Inside the villa, a crystal chandelier spilled a soft light over the ostentatious decor.
"..."
Muneichi stood by the large window with a glass of red wine in his hand, looking at the gardens with a blank stare.
Behind his back, standing against the wall like a breathing statue, his main bodyguard kept his eyes glued to the door.
A bald giant, built as wide as a closet, possessing the kind of stillness found only in genuinely dangerous people.
But suddenly, he tensed up.
"It is way too quiet."
Startled, Muneichi flinched so violently that the wine shot out of his glass and splashed his suit.
"Wh... What the fuck is going on...?"
"..."
His bodyguard responded by raising a hand, and instantly, the dozen guards in the room closed a suffocating circle around Muneichi. The skin of six of those men began to ripple aberrantly, accompanied by the crunching of their bones.
"I am going out there."
The bald man unbuttoned his shirt, exposing a bizarre glowing violet tattoo on his chest.
He belongs to the elite, a pure demon holding a high executive position in Nomad, the supranational syndicate. Black, the organization's founder, valued his skills, sending him personally to shield Muneichi after his recent political fall from grace.
…
Clouds swallowed the moon.
In a matter of seconds, the villa's gardens went from silver gloom to pitch black. The kind of darkness where a normal human would lose their bearings in three steps.
The bald man stepped out the front door, and the smell hit him before he even cleared the steps.
It was so intense the air was saturated with it.
Crouching down, he sank his fingers into a puddle on the grass. It was warm.
'They are all dead.'
Whatever had breached the perimeter came strictly for blood.
Then he felt it.
It bypassed sound and motion entirely. It was a purely internal trigger. Every hair on the back of his neck stood up one by one, like dominoes falling in slow motion, followed immediately by a blaring alarm.
Danger!
Obeying his instinct and unleashing a roar, his suit fabric exploded into pieces from the violent expansion of his body. His bone structure crunched, elevating him to a height of three meters.
Thick bluish-black scales sprouted from his skin, covering his torso, arms, and neck. From his skull, two curved horns pierced his flesh and pointed toward the sky.
And even with all that, it proved insufficient.
In the exact fraction of a second his transformation completed, something sliced through the air from the darkness.
Silently, moving with the speed of an entity killing entirely unseen.
"..."
He watched his own left arm spinning in the air.
His brain took a full second to process the sight. His amputated arm traced a slow arc before landing heavily on the grass.
On his shoulder, right where an arm used to be, a perfectly clean gash displayed the severed bone. Sliced by something so incredibly sharp that the cells on the edges remained completely unaware of their own death.
Then the pain arrived a moment later.
"GRRAAAAAAAGHHH!!!"
…
The scream of agony pierced the walls, and upon hearing it, the blood drained from Muneichi's face. His fingers trembled and he dropped the glass, shattering it against the floor into a red puddle.
"Even the department head..." he muttered, digging his fingers into the armrest.
!
Right at that moment, a blinding flash of white light erupted in the center of the room.
A pure white sphere slammed into the floor with the roar of a bomb, flooding the place with a scorching glare.
The shockwave disintegrated the nearby furniture, carving out a deep crater.
Soon the smoke cleared, revealing two figures standing in the center of the pit.
Rinko and Yukikaze.
"..."
The brutality of the event shook the guards, leaving them stunned for a moment.
But they reacted quickly.
"Visual contact!"
"They are fucking Taimanin!"
Bang Bang Bang
The ones on the perimeter raised their guns, locking their sights on the two women, and fired.
Yukikaze just smiled at the wall of lead flying straight toward her face.
Swish
Her silhouette blurred like a mirage, and moving faster than their eyes could track, she materialized in the exact center of the formation.
And propelling herself with a spin on her own axis, she gripped both weapons and extended them to her sides.
"Eat this!"
A torrent of electricity erupted from her system, channeling through her arms straight into the chambers of the pistols.
The barrels spit bursts of concentrated plasma, and the instant the spheres of lightning touched the guards' bodies, they popped like balloons.
Chunks of charred bone, guts, and boiling blood rained down, while Yukikaze glided through the carnage, calculating every step, dodging the red rain.
