On the other hand, the sparse mat of greasy hair glowed with an almost living light.
This was the head of an old man. And the person who placed it there fifteen years before was the owner of the head itself. Gento Roran’s father. The wooden box was a casket that the “evil brood” had excavated from its resting place in the Tohan ruins. Inside that casket the devil’s son had grown to adulthood.
“There it is, Gento,” murmured Setsura, what that other genie, Gento Roran, called his “abode.”
Perhaps so as not to obstruct the actions of the enthralled bodyguards, the devilish coat of arms sat there wearing a spooky smile, wrapped in the curtain of dim light descending from the ceiling.
With a derisive glance at the bodyguards, frozen there in place, Setsura sauntered up to the fissure. It was a good fifteen feet across. He raised his right hand. Without so much as a hop, he stepped toward the gap.
An infinite Hades reached down beneath him as Setsura strolled across. With footsteps as firm as if treading on solid earth, the genie arrived at the other side. He walked up to the casket and stopped.
The head had been looking to the right. Now it stared straight ahead with its eyeless eyes. After considering it for a minute, Setsura put his hand on the lid. The electronic lock wasn’t latched.
Whatever the active protective and preservative measures, the wood clearly had not aged in the least. Setsura applied more force. Something flashed across the top of the casket. He jerked back as a red line welled up on the back of his hand.
He looked at the head. Wherever the soul of Byori Roran rested, he surely would have been satisfied to know that he’d drawn blood from Setsura Aki. This was a head driven on by fierce and abiding feelings of hatred.
Setsura slightly shifted his right hand. The devil wire sent forth should have split Byori’s head down the center. But not a scratch showed on its skin.
The deep-rooted sense of conviction to guard this casket shielded Byori’s head from any and all assaults, Gento and Hyota being the only exceptions to that rule. Which must have been why Hyota had to be there when the evil brood brought it out.
“Three hundred sixty degrees of defense, eh?” Setsura observed.
There was no way in. There was no underestimating this opponent, an unrivaled foe. But whatever strategy he might have been formulating, his slightly narrowed eyes opened wider—
Something rose up from the depths of the fissure behind him. Spheres that resembled globes of blue-white fire. Two of them, each a foot in diameter.
Approaching the edge of the fissure, the light from above illuminated a triangular snout. There was no describing it in terms of primary colors. Countless contours ran along the slippery, shining surface, each segment glittering with its own eerie aura.
The glowing globes were eyes. The men on the other side of the fissure quaked in their boots. Bound by Setsura’s devil wires, the slightest movement would have aroused the torments of hell, but such was the fear they must have felt.
Setsura didn’t move. He only looked—at the creature’s shadow engulfing him, the casket, and Byori’s head.
It was already a dozen feet over them. The red tongue flicked out like a cracking whip. The tongue was a good six feet long, making the head at least nine. The entirety of its length, still hiding in the fissure, surely reached at least a hundred and twenty feet.
A small snake had escaped from the Ichigaya Genomic Research Center and eventually became this monster, the “Master” of Fuji TV.
Its head hovered there in the air, waiting for Setsura to turn around. Any human who sensed its presence was petrified in place, unable to attack or retreat. And the second they turned around and met its gaze, they lost what was left of their own will.
In exchange for their sanity, the terror was expunged. Some were chosen to be its guardians. No need to mention what became of those who were not, except that this was an eat or be eaten world.
Hence the people of Kawadacho lived in fear. They knew the heavy sound of that great thing softly slithering through the streets at midnight, those twin orbs glowing like a pair of headlights. Not a single other predatory beast remained in Kawadacho, not a two-headed dog or poisonous frog.
The Master waited.
Setsura didn’t move.
Uncertainty welled up inside the Master. This living thing was quite different from what it had dealt with before. The shadow contracted and then surged forward with a roar. No sooner had the rank warm breath struck his neck but Setsura soared into the air.
A sound like a hammer striking steel shook the soles of his feet. The serpent had more than its two pairs of fangs. Its mouth was lined with teeth like a shark, each sharp and hard enough to pierce steel.
Looping a devil wire around one of the lighting rails in the ceiling, Setsura cast out another with his right hand. Humming like a taut piano wire, a red line circumscribed the giant serpent’s head. But it dug only a few inches into the scales before being thrown back.
Similar sounds rang out from separate spots with the same result. The snake’s skin possessed a remarkable elasticity.
Uncoiling with a burst of air, its scales flashing all the colors of the rainbow, the serpent soared upwards. The tongue sprang out at Setsura from its fiery red mouth. Setsura closed his eyes. Fall into the serpent’s spell and it would be game over.
The devil wire shot into that gaping maw instead. And rebounded. The giant serpent shut its mouth.
The senses and intelligence of this indomitable creature were as sharp as its fangs.