Mochi opened her eyes and found herself in the darkness of the room.
She was alone.
She blinked several times, trying to clear her head. She grabbed her phone and checked the time. It matched Miyu's guard shift… but Haruka's place was still empty.
Did she get up to go to the bathroom too…? she thought, as the drowsiness began to fade.
"Mochi!"
The door burst open. Haruka stood there, her expression serious.
"An anomaly took Miyu. Follow me—we're going after her."
Her words woke Mochi completely.
The shock was so great that she even forgot her need to go to the bathroom. Without wasting a second, she reached for her weapon under the pillow. She always kept it close, just as Haruka had taught her.
She didn't have time to get dressed.
She grabbed Kero, who floated near the wall, and put him on over the robe she had been wearing to sleep. Then she ran out after Haruka.
"Haruka! What happened?"
"It all happened very fast," she replied without stopping. "I woke up from a loud noise and went down to the first floor just in time to see the anomaly taking Miyu."
Mochi frowned. "Huh? I didn't hear anything…"
Haruka didn't answer. She kept moving until they reached the inn's main door.
"There's no time to waste. Stay close to me."
"Got it!"
As soon as they stepped outside, the freezing air hit Mochi like a wall. When she breathed in, she felt the cold burn her throat, followed by a sharp pain in her lungs. The exposed skin stung as if it were being cut by the wind.
But she couldn't stop.
Miyu…
She had to reach her.
* * *
Miyu walked through the inn's corridors during her watch round, suppressing a yawn.
"This is pretty boring…" she murmured. "And I still have an hour before Senpai relieves me."
So far, she hadn't found anything suspicious.
Then she saw it.
A shadow.
It moved at the end of the hallway.
Miyu narrowed her eyes, trying to focus better… but she couldn't make out its shape clearly.
There was something she hadn't told the others.
Ever since the blizzard had started, her vision had deteriorated.
Miyu could see ether, but right now there was too much of it in the environment. The saturation was so high that she perceived it as a thick fog covering everything. From her perspective, the world was blurry, distorted.
She hadn't said anything. She didn't want to be a burden.
Miyu went after the shadow, but found nothing. She frowned and, without wasting time, decided to return to the room to alert her companions.
However, when she reached the stairs, she stopped as she witnessed a dense purple mist descending from the second floor, gathering close to the ground. It flowed down the steps like a waterfall.
"Senpai! Haruka-san!" she shouted at the top of her lungs.
There was no response.
She clenched her teeth. She had no choice.
She knew that mist was dangerous… but she had to take the risk.
She ran up the stairs and sprinted toward her room. As she advanced, the mist grew thicker. Up until that point she had been holding her breath, but soon she reached her limit.
She ended up inhaling a mouthful.
She tensed… waiting for some effect.
But she felt nothing.
Huh…? I don't feel anything strange, she thought.
Without stopping, she opened the door to the room.
The interior was completely covered in the mist.
And neither Haruka… nor Mochi were there.
But it wasn't empty.
At the center of the room stood a figure.
A humanoid monster formed from a mass of writhing worms, constantly twisting, moving as if each part had a will of its own.
Miyu felt a chill of pure disgust.
"Who are you?! Where are my friends?!"
The saturation of ether in the air made it impossible to clearly perceive the anomaly's strength. Miyu had never trained her ability to sense ether as much as Mochi or Haruka; she had always relied on her sight… and now it was betraying her.
Even so, she didn't hesitate.
She gripped her wagasa tightly and attacked.
She delivered a vertical strike straight at the creature.
But it dodged easily, shifting slightly to the right.
"Dodge this!"
Without losing momentum, Miyu spun and launched a sweeping horizontal strike.
The anomaly stepped back and avoided the attack effortlessly.
Once again. And again. And again.
Miyu's blows were fast and relentless… but the creature evaded every single one with unsettling precision.
"Damn it… stop dodging!"
She attacked again.
And this time, the anomaly responded.
