"The blade on that evil spirit's chainsaw… snapped."
Lying prone at the edge of the hole, Yayoi Hozuki had seen everything that happened in the parking garage below.
Red Hood recovering in an instant did not surprise her all that much. After all, during the earlier fight against the baby evil spirit, "Angel-sama," Red Hood had already shown that ability once before.
Yayoi Hozuki did not know about [Requiem], which nullified incapacitation for three turns, or [Soul Light], which restored HP through mana. She merely assumed Red Hood possessed an immortal body similar to The Imprisoned Demon Sergeant who Died for his Country.
The Imprisoned Demon Sergeant who Died for his Country possessed overwhelming regenerative powers, so powerful they bordered on immortality. While alive, he had survived all the way to the end of the war thanks to that ability, then died a natural death. After death, the ghosts of enemy soldiers ceaselessly devoured his soul, preventing him from attaining Buddhahood. Yet because of that same immortal body, he could never truly be killed. In the end, his one wish had been for someone to finally put him down for real.
But what caught Yayoi Hozuki's attention even more was the saw blade that had suddenly broken.
"As expected. That worked."
Xu Fu smiled, as though she had anticipated this all along.
The moment Red Hood drew the Knight's Sword, Xu Fu understood what she was trying to do.
In Black Souls II, the Knight's Sword was one of the easiest weapons to obtain. If the player chose the Knight class at the start, they got it immediately. Aside from that, it seemed you could also pick one up outside the Duchess's door. If you upgraded it to the maximum level, it would become the Knight King's Sword.
As one of the basic weapons, the Knight's Sword came with two built-in skills: [Disarm] and [Dislodge]. The former reduced the enemy's physical attack, and the latter reduced the enemy's physical defense. Both were extremely useful.
Since that chainsaw was the "key" that would let them leave this haunted space, then of course the first thing to do was figure out how to destroy it.
During the blade lock, Red Hood had used [Disarm] and [Dislodge] several times already. If durability bars had existed here, then the three chainsaws on the evil spirit's head and arm would probably have all been nearly empty by now.
[Red Hood]:I'm waiting for my cooldown. What are you waiting for?
The chainsaw evil spirit frantically reached up and touched its head, utterly unwilling to believe that the blade mounted there had been cut off by Red Hood. But facts were facts. No matter how desperately it denied reality, denial would not change a thing.
It was not some darling of the world's will like Shadow, whose words became law and whose nonsense turned into truth just because the whole world chose to believe it.
Red Hood walked behind the chainsaw evil spirit with calm, steady steps. Even though she had come this close, it still had not noticed her. It remained trapped in disbelief, doubting reality itself.
"…You're not going to keep fighting?"
Only when Red Hood spoke did the chainsaw evil spirit finally snap back to its senses. It whipped around and swung its arm, the wildly spinning chainsaw cleaving toward the Red Hood behind it.
Red Hood's expression did not change. Faced with that blade packed tight with murderous intent, she swung her sword once.
After a brief deadlock, the Knight's Sword cut through the saw blade like it was splitting bamboo.
"Agogog…"
The evil spirit staggered backward a few steps, staring fixedly at the shattered blade as its heart took an utterly devastating blow.
Seeing how pathetic it looked, Red Hood let out a long sigh.
So she had really fought this thing to a standstill?
But thinking about it more carefully, this thing was, at most, nothing more than a psychologically twisted serial killer. It was no famous general, and certainly no great hero. There had never been any reason to expect too much from it, even if it had shown extraordinary fighting ability a moment ago.
When Red Hood opened her eyes again, her gaze had turned ice-cold.
The chainsaw evil spirit instantly caught a whiff of something horribly familiar.
Murderous intent, so dense it was almost tangible.
In that single instant, the evil spirit understood what awaited it.
After all, it loved killing that much.
But when it was the one about to be killed, it became afraid.
"You… you've got to be kidding meeeeeeeeeeee!!"
Beneath that furious roar, what it hid was the lowliest kind of fear—and its ravenous craving for slaughter.
"I don't want to die…! I haven't killed enough yet…! I was still gonna keep slaughtering and slaughtering and slaughtering till I'd had my fill… keep killing, killing, killing, killing, killing, killing—aaaaaaaah!!"
