“Mm. Is that the demon that was on the island?!” Tohka cried, her eyebrows rising on her forehead.
“We are well met.” The demon twisted its lips up, revealing sharp fangs. “I waited and waited, but you never came. So I decided to come to you.”
“Why would you come if you don’t actually have anything against her?!” Shido shrieked. He didn’t know what the deal was with the witch from the woods or the one from the sea, but from the way this demon was talking, it hadn’t even met Tohka.
But the party didn’t end there. One after the other, the wolf’s comrades filed into the ballroom. The door to the hall had no sooner opened than three ill-tempered women in dresses appeared.
“Ohhh-ho-ho-ho!” one of them cried. “Cinderella! How rude of you to go to the ballllll!”
“Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters?!” Shido yelped. “Wait. Okay, yes, sure, you’re villains. But you’re kind of on a whole other level from demons and witches!”
Now a small boy ran in. “The king is naked… My father was put in jail because I said that… But even so! I will keep crying out the truth! The king is naked!”
“Was ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’ this heavy of a story?!” Shido stared in disbelief.
Next, flames roared to life in empty space, and the figure of an old woman with dark eyes appeared from within them. “Granddaughter,” she intoned. “You must light more matches… And then come to me…”
“The grandmother of the match girl turned into a total evil spirit?!” Shido cried, and now bats flew in through the broken window and assembled into human form. Zombies pulled themselves out of the wet floor, followed by monsters that Shido had never seen before but were undoubtedly terrifying to look at.
“Th-that’s…”
“Ah! This is me,” Nia said nonchalantly. “Vampires from the first part—the vampire arc; living dead from the second part; the immortal king and a bunch of notables from the old gods arc—the third part. Silver bullets slaughter the strange. The grown-up battle fantasy Silver Bullet is currently running in Weekly Shonen Blast to great acclaim!”
“And now superpowered jerks from a shonen magazine?!” Shido replied with a cry that bordered on a shriek.
Before he knew it, an array of unusual monsters and villains had shown up in full force in the ballroom and deployed themselves in a circle so that Shido and the others couldn’t get away, Now they crept closer and closer, steadily closing the distance between them.
“Ngh…!” he groaned through gritted teeth.
The pressure he felt now was far greater than when the guards had tried to throw them out earlier. But that was only natural. The majority of monsters and villains he faced now were infamous fairy-tale monsters and villains. On top of that, the Spirits couldn’t use their Angels. Shido’s body quickly detected this mortal danger, changed the signal into a pounding in his heart, and tried to communicate the perilousness of his situation to his brain.
The Spirits around him looked similarly tense and panicked.
“I’m not losing to you losers!” Tohka cried out, breaking the silence. The sword in her hand flashed. She kicked at the ground and flew at the demon directly ahead of her.
But just as her sword was about to strike a killing blow, the witches to either side cast magic spells to attack Tohka. ““Hyaaaaah!””
Bullets of light hit Tohka in midair on both sides, causing tiny explosions.
“Ngah?!” She let out a cry of anguish.
While she was momentarily defenseless, the demon raised its enormous metal bat and swung it hard at her. “Ha-ha-ha-ha! You’re soft, Momotaro!”
“Hnngh…!” Tohka immediately tried to block the bat with her sword, but unable to brace herself in midair, she couldn’t stop the blow. She was knocked back and slammed into seawater pooling on the floor.
“Tohka!” Shido cried, and was about to hurry to her side.
However.
“Whoopsy! You should watch where you’re going, little piggyyyyyy!”
At the same time as he heard the wolf’s voice from above, something hit his stomach hard.
“Hnnnaah?!” he yowled, and a heartbeat later, his brain caught up. He had been mowed down by the wolf’s enormously thick arm. He flew helplessly up into the air, crashed into the wall of the ballroom, and slid to the floor. “Ngh… Ah…”
“Shido!”
“Sh-Shido…!”
The Spirits cried out in concern and started for his side.
But the wolf and the other villains stepped forward to block their way.
“Oooh, sorry. You’re not going anywhere.”
“Ngh…!”
“Y-Yoshino…”
“I-I’m. Okay, Natsumi…!”
The Spirits huddled together, frustrated or perhaps anxious. The assembled villains grinned and closed in on them.
“Now then… Prepare yourself!”
“Keh-keh-keh-keh-keh-keh! Not to worry. I’ll make sure to make a taaaaasty meal of you.”
“Bwah-ha-ha! Let’s see what kind of sound a mermaid’s tongue makes.”
“Ee-eeek!” Miku pressed her hands over her mouth and splashed around. She wasn’t the only one shivering in terror, however. Each Spirit showed it in her own way, but sweat glistened on all their faces as they glared at the encroaching monsters.
“Ngh… Damn you!” Shido half groaned, half shouted, and managed to pull himself up somehow. “Don’t you…touch them!”
But having been thrown hard into the wall, his body would not move the way he wanted it to. Unable to get his legs to support him, he made a loud splash as he collapsed once more.
“Hnngh…!” He grimaced and gritted his teeth against the pain. He could just barely move his upper body still, so he began to drag himself across the floor toward the Spirits.
But he was too late. The storybook villains had already reached the girls and were wrapping their hands around slender throats.
“Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! First you!” The wolf yanked Yoshino up with its claws deftly.
“Aah…!” she cried.
“Y-Yoshino! You… What are you doing, you stupid mutt?!” Natsumi wrapped herself around the wolf’s legs, but the beast paid her no mind.
“Hmm…” It eyed Yoshino very carefully, head to toe. “You look so very yummy, hm, Red Riding Hooood?”
“Eeep…!”
“Wakaaah!” the puppet on Yoshino’s left hand shouted. “You eat Yoshinon and Yoshino and we’ll give you a stomachache, okay?!”
“Ngh…!” Shido would never make it in time. His heart pounded violently with panic. Even if he did make it, there wasn’t much he could do. Maybe buy some time, and just barely that. The wolf would knock him flying again, and his only achievement would have been to delay Yoshino being eaten by a few seconds.
Abruptly, he heard Mukuro’s words again in the back of his mind.
“Assume Muku did allow you to seal my power. Would I truly be any safer on the planet than I am here? Have the Spirits you saved thus far never been assaulted by this enemy?”
“…Ngh!” The hand reaching out toward Tohka and the others stopped for a moment. “I…am…!”
Watching the monsters attack all the Spirits whose powers he’d sealed, Shido wondered if he himself wasn’t the cause of this situation. Wasn’t he? If he hadn’t locked away their Spirit powers, they might not have been taken prisoner by Westcott’s Beelzebub. In fact, it wasn’t only that. It was just like Mukuro had said—Tohka and the other Spirits had been dragged into all kinds of dangerous situations since they’d met him.