“If you want to eat there that badly, we can stop by on the way back,” Karamori said.
“…Unfortunately, fate has decided on a different meal for me tonight.”
“Oh, really? And what’s that?”
“Yakiniku.”
“Wow, fancy.”
They reached the end of the shopping arcade and entered a residential area.
A look of relief crossed Fujinaka’s face. “Um, so where are we going now?”
“The home of the sole remaining member of the five young men present at the first attack. If Half-wit follows its pattern, it will target him next.”
“And if it doesn’t…?” Fujinaka asked.
“Then someone else will be killed,” Archive answered flatly. “Even if it adheres to the established pattern, there is no guarantee this boy will be the next target. However, the pattern will dictate that the vanit appears before Karamori.”
“Huh? How do you know that?”
“Because the fate imposed upon him desires it.”
The blond girl looked at the lotus-patterned sword bag over Karamori’s shoulder.
“Mr. Karamori, please take out that ‘keychain bought on an elementary school field trip’ of a weapon of yours.”
“…Don’t tell me you’re talking about Tyrfing.”
Archive stared at him as if that should be obvious.
“Even if it is a cursed sword, that’s a really rude thing to say about it,” he said indignantly.
“I assure you, it most certainly is cursed.”
“That’s not funny. Why do I need Tyrfing already anyway? Is Half-wit close?”
“…We may have more than just Half-wit to worry about.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
Karamori frowned, confused.
“This has not officially been confirmed by Noary, but there are rumors that Grave Nest is on the move.”
“Huh?! What are they doing here?!” Karamori asked, eyes wide and voice raw with anger.
“This case drew too much attention before Noary implemented the media blackout, so their presence would not be surprising.”
“But their objective is to—”
Karamori was interrupted by a man’s scream from across the street.
“AAAAAAH!”
It was a harrowing cry that made the red of the evening sky feel like the color of blood. Fujinaka jumped, startled, while Karamori drew Tyrfing from the sword bag and dashed forward so fast it seemed as if he’d leave his own shadow behind. In seconds, he was way out in front of the two girls.
Karamori pinpointed the direction the voice was coming from. He ran down three streets, turned a corner, and found a terrible spectacle unfolding in a dim dead-end alley.
A young man was trembling on the ground as a middle-aged man protected him, bleeding from one of his arms. Cinder block walls surrounded them to their left, right, and back, while a horde of concrete monsters shaped like human torsos—the Half-wits—approached them from the front. The unsettling creatures protruded from the walls and asphalt filling the whole alley, their delicately carved right eyes staring fixedly at the shaking youth.
“Are you two okay?!” Karamori asked as he positioned himself before the high school student and the older man—presumably a Noary investigator assigned to protect the youth.
“You’re here, sir. They came after him, just as we expected… Be careful. They can freely move in and out of the walls. But what’s even more troublesome…is their speed.”
Karamori took in the horde of Half-wits.
“The report said there were about ten of them…”
There were clearly more than twenty just in that alley.
“I’m sorry, sir. More of our team members have been killed…”
“Damn…”
There was no time to mourn his comrades’ deaths.
True to the investigator’s word, one of the Half-wits sank into the ground, becoming a picture and racing toward the wall the young man was leaning against. A needle-thin arm jabbed out of the wall, but Karamori deflected it with Tyrfing.
“Take this…!” he cried, spinning into a roundhouse kick that shattered the Half-wit’s arm. But the limb immediately pulled back into the picture and reformed.
A different Half-wit raced forward next with astounding speed. It tried to attack the high school student from below, but…
“Not happening!”
Karamori grabbed the young man by the collar and pulled him away just in time to avoid the protruding arm. He then shifted his hands to the tip of the scabbard and swung it. The scabbard slid back as far as the chains allowed, slightly exposing the dull blue blade near the hilt. It left an azure trail and severed the arm.
There was no scream, but the Half-wit clearly looked shaken as it withdrew its arm into the ground. This time, the arm didn’t reform. The creature’s right eye stared at the ruined limb, and its unease seemed to spread to the Half-wits behind it, which began to move restlessly.
Karamori gnashed his teeth. Each one of these monsters used to be human. This was all that was left of them…
Three monsters sank into the asphalt and walls and rushed at him, giving him no time to think. Their target had completely shifted to Karamori.
He started to reach for his sword, but hesitated. His hands were shaking.
The Half-wits all leaped out simultaneously.
“Coffin.”
A clear voice rang out, and three black coffins made of words appeared before the Half-wits. Momentum carried the creatures into the open caskets, and the lids closed before they could escape.
Karamori turned around and saw Archive and Fujinaka. They’d caught up.
“Funeral Procession,” Archive said, twisting her string. The coffins shook violently, sank into the asphalt, and disappeared.
Karamori frowned. The blond girl’s figure was blurring.
“Archive…?”
He’d seen this before. It happened whenever Archive disobeyed her fate.
Thankfully, the dramatic blurring lasted only a moment before Archive returned to normal. She stood up straight with her usual rigid posture, and a faint grimace flickered across her face, as if she were seriously ill.
“I…I’m fine, Karamori… They are no longer human. If you hesitate to cut them down, you may not die, but other people will.”
“You think I don’t know that…?!”
Karamori swallowed the bitter taste in his mouth and looked at the Half-wits.
“I’m sorry…”
He pulled back Tyrfing’s scabbard to expose a small piece of the azure blade, doing his best to make the unnatural metal appear threatening.
The reaction of the Half-wits surprised him. It was unclear if they were capable of fear, but the monstrous pictures sank into the ground and fled down the street away from him.
“Hey… Wait!”
They were too fast to chase. He also couldn’t leave the collapsed young man and the investigator behind.
“Hound Dogs.”
Before Karamori could make up his mind what to do, multiple dark shapes shot past him—black dogs made of writing summoned by Archive, who ran after them.