"No more lives… will be lost because of you."
Red Hood let the frenzied black aura whip her cloak about as she raised the Knight's Sword and looked straight at the evil spirit.
"I won't let you kill anyone ever again. Here and now, your sins end."
Red Hood's presence surged higher and higher.
But the evil spirit had already lost all courage to continue fighting. There was only one thought left in its mind now.
Run.
BANG!
With the crack of a gunshot, a bullet pierced the evil spirit's calf just as it was about to flee, throwing off its movement and making it drop to one knee.
Her figure became a red blur. Red Hood flashed to its side as if by teleportation, and the Knight's Sword came down in a brutal slash, severing the evil spirit's last remaining saw blade.
"Noooooooo…!!"
The evil spirit let out a pitiful wail.
But nothing it did could possibly move Red Hood now. Her face remained cold as she cut straight through its head with one clean stroke.
The moment the chainsaw evil spirit was slain by Red Hood, the haunted space began to collapse.
...
By the time Xu Fu and Yayoi Hozuki came back to themselves, the two of them had already returned to the little storage room. In the corner, right in front of Xu Fu, sat a broken chainsaw.
Yayoi Hozuki rolled her neck and looked around.
"…We're back in reality, right?"
"We'll know for sure once we get back to the interrogation room and see whether Keitaro and the others are there. For now, let's deal with this thing first."
Cradling the Red Hood doll in her arms, Xu Fu pointed toward the chainsaw in the corner of the storage room.
The evil spirit hiding inside did not seem to be fully dead yet, but it was extremely weak. Apparently, getting killed that many times in the haunted space had not left it completely unaffected after all.
Naturally, Xu Fu and Yayoi Hozuki had no intention of letting it go. So Yayoi Hozuki summoned Taira no Masakado and had him devour the evil spirit inside the chainsaw.
Once Taira no Masakado had eaten the chainsaw evil spirit completely, the floor and walls around them began trembling for no apparent reason.
"An earthquake?"
"No."
At first Yayoi Hozuki thought it was an earthquake. After all, quakes were common enough in this island nation.
But Xu Fu had already noticed the true source of the trembling.
It was Taira no Masakado.
This was evolution.
A return.
"…"
Taira no Masakado opened his mouth wide, and light wrapped around his body.
At last.
Taira no Masakado was evolving from the growth stage to the mature stage.
"I… can still… go on…"
After evolving, Taira no Masakado was clad in an imperial robe embroidered with cloud-and-dragon patterns, carrying even more majesty than before.
At this stage, Taira no Masakado already possessed power and pressure on par with a Graduate.
But this was still far from his limit.
He had yet to fully recover his strength or his memories.
Every evil spirit had its own unique "ability," or perhaps "curse." Taira no Masakado still had not remembered what curse he possessed, so in battle he still relied mainly on close-quarters combat.
Even though she had not gained another powerful evil spirit, being able to evolve Taira no Masakado to this extent already made the trip more than worthwhile for Yayoi Hozuki.
"Yayoi-chan! Where did you two run off to? We were really worried…"
When Yayoi Hozuki and Xu Fu returned to the interrogation room, they found Keitaro Gentoga and Eiko Hozuki looking like they had been waiting there for quite some time and were starting to get anxious.
To that, Yayoi Hozuki only gave a simple reply.
"Xu Fu and I went on an adventure!"
"No, tell me where you went!"
Before leaving, Yayoi Hozuki had left behind a note.
There had only been one line written on it:
[I'm going on an adventure in the police station with Xu Fu.]
That was all.
Eiko Hozuki and Keitaro Gentoga could more or less guess what kind of "adventure" the note was referring to…
Which only made them worry even more.
"I see, I see. So you two went on an adventure, huh."
One of the officers crouched down in front of Yayoi Hozuki with a gentle smile.
"So… how was the adventure? Was it fun?"
"Mm! It was very fun." Yayoi Hozuki gave a small nod. "My partner leveled up too."
