Watching Su Yuzu actually reach for the Sword of Erasure, Sakura Mai stumbled and nearly fell — and with every last ounce of strength she had left, she instinctively threw out her hand to stop her.
"Don't—!!!"
"...?"
Shink—
Su Yuzu had already drawn the sword.
Sakura Mai knelt there, head tilted, staring blankly at the red-hot Sword of Erasure now gripped in that girl's hands.
A flicker of bewilderment passed through the Knight Princess's jade-clear eyes.
The Sword of Erasure was the Sakura family's heirloom Holy Relic. To be more precise — it was a cursed relic left behind by a corrupted Aberrant.
It possessed unrivaled, devastating power.
But that power came at a price. As it granted its wielder unmatched strength, it also ravenously devoured their stamina, eroded their mind, and ravaged their life force.
Even Sakura Mai herself could only barely draw it — and only by channeling the power of the Sword of Will to hold its malice at bay.
In all the generations of the Sakura family, only Sakura Mai's mother — Sakura Renxin — had ever been able to ignore the sword's side effects entirely, wielding the Sword of Erasure like a common fire poker.
Beyond that, the Sword of Erasure, which the Sakura family had served for generations, carried strict conditions for use. Anyone who was not a descendant of the Sakura bloodline could not even draw it.
Not even Sakura Mai's father — the once-renowned Sword Princess of Frenzied Assault — had been able to pull the Sword of Erasure from its sheath.
And yet — Sakura Mai stared, dumbstruck, at Su Yuzu charging toward the Aberrant with blade in hand.
Sister Yuzu?
Why does the Sword of Erasure look... more docile in Sister Yuzu's hands than in my own?
The shock was so complete she had even forgotten that her own chest was still pouring blood in steady, welling streams.
During the iron sand storm just moments ago — she had been struck.
But Sakura Mai had forgotten the pain entirely.
She turned her head, almost dazedly, toward Soga Yura — who was staggering over, desperate to wrap her wounds.
The expression on Sakura Mai's face said it all: "So which one of us is actually her sister?"
"Did the Sakura family and the Soga family... intermarry at some point?"
But Su Yuzu — consumed by fury — was not going to look back. She would never see the Knight Princess's utterly lost and helpless expression.
The moment Su Yuzu's hand closed around the scorching Sword of Erasure, her first sensation was not burning heat.
What she felt was that she had taken hold of the Abyss itself.
The will sleeping inside the Sword of Erasure was a dread will — vast and terrible as the Abyss.
Malevolent spirits howled.
Countless demons clambered over one another's bodies and skulls in the depths of the Abyss, shrieking up at the night sky.
Pairs of lantern-like dark golden vertical pupils gleamed and flickered in the darkness.
And at the Side of the Abyss — a girl stood leaning on her sword in silence, her long white hair whipping wildly in the wind.
The girl's eyes were the same: inhuman vertical pupils.
[Erasure!!!]
[Extirpation!!!]
[Tyranny!!!]
Ten thousand demons roared as one.
The red-hot Sword of Erasure in Su Yuzu's hand erupted into a raging, roiling blaze.
The night grew darker.
The erosion domain — already shadowed and dim — seemed to lose even the last traces of light it had clung to.
Even the brilliant light of the full moon could no longer illuminate the earth.
The flickering soulfire cast no light. Instead — it consumed it.
Without the Sword of Will to cloak it, the Sword of Erasure revealed its true face to the world once more — the most vicious and evil thing beneath heaven.
Su Yuzu launched herself at Dai Ling.
The sword — which had blazed with golden light in Sakura Mai's hands, burning fierce and bright — in Su Yuzu's hands looked nothing short of apocalyptic, as if it meant to drive the very world to madness.
That solitary, drifting desolation — cold enough to cut through to the bone.
In the courtyard where Sakura Renxin sat, a girl had been sitting obediently before her, listening as Sakura Renxin described how the ancient sea scorpion had once ruled the oceans and then lost its ecological dominance — when she suddenly turned her gaze toward the center of Tsukimisato, filled with a quiet, deep sorrow.
