*BOOM!*
Mei struck through the horde of kami like a bolt of purple lightning.
Howl seemed alive in her hands, each swing unleashing a thunderous purple flash.
"Raikou - Dawn!"
Shouting the mantra, a massive blade of lightning descended once again, cleanly cleaving a giant kami that looked like a crab magnified hundreds of times straight in two.
*BOOM!*
Charred chunks of flesh flew in all directions, sparks of lightning scattering as they knocked down a swarm of smaller kami and made the air reek of burnt flesh.
As Mei fought relentlessly on the left side, she caught a glimpse of the sky over the right side, where it seemed to flash for a brief moment—not the familiar light of lightning, but a different, faint glow that disappeared almost instantly.
Seeing that strange phenomenon, she couldn't ignore it and knew the pressure on that side was immense, but sadly, she was still occupied and couldn't go there right away.
===
At this moment, on the right side, the wall was on the verge of collapse as three massive snake-like kami, whose bodies exuded bubbling green pus, attacked it together.
Facing the soldiers who fearlessly attacked its body, one of them suddenly opened its mouth and sprayed a torrent of deadly, venomous fluid, drenching everything like rain.
*Psss—*
In that instant, dozens of soldiers in front didn't even have an opportunity to scream as their bodies began to smoke, and in the blink of an eye, only their scattered skeletons remained on the ground.
"Hold the line! Support from the other guardians is on its way!"
Seeing his comrades die so miserably, the captain guarding the right wall had his eyes red and his throat hoarse, knowing that they wouldn't be able to hold much longer.
Just as the captain and the rest of the soldiers fell into despair, they suddenly felt a ripple in the air, and a young man clad in black appeared.
Lucian, who had previously been atop a damaged watchtower, had now appeared on a small patch of open ground in front of the wall, positioned directly before the defending soldiers, with his back facing them.
He seemed to be merely passing by and didn't even glance toward the three fluid-spewing kami in front of him, casually lifting his hand as he did so, extending his index finger toward them.
*POP!*
A soft sound, like a soap bubble bursting, echoed as the three mountain-sized, snake-like kami and the twenty or so smaller kami surrounding them vanished instantly.
Not bursting—just gone, without a trace, as if they had never existed.
In a single instant, the crisis on the right side was over.
Time seemed to stop in that instant.
All the soldiers were dumbfounded, mouths agape, eyes wide, weapons clanging onto the bloodied ground.
"Reinforcement... Finally, we're saved..."
"My hands are numb... I thought we wouldn't make it back today..."
"Thank the guardian... As expected, only the power of the Sentinel can easily counter the kami."
In the next moment, however, they realized that the young man in black was not any of the twelve guardians.
"Excuse me... May I know your name, sir?"
Dragging his weary body, the captain approached Lucian and asked respectfully.
===
Meanwhile, Mei had finally cleared all kami on the left and center.
Dragging her heavy steps, coated in smoke and blood, she advanced toward the right side, but upon arriving—
"Lady Wagatsuma, the right... the right side is holding!"
Seeing Mei, the captain guarding the right side ran over, scrambling and breathless, so excited he could barely speak.
"I-It's that man in black! H-He's called Lucian… with just a single gesture, all the kami… all the kami are gone! Completely wiped out!"
Upon hearing this, Mei froze, her violet eyes wide with shock.
'What? A man in black?'
Mei thought speechlessly, hardly able to believe her ears.
'Isn't that the pervert from the hot spring? He did that?'
'How could a pervert who doesn't even have a Sentinel instantly kill a horde of kami?'
Yes, she admitted that he was physically strong in hand-to-hand combat, but when it came to the kami, things were entirely different.
In all of Izumo, only the power of Sentinels could slay the kami—no one had ever slain a kami without one, let alone wiped out an entire horde in a single instant.
In other words, either the captain was hallucinating, or that pervert came from somewhere else, somewhere beyond Izumo.
A while later, under the captain's guidance, Mei found Lucian standing at the edge of the shelter.
He was leaning against an intact stone with his eyes closed, quietly basking in the starlight, with not a single drop of blood or speck of dust touching him.
