Pov Narrator.
It was daytime, the sky blue and completely clear, without a single cloud in sight; today it seemed like it would be a very calm day. It was approximately 10 in the morning, and the atmosphere felt unusually calm. It was Isagi's day off, who was taking advantage of the opportunity of his first break since he started working in public safety.
Waking up early in the morning, he had rented a car and driven to the outskirts of the city of Tokyo, watching how little by little the buildings disappeared and were replaced by more solitary roads and nature. No way would he go walking or running, which made him realize that he lacked fast travel abilities. Something like teleportation or flight wouldn't be bad at all.
He had come to start the purification ritual in a place where there were no civilians, making sure not to draw attention or put anyone in danger. He had reached the forests, to a clearing large enough to begin the summoning, surrounded by tall trees and the soft sound of the wind moving the leaves.
"I already have 1 shikigami, well, technically 2, but they only count as one." Said Isagi looking at his shadow, which stretched under his feet. "I'd be lying if I said I'm not excited and… let's do it already!" Without waiting any longer, with a smile that mixed excitement and anxiety, he put his hands together to create the shadow of a dog's head.
"Come out, you bastards!"
Isagi's shadow began to move, extending to his sides as it darkened more, as if it became deeper than normal, until it was completely black, almost liquid, undulating over the ground.
From that darkness, as if something emerged from another plane, a pair of twin wolves came out; one white and the other black, with three dots on their foreheads of the opposite color, their eyes shining with an unnatural intensity.
Both wolves stayed there, observing their summoner attentively, their gazes fixed and calm, as if they recognized him from the very first instant. Isagi couldn't stand it; he approached the white wolf and grabbed it by the sides of the face, feeling the soft fur under his fingers, and began to pet it.
"How cute, who's a good boy? Yes you, you are." He started pampering the white wolf, who only wagged its tail happily, enjoying the attention it received, letting out a docile energy very different from its appearance.
Isagi buried his face in the wolf's fur while hugging it, sinking slightly into its softness; he had always had a weakness for animals like dogs and cats. The wolf's white fur was quite soft, warm against his skin, it was like hugging a giant warm plushie that breathed slowly.
Pulling his face away, but without stopping petting White's head, Isagi looked at his black wolf, whose eyes observed him with an almost unsettling calm.
"I'm sure you have good skills at stealing, because you're black-"
Leaving that aside, Isagi also started giving him attention, running his hand through his dark fur, which although equally soft, felt slightly denser. He wasn't in a hurry, so Isagi stayed there, surrounded by his two shikigamis, enjoying the moment; it felt good to hug them and even use them as pillows, letting time pass without worries.
.
.
.
.
"Alright, enough."
Standing up again and with both wolves at his sides, Isagi prepared himself, his expression changing to a more serious one. He had thought all night about a plan for when the time came for Mahoraga's purification ritual, going over it again and again in his mind, and he had thought of something, but for that he needed a specific shikigami: the rabbits.
Rabbit Escape was fundamental for his plan to purify the most powerful shikigami of the Ten Shadows, the rabbit was a very weak shikigami, fragile even, but it had the ability to multiply infinitely, filling the battlefield in a matter of seconds.
And that was what he needed. Putting his hands together until the shadow of them resembled a rabbit's head.
once again his shadow began to bubble, stirring like a dark liquid about to overflow, and a wave of white rabbits with red eyes came out, appearing one after another without stopping.
They began to jump directly toward Isagi to attack, their small bodies moving with speed and overwhelming numbers. One of the rabbits jumped and tried to kick him, which was barely dodged with a couple of head tilts from Isagi.
Isagi reacted purely by instinct and grabbed the rabbit by the ears in midair.
"Uah! Uh uh!"
Using the rabbit as if it were a kind of nunchaku, he began doing tricks with it while hitting the rabbits that tried to attack him, moving his arm with fluidity and precision, only for them to be received with a backhand from one of their own that was being used as an improvised toy.
"Oof, I hope PETA doesn't see me." Said Isagi before stomping the ground, cracking it and lifting the rabbits into the air, small fragments of earth rising along with them.
Activating his Quicksilver, the world slowed down a little, the sound dulling and movements becoming heavy; the rabbits began to fall slower, suspended in the air for a moment, and touching a small rock he had lifted.
