When a person spends too long trapped in a cramped, enclosed space, buried in absolute silence, fear begins to breed unseen like maggots. It spreads through the darkest corners of the heart until it devours every last trace of reason and calm. That was why he talked to himself. Why he joked with himself. Anything to force his attention somewhere else.
"!!!"
All at once, he shuddered violently, as if something unimaginably terrifying had fixed its gaze on him. The chill, and the feeling of being watched, sharpened until they were almost painful.
Almost by instinct, Keitaro Gentoga whipped around to look behind him—the way he had come.
Chitter, chitter.
Sssss.
Strange noises came from the shadows. They sounded like an insect gnawing at his sanity, melting it away, easily rousing the fear he had buried deep in his heart.
Disgusting, ugly, nauseating, terrifying... That was what emerged beneath the dim light.
It was like a bloated, walking mass of flesh. Beneath hair tangled like seaweed, however, was a beautiful face that could have rivaled any actress.
And yet that beautiful woman's face was only a mask. The monster's real face was hidden behind it, swollen and enormous; whenever she opened her mouth, the false face in front of it split in two. The eyes of the false face just so happened to line up with the nostrils of her real one.
As the female evil spirit pulled her mouth into a hideous, stomach-turning smile, the false face split open with it. She lifted one fat-swollen foot and happily walked toward Keitaro Gentoga.
"Boy... you're so cute..."
"U... uwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah—!!?"
Like Bell faced with Phryne, Keitaro Gentoga was scared out of his wits. After letting out a shrill scream, he turned and ran.
Unfortunately, while they were both male protagonists, Keitaro Gentoga was nowhere near as good at running as Bell, and the enemy he faced was far more persistent and uncanny than Phryne.
"Haa... haa..."
His heart and lungs screamed in protest, but Keitaro kept running. At the end of the corridor, he saw an iron door.
Sweat soaked his clothes and rolled down from his temples. He twisted the handle frantically, but no matter what he did, the door would not open.
"Open! Come on, open already! Damn it... Why?! Why won't it open?!"
Squelch.
Squelch.
The monster's footsteps were drawing closer. With every passing second, the pressure on Keitaro's heart surged until he could barely breathe.
He craned his neck, wanting to know where the monster was.
And then he saw the ugly lump of flesh right in front of him, close enough to touch, and met the eyes hidden beneath her hair.
"Eee..."
A thick, long tongue emerged from the female evil spirit's mouth. It moved far too nimbly to seem like a tongue; it was more like a maggot. Worse, the tongue had leech-like mouthparts, packed with sharp teeth.
Keitaro Gentoga could not stop her. Fear had frozen him in place, leaving him able only to watch as the repulsive monster gripped his chin and let that parasite-like tongue creep slowly toward his neck.
A flash of crimson hidden in the darkness struck like lightning.
Shlk!
It was the sound of flesh being cut apart.
"Aaaaaaaaaah...!!"
It was the cry of pain from the female evil spirit whose tongue had been severed.
Three gunshots suddenly rang out from the shadows.
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Mana-laden bullets tore through the female evil spirit's fat-swollen head as if nothing could stop them. Every shot was a critical hit, blasting her head into a mass of rotten, pus-leaking sludge.
Keitaro's eyes caught that familiar flash of red in the shadows, and he spoke while still badly shaken.
"...Hood-chan?"
Red Hood, aloof as ever, did not answer. She strode quickly to Keitaro Gentoga's side, and then Keitaro felt his feet leave the ground.
By the time he came back to himself, Red Hood had already slung him over her shoulder like a sack of rice.
"Ugh...? Aaaah...!"
The anger of having her beloved boy stolen away overwhelmed even the pain of having her head blown apart.
The female evil spirit, as ugly as a toad, let out a furious roar. The head Red Hood had blown apart with her gun had, at some point, already restored itself.
"You dare... take my cute boy...!"
In a certain sense, this "Mother Toad" was a yandere too. Those people who claimed they loved yanderes really ought to take one look at her and see whether they could still stomach it when she was this ugly.
Red Hood wanted to sigh. Keitaro Gentoga's girlfriend was Eiko Hozuki, not her, so what was the point of this female evil spirit getting jealous of her?