"Is that so? That's wonderful. But even if it's an adventure, you still can't run off on your own, okay? At the very least, you have to tell us first, or bring these two partners of yours with you. Just the two of you is still too dangerous. And besides, there are some areas here you're still too young for. If you decide to work here when you grow up, then those places will open up to you."
The moment he heard Yayoi Hozuki say "leveled up," the officer became even more convinced that the two children had simply been playing make-believe.
After all, when he himself had been a kid, he had often picked up a stick from the ground and pretended he was a police officer. He understood exactly how children thought.
Eiko Hozuki and Keitaro Gentoga both wore rather complicated expressions.
They understood perfectly well that this officer had gotten the wrong idea.
But neither of them had any desire to correct him, so they merely stood by and let the misunderstanding continue smoothly.
What the officers did not know was that those restricted areas had already been visited by Yayoi Hozuki and Xu Fu long ago.
In fact, those were exactly the places they had been aiming for from the start.
So much had happened today, and the statements at the station were finished, so Xu Fu and the others prepared to head home.
At the corner of the hallway, Keitaro Gentoga saw someone walking toward them.
The familiar face made his eyes widen involuntarily.
He had seen that face earlier today.
He had seen the owner of that face have her head cut off by Red Hood.
Keitaro Gentoga sucked in a sharp breath and blurted out without thinking,
"Shami-san…?!"
"Hm?"
The kimono-clad old woman approaching them narrowed her eyes, as though only just noticing Keitaro Gentoga and the others.
"…Yes? What is it? Are you friends of my younger sister's?"
Hearing that, how could Keitaro Gentoga and the others not understand?
This was not Nagiko Shami.
This was Nagiko Shami's older sister.
"Ah… yes, I'm Namiko Shami, Nagiko's older sister. You're the ones who found my sister's body, correct?"
Since a murder had occurred, of course the police would notify the victim's relatives. There was nothing surprising about her showing up at the station.
Keitaro Gentoga and Eiko Hozuki had yet to fully react when Namiko Shami continued,
"No… judging from your reactions, probably not friends… then are you the culprits? In any case, you must have seen the moment she died, right?"
The instant those words came out, Keitaro Gentoga and Eiko Hozuki panicked.
"W-We're not the culprits! We're not the culprits…! Probably. I mean, that should be right…"
"We only met her today…"
Namiko Shami caught the oddity in what they were saying and raised a brow.
"Probably?"
At that moment, Yayoi Hozuki suddenly spoke.
"Why do you think we're the culprits, or at least that we saw the moment she died?"
Hearing that, Namiko Shami pointed at the doll in Yayoi Hozuki's arms and said matter-of-factly,
"You're carrying around something that creepy. Anyone would think that."
"You're a spiritualist too, Granny?"
"I suppose so… Was my sister killed by a spirit?"
"In a manner of speaking."
"In a manner of speaking?"
Namiko Shami froze for a moment.
What exactly was that supposed to mean?
"Before we explain, there's something we need to ask you first."
What came next was better explained by Xu Fu than by Yayoi Hozuki, so Xu Fu stepped forward at that moment.
Namiko Shami's gaze was naturally drawn to her.
Then, as though she had seen something utterly unbelievable, surprise flashed across her face.
"You… How strange. Someone so unusual, and yet I didn't notice you at all just now?"
Hiding her astonishment and puzzlement deep in her eyes, Namiko Shami asked curiously,
"What is it? Go on."
Xu Fu looked at her and asked,
"…Did you know your sister had already been possessed?"
"…"
Namiko Shami fell silent.
After a long while, she slowly closed her eyes, as though she did not want anyone to see what lay in them.
"I knew."
After an evil spirit successfully possessed someone, it could read the memories inside that person's mind.
Because of that, sometimes even the people closest to the victim never realized that the person had already been taken over by an evil spirit.
But spiritualists with Spiritual Sight had a more professional way of telling.
They observed the energy field around the human body.
The life energy that enveloped a person could indeed change with emotion, but after possession, it would differ noticeably from normal.
That was how Namiko Shami had realized her younger sister had been possessed.
That method, however, also had its flaws.
Smarter evil spirits would seek out targets whose energy fields were close in color to their own, using that similarity to deceive a spiritualist's eyes.