He channeled his thoughts to the veins and arteries and cauterized the flow of blood. And then something else stopped as well—his legs.
Thirty feet in front of him in the pitch black was a thick concentration of demonic miasma. Flames shot up. And yet the light from the fire didn’t extend beyond the flames themselves.
“You still alive, boy?” said Kaki, the flames collecting into a human form. “I’m impressed that you made it this far.”
“At least you could pretend to be glad to see me after all the trouble I went to, to surprise you,” Kyoya quipped with pretend displeasure, as he brought Asura to the fore and positioned himself for the inevitable attack.
“The entire station and its grounds are wrapped in the darkness of the Demon Realm. No one can take a single step inside without me knowing about it.”
Kyoya snapped back in a no-less cheerful voice, “Some sort of radar, eh? Even demon sprites keep a few aces up their sleeve.”
But his physical condition was sagging to the point where he was ready to fall over. The excruciating pain in his side unceasingly assaulted the rest of his body, sending chills and cold sweats through him in nauseating waves. Nevertheless, he had no choice but to focus every nerve on the foe in front of him. He could numb the pain, but he could not spare even that much of his psychic powers.
“Laugh while you still can, boy. I will scald you with the fires of the Demon Realm down to the marrow of your bones.”
“Answer me this first. Where’s your boss-man?”
“Up the stairs behind me and to the left. Inside the station. Not that you’ll ever get there.”
The two of them fell silent. The tension welled up in the dark hallway. There once was a time when millions of commuters passed through Shinjuku station every day. And not a one of them had ever anticipated that one day, right where they walked, a demon sprite and a young fencer would be facing off in a fight to the finish.
Kyoya was carrying the handicap in this contest. There was the wound in his side. No matter what, he had to resolve the issue in less than thirty minutes. He didn’t know the extent of Kaki’s powers. He’d defended himself against Kaki in Shin-Okubo plaza, but the enemy had been caught off guard, sparing him the full brunt of the attack. Even if he wanted to go on the offensive, Kaki wouldn’t give him an opening, and he couldn’t afford to make the slightest mistake. Cold beads of sweat—quite apart from the pain—coursed down his cheeks.
On the other hand, Kaki was equally a prisoner of his fears. The psychic energy pouring from the tip of Asura twined around him like strands of rope. The powers the boy possessed made him a formidable enemy even in the Demon Realm.
What manner of man is this, enough to give the Sorcerer reason to fear?
The two remained silent. Another sound grew louder in the corridor. The pipes in the ceiling seemed to shake loose. Several seconds apart, drops of water fell onto the floor. Like a while ago, forming a puddle a foot and a half in front of Kyoya.
Kyoya quickly lowered Asura and planted the tip in the center of the puddle. As if taking that as a signal, Kaki transformed his body into a column of fire. The cold flames—that could turn the body and soul into ashes—grew five fingers and roared straight at Kyoya.
And was repelled by a fierce cry. “Nenpo, rising dragon!”
Kyoya flipped up the tip of Asura. The inch-deep puddle rose up before him in a column of water. Fire met water with a hiss of steam and came to a halt.
Kaki smiled confidently. A moment later, the blocked fire changed into many smaller tendrils, bursting apart and wrapping around the water, then coming at Kyoya from all directions.
“Yaa—!” Instead of fire, a gasp of fright and surprise issued from Kaki’s mouth.
The towering waterspout poured down from the tip of Asura onto Kyoya’s head and like a living creature wrapped around him, soaring and crashing to earth very much like a dragon. The raging steam again billowed up, extinguishing the tendrils of fire.
“W-what—is—this—!”
Sensing defeat, Kaki turned back into a fire sprite and turned to flee. From the direction of the erupting steam came another command: “Nenpo, surging waves!”
Kaki turned and saw the young man, eyes tightly shut in quiet concentration, bring down the sword with a sweeping motion. The roiling water burst from the tip like a geyser and rushed at him, the wave imbued with the evil-crushing psychic energy of both father and son.
The demon gagged and gurgled. The screams of its death throes warbled down the empty corridor and died away. Kyoya stood there, Asura in his hand. The cavernous space returned to the same stillness before the duel began. The only difference was that every puddle of water was gone.
“We did it, Dad. One more monster to go.”
Together with the pain in his side, he felt as if the death match had wrung the last ounce of physical and mental energy out of him. He steadied himself to keep from falling over and took off running. He glanced at his watch. Twenty-five minutes left.
The stairs came up on his left. Taking the steps two at a time, he entered the main station concourse. Points of light flickered beyond the ticket booths.
There it is.
He vaulted over the turnstiles and ran closer. A black silhouette crouched before the altar. A sickly breeze struck him in the face, carrying omens of that thing’s ascendance.
Kyoya stopped behind the silhouette. Pouring all of his nen into Asura, he called out, “We meet again. But for the last time. Release the curse on the president. If you don’t—”
The answer came in a blast of evil energy, and a blow from a mighty sword that sent sparks through his brain and made him see stars. The impact left his whole body numb and wrenched Asura from his grasp and sent it clattering across the ground. The war of light and dark that erupted when Asura and the Devil Sword clashed favored the darkness.
“Who the hell is this? Not the Sorcerer from before!”
Seized by an almost crushing sense of dismay. But still managing a backwards flip through the air to retrieve Asura.
“Hoh! And if I don’t release the spell, what will you do?”
The Sorcerer slowly got to his feet. Knowing that he’d made such a furious assault from his knees, swinging the sword without breaking a sweat, made Kyoya tremble in his heart.
“What will you do? Cut me in two? You cannot kill me. Having died once, a human being cannot die again.”
The Sorcerer shed his black cloak. Kyoya couldn’t help gaping. What, this a human being?
At first glance, he looked like a cyborg with the skin stripped away. The obsidian alloy metal frame, studded with metabolic regulation mechanisms, pushed the darkness aside like water and towered over him. The mechanical heart beating in its chest and the other body parts were connected by circulation pipes and electrical conduits from a nuclear fusion furnace in its abdomen through its spinal cord.
It was like the life-sized anatomical model in Kyoya’s high school science room had suddenly come to life.
The Sorcerer had been reconstituted as a cyborg? No, observing the pale phosphorescing light cast off by the mist that encased the mechanical demon’s body, Kyoya understood the true nature of the beast.
“Bastard—after you died, you encased your soul in a cyborg’s shell.”
Black laughter shook the concourse. “Just as I should have expected from Izayoi’s son. What good eyes you have.”
The Sorcerer—his “spirit cyborg” — bared his artificial teeth in a grotesque smile, pointed his Devil Sword at Kyoya and marched toward him. Pushed back by the demonic wind as the robot monster powered up, Kyoya had no choice but to retreat.
A battle was simultaneously unfolding in another location. As soon as Kyoya left, guided by Sayaka’s shadow, Suiki stole into Mephisto’s operating room.
Perhaps taking it for granted that the world would become part of the Demon Realm that night, the figure clothed in the monk’s habit returned to its original nature. A multitude of white tentacles spilled forth from its collar and sleeves, wriggling and writhing.
Guided by the girl’s shadow crawling across the ground, they made a grand entrance at the ground floor, throwing the waiting room into an uproar and sending the patients fleeing.