Chapter 223: Conceited

The clash picks up as a server delivers the ordered Blend Coffee. Between sips, Nagumo suddenly whips a steak knife at Oki's face; Oki turns it aside with a serving spoon, and the blade buries itself in a pillar beside another diner. Nagumo springs up with a kick to the head that flings Oki into a window near a table, yet Oki keeps his feet, skidding upright while cradling his cup so steadily that nothing spills. He takes another sip and mutters about not even being allowed to finish his coffee.

Nagumo tells Oki he forgot something and passes him the check. Oki rejects it with a punch that hurls Nagumo through the second-floor glass, then dives out after him. In the air Nagumo jokes that a boss ought to cover his subordinates, and Oki answers that he is no longer anyone's boss. Nagumo counters with a fresh wager: let whoever survives settle the bill. Oki agrees. Both arm themselves as they fall, Nagumo drawing from his bag while Oki unfolds a collapsible naginata. Oki thrusts, Nagumo blocks with his Six-Function Knife set to Dagger Mode, and Oki bears down toward the pavement before Nagumo springs clear just before landing.

Returning to Nagumo's boast that the JAA is doomed without the old guard, Oki tells him not to get cocky, declaring the age of the untouchable Old Order finished. He has already gathered a crop of people with a raw talent for murder. The story then panels out to a city sliding into chaos. Two men grumbling that the New JAA has made everything unsafe harangue a police officer about earning his tax-funded pay, so the officer jams his gun into one man's mouth and fires. He explains he only ever took the job to shoot people, and since the New JAA has made killing lawful, being a cop no longer means anything to him; he answers to the JAA now and wants nothing but a license to pull the trigger.

In another scene, a man screams at a mother whose infant will not stop crying. She apologizes, her grip tightening on a kitchen knife until the veins stand out, then beheads him in an instant. Blood spatters the baby's face, and when the child laughs, the mother laughs too, murmuring that the little one truly loves the sight of blood. The view moves to the Kansai Satsujin School in Kyoto on graduation day, where three girls bid farewell to their class's top student, a prodigy the JAA has recruited. Clutching her membership card, she says she feels she is finally keeping pace with the times. Her equally gifted but timid older brother recalls being taught that assassins should stay unknown, but his younger sister brushes off his nerves, insisting their skill will carry them and urging him to come to Tokyo and cut down everyone in sight until they turn legendary. Gozu bursts in, thrilled to meet the lively newcomers since he never attended school himself, and Torres steps up behind him to call him a weirdo.

The Oki and Nagumo duel continues through and out of the cafe, the two wagering that the survivor pays the bill and drawing a naginata and a Six-Function Knife in freefall. Oki reveals he has assembled killers of exceptional talent for the JAA, dismissing Nagumo's faith in the Old Order. Vignettes across the city show the New JAA's legalized killing turning a police officer, a mother, and graduating students of the Kansai Satsujin School into eager murderers, while Gozu and Torres encounter the newly recruited Saionji siblings.

The Japanese title Unubore translates to Conceited. This New JAA Arc chapter spans fifteen pages, carries a cover featuring Oki and Yoichi Nagumo, and ran in the thirty-fifth issue of 2025 within Volume 25. It marks the debut of Shiina Saionji, Kippei Saionji, an unnamed cop assassin, an unnamed babysitter assassin, and an unnamed baby. The chapter follows Chapter 222 and precedes Chapter 224.