Sū ěr was busy.
From a purely voyeuristic standpoint, seeing what would become of Araragi Koyomi after seven days of "discipline" at the hands of vampire hunters promised to be quite a spectacle. However, the reason he wasn't there to spectate was, naturally, because he had been tied down by far more pressing matters.
Rewinding time slightly: Sū ěr was staring speechlessly at a junior high school girl who had just slammed her palm onto the table in front of him. Though she looked small, her presence didn't yield an inch.
Higurashi Kagome.
Sū ěr had nearly forgotten she even existed. Facing her now, he felt a twinge of guilt. He remembered asking her to deliver his resignation/leave note to the shop manager, promising little Kagome that he'd bring back souvenirs upon his return… Well, he had completely forgotten the souvenirs.
But it couldn't be helped! After returning to a world-shaking war of that magnitude, who could remember such trivialities? He himself had returned to this world in a comatose state from heavy injuries, and expecting Think to worry about bringing gifts for a human girl was simply asking too much.
That said, failing to keep a promise left Sū ěr feeling a bit sheepish when confronted by this girl who radiated such a sense of justice.
Wait—how did Higurashi Kagome even find him, considering he had already quit his job at McDannells?
"…How did you find me?" Sū ěr asked, his expression strange.
"A big sister brought me here! But now isn't the time for that!!" Kagome waved her hands frantically, her mind entirely focused on a much more important matter. "A monster has appeared! A yōkai!!!"
The girl in the green-skirted sailor uniform gestured anxiously, as if trying to manifest the shape of the demon with her hands.
"So what if there's a yōkai? You know by now, don't you? There are plenty of yōkai living in human society just like people. Don't make such a fuss." Sū ěr calmly sipped his tea. "Besides, due to certain reasons and the increase in spiritual energy, you might be seeing even more of them from now on."
Sū ěr didn't have any real solution for the natural transformation the three of them had discovered the world was undergoing. It was like the sun rising in the east or water flowing downward—a law of nature. For humans and other life forms, it might be a cataclysmic mutation, but for the world itself, it was as mundane as a morning stretch.
If it isn't an illness, how do you treat it?
Think and Jibril had been increasingly busy lately due to this shift. To Sū ěr relief, their various collaborations had somewhat defused the sword-point tension between them; at least their communication was no longer so strained.
"It's not that simple!!" Sū ěr indifference made Kagome want to pull her hair out. She only wished she could jump over the table and yank the hair of this male yōkai. "Those yōkai came out of the well! Just like when you all first appeared!!!"
"?!"
Kagome's words caused Sū ěr to immediately drop his nonchalant facade—could they be yōkai who, like them, had accidentally crossed over from the primordial era?
With a mere thought, he summoned Think and Jibril. Wasting no time, Sū ěr grabbed Kagome's arm, and in the next heartbeat, they appeared on the back mountain of the Higurashi Shrine.
At first glance, the situation was much better than Sū ěr had imagined. At the very least, the massive Sacred Tree [Goshinboku] bore no scars, and the surrounding trees were a lush, vibrant green. There was no overwhelming demonic aura or withered landscape.
However, this pleasant scenery vanished completely upon reaching the site of the ancient well. The centuries-old well, a Higurashi family heirloom, had been torn asunder. Countless grotesque demons, large and small, were clawing and gnashing their way outward, only to trigger ripples in the air with every swipe of their talons.
There were no flashy light effects or exaggerated magic circles. Using the well opening as a square boundary, the ripples blocking the demons only appeared when they crossed an invisible line, vanishing instantly afterward. Yet, because the demons were so numerous and constantly climbing out, the ripples persisted, manifesting as a square cage.
A colossal centipede—with legs so numerous they would make anyone with an allergy to arthropods or trypophobia want to gouge their eyes out—loomed there. However, the front half of this hideous insectoid body bore the form of a naked woman, though she only had a torso, appearing as if she grew directly out of the centipede.
Setting aside her exposed, swaying anatomy, one look at her glowing green eyes and the fangs she bared while shrieking made it clear exactly what kind of creature she was.
This centipede demon was one of the larger entities emerging from the well, but what made Sū ěr frown even more was a mass of demons that looked like a heap of human corpses stitched together. Limbs, dead but not yet stiff, swayed in mid-air with the undulating mountain of flesh, as if beckoning to onlookers.
Sū ěr spotted the occasional spearhead or remnant of armor within the mass. He already had a guess regarding the demon's origin—perhaps it was a manifestation of the corpses from some brutal ancient battlefield… Honestly, in an ancient world where cold-weapon warfare was frequent, such things weren't exactly rare.
It was no wonder Kagome, a girl usually known for her bravery, had been terrified enough to seek Sū ěr help. In her young mind, this male yōkai, who even worked a part-time job like a human, was the strongest yōkai she knew.
Sū ěr… felt fine.
Truth be told, after witnessing the slaughter caused by the fallen Nine-Tailed Fox and seeing the Takamagahara after Amaterasu's purge in the primordial era, these flesh-and-blood monsters had little impact on his psyche.
"W-w-w-what's going on?!" Kagome gripped Sū ěr arm so hard that if he weren't physically durable, her nails would have drawn blood.
The situation was worse than when she had left to find him. She clearly remembered that when she first heard the commotion and ran to the back mountain, there hadn't been nearly this many demons.
In less than half a day, the number of emerging demons had increased to this degree.