It shot out, piercing and making one of the rabbits explode, since Isagi had put a bit of cursed energy into that stone, causing a small explosion right on impact.
He did the same with the other stones that were falling, touching them quickly one after another and making them shoot out with precision, piercing the rabbits in the air, each impact causing small explosions of cursed energy that tore their bodies apart.
Even so, more and more rabbits began to come out, filling the space without stopping, like an endless tide.
"Hey, you two, look for the original, as far as I know, even though all the rabbits are almost identical, there is one that always has a symbol on its stomach, that's the one we must crush." Said Isagi while the ground in front of him exploded, lifting dirt and debris, finishing off the new wave of rabbits that came directly toward him.
The wolves' ears twitched upon receiving the first order from their summoner, attentive and tense. The rabbit shikigamis were not any real threat, well… being hundreds of small white fluffy balls, soft and apparently harmless was almost a crime already, so guilty of the charges.
The white and black wolves moved instantly. The Divine Dogs were made for tracking curses, and in this situation, even if they were rabbits, their senses were just as effective.
They could smell that almost all smelled the same, a uniform mass of repeated scent, but among all those identical threads, the black wolf detected one slightly different, an almost imperceptible variation.
"Awooo!"
With a howl to get the attention of his brother and Isagi, he began to run among the dozens of rabbits that tried to bury him using their unlimited numbers, jumping and pushing among them, seeing that they had already found the original.
"That's what I'm talking about." Said Isagi with a smile as he pulled out his katana, the shine of the steel reflecting the daylight for a moment. "Wind Breathing: Third Form: Tree Swaying in the Storm Wind."
Gripping the handle firmly, and with a single movement, Isagi's katana whistled from the speed and force with which it was swung, cutting the air violently.
A whirlwind of wind slashes formed around him, expanding in multiple directions, splitting and piercing the flesh of the rabbits as easily as a hot knife cutting butter, leaving behind fragments that dissipated into shadows.
New and more white rabbits came out taking the place of their fallen brothers, filling the empty spaces almost instantly. Isagi wasn't going to lie, it was damn easy to fight rabbits; there was a reason they were the most hunted animal in nature, and their fragility became obvious against attacks of that level.
"And speaking of the cycle of life."
He smiled seeing his wolf shikigamis engulf themselves in a huge ball of piled rabbits, which pressed against each other to protect the original, forming a white mass that moved desperately.
But that didn't stop the Divine Dogs, who bit with ferocity, tearing and pushing their way through the crowd until the black one caught between his teeth the rabbit that had the symbol on its chest.
Upon devouring it, the wave of rabbits that continued coming out vanished into shadows that fell and disappeared into the ground, as if they had never existed.
The purification ritual of Rabbit Escape was complete, and the system screen confirmed it.
[Shikigamispurified: 2 / 10]
"Is the tutorial already over? Turn up the level on the bots." He said with an arrogant smile while adopting a relaxed but confident posture. "I think I'll change regions, there's no level here."
Driving his katana into the ground with a dry strike, Isagi brought his hands together again, once more making the shadow of a rabbit's head. His black wolf had already devoured the unpurified shikigami, so the rabbits that came out now did not attack; they only moved their noses while advancing like normal rabbits, hopping softly and gathering around him.
"Ah, how cute! Too bad I'll use you to go kamikaze." A malevolently evil smile appeared on Isagi's face, contrasting with the tenderness of the small creatures in front of him.
His plan was simple, but brutally effective. Now that he had the rabbit shikigami that could multiply infinitely, he could begin phase 1 of his multi-step plan to defeat Mahoraga, a strategy he had been polishing since the previous night.
Using his Explosion ability, which turned everything his cursed energy touched into a bomb and whose power depended directly on how much cursed energy he poured into the target, he would charge a rabbit with all his cursed energy.
Then, when his reserves filled again, he would do the same with another rabbit, and so on, repeating the process with patience and precision until he had at least 10 prepared.
So that, when Mahoraga woke up completely crazy, he would receive him with 10 detonations charged with 2,000 cursed energy each, accumulating destructive power enough to try to overwhelm him from the start.
And that was only the first phase...
"Well, now I'll continue with the other shikigamis, the next one I need is Nue, Orichi, Madoka and Tiger Funeral to start with the combinations and obtain the chimera."
It would be a long day summoning, purifying and testing the abilities of his shikigamis.
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End of the chapter.