BOOM!
With a tremendous crash, the huge iron door Keitaro Gentoga had tried so desperately to open was kicked open by Red Hood through sheer force. The metal door even bent visibly under the blow.
"Give... the boy... back to me...!"
Ignoring the female evil spirit roaring behind her, Red Hood carried Keitaro Gentoga and broke into a full sprint.
Seeing the female evil spirit fall far behind them, Keitaro Gentoga let out a long breath like a man who had just survived a disaster. Then, curious, he asked Red Hood, "Um... Hood-chan, aren't you going to kill that evil spirit?"
"This is a bad position. I can't fight properly here," Red Hood answered tersely.
Red Hood had seen the female evil spirit's self-repair process.
Plump white bug spirits had crawled out from the corners, burrowed into the female evil spirit's body, and then the female evil spirit had begun to recover.
This was another evil spirit with powerful regeneration. Unfortunately, Red Hood had not brought any Undead Killer Mushrooms with her.
Even with a grown man over her shoulder, Red Hood still moved like the wind. Her cloak billowed behind her as she ran, and Keitaro Gentoga's added weight seemed to have no effect on her movements at all.
They left the dam behind and reached the border between the lakeshore and the woods before abruptly stopping.
This place was open enough. If she fought here, she should no longer have to worry about damaging the dam.
"From here on, you'll have to find a way to protect yourself. I may not have attention to spare for you once the fight starts."
Red Hood set Keitaro Gentoga down. After all, she was about to fight, and bringing him along would make too many things inconvenient.
"Still, Xu Fu and the others should be here soon. You only need to stay safe until then... Please manage at least that much, if you still call yourself a man."
"I... I'll do my best."
Red Hood's words were harsh, but Keitaro Gentoga did not think she was wrong. Everyone else was trying so hard. He did not want to be the one dragging them down.
A massive splash suddenly exploded from the lake, and the bloated, ugly female evil spirit burst out of the water.
"Give... that child... back to me...!"
Gunfire rang out again. The bullet pierced through the spray and punched through the evil spirit's mouth.
"If you want him, come take him yourself," Red Hood said coldly, raising her gun. "Do I really need to teach you even that much?"
"Grrrggh...!!"
The female evil spirit was enraged by Red Hood's words with ridiculous ease. She abandoned Keitaro Gentoga, who was trembling not far away, and decided to tear apart Red Hood's jealousy-inducing face first.
As long as she dealt with the woman in front of her, no one would be left to stop her from taking the boy away. That was what the female evil spirit thought.
The female evil spirit seemed to possess something like teleportation, an ability that let her appear beside Red Hood in the blink of an eye. Red Hood could not see the path of her movement.
By contrast, her actual motions were very slow. With a body that fat, moving flexibly was difficult. Red Hood lowered her head to dodge the huge hand that suddenly reached for her, and searing flames burst to life on the Drake Sword.
The sudden blaze of scorching heat before her made the female evil spirit's expression change. Before she could dodge, the flame-wreathed blade shredded one of her arms.
The teleportation ability activated again. The female evil spirit tried to put distance between herself and this powerful, strange woman, but the instant she finished teleporting, Red Hood was already upon her.
Beneath the hood, those blue eyes were enough to chill the blood.
"Where do you think you're going?"
Red Hood switched from the Drake Sword and gun to the Vorpal Sword. Six arcs of slashes crossed over one another, slicing through the female evil spirit's bloated body like a hot knife through tofu.
Red Hood was about to press the advantage when a faint chill suddenly raced down her spine. That ominous premonition made her stop and quickly retreat.
The next instant, the female evil spirit detonated the parts of herself that Red Hood had cut away. Her detonation produced no flame and no shockwave, only great swathes of glowing "smoke."
Although Red Hood did her best to evade, some of that strange "smoke" still clung to her.
The hands touched by the smoke turned white at a visible speed, and she gradually lost control over them.
Red Hood remembered what this "smoke" was. In truth, it was made of countless insect eggs so small they were almost impossible to see with the naked eye. Once the "smoke" touched someone, the eggs would burrow deep beneath the victim's flesh, using their blood, flesh, and life force as nutrients to hatch and grow.
