“I left a present for you. Please accept it.”
“Say what?! A present? Now I’m even more lost,” she shouted, but she received no response.
Confined in the barrier, Hana was at a loss for what to do.
“Master,” Miyabi said, her brows drawn worriedly.
Aoi was wearing the same expression. “Master.”
But Hana was in the same predicament.
She tried kicking the door one more time, but because of the barrier, it stayed shut.
In the meantime, the ominous feeling she had was growing steadily stronger.
Then the sound of glass shattering reverberated through the space, and she was assaulted with a malignant force that brought goose bumps to her skin.
“Eek!” her mother shrieked.
“Wh-what was that?” her father asked nervously.
Among practitioners, her parents were weak and their senses dull. Even so, they could still sense the presence of the powerful shade.
Hana’s gaze sharpened. “The bad feeling I’ve had all this time was from a shade?”
It was coming from deeper in the factory than where Hana and the others were.
The sound of something dragging along the floor grew closer and louder.
“Something’s coming from inside,” she declared.
Aoi and Miyabi raised their weapons.
It was strong, the deadliest out of all the shades she had ever encountered.
The pressure it was exerting made her skin prickle, and she found herself sweating bullets.
It appeared out of nowhere.
It lashed out from the depths of the building and attacked them with shocking speed.
Hana immediately yelled, “Expand!” and erected a barrier around herself, but the shade was sure to break through it easily.
The barrier had been created reflexively, so it wasn’t the most durable, but it served the purpose of stopping the shade’s attack.
Hana’s parents, on the other hand, hadn’t managed to create a barrier and were snatched up by the grasping presence and thrown toward the ceiling.
“Gwahhh!”
“Eeek!”
Hana clicked her tongue instinctively.
She had her hands full protecting herself and her shikigami. She hadn’t had the time to throw a barrier around her parents, standing apart from her as they had been.
It would have been convenient if they could by themselves, but all they were managing to do was scream.
“H-help! Master Sankourou! Where did he go?!” Hana’s father yelled.
“Hurry up and do something!” her mother cried.
Aoi glowered at Hana’s so-called parents, who were failing to do anything but make a racket, and said, “Master, can’t we just leave them for dead?”
“Aoi is right. Trash is meant to be thrown out,” Miyabi said, denouncing the two of them as the garbage that they were.
The same thought had flashed through Hana’s mind, but she caught herself just in time. “No, nuh-uh, that’s out of the question.”
As far as Hana was concerned, they were getting their just deserts, but they were still human beings, and she couldn’t abandon them.
She wouldn’t be able to sleep if she let them become shade kibble.
“Really? You’re gonna help them?” Aoi whined.
“Don’t complain. Sure, them kicking the bucket here would solve a lot of problems, but I have no choice.”
Aoi looked displeased, but he agreed and said, “Fine.”
“I suppose it can’t be helped,” Miyabi said. “However, if I mistakenly attack them instead of the shade, it’ll be nothing more than an accident, right?” A dark but delighted smile rose to her face, and she raised the hammer.
Aoi smirked, approving of Miyabi’s strategy. The expressions of the two shikigami became positively malicious.
“Oh-ho-ho-ho,” Miyabi chuckled.
Aoi joined in. “Heh-heh-heh.”
It seemed to Hana that their original goal had changed, but if they were still able to destroy the shade as a result, there was no issue.
“I’m pumped. Let’s go, Miyabi,” Aoi said.
“Let’s,” Miyabi agreed. “Make sure you take good aim at the target, Aoi. Very good aim.”
“Obviously.”
They charged. From their gleeful expressions, one wouldn’t think they were heading into battle.
Hana watched over them with fond exasperation and turned to head deeper into the factory to seek out their enemy who had yet to show its true form.
“Oh, dear! I made a mistake,” Miyabi said.
“Gwahh! That’s my leg,” Hana’s mother screamed.
“Whoops. My hand slipped,” Aoi said.
“Eeyahh,” her father groaned.
From behind her came her parents’ shrieks of pain and Aoi’s and Miyabi’s accidentally on-purpose exclamations, but she paid them no mind. She didn’t have the time.
She casually dodged incoming blows from her attacker as she followed the reaching limb back to its source. She arrived in an inner room to find a fat, bulging shade.
“Ugh, gross.”
Of all the shades she had encountered before, this one was particularly repulsive. Its distended body filled the entire room. It was so massive, it couldn’t leave. It was trying to pry its way out using the limbs extending out from its body.
Hana cast her eyes down toward the floor. Lying on the ground was the same rope that had been strung on the outside of the factory grounds, only this one was in pieces.
