Ryunosuke Uryu sat cross-legged on the blood-stained floor, holding a battered magic book in his hands and frantically flipping through the pages.
"No... still not right... Why can't Mr. Demon hear me?"
He scratched his head in frustration until his gaze landed on a twisted red pattern in the corner of a page.
The annotations in the book were written in an obscure ancient language, detailing marks of contract and domination.
Ryunosuke suddenly slapped his thigh. "Ah! I get it now!"
"How can you tame a wild beast without a leash? If there are no restraints, Mr. Demon will definitely run away the moment he comes out!"
He excitedly picked up his knife, his greedy gaze turning toward Sumire Kamado in the corner.
"Hey, little girl, I just thought of a brilliant idea."
"How about this? I'll carve a cursed seal on your body that can tame Mr. Demon. If it works, you'll get a demon underling of your own. Isn't that great?"
Ryunosuke approached step by step, the smile on his face growing increasingly fanatical.
Sumire Kamado remained silent, refusing to just sit there and await her death.
Although the lingering effects of the drug still made her limbs incredibly heavy, she continued to struggle against her restraints.
'Total Concentration Breathing...'
She chanted silently in her heart, racing against time to seize every opportunity to breathe.
As oxygen penetrated deep into her bloodstream, her stiff muscles slowly began to regain sensation.
"Don't move around. It won't be sacred anymore if I carve it crooked."
Ryunosuke lunged forward, pinning Sumire's abdomen down hard with his knee. His left hand clamped around her wrist like an iron vise, forcefully pressing it against the floor.
"Ugh!" Sumire let out a muffled groan, but she gritted her teeth tightly to keep herself from crying out.
The cold tip of the knife pierced the skin on the back of her hand.
Ryunosuke did not scribble haphazardly as he had done before. Instead, with a focused, almost devout expression, he mimicked the pattern from the book, slicing into the back of Sumire's hand.
Blood welled up, but he turned a blind eye to it, even dipping his fingers in the blood and attempting to smear it deep into the wounds.
The agonizing pain pierced her very core.
Yet, this intense pain became the final spark Sumire needed to break through the shackles of the drug.
'Now!'
In the exact moment Ryunosuke was entirely absorbed in his artistic creation, just as the tip of his knife finished the final stroke.
Sumire's pupils sharply contracted.
The strength she had been accumulating erupted in an instant.
Her legs, previously pinned to the ground, violently curled up before viciously kicking Ryunosuke in the lower abdomen!
"Gah!"
Ryunosuke completely failed to anticipate that this drugged girl still had the strength to fight back. He was sent flying backward by the kick, crashing heavily into the iron shelving unit behind him.
With a loud crash, the bottles and jars on the shelves shattered all over the floor.
"Hah..."
Sumire scrambled to her feet in a disheveled state.
The back of her hand was dripping with blood, the carved wounds radiating a burning pain.
But she had no time to care about that, immediately stumbling toward the exit.
"You... you uncultured brat who doesn't understand art!!"
Ryunosuke's hysterical roar echoed from behind her.
Like an enraged beast, he leaped up from the floor, grabbed a rusty iron pipe, and swung it at her.
The pipe whistled through the air.
Sumire instinctively tried to dodge, but that kick just now had exhausted most of her accumulated stamina, causing her movements to be a beat too slow.
Bang!
The iron pipe smashed ruthlessly into her shoulder.
"Ah!"
Sumire cried out in pain, losing her balance and falling to the side.
And the direction she fell was right toward the summoning circle, which had long since been saturated with blood and reeked of a foul stench.
Thud!
She crashed heavily next to the pile of corpses in the center of the magic circle.
At that exact moment, the wooden butterfly carving slipped out of her pocket, landing squarely in a pool of uncoagulated blood.
"Unforgivable... Unforgivable..."
Ryunosuke dragged the iron pipe along, closing in step by step. The fanaticism in his eyes had completely morphed into murderous intent.
