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In Hanemiya, where the pitch-black rain continued to pour down, Hart's fist slammed into a phantom demon and slaughtered it.
Yet no matter how many he felled, the end was nowhere in sight.
The phantom demons crawling along the ground seemed to surge endlessly from a bottomless well.
"Captain, this is never going to end!"
Katina shouted as she rushed over.
The water blades she unleashed sliced off the legs of several phantom demons that were swarming toward a boy who had been too slow to escape.
Blackish splashes that resembled neither blood nor miasma scattered across the area.
"I know!"
Hart replied lightly while swinging his fist at a phantom demon that had lost its footing and lost its balance.
The mass of ki released from his punch vibrated through the air and crushed the phantom demons.
Katina helped the boy to his feet and led him toward the gathering point where civilians were being evacuated.
If all they had to do was keep defeating phantom demons, they could manage somehow.
But protecting the civilians who could not fight changed everything.
Foreign tourists, families with children who had been slow to evacuate, elderly people who could not even hold a weapon.
There were simply too many lives that needed protecting.
"Damn it! I never thought not being able to use [Aerial View] would be this frustrating!"
In the suburbs of Hanemiya where they had first transferred in, [Aerial View] had still worked to some degree, but inside Hanemiya where the magical energy had grown even more unstable, it had become unusable.
"Huey! How's the civilian evacuation going!?"
At Hart's call, a voice answered from the shadow of a nearby building.
"The evacuation itself is proceeding smoothly! But if the number of people keeps increasing, I'm not sure we can protect them all…"
In reality, more than thirty people were already huddled together at the gathering point.
Shion and Telsche were the ones guarding that location.
Hart could trust those two.
Still, if the number of phantom demons swelled any further, they would eventually reach their limit.
"It looks like it'll still take a while for Oliver and Luna to get back…"
Oliver and Luna, who were not present, were transporting the gathered civilians to an area beyond the reach of the black rain.
But the round trip inevitably took time.
Hart turned his thoughts over rapidly.
(If things keep going like this, we'll eventually be overrun…!)
There was a limit to how much ground he could cover by punching and defeating enemies.
Hart glanced briefly toward the sacred mountain.
As long as the outflow from there was not stopped, this would never end.
He understood that.
But since he had left that task to Orun and Fuuka, what he needed to do now was keep fighting right here.
He could not afford to show weakness in a place like this.
The moment he punched down another phantom demon, he felt a chilling presence from behind.
"Captain, something big just came out…!"
Following Huey's shout, Hart looked in the direction he was staring.
Four abnormally swollen phantom demons had crawled out, each radiating an aura far more unnatural than the ones before.
Their fangs had elongated, their once blurry body surfaces had hardened like rock, and dense black magical energy dripped from every inch of them.
"Enhanced individuals at this stage!?"
Hart readied his fists.
The first enhanced phantom demon slid across the ground and leaped at him.
He met it with a ki-coated punch.
At the moment of contact, Hart poured ki into the creature's body and detonated it from within.
The enhanced phantom demon burst apart from the inside.
A large amount of black liquid-like magical energy splattered outward, momentarily blocking his vision.
Under normal circumstances, Hart would not have been left with any blind spots.
But right now, the black rain had sealed off [Aerial View].
The remaining three enhanced phantom demons attacked him by exploiting that opening.
"Shit—"
By the time he realized it, it was too late.
The sharp claws of an enhanced phantom demon swung down, aiming to tear him apart.
"—I'll take the one in front. Master, you take the left. Nagisa, please handle the right."
A clear, ringing voice cut through the battlefield.
"Understood." "Got it!"
In the next instant, the central individual was shredded into pieces by countless slashes, the left one was split vertically, and the right one suddenly melted into a gooey mess.
As Hart's eyes widened, the ones who approached were—
"Fuuka… And—"
"I brought powerful reinforcements."
Accompanying Fuuka were Kiryu and Nagisa.
"You've grown quite a bit in both height and spirit, Hart."
Kiryu narrowed his eyes and spoke with a touch of nostalgia.
"Hart! It's been so long! You've gotten so big!"
Nagisa ran over with light, bouncing steps and flashed an innocent smile.
The joy overflowing from her small frame seemed to soften the very air around them.
"Nagisa, I'm glad you're safe."
Hart placed a hand on her head.
But his gaze was fixed on Kiryu.
There was clear anger in his eyes.
