Root bared her teeth with a vicious snarl.
"You have a death wish?"
The Kaleid Bloods, crafted as vessels for familiars, shared their will with the very beasts housed within them.
Driven by this shared consciousness, Dabih-Crystallus—the Tenth—chose not to let Senga Takehito die here.
Minamiya Natsuki glanced at the figures who shared similar faces, then looked towards the sniper's former position.
She ruffled the head of her guardian, Neco-Arc, then turned and vanished into the night sky.
Their own conflicts were theirs to resolve.
"Sorry... Can we let them live?" The Tenth bit her lip, looking pleadingly at Root.
"...Acquaintances from your last waking period?"
To accumulate the source of their power—inherent accumulated time—the Kaleid Bloods would awaken and wander the world for certain periods.
Having spent long years in the outside world, the intense emotions and will accumulated during that time could empower their familiars. It was hardly surprising for such accumulated will to produce a defiant streak strong enough to rebel against their host.
Root shot an irritated glance at the crater where the figure had disappeared. Senga Takehito had undoubtedly escaped.
Avrora glanced nervously at the fuming Root, and after a few seconds, mustered her courage to comfortingly place her hands on Root's ears.
Root's cheeks instantly flushed red, and she turned her face away with a 'hmph!'
The Tenth nodded, her gaze shifting to Avrora.
"Unlike you, I awakened in the distant past, so long ago I can't even remember clearly." She blinked gratefully at Avrora. "About forty years ago, I joined Tartarus Lapse and destroyed three Demon Sanctuary cities. Then, as the Blazing Banquet approached, the Third Primogenitor captured me and sent me to the Princess."
She slowly moved her line of sight to Minamiya Natsuki, who was stepping out of a spatial rift.
Beside the black-haired young girl, a petite beastkin was tightly bound by chains.
"...Carly."
The struggling beastkin, hearing her call, instantly stopped moving and slowly looked up.
Seeing the Tenth's figure, even in her captured state, a brilliant smile spread across her face. "December!"
"Carly is a beastkin with weak powers. Abandoned by her birth parents as a child, I took her in." The Tenth—December—looked at Minamiya Natsuki. "I don't think they can escape the consequences of attacking Itogami Island, but could you... possibly spare their lives?"
"December..."
Carly looked cautiously at December, her dog-like beast ears trembling uneasily.
She had no interest in Tartarus Lapse's goals, no hatred for the Demon Sanctuaries.
She acted only for December.
December shook her head at her and pointed to the smartphone beside her.
Understanding, Carly picked up the phone. "Rahn, December is here. I'm fine. You can stop now. December says so."
"No wonder," Minamiya Natsuki glanced at Carly, who was staring intently at December, then looked up at the Abyssal Roses in the sky, from which familiars were still falling; the magic circle was still active. "Attacking us wasn't just to draw attention, but also for this reason."
Her deep blue eyes silently fixed on December for a long moment. "Call off that hacker and the homunculus. The Security Team will deal with them later. As for Senga Takehito..."
Her fingers gently stroked the handle of her parasol as Minamiya Natsuki glanced towards the direction of the Keystone Gate.
It was impossible that Senga Takehito didn't have a backup plan.
Since the plan to destroy Itogami Island by causing chaos had failed, then...
Destroying the place the people from the Church had also tried to attack before—the remains of the Saint that served as the island's foundation—would cause Itogami Island to collapse under its own weight.
As the island's greatest vulnerability, that sector was tightly sealed by countless barriers. Apart from someone like Astarte, who could easily break such barriers, only the designer, Itogami Senra, and his ally, Akishige Yaze, could unravel them.
However, Itogami Senra had once sent the sealing formulae to an authority on Feng Shui techniques teaching at a European university, and Senga Takehito was one of the world's foremost genius Feng Shui masters.
"...He must know how to open the Keystone Gate's barrier." Minamiya Natsuki gazed silently towards the Keystone Gate, her weary nerves gradually relaxing.
In that direction, a certain Princess was playing over there.
