Chapter 140 Boiled Into Soup?!! (Bonus)

Daigo stared at Vane blankly. Sorry, but he hadn’t understood a single damn word of that.

“Right… I’m just going to take you guys to the shelter now.”

“Daigo,” Vane said, his face deadpan and serious. “How much longer are you going to run from your duty?”

“To fight those monsters, Commander Yuzare already told you what needs to be done. There is only one way to resurrect the giant… and that is to boil Daigo into a nice, hearty soup.”

Huh?!

Daigo’s eyes went wide with sheer disbelief.

Resurrecting the giant means they have to sacrifice me?!

“How do you even know that? Not even the TPC’s top scientists could decrypt the end of that message! Tell me, who the hell are you—”

“Never mind how I know,” Vane interrupted smoothly. “All you need to know is that your job right now is to go find the ancient giant’s body, turn yourself into human soup, and wake him up.”

Daigo rubbed his forehead, groaning in exasperation. Talking to this guy was like talking to a brick wall.

Right on cue, the voice of Yazumi, the squad’s resident computer genius, buzzed through Daigo’s comms.

“Daigo, we found the pyramid! The coordinates are just northeast of your city, and the kaiju are heading straight for it.”

“Copy that, I’m on my way.”

No sooner had Daigo confirmed the order than he looked up to find Vane standing practically nose-to-nose with him. He jumped back in shock.

“Why are you standing so close?!”

“You found the pyramid, so what are you waiting for?” Vane urged. “Chop chop, go wake up the giant. This world needs you, Daigo.”

Daigo looked at the wildly eccentric Vane. It was painfully obvious this guy knew a whole lot of classified secrets and definitely didn’t need his protection.

But right before leaving, he just couldn’t help throwing out one last piece of advice.

“You two need to get to the shelter as fast as you can. These monsters aren’t a joke.”

Daigo jogged over to his patrol car parked by the curb. Hopping in, he slammed the gas, gunning it toward the coordinates Yazumi had just sent him.

“Are we really just going to stand here and watch him leave without doing anything?” Big E watched Daigo’s car speed off before turning back to Vane.

Vane glanced at his map, which now had a shiny new pyramid icon blinking on it. “Open up a portal. Let’s head over to the pyramid and see what’s going down.”

Big E looked completely lost, utterly confused by the whole situation. Still, he took the coordinates Vane handed him, burned a bit of his remaining psychic energy, and tore open a portal.

—

Daigo had the patrol car’s pedal to the metal, tearing down the road toward his destination. As he drifted around a highway bend, he caught sight of it: a massive pyramid radiating a brilliant golden light, nestled right in the middle of the mountains.

Before he could even process the sheer scale of the thing, a voice echoed in his mind. It kept calling out to him, urging him to step inside the pyramid and resurrect the giant.

So the pyramid is actually real. Looks like that weird guy and Commander Yuzare were telling the truth after all.

To fight the kaiju, the giant has to be revived. Am I really going to have to boil myself into soup?!

A knot twisted in Daigo’s stomach. Heavy with worry, he pulled the patrol car up to the base of the pyramid. Right as he arrived, Rena, Horii, and the rest of his squad touched down in the GUTS Wing jets.

“I can’t believe there’s actually a pyramid out here. This is insane,” Horii breathed, staring up at the structure in absolute disbelief.

“A pyramid this massive, and our satellites never picked it up?” Munakata frowned, his expression grim as he studied the glowing monument. “And none of the locals ever reported seeing it?”

“Maybe it was cloaked or hidden away until now,” Rena guessed. “It probably only revealed itself because it sensed the kaiju waking up.”

“Makes sense to me,” Shinjo nodded in agreement.

Daigo didn’t say a word. Driven by the relentless voice in his head, he walked up to the pyramid and reached out to touch its golden wall.

To his shock, the solid-looking surface rippled like water beneath his fingertips. With a gentle push, he stepped right through the wall and into the pyramid’s interior. There, towering dozens of meters above him, stood three massive statues of ancient giants.

“Daigo, you idiot, that was way too reckless!” Rena shouted as she hurried in after him. Her words were scolding, but her voice was trembling with worry.

Munakata, Horii, and the rest of the squad filed in right behind her. When they caught sight of the towering statues, their jaws practically hit the floor.

“So the giants are actually real,” Shinjo muttered in awe. “But how the hell are we supposed to wake them up?”

“Headquarters still hasn’t figured out how to filter out the static on that capsule? Are we really stuck without the only useful part of the message?”

Listening to his teammates brainstorm, Daigo opened his mouth to speak a couple of times, but the words just died in his throat. He couldn’t exactly tell them that the secret to waking the giants involved boiling himself into human soup. That sounded like some twisted cult ritual.

After a brief internal struggle, Daigo finally gathered his courage. “Guys…”

But the moment the squad turned to look at him, a familiar, annoying voice echoed in his head.

Alright, Daigo, I was just messing with you earlier. The real way to wake the giant is to awaken the ancient genetics hidden inside your DNA. And to do that, you need to fight like a true warrior and earn the giant’s acknowledgment.

Daigo wanted to cough up blood out of sheer frustration. He had literally been mentally preparing to sacrifice his own life! And now this jerk was just popping into his head to say it was all a prank? What an absolute bastard!

“What is it, Daigo?” Munakata asked, looking confused as Daigo suddenly fell dead silent.

Swallowing his immense irritation, Daigo looked at his teammates dead in the eye. “Talking in here isn’t going to solve anything. We need to fight. We have to hold off those kaiju and keep them as far away from this pyramid as possible.”

“Daigo’s right.” Munakata turned to the rest of the squad. “Move out! Intercept the kaiju!”

The team scrambled out of the pyramid, rushing back to the GUTS Wings to prep for combat.

—

IMPORTANT:

For this week only!