:re Chapter 98

Convinced they had finished off the ghoul once nicknamed Floppy, the Quinx investigators are stunned when their downed opponent shifts into a monstrous armored state. Urie warns his team to keep clear of the swollen kagune before the enemy wounds both him and Hsiao. Higemaru steps forward alongside the still-healing Aura, unlocking a further frame and asking Saiko to guard his back while he stalls for time. Mutsuki joins the assault, yet Higemaru is hurled into a wall and Mutsuki soon falls as well. When Urie returns and takes a savage strike to his flank, Saiko throws up her own kagune to shield him. Echoing the lesson Kaneki once received, only this time from a ghoul's side of things, the fallen investigator passes a few final words to Saiko before she brings him down for good.

Matsuri delivers a grim tally to the surviving investigators. The Rushima effort wiped out roughly ninety-eight percent of the enemy, Arima has died, Cochlea was breached, and Haise Sasaki carried out both. Battered CCG personnel gather, Itou propping up a hurt Kuroiwa and Ui standing near a weeping Fura, while across the island the ghoul factions regroup around Mirumo Tsukiyama, Takizawa, Shuu, Miza, Nishiki, and their companions. Word also travels of Yoshitoki Washuu's killing and Marude's apparent suicide, and Kanou assembles his aides, among them Kimi carrying research material. As Matsuri declares his intent to hunt Marude down, another death is reported.

The chapter saves its true shock for the final pages. Chairman Tsuneyoshi Washuu is found slain at his desk, blades driven through his skull and body, the entire Washuu bloodline eliminated in one stroke. As Uta asks after his father, Furuta shrugs off the massacre and proclaims himself the new Washuu King, master of both the Clowns and the shadow group V, with Kaiko and Donato Porpora looking on. The title "Old School" points toward the sweeping away of the established order.