A grief and desolation almost identical to the lonely despair emanating from the vicious sword in Su Yuzu's hand bloomed from the girl's very being.
If one had to describe the difference between them:
One was drifting through the world — that hollow, bewildered wandering of someone with no one left to turn to.
The other — was the hopeless, mournful sorrow of one who had been cast away by the world entire.
Sakura Renxin panicked.
"The Sword of Erasure!?"
That idiot had only just released the Sword of Erasure once — how was she doing it again!?
Her body and will wouldn't be able to take it.
Sakura Renxin shot to her feet — this time, nothing was going to keep her from going over there.
But — the girl in the white dress gently took hold of Sakura Renxin's hand.
Sakura Renxin glared furiously into the girl's pitch-black eyes, demanding an explanation.
The girl only looked at her quietly. "Horseshoe crabs..."
"Do you think they'd taste good?"
She was going to throttle her.
Sakura Renxin's fist clenched shut.
—
Swinging the Sword of Erasure.
Unlike Sakura Mai, whose every strike blazed as though trying to set the night on fire —
Every slash Su Yuzu made sent black sword light that seemed to swallow everything in its path.
The light didn't travel forward along its arc.
It stopped in place — and devoured the light around it.
The interlocking blades of darkness became a cage, a birdcage of black light that imprisoned Dai Ling and sealed off every last avenue of escape.
Soga Yura struggled to help Sakura Mai to her feet.
The chest wound from the iron sand storm was still streaming blood without end — iron grains had struck her, piercing through into her chest cavity.
Soga Yura reached out in a panic, trying to stanch it. "Where's your mother..." she breathed.
"Where is she right now..."
Sakura Renxin was a Fifth Sequence Healing-type Esper. For a Healing-type Esper at that level, Sakura Mai's injuries were trivial.
Their healing abilities had already reached the threshold of a Medical Unit — and more critically, they could replenish stamina and mental power that even a Medical Unit couldn't restore.
Sakura Mai paid no attention to her wounds whatsoever.
She only stared — with grave and complicated eyes — at the sword Su Yuzu was swinging. The Sword of Erasure in that girl's hands was jubilant, exultant, resonating with her as though it were alive.
Something was laughing. A devil.
The feeling was unlike anything that had ever happened when any other member of the Sakura family gripped the Sword of Erasure. Including Sakura Mai's own mother, Sakura Renxin.
Between them and the Sword of Erasure — it was a simple contract. Wielder and cursed blade.
But in Su Yuzu's hands — the Sword of Erasure was howling with joy. It poured its malicious power into the girl far beyond anything Su Yuzu herself could have drawn forth — a limitless, boundless evil strength.
Su Yuzu crashed into Dai Ling like a missile.
Layer upon layer of stone walls were split apart with contemptuous ease by the Sword of Erasure.
Black flames fanned out behind the girl's waist — terrible dark wings, unfurling.
She would raise the torch of rebellion against the world, and burn everything to ash.
The girl's crimson eyes looked as though they were about to be swallowed entirely by an absolute, lightless black.
She had not yet ascended to the Seat of Karma.
And yet — Dai Ling could already feel the suppressive pressure of a Throne radiating from Su Yuzu's body.
"Is this what you wanted to see?" the girl smiled, swinging the greatsword in her hand.
Dai Ling wanted to flee —
But beneath the seal of that black sword light, there was nowhere left to run.
She could only raise her hand to block — and watch helplessly as that blade, which could cleave through light itself, tore through her right shoulder with effortless contempt.
Su Yuzu's left hand seized her by the collar. A brutal force slammed her to the ground in an instant.
The girl knelt on top of Dai Ling, both hands gripping the Sword of Erasure, raising it high —
Then drove it down with all her weight.
Thud — thud —
A heart convulsed and stopped beating.
Thick, tar-black blood splattered across the girl's face.
"I reign supreme."
____
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