Chapter 4
The rain stopped.
Denji's heightened senses picked up footsteps approaching slowly across the gravel in the distance.
Hm? Three legs?
Oh— one's a cane.
Looks like those idiot debts are about to vanish for good~
Denji straightened his clothes and sat up as he thought it over.
A knock came at the door—"thud thud"—followed by an impatient voice outside: "Denji, a devil's shown up. Get out here and work."
Denji walked over and opened the door.
It was the old yakuza boss from earlier. Once the door swung wide, the old man's aged but sharp eyes scanned Denji up and down relentlessly.
A flood of questions rose in the old man's mind, but he swallowed them all.
After a long pause, he simply said:
"Let's go."
Denji shrugged indifferently, shoved both hands in his pockets, and strolled lazily after the old man.
Down the mountain. Into the car.
The ride was thick with heavy, dead silence—broken only by Denji humming some random, nameless tune.
His lazy, carefree humming made the whole scene feel even more eerie.
They arrived at the destination. The old man parked haphazardly by the side.
Denji glanced out the window at the surroundings.
So familiar—this abandoned factory. The agony of being torn apart alive… I'd almost forgotten that pain…
They got out.
The old man's steps grew hurried and stiff.
Watching that rigid, frantic back, Denji let out a scornful chuckle.
He reached out and placed a hand on the old man's shoulder.
"Don't be so scared. It's just a lousy devil~"
The light tone carried a hint of amusement—and mockery.
Denji wasn't pretending anymore.
The old man clearly sensed it. He tried to shrug the hand off experimentally, but it didn't budge.
It didn't feel like a human grip anymore—more like a hydraulic clamp locked tight from muscle to shoulder blade. The harder he struggled, the more it hurt.
Normally, even immense strength would waver under resistance.
But there was zero give from Denji. None at all.
This wasn't something a human could do.
It felt like a lot of thinking, but only two or three seconds had passed.
In that short time, cold sweat had already soaked the old man's back.
Seeing the reaction, Denji smiled reassuringly:
"Relax. Just walk slowly."
The old man didn't know what to say. He could only obey and keep moving forward.
At this point, all his hopes rested on the devil waiting inside the factory.
They entered.
Denji casually scanned the surroundings.
Filthy.
Cluttered.
Empty.
Every step echoed through the vast space.
Abandoned factories like this had no power, so in the dead of night—heading toward dawn—the interior was pitch black beyond the faint moonlight slipping through windows and cracks.
Beyond what normal senses could pick up, something lurked in the unlit darkness.
Like those careful, suppressed breaths~
And faint creaks, like rotting wood swaying in the air.
Nothing's changed~ Same old setup.
Denji and the old man's odd positioning had jammed the plan into an unpredictable stalemate.
The old man couldn't run.
His men didn't dare move.
The only variables were Denji and the devil hiding in the shadows.
And that hidden devil seemed like a coward—unwilling to strike until it had the clear advantage.
As for Denji?
He was the least hurried. The ones skulking in the dark were the rats afraid of light. The longer this dragged on, the worse it got for them. Why rush?
So the standoff stretched tighter.
One side wasn't anxious—so the other side started to crack.
The noises from the darkness grew louder and more frantic, the chaotic sounds practically screaming impatience.
Crushed by despair, the old man finally gave up hope of survival. He broke the silence himself, muttering what sounded like last words:
"Denji… you…"
Crack—
A sharp but not clean snap cut him off mid-sentence. The unfinished words lodged forever in his twisted, broken throat.
The rigid body twitched once—then went limp, collapsing into a boneless corpse.
Denji had considered turning the old man into a zombie too, but he knew the feeling of a final regret stuck in your throat would hurt worse than death. So he ended it.
"Oops~ Looks like a bit of trouble now~"
His mouth said trouble, but his tone was far too relaxed.
As he spoke, Denji turned toward the countless silhouettes emerging from the darkness.
"By the way, can a corpse like this still turn into a zombie?"
The devil didn't answer. Instead, a single "vine" silently pierced the old man's corpse at the spine and slowly dragged it back.
Following the vine's path revealed the devil's full form:
Towering—maybe two or three stories high?
A humanoid torso, not emaciated but with every bone visible beneath shriveled, dried skin. No limbs. A large human-like face protruded from the right side of its chest. Wrinkled brain exposed at the neck. Lower body branching into countless tentacle-like organs sprouting from exposed innards.
The tentacle injected something unknown into the corpse. The body began to twitch and warp slightly. Corpse spots bloomed across the skin, rotting it rapidly.
This was the "partner" the yakuza had wanted to work with—the Zombie Devil.
Tentacle out. Pierce. Pull back. Inject. Drop to the ground.
The Zombie Devil's army gained one more member.
The cycle repeated endlessly. Denji just watched silently until no living human scent remained in the abandoned factory—only the stench of decay.
Finally, the Zombie Devil puppeteered the old man's corpse to speak:
"What we wanted… was devil power…"
The Zombie Devil itself responded:
"What I want… is the lives of devil hunters!!"
With that, the contract between devil and "man" fully activated.
The Zombie Devil didn't need to put on this show—the yakuza were already fully converted into zombies.
Maybe it was honoring a prior agreement. Maybe ritual. Maybe both.
Either way, it performed the little drama right in front of Denji.
Perhaps it had been bottling up resentment for too long. After the act, the Zombie Devil wasn't satisfied. It kept directing the zombies to encircle Denji while spewing taunts, insults, and hatred—venting its emotions and feeding its own twisted pleasure.