"This sword..."
Swordmaster Tomie raised the short blade before her eyes, feeling an indescribable throb.
Through the body of the blade, her consciousness began to sink, as if dragged by some invisible giant hand into a lightless abyss.
It was no ordinary darkness, but a viscous thing with weight and breath, churning and boiling, as though it harbored the chaos from before the birth of the universe.
Within that chaos, some colossal entity seemed to be coiled, its formless outline collapsing and swelling as it writhed, rolling and folding upon itself. An unrecognizable power flailed madly, and what it stirred was not wind but a droning hum fierce enough to tear sanity apart.
Gazing at that formless silhouette, the boundary between life and death seemed to blur. Individual will was like a guttering candle in the wind, ready at any moment to be drawn into that eternal darkness and become part of its soundless pulse.
For a moment, even Swordmaster Tomie's soul began to take on an ashen hue.
As if all its color was fading away, reducing it to a nameless mote of dust against that dark backdrop.
In that eternal darkness, her will and soul appeared so small and fleeting.
Like a castle upon the sand—no matter how exquisite, it would eventually be smoothed flat by the tide called death, dissolving into the boundless sea of sand.
A whisper rose beside Swordmaster Tomie's ear, a sound like countless departed souls groaning within rotting coffins, or like the frenzied prayers of an ancient priest at a sacrificial rite.
A dread that reached the very depths of her soul made her gaze slowly scatter, her body trembling with involuntary fear.
This dread, without any warning, swept across the entire [Tomie Network].
In an instant, everyone's hair stood on end.
As if their bodies had been buried in a cold grave, as if their brains had been steeped in cotton wadding soaked with icy water.
Bodies stiffened, thoughts froze, consciousness was forcibly dragged into that viscous darkness—a terror beyond the comprehension of human reason, striving to sink them all beneath the sea of death.
(Get out!)
Almost by instinct, and also by absolute refusal, the [Tomie Network] erupted with a piercing will!
In the next instant, over three hundred untamed consciousnesses surged madly along those invisible nerve lines, rushing toward Swordmaster Tomie's brain!
Whether righteous or wicked, saintly or demonic, obsessive madness and all-embracing Nature-Light descended together within Swordmaster Tomie's body, slamming into the very depths of her nearly frozen consciousness!
"Ngh——!"
Swordmaster Tomie shuddered all over. The right arm holding the sword snapped rigid, and the veins bulged at her temple.
In her mind, that icy tide of death and these three hundred-some surging, restless wills collided with a roar, bursting forth into a fiercely burning self!
At the very center of this ultimate clash and pressure, deep within Swordmaster Tomie's scattered pupils, a light colder than a blade's edge and more searing than karmic fire abruptly bloomed.
"Slash!"
She did not swing the blade, yet her entire existence seemed to become a peerless deadly weapon drawn from its sheath!
The thought was the blade! The will was the edge!
That blade, tempered from her very will, slashed out against the gravity of death!
Clang——!
As if an invisible clash of metal against metal detonated across a higher dimension.
In that instant, the keen flash of the blade cut open the viscous chaos, shattered the maddening whispers, and severed the gazing stare.
That viscous darkness, like a lanced abscess, recoiled with the stench of decay.
The silhouette of the giant shadow twisted violently, as if letting out a soundless roar, and then vanished at the very edge of consciousness.
Those maddening whispers dissipated in an instant, leaving only a piercing ringing in her mind.
The pulse upon the Soul Reviver's Sword gradually stilled, and the blade returned to its cold, deathly silence, as if no anomaly had ever occurred.
Swordmaster Tomie gasped in great breaths, her whole head drenched in cold sweat.
(What just happened? What was that a moment ago?)
It had all happened too fast, ended too fast—the Tomies who had instinctively resisted had not yet grasped what had occurred.
(The Soul Reviver's Sword—that blade's will was trying to capture Tomie.)
Amamiya Rin steadily set down her teacup. A few drops of milky-white tea had spilled onto the tabletop at some unknown moment.
(You make it sound so simple. This broken sword—its will is second only to our collective? Is such a thing even possible?)
(I don't know. We know nothing about this blade, only that it possesses its own will and can let its wielder gather life force to accumulate within their body. Still, judging from what just happened, this sword must come from some evil god or demon that holds authority over death and resurrection.)
A trace of gravity flashed through Amamiya Rin's eyes.
Reviving the dead almost without limit—set in a short horror manga, one needn't think too hard about it. But placed in a real world, even the famous great gods of this country couldn't manage it, surely?
