A single strike — heavily wounding, perhaps even outright killing, a Fourth Sequence Aberrant.
But the girl's face held no joy.
Not even a trace of color.
The Sword of Erasure had resonated with her, yes — but that didn't mean she was exempt from paying the price of drawing it.
Su Yuzu's pinky fingers were trembling at the tips.
She stared down, cold and hollow, at the tall and voluptuous woman pinned beneath her.
The chest had been split open. The heart, skewered.
Those dark golden vertical pupils — fierce and wild just moments before — slowly dimmed, gazing up at the sky in near silence.
The moon tonight... it must truly be full.
"It... it is," Su Yuzu said.
"You have come to rule."
The woman's face withered in an instant.
When Aberrants die, they return to the Abyss.
Su Yuzu's body lurched sharply. She watched the woman beneath her dissolve into drifting motes of black-violet light.
Scattered specks of black-violet radiance seeped into the earth.
In that final instant before the dark golden vertical pupils went dark — Su Yuzu realized the woman was smiling.
"Since you have...
"Since you have come to rule.
"Why not ascend the Throne?"
Thud. Thud.
The moment that faint voice sounded, Su Yuzu felt as though an invisible hand had closed around her heart.
"Yuzu...
"Yuzu." Soga Yura's voice came from behind Su Yuzu — thick with barely-held-back tears.
Propping up Sakura Mai, Soga Yura pressed her hand desperately over the wound that wouldn't stop bleeding, and all at once she completely lost her head.
She was frantically looking for someone to anchor herself to.
For Soga Yura, Yuzu was above all things. Yuzu was the sky itself.
Second only to Yuzu — by just the tiniest, most infinitesimal margin — was her roommate and best friend, Sakura Mai.
"Sakura...
"Sakura's losing so much blood," she breathed. "I can't stop it."
"Don't come over here!!!" Su Yuzu spun around, eyes wide, and shouted.
Soga Yura froze mid-step, not quite processing it in time.
The next second — the entire center of Tsukimisato simply collapsed.
All the girls plunged downward together.
Dai Ling — during her battle with the girls, or perhaps long before that — had already hollowed out nearly the entire center of Tsukimisato from below. Like an enormous pit.
The only reason the ground had held its shape at all was because Dai Ling's power had been propping it up from beneath.
Even in death, she had managed to set one last trap for Su Yuzu.
The moment Dai Ling died, the earth lost its source of support — and collapsed.
As the ground gave way beneath her, Su Yuzu caught sight of something glinting with light right at the spot where Dai Ling's heart had been pierced.
Falling, she closed her hand around it.
She kicked off the Sword of Erasure with every ounce of strength she had left, and reached out desperately to grab Soga Yura on the way down.
More than the collapsing earth — there was something else Su Yuzu was worried about.
The erosion domain. It hadn't disappeared.
With Dai Ling's death, the erosion domain should have vanished — but it hadn't.
On the contrary —
Thud. Thud!!!
Thud. Thud. Thud!!!
The entire earth seemed to shudder — a rhythmic tremor that echoed like the chambers of a giant's heart.
She was closing in on Soga Yura fast, plunging through the air.
Su Yuzu threw open her Material Inventory and dumped out every piece of bedding, every scrap of cloth — anything that could cushion the impact — beneath her.
Thank goodness she'd hoarded so much in her inventory.
And then —
Just before they hit the bottom, Su Yuzu looked at Soga Yura and Sakura Mai falling alongside her, and threw her arms tightly around Soga Yura.
A terrifying mental storm erupted in an instant.
Sakura Mai had only just drawn the Sword of Erasure moments ago — her Sword of Will was still in a state of utter exhaustion. Those jade-clear eyes of hers filled with the expression of someone who'd been dealt the worst hand in the universe — and then she passed out.
Thud.
A deep, muffled impact. Su Yuzu, arms locked around Soga Yura, crashed into a sea of colorful, girl-scented softness.
"Yuzu...
"YUZU WAAAAAH!!!" The mental storm was still raging — Soga Yura, somehow miraculously uninjured, stared at the girl cushioning her fall and immediately panicked.
Su Yuzu's consciousness was on the verge of blacking out.
With the very last of her strength, she opened her Material Inventory, found the [Medical Unit], and tapped confirm — for herself and for Sakura Mai.
Soga Yura watched, wide-eyed, as the wounds on the girls around her and beneath her sealed themselves shut like a miracle.
"Get off me... first," Su Yuzu wheezed, looking up at Soga Yura still draped across her as the mental storm continued to surge. If it kept going like this, Sister Mai was going to get her brain rattled into mush.
"Ah.
"R-right, right!" Soga Yura scrambled to her feet.
But the moment Soga Yura stood — Su Yuzu's expression changed.
Noticing the look on Su Yuzu's face, Soga Yura slowly turned around.
And then — stopped dead.
Behind them stood an enormous cylindrical incubation pod.
It was filled to the brim with a transparent green liquid that glowed faintly in the darkness.
And inside the pod — a small, delicate girl was fixed at its very center.
Restraining devices gleamed with a dull metallic luster all across her body.
Around her neck was a collar of strange design, fitted with needles and tubes set in place for injection.
Inside the tubes was a liquid — crimson as blood, nothing like the thick black ichor of an Aberrant — and the tubes were slowly, steadily advancing, pushing that crimson fluid into the girl's neck.
"Zero!?!" Su Yuzu's whole body jolted in alarm.
In all the time they'd spent together, she had come to accept that absurdly well-behaved little cat.
The little cat who always wanted to curl up in her lap and be coddled.
The little cat who, whenever she got crepes or apple pie she liked, would always try to feed Su Yuzu first.
The little cat whose every move was governed by obedience to Su Yuzu's commands — the little cat who even wanted to be carried to the bathroom.
The little cat who every single morning was already there when Su Yuzu woke up, nuzzling sweetly against her chest, going nyaa~ nyaa~~.
"You absolute—!!!" Su Yuzu let go and looked down at what she had grabbed during the fall — the thing that had dropped from Dai Ling's body.
She stowed it into her Material Inventory, and her expression turned ashen.
It was a switch.
Bound to Dai Ling's heart. Using the signal of her life and death as a trigger.
The moment Dai Ling was killed — the switch would activate, opening the underground laboratory and triggering the device around Zero's neck.
Thud. Thud.
Thud. Thud.
A heartbeat echoed through the underground space.
The frail girl restrained inside the pod — her eyes snapped open. Dark golden vertical pupils blazed to life, illuminating the underground chamber.
The girl's lips parted. Her voice rang out, solemn and resonant as a bronze bell.
"Since you have come to rule.
"Why not ascend the Throne?"
[Wind — Fire — Mountain — Zero!]
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