**CHAPTER 4: THE CANDIDATES TRIAL**
The containment field failed with a sound like shattering glass. Two hundred students recoiled as the Stage-1 Kaiju pupa exploded from its restraints, segmented plates grinding like rusty gears. The first deaths came before the screams could fully form - three front-row students disintegrated into crimson mist beneath barbed forelimbs that moved faster than human eyes could track.
A hush fell over the observation deck above. Director Shirogane adjusted his respirator mask with clinical detachment as the evaluation chamber became a slaughterhouse. His daughter moved first.
Aoi Shirogane's transformation was a study in lethal grace. Cobalt veins pulsed to life beneath her porcelain skin, tracing intricate fractal patterns as elongated talons slid from her fingertips with soft metallic clicks. She stepped over a twitching first-year without glancing down, her ice-blue eyes already analyzing the battlefield.
"Formation Delta," she commanded, voice layered with unnatural harmonics.
Chaos answered.
To her left, Ryota Kaneshiro's uniform split along the seams as jagged bone plates erupted from his forearms. The massive third-year bellowed through the pain of transformation, his enhanced musculature swelling grotesquely. He grabbed two panicking students by their collars - a living shield in each fist - and charged.
The kaiju's barbed tail lashed out.
Metal screeched as Ryota crossed his bone-armored forearms. The impact sent shockwaves through the chamber, shattering the ribcages of his human shields. Their dying screams cut off abruptly as he used their corpses to bludgeon the creature's wounded flank.
Another student, Hina Kuroda's transformation was less dramatic but more unsettling. Twin spinal whips uncoiled from ports along her vertebrae with a sound like tearing leather, their barbed tips dripping viscous neurotoxin. She moved through the chaos like a dancer, her whips severing limbs with surgical precision - some belonging to the kaiju, others to students who stumbled into her killing zone. When a sobbing boy clutched at her leg, she paused just long enough to let her whip caress his throat before moving on. His convulsions made pleasant background noise.
One notable exception to the rest, Renji Matsumoto didn't so much transform as unravel. His edges blurred, light bending unnaturally around his form as he phased through solid matter. A dying student's eyes widened as Renji stepped through his chest, planting micro-explosives in the kaiju's wounds before dematerializing again. The subsequent detonation painted the walls with shrapnel and shredded flesh.
Amidst the carnage, Kazuki Ren moved differently.
He didn't charge. Didn't transform. Simply observed as the enhanced candidates carved their bloody paths through both kaiju and classmates alike. His dark eyes tracked the creature's attack patterns, noting the slight hesitation after each lateral strike, the way its abdominal plates lifted a fraction too slowly when transitioning between targets.
When Ryota's latest charge momentarily pinned the creature, Kaz moved with precision.
A jagged shard of bone from a bisected corpse found its way into his hand.
Three calculated steps brought him to the pupa's blind spot.
The killing stroke wasn't dramatic - just a single upward thrust into the neural nexus beneath the third thoracic plate. The kaiju's death throes claimed eleven more students before its massive body collapsed, shaking the chamber.
Silence fell, broken only by the wet sounds of the dying and the electric hum of emergency systems. Nineteen dead. Thirty wounded. The air hung thick with the coppery stench of blood and the sharper tang of voided bowels.
Aoi Shirogane's talons retracted with soft clicks as she surveyed the aftermath. Her gaze lingered on Kaz - the only unenhanced candidate standing untouched amidst the carnage, his borrowed bone weapon still dripping black ichor.
"Negative for symbiosis," she mused, stepping over a headless corpse to approach him. "Yet somehow still alive."
Kaz met her gaze without flinching. "Someone had to clean up your mess."
From the observation deck above, Director Shirogane adjusted his glasses, the ghost of a smile visible beneath his respirator mask. The test had only just begun.