Black Bullet, Vol. 1: Those Who Would Be Gods Read Online Free PDF Page B

pulled out the day’s insert flyer from his pocket. The blood drained from his face.
    “Oh, you’re going already?” asked Tadashima.
    “Yeah, if you’ve got more work, let me know.”
    Tadashima seemed to be mumbling something for some reason. “Well, you know, that…when you, uh, helped me earlier… Oh, never mind. Anyway, what’s the important business you’re rushing off to?”
    “Bean sprouts are six yen a bag!”
    Watching the young man’s shadow as he ran away, followed by the playful smaller shadow following him like a puppy, Shigetoku Tadashima grumbled. “Bean sprouts…?”
    He had thought about thanking him for protecting him earlier, but it seemed silly now.
    “You made it out in one piece, Chief?”
    Turning around, he saw his subordinates who had split up to search for the Gastrea start arriving late to the scene.
    “They looked like new faces. Do you think we can use them?”
    “Who knows. Speaking of which, I forgot to ask for their IP Rank.” Tadashima pulled out a cigarette from his chest pocket almost unconsciously and lit it. Seeing that, his younger subordinates gazed at the cigarette without a word.
    “You gonna work with the cigarette in your mouth?” one said.
    “Don’t be so stuffy. I almost died just now.” Ignoring his subordinate’s knit eyebrows, he took a deep puff into his lungs and blew it out. It had been clear all day, so even the Monoliths standing far in the distance could be seen in one glance. The enormous rectangular walls standing 1.618 kilometers high and one kilometer wide dotted the scene like steel towers at regular intervals. Even though they seemed out of place in the natural landscape, there was also a feeling of reverence for them for some reason.
    Within the Monolith barrier that completely surrounded a portion of the Kanto Plain was one of the last paradises left for mankind. What looked like a forest of black chrome stone blocks were actually slabs of metal made of Varanium. They were the same as what surrounded the Kanto Plain, extending into Old Tokyo, Old Kanagawa, Old Chiba, and Old Saitama.
    Gastrea hated Varanium. With the special magnetic field given off by Varanium acting as a natural barrier, Tokyo Area was able to avoid large-scale Gastrea attacks. To put it another way, outside of the five remaining areas in Japan including Tokyo, the rest of the land was teeming with nonhuman monsters and nonhuman monsters that used to be human. If a mere human were to take one step outside of the Monolith, he would either be devoured in an instant or end up as one of them.
    And this wasn’t just happening in Japan.
    Before Tadashima knew it, forensics and other police had gathered, gathering evidence and putting up caution tape that said KEEP OUT .
    Ten years ago, these Gastrea began to appear around the world, and with their infectious capacity, their destruction of humanity accelerated with incredible momentum. One infected person became two, two became four, four became eight… When humanity finally beganto worry about the multiplying Gastrea, it was already too late. There was nothing they could do.
    All the countries that suffered damage during the large-scale war used the Monoliths, which were barely good enough for practical use, to build barriers. Now, ten years later, they continued to desperately barricade themselves with them.
    Humanity lost the Great Gastrea World War.
    The cigarette smoke that rose into the air soon dispersed in the setting sun.
    In those ten years, Japan had healed the wounds of its defeat and finally gotten its cultural compass back to the levels of the early 2020s.
    Tadashima crushed the shortened cigarette butt with his foot and looked out of the corner of his eye at his subordinate, who was moving briskly to the scene.
    Occasionally, to prevent a Pandemic, they would have to hunt an early-stage Gastrea that had wandered in. At first, that was the job of the police and the riot squads under their command, or the