"We cannot guarantee Senga Takehito's life." Despite the crisis, she turned back to December with an air of nonchalance, jerking her chin towards Avrora's group. "Rather than that, you should think about how to resolve the situation over there."
Root was glaring fiercely at December.
She had given the few who didn't appear at the previous Blazing Banquet a hard time afterwards, let alone December now.
After a moment of silence, December nodded quietly.
Carly, trussed up tightly by the chains, tilted her head. "Aren't you worried Itogami Island will—"
"No need." Before she could finish, Trimmau brushed the dust from her skirt, displaced during the fight.
With the hacker attacks stopped, she had returned to her usual maid demeanor.
"But Takehito's Four Divine Beasts have already hatched." Carly jerked her head upwards towards the sky.
The Abyssal Roses shrouding Itogami Island suddenly began to wither.
The rose petals withered one by one, and vast amounts of magical energy converged in the air.
Simultaneously, the forms of the captured familiars on the ground began to flicker unsteadily.
"Their mana is being drained?"
Minamiya Natsuki, sensing the mana gathering at the roses, narrowed her eyes slowly. Her guardian, Neco-Arc, hopped out behind her.
The gathered mana formed four massive orbs. The familiars born from the roses had all their magical energy stolen by these four seeds.
Then, the seeds slowly began to crack.
Dense aggregates of mana revealed their forms within.
One resembled the Azure Dragon, one the White Tiger, one the Vermilion Bird, and one the Black Tortoise.
"The Four Divine Beasts..." December murmured, looking at the creatures in the sky that resembled vampire familiars.
Itogami Island's four massive floating structures were each designed to be independently movable, allowing them to mitigate the effects of storms or tsunamis and minimize flood damage.
Placing the four structures in the east, west, south, and north also gave them a magical function.
Azure Dragon of the East, White Tiger of the West, Vermilion Bird of the South, Black Tortoise of the North—this was the Feng Shui principle known as the correspondence of the Four Gods. Itogami Island itself was a massive Feng Shui curse device.
Using the island's very structure as the pivot for a ritual gate—that was the true nature of the Eight Trigrams Formation Senga Takehito had activated. Precisely because he used the island itself as a power source, he could transcend conventional limits to deploy a vast barrier with a radius over a hundred kilometers.
"Is this Senga Takehito's final move?"
Mana, powerful enough to rival a Primogenitor, reverberated above Itogami Island. The guardian Neco-Arc beside Minamiya Natsuki viciously pulled out a phone, raising a chubby hand, ready to dial a number...
Whoosh—
A flash of silver light.
The world instantly fell into silence.
The sharp chirping of insects in the bushes, the rustle of leaves in the breeze, the noisy clamor of the Neco-Arcs partying as familiars fell from the Abyssal Roses—
It was as if a mute button had been pressed. The symphony of surrounding sounds vanished abruptly, time itself seeming to freeze in that moment.
Then,
The world split.
Clouds were torn asunder, the sea surface parted, the earth cracked.
Not even a speck of dust was ejected as a slashing attack cleaved through the world.
Several seconds later, the roar of annihilated air finally reached their ears.
A deep sword scar, originating from the Keystone Gate, was visible in their line of sight.
The impossibly smooth cross-section made Carly instantly shut her mouth.
The Eight Trigrams Formation in the sky shattered like fragile glass. The figures of the Four Divine Beasts had vanished without a trace.
Minamiya Natsuki stared in shock at the aftermath of the slash, then after a long moment, rubbed her brow in frustration.
Princess... please don't let our own side sink the island.
She let out a soft sigh, looking at the blue flowers that had appeared along with the slash, pulling and anchoring the fractured earth.
"Thank goodness."
Her blue eyes searched towards the center of Itogami Island.
That was the source of the slash—
The Keystone Gate, now draped in flowers.
--+--
T/N: I have a Patreon! While it may seem empty as of now, webnovel will get 2 Chapters Every Day, and advanced chapters will be uploaded on Patreon.
It may not seem worth it now, but maybe in the future. Who knows!
[email protected]/AspenTL
If you guys wanna check it out.