Amamiya Rin concentrated his will and, through [Contemplative Sight], turned his perception inward — away from the external world and into himself.
Under the force of that fierce, unyielding intent, the regions of his cerebral cortex surged into extraordinary activity. Command after command traveled from his brain along invisible pathways, threading through his body.
"Shhk!"
With a skin-crawling tear, a tremendous force ripped outward from within — the skin at the back of Amamiya Rin's neck split violently open from the inside, and blood geysered out, staining his pale throat a vivid crimson.
Then, slick with viscous blood and ragged fragments of soft tissue, a section of vertebra thrust out through the rupture like some alien plant breaking through soil.
Amamiya Rin's body shook violently with the extremity of the pain — and yet his movements held not a single beat of hesitation. He reached back with one arm, curled five fingers around that exposed vertebra, and wrenched free an entire segment of spinal column — ribs still attached — tearing it bodily from his own back.
In an instant, blood cascaded down Amamiya Rin's back like a waterfall.
Kawahara Miyuki, who had been closing in for the kill, lurched to a dead stop. The sight had simply frozen her.
Those eyes, glowing red, stared at Amamiya Rin — at the man who had just pulled a section of his own spine out with his bare hands. She drew a sharp, involuntary breath. Some deep, instinctive awe made her body take an unconscious half-step back.
The extracted spinal segment seemed to come alive in Amamiya Rin's grip. The bone proliferated, warped, fractured, and stacked upon itself at a frantic pace.
The individual vertebral structures elongated with a hideous scraping screech. The transverse and spinous processes on either side folded inward under pressure, compacting together into crude but razor-sharp blade edges.
In the span of a few breaths, a grotesque bone-blade had taken shape — forged from his own spinal column.
It was bone-white throughout, its surface laced with irregular crimson veining. The blade retained the natural arc of the skeleton, and its edge was jagged and uneven — yet it radiated a raw, bloody sense of lethality.
Amamiya Rin gripped the spine-sword born from his own body, slowly raised his head, and fixed his gaze on Kawahara Miyuki — who stood frozen by the horror of what she had just witnessed. His eyes were calm. Terrifyingly calm.
Behind him, the monstrous wound was already reacting. Muscle tissue writhed and crawled at the edges of the rupture as Tomie's regenerative power kicked in, struggling to stanch the bleeding and seal the wound.
But the wound was too large. In the short term, that ghastly gaping gash would not fully close — a visceral reminder of the savage price paid for this bone-blade.
"Round two. Let's begin."
Amamiya Rin leveled the bone-blade at Kawahara Miyuki, and a smile touched his face — one edged with a flash of madness.
The monstrous scene had stunned her, but a vampire's instinct quickly overwhelmed the shock. She let out a piercing, inhuman shriek and lunged again — faster this time — both claws driving straight for Amamiya Rin's face.
The bone-blade screamed up to meet her.
"Clang!"
Bone edge struck claw. The collision rang out with the dull, heavy sound of metal on stone, even throwing a few sparks.
Amamiya Rin felt his arm sink under the impact.
Kawahara Miyuki's strength was staggering. In this newborn body — Kawakami Tomie's body — trading raw force for raw force was a losing proposition, no question.
But he had no intention of trading raw force. With a flick of his wrist, Amamiya Rin caught the momentum of her claw strike with the flat of the bone-blade and redirected it sideways, bleeding off most of the force.
At the same time, his footwork shifted — his body flowing like water around to Kawahara Miyuki's left.
She snarled and lunged at him again. Amamiya Rin simply half-stepped back and turned sideways, the bone-blade angled in front of him at a precise, subtle angle.
The claws came raking through with a rush of foul wind and met only the flat of the blade, their force guided cleanly to the side — slicing empty air with a hollow whoosh.
Kawahara Miyuki pressed the assault without pause. Her twin claws blurred into afterimages; the fiery glow in her eyes deepened to blood-red, without a shred of wavering — only the pure, unhinged madness of something that had shed its reason entirely.
