Several hours had passed since the anomaly's defeat.
The sun was already high in the sky, illuminating the inn—which was now unrecognizable. The place was filled with constant movement: stretchers going in and out, voices giving orders, engines running without pause.
Mochi, Haruka, and Miyu watched the scene from outside.
The surviving staff were being loaded one by one into ambulances to be taken to the hospital. Many were wrapped in thermal blankets; others walked on their own, dazed, still unable to fully process what had happened during the night.
But there weren't only ambulances.
Several black vehicles, plain in design and without visible markings, occupied much of the area in front of the inn. From them descended people dressed in identical black suits, all the same, moving with efficiency and perfect coordination.
"Why are they all wearing the same uniform?" Miyu asked, tilting her head slightly. "I've never seen anyone wearing uniforms at headquarters."
Haruka followed one of the groups with her gaze before answering.
"Because they're not combat agents," she explained calmly. "They're assigned to what you could call 'cleanup.' They handle incidents involving large numbers of civilians or wide areas. Their job is to make sure the existence of anomalies doesn't come to light."
Miyu swallowed.
"So… they're the ones who erase all of this."
"Exactly."
Mochi kept watching in silence until something else caught her attention.
"Haruka… what about that group over there?" she asked, pointing.
A bit farther away, several agents wore completely different outfits. They had traditional clothing, similar to that of monks. Some held talismans; others carried ritual staffs covered in inscriptions.
"That's a special unit. The sealing unit. Their job is to erect barriers and apply seals when necessary—either to contain an anomaly or to keep ordinary people away from a dangerous area."
Mochi frowned.
"What are they going to seal here?"
Haruka didn't answer right away.
"Haruka?" Miyu insisted.
"The anomaly responsible for all of this."
"Huh!?"
Mochi and Miyu reacted at the same time. Their gazes darted around, tense, searching for some hidden creature among the buildings or the nearby forest.
"No need to look for it," Haruka said at last.
She raised her arm and pointed behind them.
"It's right here, in front of us."
The two girls followed the direction of her finger… until their eyes landed on the vast lake stretching behind the inn. Its waters were completely still—too still—like a dark mirror reflecting the sky.
"You were lucky… or unlucky… to witness something unique. In fact, many agents go their entire lives without ever seeing something like this."
She paused briefly.
"An EX-rank anomaly."
"EX rank? Weren't the ranks supposed to go from F to S?" Mochi asked, frowning.
"You're right," Haruka nodded. "Those are the standard ranks. But there's a special category created exclusively for this type of anomaly. They're not targets that can be defeated—they're treated more like natural disasters, like earthquakes or hurricanes. You can't fight them."
Miyu swallowed, looking back at the lake.
"Then…?"
"Unlike the others, anomalies of this rank don't possess consciousness. They act purely on instinct. In this case, the lake remains in a dormant state and only awakens when it feels the need to feed, before going back to sleep. The legend surrounding this place most likely originated from its previous awakening, over a hundred years ago."
"But…" Miyu clenched her fists. "Is there really nothing that can be done? This time we were lucky to be here, but if we hadn't been… the inn would have been full of people. There would have been far more victims."
"That's why the sealing unit is here. Even if we can't defeat it directly, there is a way to eliminate it… it's just extremely slow. We'll seal it to prevent it from feeding again. That way, over time, it will gradually weaken. Even so, they possess such an enormous amount of ether that the process could take hundreds of years."
"Hundreds of years!?" Mochi exclaimed. "Isn't there another method? Something faster? Won't it resist being sealed?"
Haruka let out a soft sigh.
"Mochi, think about it. The anomaly is the lake itself. To kill it, we would have to erase the lake entirely—and for something of that size, not even a nuclear weapon would suffice. There's no man-made weapon capable of completely destroying a lake."
She paused briefly before adding:
"Well… there is one agent who could do it. But destroying a lake of that size would cause unimaginable collateral damage. For starters, the shockwave would travel across much of the country and bring down buildings in nearby cities."
Mochi fell silent.
"And about your other question," Haruka continued, "EX-rank anomalies share one trait: they don't think, they don't reason. They act on basic instincts. Eating when they feel hungry, for example. In this case, that happens roughly once every hundred years."
Haruka looked up at the sky.
"It's getting late. You should leave now if you want to make it home before nightfall."
She accompanied them to the car that would take them back to the city. Before closing the door, she paused.
"This is where we part ways. I need to stay and supervise everything until another combat agent arrives to relieve me."
Mochi hesitated for a second, but in the end, she nodded.
And so, the trio parted ways. Mochi and Miyu began their return, fully aware that a demanding month awaited them. They had to train, prepare… and fully master their ether weapons.
In one month, their rank promotion exam would take place.