, amateur tattoos creeping up their necks. Low-level muscle. The pit-boss hadn’t sent his best; he had sent expendable thugs.

  "Hand over the heavy plate, kid," the taller one grunted, pulling his hand out of his jacket. He was holding a square of rusted brass. "Do it now, and we let you walk up those stairs with all your teeth."

  Shin didn't answer. He slipped his right hand into his pocket, his fingers wrapping around the freezing iron of the Mukade plate.

  "Deaf, huh?" The taller thug sneered. He slammed his brass plate against the concrete wall. Blood Toll. The sharp edge sliced into the meat of his palm, leaving a smear of red on the wall.

  Black smoke poured from the brass, hitting the stairs like a heavy liquid before surging upward. It solidified into a Crusher Stray. It looked like a hairless, starved gorilla, its skin the color and texture of wet cement. It had no eyes, just a massive, gaping maw of blunt, grinding teeth. It took up almost the entire width of the stairwell, its knuckles scraping the floor.

  "Break his legs," the thug commanded.

  The Crusher roared, a sound like grinding boulders, and charged up the stairs.

  Shin didn't pull the Karakuri plate. He pulled the Mukade.

  He didn't need to bleed for this one. He just gripped the blackened iron tightly and commanded it to activate.

  The heat was sucked out of his body instantly.

  Shin gasped as a violent shiver racked his spine. The air leaving his lungs suddenly turned to thick, white fog in the dim yellow light. The iron plate in his hand turned white with instant frost, burning his skin with cold. His core temperature plummeted, his joints stiffening as if he had just been submerged in a frozen lake.

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  From the frost-covered iron, a massive, writhing shadow exploded downward.

  It hit the stairs with a sound like a thousand falling nails. Hundreds of foot-long, black-shelled corpse-centipedes flooded the narrow landing. They piled over each other, a disgusting, clicking wave of chitin and needle-legs.

  The Crusher Stray didn't stop. It wasn't smart enough. It swung a massive, cement-like fist directly into the center of the swarm, aiming to crush them into paste.

  The fist connected with a sickening crunch. Dozens of the centipedes were obliterated against the concrete.

  But Shin remembered the old woman's words: They breed rapidly when exposed to kinetic force.

  The crushed pieces of the centipedes didn't die. They violently snapped and twisted, immediately regenerating into two, then four, then eight new centipedes. The kinetic force of the monster’s punch triggered a chaotic multiplication.

  Within two seconds, the swarm doubled in size. The centipedes crawled frantically up the Crusher’s arms, biting into its cement-like skin with tiny, needle-sharp pincers. They didn't do any real damage, but there were simply too many of them. They flooded into the monster's gaping mouth, blinded it, and wrapped around its thick legs like living, squirming ropes.

  The massive brute panicked. It thrashed wildly, slamming its fists into the walls, into its own face, and into the stairs—every single impact causing the centipedes to split and multiply even faster.

  The stairwell was completely choked. The thugs were screaming, stumbling backward as the sheer volume of clicking, black insects threatened to spill down onto them. The taller thug lost his footing on the slick stairs and fell hard on his back.

  Shin didn't wait. His teeth were chattering violently from the freezing activation cost, but his mind was crystal clear.

  He stepped directly on the thrashing, distracted Crusher Stray, using its massive back as a stepping stone. He launched himself over the writhing pile of centipedes and landed heavily on the narrow steps right in front of the second thug.

  Before the man could even raise his hands, Shin drove a solid, brutal right hook directly into his jaw. The tape on Shin's split knuckles tore open, but the thug’s eyes rolled back instantly. He collapsed against the wall, unconscious.

  The taller thug, still on the floor, scrambled backward in terror, dropping his brass plate onto the concrete.

  "I don't have time for this," Shin said. His voice trembled slightly from the bone-deep cold, but his eyes were dead and flat.

  He looked at the thrashing monster, completely neutralized by the trash-tier swarm. He had won without sacrificing a memory. The fodder strategy worked.

  Shin closed his fist, recalling the Mukade.

  Instantly, the thousands of centipedes evaporated into black smoke, zipping backward and sucking themselves into the freezing iron plate in Shin’s pocket. The Crusher Stray, suddenly free, collapsed onto the stairs in a heap of exhaustion.

  Shin stepped over the unconscious thug, picked up the brass Bind-Plate the leader had dropped, and slipped it into his jacket. He didn't look back as he climbed the rest of the stairs, shivering violently into the cold Tokyo night.