Rabbit was an opponent he’d already defeated. The Zodiac War was still ongoing, and the matador wouldn’t get anywhere tied up by Rabbit.
No matter how masterful a fighter Ox was, no matter if he always decisively took the most appropriate course of action, he lacked information. He didn’t have any special ability like the Eye of the Cormorant that could give him a bird’s-eye view of the battle. He couldn’t see the current state of the other warriors—or of the war as a whole. He didn’t know that only he and one other fighter remained alive.
He knew of six that had died—Tiger, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Chicken, and Boar. From Chicken’s extra jewel, he could assume that she had killed one other, and from what Tiger had said when she mentioned Sheep, the old man was likely dead. But whether or not any or all of the other fighters were still alive, Ox didn’t have a reason to waste one extra moment on Rabbit.
So then I’ll carve him up one more time and search for a gas station while he’s putting himself back together again.
The idea of chopping up Rabbit again was unpleasant—taking his saber to the vulgar monstrosity felt akin to desecrating a corpse—but he saw no other effective option. Though Rabbit’s humanoid construction had arrived faster on two feet than it could have crawled, the animated corpse was not speedy by any means, and its movements were relatively predictable. Besides, no matter how strong were the bonds between the zombie’s various bits and pieces, Ox only needed to cut along the seams and they would fall and scatter.
Again Ox wondered, What wish was so important that he was willing to make such a monstrosity of himself?
The lurching, shuffling monster was nearly upon him now. Rabbit raised the blades that had served as his crutches.
Ox analyzed his attack. No point in aiming for the vital parts, like the head or the heart. It wouldn’t even give me any peace of mind.
Instead, Ox focused entirely on dismantling the corpse. Before Rabbit could swing Shiro-usagi and Sangatsu-usagi down upon him, Ox’s masterful slashes split the monster into six pieces—first the head, then the four limbs, and finally, he split the zombie’s torso in two.
A corpse jumped out from the cleft.
Springing out at Ox like a grotesque jack-in-the-box was none other than Sharyū, the Fighter of the Monkey—once a hero, now a corpse. Ox grunted as she tackled him and took him to the ground with superhuman strength.
So, Monkey, you’re already dead, Ox thought, realizing his fatal error.
His mistake wasn’t failing to presume that Rabbit had killed the pacifist and turned her into his pawn. Ox lacked the information that could have enabled him to make that assumption. But he should have foreseen the possibility that some other corpse was hidden within the patchwork monster.
The gruesome sight of the model kit gone wrong distracted his thoughts from realizing it at the time. Because Rabbit had utilized some of his own body parts to hold the rest together from the outside, the golem should not have been the same size as Rabbit had been when he was alive; a hollow must have been inside there somewhere. If only Ox had realized there was a space for something else to occupy, he might have guessed that another of the necromanticist’s minions—not necessarily Monkey, but somebody—was hiding within.
More likely than not, Rabbit hadn’t simply been using the woman’s body as filler to occupy the empty space—creating a place to hide her was the goal all along, so that when the unsuspecting Ox approached to cut him apart again, Monkey could pop out and catch him by surprise.
To say that they had caught him by surprise was understating it. He hadn’t the slightest suspicion that another body could have been inside there. He had made a total and complete blunder. If only he hadn’t let the gruesome sight distract his attention and cloud his thoughts …
No, even if I had managed to suspect another corpse was inside, the moment it turned out to be Monkey, my suspicions wouldn’t have made any meaningful difference.
The dead hero pinned Ox down with unbelievable strength, preventing him from making the slightest movement. For being so small in stature—petite enough, after all, to have hidden inside the other corpse—Monkey possessed incredible raw physical power. Even accounting for the lack of inherent restraint all Rabbit’s corpses shared, Ox was made painfully aware of just how much latent ability the pacifist had once kept bottled up—and was now being compelled to unleash.
While I fled with Tiger on my back, Rabbit summoned Monkey and joined their bodies together. He’d done such a horrifying mess of reshaping himself because appearing like a normal human hadn’t been his goal. He wanted to construct a vessel in which to hide a human body, like prehistoric man once built houses out of mammoth bones.
Ox remained calm and analyzed his situation, not because the master had time to spare, and not because careful thinking could find him an opportunity to regain the upper hand. No, the Natural-Born Slayer was coming to terms with the reality that he had no way out.
When Monkey tackled him, his saber clattered to somewhere out of reach, and the slight-figured zombie had him completely pinned to the ground. She wasn’t holding him in any kind of lock or hold; she was just that strong. If she had felt like it, she could have flattened his arms and legs into the pavement.
The only reason she didn’t try to harm him was not because she had been a pacifist in life—it was because Ox had already been defeated. At the edge of his vision, Ox saw the pieces of Rabbit’s corpse slowly reassemble. The process was going to take a little time, but with his prey captured, Rabbit could afford to take as long as he needed.
I see what he’s doing, Ox thought in realization. He doesn’t want Monkey to kill me. He wants to kill me himself. He wants to gain control of me with as little damage done as possible.
The future that Tiger had feared now bore down on Ox. He would become one of the walking dead, as had Boar, Dragon, Snake, and Monkey—or as some disfigured creature like Rabbit—stripped of consciousness, free will, or creed. He would keep on battling, following his leader’s every command.