Mei took a deep breath to calm herself, then approached him, her emotions tangled and unsettled.
Yet as she looked at his calm profile, she inevitably recalled the hot spring incident, and the memory made her cheeks warm and left her feeling a little flustered.
Regardless, as she finally stood before him, she forced herself to speak.
"Hey! About the hot spring... You... How do you explain that?" Mei asked, her voice slightly weaker and softer than before.
Lucian opened his eyes, revealing a nonchalant gaze, as if nothing at all had happened.
"Willing to hear me out now?" Lucian said calmly, his gaze remaining relaxed and detached. "As I said before, it was a misunderstanding."
"A misunderstanding, you say?" Mei said with a frown. "You barged in, and... and did that to me, and you call it a misunderstanding?"
"Yeah, it's really a misunderstanding," Lucian nodded seriously, then made up a reasonable explanation on the spot. "When I first got here, I ran into this really ugly monster you people call a kami and killed it, but before it died, its spatial ability accidentally teleported me right above you."
Hearing this reasoning, Mei froze, her thoughts racing.
Teleportation?
Kami indeed had various abilities, and many of them were spatial ones.
According to the witnesses, Lucian was absurdly strong, so instantly killing the kami was plausible.
'Accidentally ending up in the hot spring seems... reasonable?'
As this thought crossed her mind, Mei looked seriously at Lucian's face—both handsome and innocent—and, remembering how he had saved the right side, felt her anger quietly fade.
Even though it was still slightly awkward, just like he said, it really did seem to be a misunderstanding.
"All right, next time you fight a kami, be more careful…"
Mei finally forced out the words, her cheeks tinged with red, subconsciously recalling the thick steam in the hot spring.
Given that there was thick steam in the hot spring bath, maybe he truly didn't see her naked?
As the misunderstanding was clarified, Mei, feeling slightly better, shifted her gaze and observed the many soldiers mourning the dead and tending to the wounded, while the civilians huddled together, shivering in fear.
Seeing the scene before her, her heart instantly felt heavy.
Mei sighed quietly, then walked straight in front of Lucian, her expression serious as she slightly bowed her head.
"In any case... thank you for your help..." Mei said in a grateful and sincere tone. "If you hadn't intervened, the soldiers and the civilians… I don't even want to imagine the outcome..."
"No need for thanks. I'm just doing my part," Lucian replied, letting out a faint smile. "I mean, those kami were in my way and pissed me off."
Fortunately for him, the current Mei was still inexperienced—easily fooled.
If she had been her future version, Acheron, his bullshit would have been seen through instantly.
Just as Lucian's words fell, a blinding golden light, like a meteor, crashed down with a thunderous sound, slamming into the ground a short distance ahead of them and shaking the earth as it raised clouds of dust.
Before the dust could settle, a tall figure walked out from it, her gaze sweeping across the battlefield.
It was a beautiful woman with golden hair tied in a sleek high ponytail, her body clad in fitted black armor with golden accents, sleek in design, with two uniquely shaped swords hanging from her waist—one black sword and the other a white sword, each of their hilts engraved with a distinctive emblem of a Japanese character that read 'Fate.'
Like Mei, she also had two horns rising from her head—the right horn was pure white, while the left horn was pure black.
Her eyes scanned the surroundings until they fell on Mei, confirming that she was unharmed, then paused as her gaze shifted to Lucian. Finding nothing out of the ordinary aside from his unusually handsome face, the woman ultimately moved her gaze back to Mei before approaching.
"Mei, is the battle over?"
Standing before Mei, the golden-haired woman asked in a clear, commanding voice.
"Bianka..." Mei smiled and nodded gently. "Mm, the battle is over. All the invading kami have been eliminated."
Lucian, gazing at the sharply defined and slightly familiar face of the golden-haired woman, felt a meaningful smile tug at the corner of his mouth.
'Well, well, there's Dudu's counterpart here...' Lucian thought amusedly to himself. 'Now that she's here, the other Sentinel wielders probably also have familiar faces, right?'
Apparently, his earlier wild guess was not so wild after all.
===
[A bonus chapter for every 500 Power Stones.]
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