"Yu... Yuzu!?"
Hearing the familiar voice, Kujou Katora turned her head in astonishment.
She looked at the girl who had suddenly dropped from the sky, wrapped in a bathrobe... and seemingly only a bathrobe.
Kujou Katora, who had just been immersed in a lust for slaughter—so deep that even Hayabusa, who had followed her since graduation, couldn't wake her—sobered up on the spot.
The girl descending amidst cyan specks of light looked as if she had been soaking in a bath just a second ago.
Wet short hair clung to her forehead, water droplets still dripping from the tips.
The girl's slender collarbones appeared indistinctly amidst the flickering cyan light, and occasionally... one could see a shimmer of water in the deep hollow of her neck.
"Gulp—" She swallowed with some difficulty.
The hand gripping the bloodsaw unconsciously tightened. Kujou Katora suddenly felt... she was a little thirsty.
"Yuzu!?" Waving the bloodsaw to parry the tentacle attacks, the ferocious black-and-red beasts arched their bodies one by one, guarding Su Yuzu.
Looking at the female superintendent collapsed at Su Yuzu's feet, Kujou Katora realized in an instant what had happened.
Hayabusa's ability was "Displacement".
She must have set a marker inside Yuzu's dormitory.
Just now... after she fell into madness, Hayabusa intended to use "Displacement" to teleport both of them to Yuzu's dorm.
But under the monster's mental shock, the "Displacement" went in the wrong direction.
It teleported Miss Yuzu, who was still bathing in her dorm, over here instead.
Damn it...
Kujou Katora felt as if she had missed out on a billion.
But... the more critical issue right now was Yuzu's safety.
Even though her blood seemed on the verge of running dry, Kujou Katora still wanted to drain every last drop, commanding the Hounds of Blood to arch their bodies and stand guard in front of Yuzu.
Fists clenched tight... for the first time, Kujou Katora felt she was weak.
"When is the backup from those old bastards going to arrive!!!" She slowly retreated.
Kujou Katora, who always attacked and never defended, for the first time... wielded the bloodsaw in her hands solely for defense.
Slicing open the thick, tough black-purple tentacle in front of her, Kujou Katora took a moment to look back.
Then... she realized something seemed wrong.
The girl standing there stood stiffly, her shoulders... no, her whole body seemed to be trembling slightly.
Her crimson eyes—almost the symbol of the Soga clan—contracted sharply, glistening with mist.
Kujou Katora suddenly realized a very serious problem.
Yuzu... was afraid of the dark.
And right now, deep in the underground drainage system, there were only the constantly falling cyan light specks and the faint glimmer of those black-purple Catastrophe crystal clusters.
This is bad.
Kujou Katora fumbled towards her thigh.
But the strap on her right leg had been torn open, and she didn't know where her flashlight had been lost.
Hiss—
She waved the bloodsaw to parry again.
But... is Yuzu really afraid of the dark?
—Yes.
But... is she standing stiffly in place right now really because of the darkness of the empty sewer?
No.
Although Yuzu is afraid of the dark, what she fears is that kind of pitch-black darkness where you can't see your fingers. A little faint light wouldn't make her freeze in place as if hit by a paralysis spell.
What really made her stiff... was the wet, slippery thing behind her, gently brushing past her back shoulder like a tentacle.
No—
That was a tentacle.
In her crimson eyes, the reflection of Kujou Katora waving the bloodsaw was visible.
In Su Yuzu's eyes, Kujou Katora had been standing in place waving the bloodsaw, wasting her stamina in vain. Only occasionally... would a slender black-purple tentacle suddenly attack from a shallow puddle.
Then it would be ruthlessly severed.
Viscous blood spread in the water.
The monster Kujou Katora faced wasn't bloodless.
Rather... it had been affecting the minds of Kujou Katora and Hayabusa all along.
It didn't have a massive, bulky body; on the contrary—
Its body size was probably about the same as a human's.
The root cause of Kujou Katora not being able to replenish blood was that she was trapped deep within the illusion created by that monster.
And Su Yuzu, possessor of the "Dominator's Aegis", was not affected by the monster's mental influence at all.
Whoosh—
A fishy wind brushed past Su Yuzu's shoulder.
At this moment... that monster was right behind her.