"Since you refuse to accept my goodwill, then turn into rotting meat!!"
He raised the iron pipe high, swinging it down viciously toward Sumire's head!
Sumire raised her bleeding hands and swiftly caught Ryunosuke's iron pipe.
"Die! Die! Die!"
Ryunosuke straddled Sumire, his eyes bloodshot and spit flying from his mouth.
"The one who should die is a piece of trash like you!"
The two grappled with each other, knocking over a nearby table. The ancient book detailing the summoning ritual also fell to the floor, becoming stained with filthy blood.
"I wasn't wrong, your life force is incredibly vigorous! Then I'll just forcefully sacrifice you!"
Ryunosuke brought the pipe down again, striking Sumire's forearm with a sickening, crisp crack.
"Close it, close it, close it, close it. Repeat it four times every time—oh wait, is it five times?"
He pinned Sumire's weakened shoulder with the iron pipe, muttering under his breath.
"Um, when it is filled... destroy it. Is that how it goes?"
However, he was clearly very unfamiliar with this demon-summoning incantation. It was riddled with errors, and he had to think for a long time before uttering each line.
Meanwhile, just outside their field of vision, the wooden butterfly and the ancient book began to continuously flash with bizarre arcs of light in time with his chanting.
"Shut... your mouth!" Sumire grabbed a hairpin belonging to one of the dead girls nearby and stabbed it into the back of Ryunosuke's hand with all her might.
Squelch.
"Ouch!!"
Although the hairpin wasn't sharp, Sumire's brute force still drove it into his flesh, causing his grip on the iron pipe pinning the girl to loosen involuntarily.
The girl attempted to escape once more, her palm pressing down on the wooden butterfly in the pool of blood.
At that very instant.
Buzz—
It was as if some ancient switch had been triggered.
The wooden butterfly suddenly disintegrated on the spot, transforming into a surge of pure, freezing power that followed the trails of blood and rushed directly into the freshly carved wound on the back of Sumire's hand!
Invisible magic circuits seemed to activate within her body, and an unfamiliar yet formidable aura surged beneath her skin.
Although the mark Ryunosuke had carved was a clumsy failure, tonight, with Fuyuki City's spiritual leylines highly active, combined with Sumire's unique constitution and the power of this special butterfly relic...
The fake was transformed into reality.
Boom—!!!
Without warning, a blast of black and red energy erupted within the previously lifeless basement.
The shockwave was so powerful that it sent Ryunosuke and his iron pipe flying, slamming him brutally against the wall.
"Wh-What is that?!" Ryunosuke slid to the floor in terror, staring at the scene before him in disbelief.
The space in the center of the magic circle was violently torn apart by an invisible force.
It was an extremely ominous black rift that could devour even light.
Dark red electrical arcs danced around the rift, crackling loudly as if some terrifying entity was forcefully squeezing its way into this world.
An oppressive weight, so heavy it made it almost impossible to breathe, instantly filled the entire basement.
Sumire curled up in the center of the magic circle, feeling a familiar yet foreign presence gathering above her head.
The presence was as biting as the winter wind.
Yet, it carried a comforting sensation that she had felt countless times from the wooden carving.
Crack—
The black rift completely shattered.
A figure crashed heavily into the center of the magic circle.
Smoke filled the air.
There was no flashy entrance line; the figure even stumbled a bit after landing.
He dropped to one knee, supporting himself with one hand on the ground, seemingly enduring immense pain or dizziness.
"Where is this..."
A hoarse voice rang out, laced with confusion and exhaustion.
He slowly raised his head.
His messy black hair was disheveled, and his pupils were somewhat unfocused, showing that he hadn't yet recovered from the shock of the spacetime turbulence.
His Shihakusho was in tatters, covered in black mud and filth. It was impossible to tell where he had just crawled out from.
It was Asuka.
At the wrong time, in the wrong place, and through the wrong method, he had been forcefully dragged out of the spacetime turbulence as a—
Servant.