She hadn’t noticed when she had first come, but looking at the rope closely, she could sense the faint trace of a practitioner’s power.
“I see. This rope was used as a medium to maintain the barrier,” Hana mumbled to herself.
She now understood why the Association had forbidden entry to the factory. Most likely, this shade had been sealed here, and the earsplitting noise from earlier was from the shade destroying the barrier.
“Why did they seal away a monster instead of killing it outright?”
The seal had been broken. Had Yukizasa known?
Why had he left without destroying it? Not just that, he escaped first and trapped Hana and the others.
“Hmmm. I still don’t get the reason.”
She didn’t understand what his goal was.
“Wait, is Suzu safe?”
The factory wasn’t very large. There were no signs of other people, so Suzu was definitely not inside the building.
Hana was relieved but also worried about Suzu’s safety.
“There’s too much I don’t know. But first, I suppose I have to take care of this fatty…”
She had left Saku a voicemail saying she was coming to the factory. How long would it take him to notice and come help?
Before then, she would just have to do what she could.
“Expand.”
The energy she felt from the sickening shade was so powerful it gave her goose bumps.
Knowing she couldn’t afford to hold back, she constructed a heavy-duty barrier. It sealed shut with a quiet, high-pitched ting.
All that was left was to crush it.
“Eli—”
But before she could finish, the shade lashed out and smashed the barrier in an instant.
“You’re kidding!!!” Hana cried, gaping at the shade.
She rapidly retreated, dodging its grasping tendrils by a hair’s breadth. Occupied with trying to evade the shade’s attacks, she had no chance to retaliate.
“Aoi! Miyabi!” she screamed.
After a moment, Aoi came running. “Master, are you okay?”
“Where’s Miyabi?” Hana said.
“The situation over there is pretty dire. She has the dead weight to look after, and the limbs have multiplied, too. I managed to get away to help,” he explained. “This SOB’s limbs split every time you cut one down. We have to hurry. Miyabi won’t be able to protect her cargo for much longer.”
“Shit. Impudent bastard.”
She concentrated her power in the palm of her hand and hurled it at the shade.
The ball of energy exploded with a bang as if it were a bomb and tore at the shade from its center.
“Score!” Hana was elated her attack had been effective, but not a second later, the shade’s injuries started healing with unbelievable speed. “Damn. Its regenerative abilities are crazy.”
However, possibly because it was exhausting its energy healing, it had shrunk slightly.
Hana saw a spark of hope. She threw another energy bomb at the shade, then started pelting it before it could recover.
“Aoi, I’m going to bombard this guy with all I have. In the meantime, keep those limbs away from me,” she ordered.
“Got it. Brute force. Master’s specialty,” Aoi said.
“Don’t make it seem like I’m a muscle head!”
He had hit a sore spot. At school, she was ridiculed for being magically strong but intellectually weak.
“Take this! And this! And some of this!” Hana screamed.
Somewhat desperately, she continued to assault the shade with her powers, and it continued to shrink smaller and smaller.
“Yes!”
She kept up her attacks, confident that things would work out at her current pace, when all of a sudden, a slew of limbs sprouted from the shade in a last-ditch effort at resistance.
“Eww! That’s disgusting…”
The shade concentrated its attacks on Hana as if it knew that she was doing it harm.
The one who panicked at the situation was Aoi, who was protecting Hana. “W-wait a sec. This is too much even for me!”
“My hands are tied here so figure it out!” she yelled.
“No, no, no, no, no. This is literally insane! Big Sis! Can’t you do something?” he cried, begging Azuha for help.
The butterfly was batting away lashing limbs and simply replied, “Nope.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
Alarm colored his features. It was obvious that he was at his wit’s end, too.
“Azuha has been using her powers to enthrall it this entire time, but it seems that it’s a bad matchup for her,” Hana explained. “Just a little longer. Don’t give up, Aoi.”
Hana had no time to rest. Attacking the shade took everything she had.
But then, she was struck by a tendril that had evaded Aoi’s guard.
“Shi—!”
Hana flew through the air and slammed into the wall, momentarily stealing the breath from her lungs. Excruciating pain shot through her back, but she had no time to waste on her injuries.
“One last push. Eat this!” she cried, throwing all the rest of her energy at the shade as hard as she could.
The shade had already sustained a lot of damage. Its limbs whipped through the air, but its body collapsed in on itself, shrinking until it disappeared entirely.
Silence reigned over the factory.
Hana let out a deep sigh, reassured that the shade had been destroyed. “Haaah… It’s over.”