Su Yuzu could even imagine the wriggling tentacles of the monster behind her.
The nictitating membrane blinked over the dark golden vertical pupil.
The man, who was already dead, looked with satisfaction at the girl who seemed to be trembling constantly before him.
He sang praises to the "Eye of Insight"—
It was the "Eye of Insight" that pushed fate to deliver her before him.
Enduring the severe pain, a blood-colored tentacle forcibly tore off the black gear on his shoulder, then slowly... slowly approached Su Yuzu.
The world will change because of her Fall.
Su Yuzu...
It's time to open your eyes and see the world.
However... just as the black-purple tentacle was slowly reaching out to touch Su Yuzu.
The girl, who a second ago seemed harmless and trembling, suddenly drew a blade from the void.
Su Yuzu pulled that "Collector's Tachi" from the game interface.
Twisting her body, drawing the blade.
Sword light cut through the darkness.
"Raaahhhh!!!" Accompanied by the pained roar of the Chimera Amalgam, the blood-colored tentacle snapped in response.
Bang—
A sound like a mirror shattering.
Kujou Katora finally saw... the half-human, half-tentacle monster standing behind Su Yuzu.
Her back was suddenly soaked in cold sweat.
Kujou Katora couldn't imagine what would have happened if Su Yuzu met with an accident due to her mistake and recklessness.
How she would regret it for the rest of her life.
How... could this be? The "Eye of Insight" cultist man, now transformed into a Chimera Amalgam, was even more unable to comprehend what had happened than Kujou Katora.
He couldn't understand... Where did Su Yuzu, clearly not a Spatial-type Esper, pull that sword from?
He couldn't understand even more... how Su Yuzu, who hadn't even stepped into the First Sequence... managed to escape the "Eternal Night Dream" he created.
Even that dog of the Empire was deeply trapped in the "Eternal Night Dream".
How on earth did Su Yuzu do it?
Ding—
The black gear fell into the water.
Su Yuzu didn't care whether the guy in front of her was a Chimera Amalgam infinitely approaching the Fourth Sequence; she drew her blade and slashed.
Clang—
A black-purple tentacle, completely different from the blood-colored one, blocked Su Yuzu's blade.
The blade sank deep into the tentacle but didn't sever it.
He was, after all, a monster infinitely approaching the Fourth Sequence.
Even if he was a mental-type Chimera Amalgam inexplicably countered to death by Su Yuzu... in a purely physical fight, Su Yuzu really wasn't his match.
But how could the man accept the fact that his "Eternal Night Dream" had no effect on Su Yuzu?
Moreover... their goal, from the very beginning, was not to kill Su Yuzu.
Invisible mental power spread; the powerful mental force even caused visible ripples in the air.
The dark golden vertical pupils widened.
Invisible tentacles sought to invade Su Yuzu's mental domain.
"Accept it!"
"Accept the blessing of the 'Eye of Insight'!"
"You will be able to glimpse the origin of the world."
"You will be able to see... the absolute truth of this universe beneath your feet."
"You will be able to see... what exactly is the reality upon which we stand?"
Invisible tentacles spread, surrounding Su Yuzu from all directions, trying to bind the girl's mental domain tightly.
"We bear no malice—"
"Like a finger pointing at the moon, what we desire is not the finger pointing at the moon, but the true existence of the moon itself."
"Accept this blessing."
"Time to open your eyes."
Black-purple eye-shaped totems spread across the man's monstrous face as he reached invisible hands toward Su Yuzu's mental domain.
Su Yuzu just tilted her head; the Chimera Amalgam's attack made her slightly uncomfortable.
"Wha...t...?" The dark golden vertical pupils were full of astonishment.
Su Yuzu looked at the tachi stuck deep in the tentacle.
Then she looked at the monster's dark golden vertical pupils and the black-purple Catastrophe crystal clusters covering its body.
The two stared at each other.
Then—
"Twist—" Su Yuzu stopped pretending; she showed her hand.
The nictitating membrane blinked over the dark golden vertical pupil.
In the final moment of life's withering... he saw...
A giant throne of thorns standing as if at the end of the world, and... a young girl sitting on the pitch-black throne, smiling... swinging her legs as she looked down on him.
"You look... like you wouldn't taste very good."
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