The silhouette lunged.
Arata's first shot went wide, hitting the wall in a burst of steam. He flinched.
"Crap—sorry!" The second shot found its mark. Holy water splashed across the ripper's form, making it sizzle and recoil, its shape rippling like disturbed water.
Noir charged forward, brass knuckles raised, and drove his fist into the center of the creature's mass.
His fist passed through empty air. Nothing. Just cold and the sensation of touching smoke. His momentum carried him forward, stumbling.
The silhouette reformed behind him. Its eye curved upward in what might have been amusement.
No power, it seemed to say.
"It—it won't work!" Arata's voice cracked as he tried to line up another shot, his hands unsteady. "You don't have the energy, it won't solidify for you!"
The ripper's form rippled, then split. Its body fragmented into a dozen smaller shadows that scattered across the ceiling like spiders.
Arata made a small, distressed sound in his throat. "Oh, no. No, no, no."
He fired, catching one fragment mid-dive. Then another. His movements were less like a gunslinger and more like a man desperately swatting at a swarm of hornets.
"There's too many! Noir, please, try to get them close together or—or something!"
All twelve shadows dove at once.
Arata fired rapidly, catching three mid-dive. They exploded in bursts of steam and ash, their dying shrieks like nails on glass.
But nine kept coming.
Noir swung at the nearest shadow. His brass knuckles passed through it harmlessly, and the fragment circled back, taunting him. Another raked cold claws across his back. A third slashed at his face.
He was useless. Exactly like the ripper said.
Then one of the fragments latched onto Arata's shoulder.
He didn't scream a heroic cry. He let out a sharp, choked gasp—the sound of someone trying and failing to stifle pure pain. His pistol hand wavered.
Noir saw it happening in horrible detail: blue spiritual energy pulled from Arata's body in visible, ragged strands, drawn into the fragment's formless mass like water down a drain.
"G-get—" Arata stammered, his face ashen. "Get it off—"
"Get off him!" Noir lunged forward, grabbing Arata's arm to pull him away.
The moment their skin made contact, everything changed.
Power flooded into Noir—raw and electric. Arata's spiritual energy, brilliant blue and pure, rushing from the seer's body into Noir's like water through a broken dam. Noir felt it filling the void inside him, the hollow space where his own power should be.
He wasn't trying to take it. Didn't know how to take it. But his body was drinking it in anyway, desperate and instinctive.
Arata's eyes went wide with shock and a deeper, more personal kind of hurt. "N-Noir, what are you—"
Noir tried to let go. His fingers wouldn't move. The energy kept flowing, kept pouring into him, and some terrible part of him didn't want it to stop.
The fragment on Arata's shoulder shrieked. It released its grip and dove at Noir instead, sensing the sudden surge of power.
Noir swung on pure instinct.
His brass knuckles blazed with stolen blue light—the spiritual wards finally activated. When his fist connected with the fragment, it didn't pass through.
It shattered.
The fragment exploded. The force threw Noir backward, breaking his grip on Arata.
The energy flow stopped immediately.
Noir hit the ground hard, gasping. The borrowed power was already fading, draining away. His brass knuckles flickered once, twice, then went dark again.
The remaining fragments coalesced back into the main body near the loading dock exit. The ripper's single eye blazed—not with amusement anymore, but with something like recognition.
Devourer, its distorted voice seemed to whisper. Like me.
Then it turned and fled, slipping through the loading dock door.
"Wait," Arata slurred, slumping against the doorframe, his breathing shallow. He tried to raise a pistol. It trembled violently in his weak grip.
"We can't… the mission parameters clearly state…" The bureaucratic impulse was his brain's last ditch attempt to function. "We have to…"
"Leave it to me." Noir's voice came out harsh. "You can barely stand."
"Neither can you."
Noir realized Arata was right. His legs were shaking. The borrowed energy had felt incredible while it lasted, but now he felt even more hollow than before.
But the ripper was escaping.
"I'll be fine," Noir lied, pushing himself to his feet. "Just...stay."
He didn't wait. Didn't want to see the confusion and hurt in the other seer's eyes.
The loading dock door was heavy, but Noir forced it open and stumbled into the freezing December night.
The alley was narrow, lit only by a single flickering streetlight. Steam rose from a nearby grate.
Through the walls, the concert continued. Muffled cheers. Pounding bass. Thousands of people celebrating, completely unaware.
The silhouette waited at the alley's end. Its form was unstable now, flickering between solid and shadow. Weaker. Wounded from Arata's holy water.
But still dangerous. Still hungry.
"You can't win," it said, its voice layered and wrong. "No power. No energy. Just meat pretending to be a seer."
Noir raised his brass knuckles. They were cold and dead in his hands.
"Maybe," he said. "But I'm still going to try."
The ripper's eye curved upward. Amused.
Then it lunged—faster than before, desperate—its form solidifying as it reached for Noir's throat.
Noir's world narrowed to that single moment. No energy. No plan. Just instinct screaming at him to survive.
Something inside him opened.