The being that created that Soul Reviver's Sword was likely no easier to deal with than the Apology Demon.
It was only that those higher-dimensional beings seemed unable to directly interfere with the real world; to influence reality, they had to work through various mediums.
(Can you use that sword?)
Setting aside her misgivings, Amamiya Rin turned to ask Swordmaster Tomie.
If she couldn't use it, then they would just have to parasitize a Soul Reviver and control the Soul Reviver into wielding the blade.
A bit troublesome, but no great problem.
(I can.)
Swordmaster Tomie stared at the Soul Reviver's Sword in her hand. At some point her eyes had changed, taking on a peculiar transparency—the quality gained from having witnessed death, from having witnessed the god of death itself.
Though the encounter just now had been perilous indeed, after gripping this short blade, she could feel a certain resonance between herself and the sword's body.
Swordmaster Tomie sat cross-legged on the ground, gripped the hilt of the short blade tightly, closed her eyes, and attempted a near-instinctual guiding force, drawing upon the life force of humans and animals that drifted above the earth.
In distant graveyards, in the mass graves of the outskirts, in the mountain forests beyond the city, and even in the dark corners within the city itself, countless orbs of milky-white light silently peeled away from the ground and rose into the air.
As if drawn by an invisible giant hand, one orb after another tore through the night, dragging faint phantom trails, converging upon the residence from all directions.
They passed through the treetops, skimmed over the eaves, crossed the power lines, tracing countless pale arcs through the air—like a river of stars flowing in reverse, all pouring toward the same destination.
At the same time, across the whole of Chiyoda Ward, and even the surrounding area, tens of thousands of people beheld this bizarre spectacle.
"Wh-what is that?"
Someone pointed at the sky, their voice startled and uncertain.
"A meteor shower? No... why are they all flying toward one place?"
Someone raised their phone, using the lens to capture those lights whose trajectories moved with abnormal uniformity.
"White... orbs of light? So many of them!"
Children widened their eyes in curiosity.
"What the hell..."
A taxi driver slowed his vehicle, rolled down the window, and squinted up at the sky.
The phones at the Metropolitan Police Department were flooded within mere minutes. People's astonishment fermented across social networks. The anomaly that Swordmaster Tomie had brazenly stirred up across the city sowed alarm and unease in countless hearts.
"My, what a commotion."
Mara Tomie stood beneath the eaves of the residence, tilting her head up at the sky as streak after streak of flowing light crossed the night and descended toward the residence.
And within the residence, too, clusters of pearly-white or misty light rose up from the ground.
They varied in size—some bright as beans, some dim as dust—as if swept up by an invisible wind. Countless orbs of light surged toward Swordmaster Tomie, wrapping around her frame, cloaking her in a shroud of white radiance.
Swordmaster Tomie could faintly feel a warm power flowing steadily into her body, ceaseless yet never bloated or swollen. And within her own body, it seemed there was already the same energy—but far vaster than the energy now flowing in, only now, at last, did she sense it.
Swordmaster Tomie tried to mobilize these forces with her will, but received no response at all.
Temporarily halting the gathering of life force, she slowly opened her eyes, and the white halo enveloping her gradually drew inward into her body.
She could clearly feel that inert, vast energy settled deep within her, like a sealed pool filled with some special fuel.
Swordmaster Tomie tried to mobilize and shape it with her will, imagining gathering this life force in her palm, or circulating it along the meridians of her arm.
But there was no reaction.
That power remained indifferent and sluggish to her intent to control it, as if it were merely a guest lodging within her body.
Swordmaster Tomie frowned, then turned her attention toward her throat and lungs. Recalling the image of the Soul Reviver spewing forth a pillar of light, she drew in a deep breath and forcefully exhaled.
"Fwoo——"
In the next moment, a white light burst forth from between her lips, slamming into a wall dozens of meters away and cracking open several fissures upon it.
Swordmaster Tomie lowered her head in thought, then raised the short blade again, sensing the guiding force of the Soul Reviver's Sword, and slashed forcefully forward in a horizontal arc.
The inscription on the blade lit up with white light, transforming into a pure-white blade of light that detached from the sword's body, flying forward with a shrill, air-splitting shriek.
"Is this all I can manage?"
Swordmaster Tomie's frown deepened.
Using brute force to release a light cannon from her mouth, using the Soul Reviver's Sword to guide a blade of light from the sword's body—these were all techniques that the Soul Reviver from before had used.
Crude and simple, one might say.