It raised one of its hands toward Miyu.
In that instant, the ground deformed.
A pillar of worms erupted out of nowhere, coiling around the wagasa and trapping it.
"What—?!"
Miyu pulled hard, but it was useless. The weapon was completely immobilized.
When she looked up, the anomaly was already in front of her.
Too close.
The creature extended its hand and placed it on her shoulder.
And then—
A brutal cold ran through her entire body, as if she had been submerged in icy water. Her mind spun, disoriented. Her legs gave out, forcing her to drop to her knees.
Everything was spinning.
Everything was distorting.
When she managed to look up…
The anomaly was gone.
In its place, Haruka stood.
To one side, her wagasa was trapped… but now in a pillar of ice.
Miyu blinked, dazed.
"What… just happened…?"
"That mist," Haruka replied calmly, "causes hallucinations in anyone who breathes it."
Haruka snapped her fingers, and the pillar of ice holding Miyu's wagasa vanished, breaking apart into tiny particles.
"Take your weapon and follow me, we don't have time to lose. We need to find Mochi. When I woke up, she wasn't here."
* * *
Mochi endured the brutal cold outside and pushed forward with difficulty. The wind cut her skin like blades and the snow numbed her feet, but she kept going. She managed to see Haruka running several meters ahead and heading into the forest.
She had to follow her.
However, after taking only a few more steps, she stopped abruptly.
No… something stopped her.
A force was pulling at her insistently, dragging her backward, preventing her from moving forward.
"Kero… is that you?" she asked, panting. "What are you doing? I have to follow Haruka!"
Kero pulled harder, refusing to let go, trying to drag her back toward the inn.
"Are you scared or something? Let me go!" Mochi protested. "I have to go, we have to help Miyu!"
No matter what she said, Kero didn't give in.
Impatient and desperate, Mochi tried to pull it off. She didn't even care that she was only wearing a light robe; she was ready to throw herself outside without protection if necessary.
Then something lunged at her.
Mochi fell backward into the snow, the air leaving her lungs. The cold pierced her completely… but at the same time, she felt something strange.
As if a fog had cleared inside her mind.
She blinked several times and looked up.
"Miyu…?"
It was her. Miyu had thrown herself on top of her to stop her. Just behind, slightly out of breath, stood Haruka.
Confusion hit her immediately.
Mochi turned her head toward the forest, toward the direction where she was certain she had seen Haruka run into, and then looked back at her standing there in front of her.
"Haruka… what are you doing here?" she asked, bewildered. "I saw you go into the forest. And how did you find Miyu?"
Haruka did not answer immediately. She crouched down and firmly grabbed Mochi by the shoulders.
"I'll explain later," she said seriously. "We need to get you inside. It's too dangerous out here."
The two of them helped her to her feet and guided her back into the inn. As they crossed the doorway, the mist seemed to remain outside, but the cold still clung to Mochi's body.
"Mochi… you're freezing," Haruka murmured.
She touched her cheeks and hands, and that was when Mochi realized she was trembling uncontrollably. Haruka didn't hesitate and wrapped her arms around her, pulling her close to her chest to share her warmth.
"I don't understand what's happening," Mochi said in a low voice. "You told me an anomaly had taken Miyu… I followed you… and…"
"They're illusions, senpai," Miyu interrupted, still breathing heavily. "This mist makes you see things that aren't there. It happened to me too."
Mochi lowered her gaze to Kero, who was still clinging to her.
Then she understood.
"Thank you, Kero," she whispered. "If it weren't for you, I would have ended up going into the storm alone."
Kero shifted slightly in response, as if acknowledging her thanks.
Mochi took a deep breath and, a bit more composed now, lifted her head.
"Haruka, I'm better now. We need to deal with the mist," she said with determination. "Are the others affected too?"
In response, a loud crash echoed from above.
Two employees from the inn appeared from the second floor, struggling against each other, completely out of control. They didn't see the stairs until it was too late. Both tumbled down, crashing against the steps, until they ended up sprawled on the floor.