As Red Hood remembered it, this should have been a skill the female evil spirit only used after entering her second phase... She had not expected it to be usable in the first phase as well.
"Heeheehee... heeheeheehee..."
Reduced to only an enormous head, the female evil spirit laughed endlessly off to the side. The sound was as grating and awful as fingernails scraping across a blackboard.
The disgusting monster had absolute confidence in this move. It was as if she could already see Red Hood slitting her own throat, or her entire body bursting apart from the parasites within.
And so she lifted her eyes to Red Hood's face, wanting to see regret and fear on that face so beautiful it made her gnash her teeth with hatred.
However, before she could feel smug for long, the parasitic bug spirits inside Red Hood's body all vanished for no apparent reason, not a single one remaining.
Red Hood clenched her hands, then loosened them again. Feeling every trace of the abnormal sensation in her body disappear, she murmured, "Good. It works."
[Cure].Its effect was to cure all status ailments on a single ally, excluding incapacitation.
That was the skill Red Hood had just used to purge every parasite from her body.
Then... Red Hood gripped a new weapon.
The longsword was named Storm Ruler, a powerful weapon that contained the power of storms. With it, Red Hood could use the skill [Storm Ruler].
In the next instant, small emerald tornadoes rose from the ground. Neither the female evil spirit nor the smoke-like drifting insect eggs could escape the fierce winds. Invisible, razor-sharp blades of wind trapped them inside.
"Gogog...! Ogugugug...!"
At last, the female evil spirit began to feel afraid.
To sow her insect eggs inside her opponent's body, she had detonated most of her own body. That would not have been a problem on its own; the parasites could have brought back even more nutrients to repair her flesh.
However, the bugs parasitizing Red Hood had been destroyed outright, while the other bugs that wanted to save her could not cross the layers of wind barriers trapping her. The instant they entered, they were shredded by countless wind blades, unable to get anywhere near her.
At the brink of life and death, the female evil spirit strained to turn her eyes toward Keitaro Gentoga, placing all her hope in this boy.
"P-please... save... me..."
When the female evil spirit suddenly looked his way, Keitaro Gentoga retreated several steps in fear.
"Why...?" The female evil spirit seemed utterly unable to understand Keitaro Gentoga's reaction. "I was... so... to you..."
Until the very last scrap of flesh was ground apart by the gale, the female evil spirit never solved that question. Even at the end, she never realized what she had done wrong.
Thus, the female evil spirit was killed by Red Hood without even getting the chance to enter her second phase. After all, to enter her second phase, the female evil spirit needed to recover every bug spirit, and Red Hood, who knew the plot inside out, never gave her that chance.
By the time Xu Fu and the others found Red Hood and Keitaro Gentoga and regrouped with them, there was not even a shadow of the evil spirit left.
"Huh? You already dealt with that bastard? Why couldn't you wait for me?!"
Xu Fu stood in front of Red Hood, stomping her foot in anger. "That bastard! She actually tried to run me over with a motorcycle! Does she think she's Sun Ce or something?!"
Thanks to Xu Fu's protection, none of the three had been injured, but Xu Fu still could not swallow her anger. She swore she would make the other party die to a proper rhythm.
Unfortunately, Red Hood had given her no chance to act. There was no chance to land the finishing blow, and not even a chance to kick the corpse afterward.
Afterward, Xu Fu's group found the evil spirit's lair. In that cave, they saw many, many imprisoned ghosts—and every one of them was male.
The ugly ones and the old ones had been thrown into a pit.
The good-looking, younger men had been bound, and that female evil spirit would come by from time to time to "bestow her favor" on them.
Some people could still be saved, as long as their souls were returned to their bodies.
But some could no longer be saved, because their bodies had already decayed. The only thing Xu Fu and the others could do for them was help them attain Buddhahood and hope they would not be so unlucky in their next lives.
The evil spirit of A Dam had been eliminated. Yayoi Hozuki found a suitable place and set the "Graduate" in position.
With that, the Regicidal Bellflower grand formation was one-fifth complete.
The next target was National Route 1.