Amamiya Rin moved like a swift in a storm. The bone-blade touched, deflected, guided, parried — appearing at precisely the right point along each claw's path every single time. Through footwork and blade-angle he funneled the fury of each attack, neutralizing it with the minimum of effort and motion.
His breathing was even. His gaze was still. Step by step, he drew Kawahara Miyuki toward a load-bearing pillar.
When she hurled herself at him again, Amamiya Rin drove off with his legs, his body spinning — and vanished into her blind spot.
By the time Kawahara Miyuki whipped her head around searching for him, Amamiya Rin had already circled the pillar and reappeared behind her.
Watching her back, Amamiya Rin's eyes sharpened. In an instant, the blade-intent shifted — defense dissolved into offense.
"Marvellous Sword!"
The bone-blade thrust straight for the center of Kawahara Miyuki's back. Every hair on her body stood on end; by pure reflex, she twisted to block.
At the precise moment her arm was about to intercept the blade, Amamiya Rin's wrist gave an almost imperceptible twitch. The bone-blade traced a strange arc and changed from a thrust into a draw-slash — the keen edge glanced along her ribs, raising a line of blood-beads.
The pain made Kawahara Miyuki seize up — a brief, stuttering hesitation in her movement. Amamiya Rin seized that fleeting opening and changed the blade once more.
The bone-blade did not pull back. Instead, it rode the lingering momentum of the draw-slash downward, the spine pressing flat like a weighted iron ruler — hammering down onto her arm just as it rose to guard.
The force struck directly into the nerve cluster, and her arm juddered.
Strike, redirect, press — three layers stacked in sequence. Kawahara Miyuki's rhythm shattered completely.
Amamiya Rin surged forward, pressing his advantage. His feet moved swift as wind; the pale bone-blade cut through the dim air in trailing afterimages, hewing toward Kawahara Miyuki in an unbroken, relentless chain.
Each cut was precisely placed, without a wasted ounce of force — sealing off her escape routes, striking at vital points. Kawahara Miyuki was driven back step after step, battered and reeling, her guard wide open.
No conscious thought was needed. Pure battle instinct drove Amamiya Rin's next thrust.
"Evil Thrust!"
The bone-blade, coiled and patient as a serpent in the grass, struck from stillness into motion — finding the right shoulder joint, fully exposed by her forward lean, and plunging in with sudden, merciless force.
The blow carried no flourish, no complexity — a single, clean thrust that drove the bone-blade's tip hard into the gap of Kawahara Miyuki's right shoulder joint.
At the same moment, his footwork followed through, using the forward momentum of his body to wrench her already-unbalanced frame sideways.
Kawahara Miyuki crashed hard to the floor. Amamiya Rin yanked the bone-blade free, took it in both hands, and drove it down into her left shoulder — the tip punching savagely into the joint, destroying that arm as well.
"Ha——"
Amamiya Rin let out a long, slow exhale. Somewhere along the way, a look of profound, unguarded satisfaction had spread across his face.
For so long he had been helpless — a cripple stumbling from one world-ending horror to the next. But today, at last, he had run into a third-rate threat, a mere vampire, and after one proper fight all the pressure that had built up inside him came pouring out. His confidence came flooding back.
Kawahara Miyuki was still struggling. Animal growls clawed up out of her throat; the veins in her neck stood out in sharp relief as she thrashed and writhed.
"Stop moving. Stay still. I still have things to ask you — I'll decide what to do with you based on your answers."
Amamiya Rin pressed his knee onto Kawahara Miyuki's chest, his left hand clamping down hard on her forehead, pinning her head to the floor.
But Kawahara Miyuki had lost all reason. Her legs kicked and flailed wildly. Amamiya Rin could only bear down harder, until she could not break free.
____
👻🔥+40 ch: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Samsara Game: Starting with Shirogane Kei
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