They were alive. Their groans confirmed it.
"That must've hurt…" Mochi muttered.
Then she clenched her fists, her gaze resolute.
"We need to hurry. We have to end this before more people get hurt."
"Yes, we need to hurry," Haruka said firmly, "but we can't forget about Rin. I'm worried the anomaly might go after her."
"Miyu, go to the room and don't let anyone in. Neither anomaly nor human. No one."
"Understood," Miyu replied without hesitation, turning immediately.
Haruka and Mochi began the search.
This time, in theory, it should have been simple: they just had to trace the source of the mist. The problem was that, at this point, everything was covered by it. The air was thick, cold, and deceptive, and every step seemed to sink them deeper into a white sea with no reference points.
Not only that.
Along the way, they had to deal with people who had fallen under the mist's effects: employees fighting each other, guests attacking nonexistent shadows, others fleeing in terror from imaginary enemies. Stopping them without hurting them, knocking them out when necessary, and making sure they didn't injure themselves consumed valuable time.
Even so, they kept moving forward.
"I can't sense a clear concentration," Haruka murmured, frowning. "The mist is too uniform… there's no denser point."
Mochi took a deep breath, forcing her mind to remember.
"Miyu said she saw the mist coming from the second floor," she added. "I'm sure of it… but now it's everywhere, as if it's coming from all directions at once."
Haruka stopped abruptly.
"That's it," she said in a low voice. "It spread too quickly… and too evenly. It's not coming from a single room."
Her eyes widened as she realized it.
"The ducts," she said. "It's using the building's ventilation system to distribute the mist."
"Then…" Mochi looked up.
"The boiler room. That's where they all converge."
Without wasting another second, both of them broke into a run.
As they moved, Haruka spoke without slowing down.
"Don't let your guard down, Mochi. Based on what we've seen, this anomaly must be at least Rank C. And that room… is the perfect place for an ambush."
They reached the boiler room and entered cautiously.
The place was filled with pipes, valves, and old machinery. Steam mixed with the mist, creating distorted shadows among the twisted metal. They moved forward slowly, alert to any sound.
Then, Mochi felt something.
Her ears tensed as they caught an almost imperceptible noise.
"Haruka!" she jumped back on instinct.
In the next instant, the spot where she had been standing was sprayed with a greenish mist that crackled upon contact with the pipes, warping the metal.
"There it is…" Haruka whispered.
They couldn't see it clearly. The anomaly moved quickly, hiding among the machinery and ducts. It wasn't large—in fact, it seemed smaller than Mochi.
Haruka wasted no time.
She flicked her fan and unleashed a rain of icicles. The anomaly dodged with erratic movements, taking cover behind obstacles… but Haruka changed her strategy.
The air turned freezing.
This time, she didn't attack with projectiles—she froze everything in front of her.
The anomaly barely managed to move aside, but it didn't escape unscathed. It hit the ground with a heavy thud.
Now they could see it clearly.
It had the shape of a simian, but twisted and unnatural. Numerous fungi of different shapes and sizes sprouted from its back. It had no nose or ears; on its face, only a circular mouth stood out, always open, contracting and expanding like a bellows, pumping out the mist. Its eyes were enormous, whitish, with no pupils.
One of its legs was stiff, darkened by the extreme cold. Haruka's attack had immobilized it.
"Now," Haruka said.
Mochi didn't hesitate.
She leapt forward and threw a punch straight into the anomaly's chest. She expected resistance—she even thought she might barely damage it.
But the impact was brutal.
The arms the anomaly tried to use to block the blow gave way as if they were fragile, and the punch continued, sending it flying through the air until it slammed into the far wall. It fell to the ground and did not move again.
Silence filled the room.
"…Huh?"
Mochi stood frozen, staring at her own fists.
"Whaaaat…?"
She couldn't understand what had just happened.
That wasn't what she expected from a Rank C anomaly.
Not even close.