The crimson power erupted from his chest—not controlled, but something raw and primal. A wave of pure absence exploded outward, disrupting reality.
The ripper's lunge faltered. Its form destabilized, caught in the wave of nothingness.
But it wasn't enough. The creature was too close, already adapting—
Then Arata was there.
He crashed through the loading dock door not with a battle cry, but with the clumsy desperation of someone throwing their last, failing body into the breach. He didn't shout with authority. He gasped the words, like a prayer or a forgotten password he hoped he'd remembered right:
"Spiritual… technique…" The blessed water that shot from his pistols wasn't a focused jet, but a wide, desperate spray. "Holy Baptism!"
It was messy. It was inefficient. But it was enough.
The water struck the ripper mid-reformation.
The silhouette screamed as its core destabilized. The combination of Noir's disruption and Arata's holy water was too much. The creature's form began to collapse inward.
Arata's voice was thin, wavering, almost pleading with Noir to understand the one thing he knew for certain: "Now, Noir! It's core! It's solid at the core!"
Noir charged forward. His brass knuckles were still dead, still powerless, but he swung anyway—putting every ounce of his strength behind the blow.
His fist connected with the ripper's core.
The impact sent shockwaves up his arm. For one terrible moment, Noir thought it wasn't enough.
Then the ripper shattered.
It exploded into a thousand fragments that dissolved into ash. The stolen spiritual essences rose into the night air as glowing motes of light, finally freed.
Noir collapsed to his knees, gasping. His crimson power retreated, leaving him hollow and exhausted.
Behind him, Arata slid down the wall until he was sitting on the cold ground, his head in his hands. His pistols lay beside him. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. They just sat there in the alley, breathing, surviving.
"That power," Arata finally said. His voice was hoarse. "At the end. That wasn't spiritual energy."
"No."
"What was it?"
"I don't know." The lie tasted bitter.
"And before," Arata continued quietly. He didn't look up. "When you touched me. When you... took it. Have you done that before?"
"No." That wasn't a lie. "Wasn't intentional. I don't know how I did it."
"But you felt it, didn't you?" Arata finally lifted his head. His eyes were exhausted, but clear. "How it filled the emptiness inside you. How good it felt."
Noir said nothing. What could he say? That yes, it had felt incredible? That for those few seconds, he'd finally felt complete?
That some dark part of him had wanted to keep draining Arata until there was nothing left?
"I'm sorry," Noir finally managed. "I didn't mean to hurt you."
"I know." Arata tried to smile, but it came out shaky. "You saved me back there, when I was supposed to be the one saving you. I should be thanking you."
"You shouldn't."
"Why not?"
"Because I don't know if I can control it." Noir's hands were shaking. "What if next time I can't let go? What if I actually end up killing someone?"
Arata was quiet for a long moment. Above them, the freed souls drifted upward into the night sky, glowing softly as they faded from view.
Arata watched the last soul fade, scratching his neck. "Okay. So if you… lose it," he began, haltingly. "I'll stop you. That's the deal."
He met Noir's eyes, his own gaze earnest and a little helpless.
"And, um. Maybe worry less about turning evil? Because you're going to give yourself an ulcer. And then I'll have failed my promise anyway, which… would be really awkward to explain."
He offered a small, genuine shrug, as if to say, What else can we do? The comfort wasn't in confidence, but in shared resignation.
"Come on," Arata said, pushing himself to his feet with visible effort. "We should report back to Yuusha-sama. He'll want to know about... everything."
Noir stood on shaking legs. Through the walls, the concert had ended. The venue lights were coming on, and crowds of fans were streaming toward the exits, chattering excitedly about the amazing show.
None of them knew how close they'd come to being the ripper's final meals.
None of them knew what had happened in this alley.
As Noir and Arata made their way back toward the service entrance, neither of them noticed the figure watching from the rooftop across the street. Silver hair gleaming in the moonlight. Pale skin luminescent in the darkness.
The man stood perfectly still, arms crossed, satisfaction playing at his lips.
He'd seen everything. The energy drain. The crimson manifestation. The raw potential.
"Not yet," he murmured to himself. "But soon. Very soon."
Then he was gone, vanishing into the night like smoke.
Below, Noir paused at the loading dock door. He looked back at the alley—at the spot where the ripper had died, where he'd discovered something terrible about himself.
The ripper had called him devourer. Like recognizing like.
Noir shuddered and stepped inside, letting the door swing shut behind him. But the word echoed in his mind, refusing to fade.
Devourer.
What am I becoming?
The question followed him into the building, unanswered and terrifying.
They walked side by side down the sterile service corridor, now lit by harsh fluorescent lights. The silence between them was heavy, but it was no longer just awkward.
It was shared.
It was the silence of two people who had just seen the worst in each other, and chosen to walk forward anyway.
One wondered, with a cold dread, what he was becoming.
The other, exhausted to his bones, was already mentally drafting his mission report, hoping he'd remembered to note the correct containment protocol for spiritual residue.
The roar of the departing crowd was just a dull thrum through the walls as they headed for the exit, and the long report ahead.