But Swordmaster Tomie would not be satisfied with this. How could she be on the same tier as that Soul Reviver?
After a moment's thought, she once more sat cross-legged, laying the short blade across her knees.
Her eyes closed slightly, her breathing gradually growing long and drawn—this was Dhyana.
She sought to use her breath as a guide, the state of Dhyana as a foundation, to tame that vast life force within her and find a more precise resonance.
"Hey."
It was then that Mara Tomie's voice broke through her immersion.
Swordmaster Tomie opened her eyes in displeasure, only to see Mara Tomie leaning against the shattered corridor door. Her gaze was not on her, but cast far off toward the night beyond the residence, swallowed by a deeper darkness, an amused, spectator-like smile hanging at the corner of her lips.
"Some uninvited guests are about to arrive~"
Mara Tomie turned her head, and her gaze collided head-on with Swordmaster Tomie's, which held the dissatisfaction of one who had been interrupted. Unbothered, she only smiled all the more vividly.
Swordmaster Tomie's brow knit, but she did not press further, sinking her mind into that formless [Tomie Network].
In the distance, the field of vision of a certain Tomie was shared over.
In the dim gloom of night, heavy military vehicles rolled over silent streets, headlights cutting through the darkness, their objective perfectly clear—the very Takaichi residence where they were.
"They've come so quickly... no."
Swordmaster Tomie withdrew her perception, murmuring to herself, a cold light flashing in her eyes.
"It's not that they came quickly. Come to think of it, they've probably been waiting a long time already."
So many armored vehicles, mustered within such a short span of time and appearing in the heart of Chiyoda Ward—the preparation required would surely have been far from brief.
So this was no spur-of-the-moment reaction. Barring surprises, this place itself was a trap?
Those so-called gods had perhaps long since guessed, or suspected, that they would return to the Takaichi residence—after all, the culprit always tends to return to the scene of the crime.
So they had specially deployed armed forces to lie in wait nearby, ready to pounce the moment any anomaly stirred, like sharks scenting blood.
"Still, strictly speaking, we're the uninvited guests here, aren't we?"
Swordmaster Tomie raised her eyes and remarked dryly to Mara Tomie beneath the corridor, her tone carrying little tension.
"No, no, no," Mara Tomie wagged her slender fingers and cocked her head, wearing a look of utter matter-of-factness. "Very soon—no, right now, we're already the masters of this place. So it's they who are the boorish intruders barging into a private residence."
Swordmaster Tomie shot her a glance but did not refute this bandit's logic.
"Shall we run? Or else..."
Mara Tomie drew out the words, waiting with great interest for what would follow.
"Or shall I dodge their edge?"
Swordmaster Tomie let out a cold laugh, her voice brimming with biting sarcasm.
Having tossed out those words, she paid no further heed to the threat closing in from outside, and once again closed her eyes, her breathing returning to that deep rhythm as she forcibly hauled her mind back into Dhyana.
"You mean to confront them head-on? How impressive."
Mara Tomie clapped her hands, as if applauding Swordmaster Tomie.
She could see through Swordmaster Tomie's intent—nothing more than to borrow the pressure of those armed forces to bring the life force within her under control.
But this fool, who had already hammered her own head into a sword—had she really not considered that with so many dignitaries and Soul Revivers gathered here, those police or soldiers, even if they came, wouldn't dare deploy heavy weaponry?
On the other side, Amamiya Rin was about to make her move as well.
She sat across from the television station building, watching through the glass window as vehicles arrived one after another at the entrance.
A black minivan pulled up at the building's main gate.
The car door opened, and two women stepped out.
Ago and Azuki.
Just like the television program Amamiya Rin had watched—those two women with exaggerated smiles, dressed in gaudy, garish colors—it was them!
The two were quickly ushered into the building by the staff.
Amamiya Rin immediately issued a command within the [Tomie Network].
(Target confirmed to have entered the television station. Now, send them a text message.)
(Understood~)
A Tomie in an apartment in Ikebukuro Ward responded unhurriedly.
She picked up her phone and typed out a message.
The content was blunt and crude.
[I know you release your own Ikiryo to tickle the audience, using such clownish methods to make them laugh, and I also know there's a household you silenced because they had spiritual sight. I've already gotten hold of solid evidence. If you don't want to become rats scurrying across the street, come at once (Address: Nerima Ward, XX-cho X-X-X), and don't try any tricks.]
The message was sent.
The Tomie deftly pried out the phone's battery—that way, there'd be no worry of an Ikiryo tracing its way over along the signal.
____
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