With every pull of her triggers, a new body exploded.
Three seconds of continuous fire were enough to reduce the security perimeter to a smoking slaughterhouse.
Meanwhile, next to Muneichi, the personal guard shed their disguises. Their skeletons crunched, expanding sharply, tearing their suits apart.
Thick layers of fur and muscle covered their bodies, transforming them into hybrids with the heads of lions and tigers.
They were beastmen from the demonic world.
Watching the beasts lunge and smiling icily, Rinko unsheathed the katana fastened to her waist.
Ishikiri Kanemitsu, the relic forged by the blood of the Akiyama family, flashed as it left the scabbard.
"Hah!"
The blade sliced the air, projecting an arc of white light.
The lion hybrid leading the charge leaped straight for her throat, but the katana's edge cleaved through its torso mid-flight.
The force of the blade split it into two halves, exposing its internal anatomy.
The five remaining hybrids pressed their charge and attacked, closing the perimeter from all flanks.
Rinko smiled.
This was exactly what she wanted.
Adjusting her stance, she traced a geometric web of slashes with her katana moving at blinding speeds, slicing tendons, throats, and vital arteries down to the millimeter.
"... Yita-ryu: Butterfly Guillotine."
Puff
The mutilated bodies of the five monsters fell to the ground in unison.
Shaking the blade, Rinko expelled the fluids and slid it back into its scabbard.
"Just as expected from Rinko-nee, that is amazing!" Yukikaze approached with her eyes shining in adoration.
"..."
Rinko ignored the compliment and looked toward a specific spot.
Yukikaze followed her gaze and her smile vanished.
"Yazaki Muneichi."
"Y-You are trespassing on private property!" Muneichi jumped to his feet, hands trembling and sweat rolling down his temples. "I demand to speak to my lawyers! I have political immunity!"
"Heh, the law lacks jurisdiction over traitors who sleep with demons." The disgust on Rinko's face was absolute.
"Rinko-nee, what is the point of talking to that kind of person!" Yukikaze raised one of her pistols with complete casualness, and a crackle of electricity wrapped around her wrist as her finger rested on the trigger. "Let's just kill him right now! His disappearance would do the planet a massive favor!"
!
The color drained from Muneichi's face upon seeing the gun aimed at his head and realizing these two women were going to execute him.
"Wait, wait, WAIT!" His knees buckled before he dropped to them, throwing his hands up in the universal gesture of begging. "Let me live, I am begging you! I have information you want! I offer intel in exchange for my life!"
"... Cease fire, Yukikaze."
Following her leader's order, Yukikaze lowered her weapon with a pout.
"I-I have a ledger with names in my room!" Muneichi spoke at lightning speed. "You must know there are more people involved in this whole colluding with demons business, many more! I have the complete list upstairs, all the names, I will hand it over if you let me live!"
"..."
Rinko stared at him for a moment, weighing if the words coming out of his mouth carried enough weight to justify every second she allowed him to keep breathing.
She exchanged a look with Yukikaze, who shrugged with a "you decide" expression, and after a few seconds the katana left its scabbard for the second time tonight.
And she rested the blade against Muneichi's flabby cheek.
"Walk in front."
"Understood!"
Spinning on his heels, Muneichi raised his hands above his head and started climbing the stairs to the second floor.
…
Outside, in the villa's yard, what was once Nomad's department head became an unrecognizable mess completely unfitting of that title.
Jin had spent a while working on him.
He reduced him to an unrecognizable lump of meat that still twitched.
That was when he heard them.
The gunshots came from inside the mansion, a sustained burst followed by something sounding like explosions, rattling the second-floor windows.
Then silence, and in between, if he strained his ears, something resembling a scream or a roar.
'The Taimanin.'
So they had already made their way inside...
Their presence inside meant a clear perimeter and the fat bastard backed against the wall. Which was perfect.
But first he had to finish the thing on the ground.
Boom
Throwing one last punch into the mass, the kinetic energy of the impact detonated the monster's structure, blowing it apart in a shower of blood.
And beneath that boiling downpour, he advanced toward the villa's door.
________
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