I stared at Makeno, my brow furrowing in confusion. "What are you talking about, Makeno?" I asked, struggling to process her words.
From the shadows of the backseat, her presence felt steady, anchoring the tense atmosphere. There was a newfound gravity in her tone—a quiet, unshakable confidence. "I can help you break this loop," she said.
"Wait, how?" I asked, still skeptical.
She leaned forward, a faint, ethereal glow bleeding into her eyes as a hidden power began to wake within her. "There are things you don't know about me," she murmured.
"Your grandfather didn't just summon any wandering soul. He crafted me with absolute precision. I am a guardian of your bloodline, designed to protect your home... and to protect you. I possess a highly specific ability: I can freeze a spirit in its tracks. Stronger entities might resist, but I can at least try."
Hearing my grandfather's name always hit me like a physical blow—a heavy mix of reverence, curiosity, and unresolved grief. But there was no time to get emotional. The air was turning colder by the second.
"Alright," I said, my voice hardening into a commander's tone. "Do your work." I glanced over at Haroku, who was already rolling his shoulders, preparing himself mentally for the clash. "You ready for this?"
Haroku's signature calm was firmly in place, his confidence completely intact despite the paralyzing danger ahead. "Just focus on your parts," he said evenly. "Once you weaken the bastard, I'll open the gate and drag it straight to hell."
The plan was set.
We stepped out of the car and into the freezing, suffocating air of the loop. The silence was absolute, pressing against my eardrums like a physical weight. I could feel the invisible eyes of the forest locked onto us from every conceivable angle.
Makeno took the lead. She raised her pale hand, her aura flaring into a soft, visible mist as she locked onto the creeping dread ahead of us.
"Stay still..." she whispered under her breath.
But the entity was impossibly fast. The air rippled, and her energy dispersed harmlessly into the empty road. She staggered back, her eyes wide with surprise. "It's faster than I expected," she muttered.
"Try again!" I barked. "Don't lose focus!"
She nodded, her jaw set. The pressure in the air spiked as her aura burned brighter, distorting the space around her. She threw her hand forward, releasing a concentrated wave of spectral force.
A sudden shriek echoed through the trees as the unseen entity materialized, instantly paralyzed in the middle of the road.
"Got it!" Makeno shouted.
I didn't waste a single heartbeat. I drew one of my legendary papers—ancient, potent seals inscribed with binding arrays.
Channeling my spiritual energy, I watched the intricate symbols ignite with a searing light against the parchment. With a precise flick of my wrist, I threw it. The paper cut through the air and slapped squarely onto the frozen spirit's chest.
"Sealing initiated!" I yelled. Spectral chains erupted from the seal, violently binding the creature's limbs and restricting it even further.
"Now, Haroku!"
Haroku stepped up, his hands outstretched. "This is my part," he declared. "Back to where you belong."
Beneath the struggling spirit, the asphalt melted into a swirling vortex of pitch-black energy. A void. The abyss snapped open, and in a split second, the spirit was violently sucked downward.
The portal snapped shut.
Silence crashed back down on us. For a long moment, nobody dared to breathe.
Then, I let out a breathless, shaky laugh.
"Man... that was so easy," I muttered, wiping cold sweat from my forehead, a massive wave of relief washing over me. "Easiest hunt I've ever seen."
Haroku cracked a faint smile, and even Makeno's tense shoulders finally dropped.
Then, the laughter started.
HAHAHAHA...
It was a booming, echoing sound that grated against my skull—loud, freezing cold, and dripping with pure mockery.
All three of us froze. My smile vanished instantly.
"You really think I lost?" the voice sneered, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.
Haroku spun around, his eyes frantically scanning the dark tree line. "What the...?" he muttered.
"I thought you were smarter than this," the voice continued, savoring the terror in the air. "But in the end... you are just kids."
My heart hammered aggressively against my ribs.
"The spirit you just trapped..." The voice paused for a split second, twisting the knife of suspense. "...was just my illusion."
"Huh?" Haroku's eyes widened in absolute shock.