"Hey, you shitty old man. Are you the reason Fuuka and Nagisa are covered in injuries?"
"…Indeed. Both of them are my doing."
Kiryu offered no excuses and simply nodded quietly.
At that response, Hart's expression changed completely.
"Don't screw with me… You're the same guy who used to lecture me since I was a kid about how a member of the Tendo family should behave, and now look at what you've done."
A low growl escaped him as veins bulged on the back of his clenched fist.
The surrounding air wavered slightly, and ki leaked unintentionally from his fist.
"If we weren't in the middle of a situation like this, I'd knock you flying right now."
Hart unclenched his fist and let out a deep breath.
Still glaring at Kiryu, he declared slowly,
"Once the fight is over, I'm definitely punching you. Get ready, old man."
"…Understood. I'll accept it without complaint."
"Surprising. I didn't expect you to get genuinely angry on my behalf."
"Huh? Of course I would. I'm your chief retainer, after all—wait, never mind that right now. Why are you even here? What happened with the sacred mountain?"
"I left that to Orun."
The moment Fuuka answered Hart's question, the magical energy that had been erupting from the mid-slope of the sacred mountain vanished.
Perhaps because the supply of magical energy to the black sky had been cut off, the rain that had been falling continuously over Hanemiya began to let up.
"…See?"
"I don't like it, but it looks like the phantom demons won't be spawning anymore."
"Leave the rest to me!"
Nagisa called out energetically.
She stepped forward, spread both arms toward the sky, and activated her special ability.
"—Impurity and sin, return to the heavens!"
Nagisa's clear voice melted into the sky where the rain was beginning to stop.
Cherry-blossom-colored light overflowed from around her and gently yet surely enveloped all of Hanemiya.
Just as spring warmth melts frozen ground, the black presence swirling through the city slowly receded.
The radiance pushed back not only the defilement crawling across the earth but even the black clouds covering the sky.
The heavy, low-hanging sky gradually began to split open.
A single ray of sunlight broke through the clouds and began to illuminate Hanemiya.
The phantom demons let out groaning cries and stopped moving one after another.
Eventually their bodies crumbled and vanished as if returning to nothingness.
"Amazing…"
Katina murmured involuntarily.
Hart, too, felt a wave of relief that made his strength drain away.
"Whew… With this, for the time being—"
Just as he was about to voice his relief, a shock like something surging up from the depths of the earth ran through the area.
"What!? An earthquake!?"
Screams rose from various parts of the city.
Even though the damage from the phantom demons had been contained, building collapses and secondary damage from debris would be catastrophic.
"The sacred mountain!!"
Someone shouted.
Hart and the others all turned their gazes in that direction at once.
There, stretching toward the heavens like a pillar piercing the sky, was a pitch-black serpent monster.
Its massively coiled body writhed as if looming over the mountain peak, and its eight heads glared in different directions.
The creature had crushed the summit and wrapped itself around the earth, its mere presence pressing down on the surrounding air.
The black magical energy seeping from its entire body was on an entirely different scale from the phantom demons that had attacked Hanemiya.
"Is that… could it be the mythical monster from the old tales, the Eight-Tailed Serpent Yata no Hebi!?"
Nagisa let out a cry of astonishment.
One of Yata no Hebi's eight heads tilted far back toward the sky—
The next instant, accompanied by a roar like furious anger, black magical energy began swirling inside its mouth.
"An attack is coming!"
The moment Kiryu raised his voice, the magical energy was unleashed all at once.
A jet-black breath resembling a torrent of black lightning shot straight forward with enough force to scorch the earth.
The air was torn apart, and the pressure threatened to gouge out the terrain itself.
But right in the path of the direct hit, a single figure stood blocking it.
Orun, holding a pitch-black shield, was taking the attack all by himself.
"!"
Seeing that, Fuuka immediately dashed off in the direction opposite the sacred mountain—toward the place where the rescued civilians were gathered.
"Fuuka!?"
Hart called out in surprise, but Fuuka did not look back.
When she arrived, Shion was standing there protecting the evacuees.
"Shion!"
"I know!"
Those words alone were enough.
Shion instantly understood Fuuka's intention and reached out without hesitation.
"Telsche, I'm leaving this to you."
"Please leave it to me. Take care of what you need to, Lady Shion."
The moment Fuuka took her hand, the transfer magic activated.
"—[Shift]!"
With a lingering echo, the two of them vanished from the spot like mist.