Before we could even process the words, the shadows behind Makeno violently exploded. A monstrous, dark force seized her, yanking her backward.
Makeno let out a blood-curdling scream.
"MAKENO!" I roared, lunging forward.
But I was too late. The air tore open behind her—a jagged, bleeding tear in reality. In less than a second, she was dragged into the abyssal rift, and the portal slammed shut, erasing her from the road entirely.
She was trapped in hell.
"No..." I whispered, my voice shaking as the gravity of the loss hit me.
Haroku locked his jaw, his fists trembling at his sides. "This is bad."
I forced my panic down, clamping a heavy lid over my racing emotions. "This isn't a normal spirit," I said, my voice dropping to a harsh, deadly serious whisper. "It's an illusionary master. We can't defeat it easily."
"Yeah... you're right," Haroku agreed, his tone entirely stripped of its usual ease.
The atmosphere grew suffocatingly heavy. Before we could even formulate a counterattack, the spirit lunged.
A massive kinetic force barreled straight toward Haroku.
"Not again!" Haroku yelled. He slammed his hands down, ripping open another dark portal to intercept the distortion. "Got you this time!"
The rushing force plunged into his void. For half a second, it looked like a success. But then the portal flickered and died, and the entity reformed instantly, completely unaffected by the trap.
"It's... another illusion," Haroku gasped in disbelief.
My mind raced, calculating the impossibilities. "We're surrounded," I warned.
And then we saw them.
Spirits. Hundreds of them.
One by one, pale, twisted figures stepped out of the tree line. Then dozens. Then hundreds. The numbers climbed at a terrifying rate—one hundred, two hundred, three hundred... Within seconds, there were well over four hundred identical, nightmarish spirits enclosing us in a massive, inescapable ring.
But the truly terrifying part wasn't the sheer volume. It was the horrific realization that only one of them was the real spirit. The rest were flawless illusions.
Every single one of them looked real. Every movement carried the same lethal intent. The pressure of their combined auras was agonizingly overwhelming.
The horde began to move. Slowly at first, and then with a sudden, violent speed, they attacked from every direction.
Haroku narrowly dodged a sweeping claw, ducking another strike immediately after.
"There are too many!" he screamed over the chaos.
I parried a spectral blow, my own strength failing to keep up with the onslaught.
"We can't keep fighting like this!" Haroku shouted.
I took a deep, jagged breath.
"No... we don't fight all of them," I said.
Haroku shot me a desperate look. "Then what?!"
My eyes narrowed into a lethal glare. "We eliminate them."
I reached deep into my coat and pulled out a different seal. The parchment was heavier, laced with intricate, high-level arrays. "This is my 6th-rank paper," I declared.
Haroku's eyes widened in sheer disbelief as he evaded another phantom attack. "Are you serious?!"
"Yes," I replied coldly. "This will clear the board."
Without a second of hesitation, I activated the talisman. The ancient runes ignited with a blinding, searing light. The energy radiating from it was incredibly oppressive, a localized storm of spiritual power far beyond anything I had used before.
"Step back!" I commanded.
Haroku threw himself out of the blast radius.
I hurled the paper high into the pitch-black sky.
For a fraction of a second, the world went completely silent.
Then—BOOM.
A colossal shockwave of pure, blinding energy detonated outward. It ripped through the air in a perfect sphere, slamming into the horde of spirits. The moment the light touched them, the illusions violently dissolved into nothingness. One hundred... two hundred... three hundred vanished in the blink of an eye.
When the blinding light faded, the road was vastly clearer. Out of the massive army, only a handful of figures remained standing.
Haroku staggered to his feet, panting heavily. "Did we... did we get it?"
I stared intently at the remaining figures, my chest heaving. The heavy dread in my stomach hadn't lifted.
"No..." I said slowly, the word tasting like ash in my mouth.
Haroku frowned, wiping grime from his face. "What do you mean?"
I clenched my fists so hard my nails dug into my palms.
"They were all illusions."
A dead, freezing silence crashed back down on Hinamoruka Hills.
The real spirit was still out there. Hidden.