Crowds packed the Tokyo Mall, a shifting sea of shoulders and overlapping chatter. Navigating through the dense throngs, Riko kept his eyes peeled, his patience wearing thinner with every passing minute.
Nearby, a small boy suddenly darted ahead into the crowd. His mother's panicked voice cut through the noise. "Toma! Stop right there; don't run so fast!"
"Gojoru, if you're out there somewhere, just show yourself already," Riko muttered under his breath. He shifted his weight, rubbing the back of his aching calf. Three full laps around this entire floor. My legs are officially starting to hate me.
Leaning over the glass railing, he stared down at the lower levels. The view was overwhelming—hundreds of anonymous heads moving in every direction like ants.
"Good grief... look at all these people. How am I supposed to spot a single guy with white hair in a mess like this? Where the hell is he?"
Riko let out a heavy, dragging sigh, his shoulders slumping in pure exhaustion. This is hopeless. I seriously hope Maria had better luck finding him.
Giving up on the lower levels, he rode the escalator up to the fifth floor, winding his way into the clothing department. Racks of designer apparel and display cases blurred past as he walked, a dry, sarcastic smirk forming on his lips.
"Alright, Gojoru," he murmured ironically to himself. "Either you step out right now, or I'm marching straight to the information desk. I will personally broadcast it over the loudspeakers: 'Searching for Gojoru, the only man alive who knows how to get lost better than anyone else.'"
Suddenly, his eyes caught a tall, bone-pale figure standing rigidly near a clothing display. Riko's face lit up as he hurried forward. "Finally, I found you—"
His voice died instantly in his throat.
Stopping dead in his tracks, Riko stared blankly at the plastic, featureless face of a fashion mannequin. A muscle twitched violently in his jaw. Burying his face in his palm, he let out a miserable, frustrated groan.
*Are you kidding me right now? It's just a damn mannequin wearing clothes.*
Turning back from the mannequin, Riko found his path abruptly blocked by a young man who had materialized out of the crowd. The stranger locked eyes with him, a smug, condescending grin spreading across his face.
"Well, well, well, Riko, sweetheart..." the guy drawled, his voice dripping with mockery. "Did you expect to find the 'Abyss' in a place like this? I'm sorry to disappoint you, but the only thing you've found is me."
Riko stiffened, his knuckles whitening as he instinctively braced himself. "Who the hell are you?"
Letting out a sharp, sudden laugh, the boy leaned in closer, completely disregarding Riko's personal space. "You can call me Ezo. A professional Devil Hunter. Yeah... Special Grade, to be exact."
Special Grade? Riko's heart hammered violently against his ribs. Retreating andevil hunter.ep backward, he raised his hands defensively. "Look, dude, you've got the wrong guy."
"I never find the wrong person," Ezo replied, his gaze locked onto Riko's moving feet. "What I am looking for, though, is a bit of style. A dance. What do you say? Do you know how to dance?"
"My friend, I have no idea what you're even talking about," Riko insisted, a cold sweat breaking out at the nape of his neck. "I'm just an ordinary civilian."
Ezo's eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. "We'll see about that."
A violent detonation suddenly rocked the entire mall, cutting the conversation short. Gigantic, roaring sheets of dark orange flame blew violently outward from the fifth floor, shattering the glass storefronts and sending a shockwave through the upper levels.
The chaotic chatter of the mall died instantly as hundreds of heads snapped upward in absolute terror, staring at the blazing inferno above.
Riko stared at the sudden destruction in complete shock, his breath catching in his throat. *What the hell is going on up there? Is that where I just was?*
Before he could even process the explosion, the sharp whistle of displaced air sliced through the panic directly behind him. A heavy fist cleaved forward from the shadows, escaping into a brutal, high-velocity strike aimed straight at his blind spot.
"Good, good," Ezo sneered, his eyes flashing with manic excitement. "Let's see you escape this."
[Flame of Hell]
A colossal torrent of fire erupted from his open palm, unleashing a blinding flash that completely whited out the environment. An instant later, a catastrophic detonation tore the structural pillars apart, triggering a massive thermonuclear shockwave.
A titanic mushroom cloud of roaring fire climbed violently into the night sky, painting the crumbling ruins of the Tokyo Mall in an intense, terrifying hue of burning blue and deep orange. The catastrophic inferno swallowed the entire complex whole.
Distant sirens began to wail frantically through the smoke as a tide of fleeing citizens choked the surrounding streets, trampling over debris in absolute panic.
Scrambling through the settling ash, a trembling woman looked up just in time to see Ezo stepping out of the blazing heat. Her legs gave out completely under the sheer weight of her terror, pinning her to the pavement.
Stepping right past her without a single glance, Ezo completely ignored her presence.
His eyes scanned the burning, collapsed wreckage of the upper floors, his voice carrying over the crackle of the flames. "Well, well... don't tell me you want to play cat and mouse. Come out!"
Stumbling through the billowing black smoke, Riko coughed violently, fresh blood dripping from his split lip. His legs gave out, forcing him to slump his battered body against a flight of shattered concrete stairs that Ezo had pulverized moments before.
Footsteps crunched on the loose gravel as Ezo materialized from the haze, looking down at his wounded prey with an insufferable smirk. "Come on now, don't be so boring. Get up."
Ezo tapped his chin in mock realization, letting out a condescending chuckle. "Oh, right... I totally forgot. Your little trick just lets you hear things from far away, doesn't it? You can't actually do anything in a real fight. Wow. But hey, don't worry—I'll gladly end your misery right now."
Trembling from head to toe, Riko gripped his torso as a wave of blinding agony threatened to swallow him whole. He was losing control of his body, the intense physical pain slowly conquering his remaining strength.
"Seriously? It's pretty pathetic to watch you fold like this in front of my Devil Flame," Ezo taunted, closing the distance with slow, deliberate steps. "Are you really just going to give up? Don't be such a quick loser. Come on, stand up!"
A low, wheezing laugh escaped Riko's throat, his bloody lips curling into a sudden, defiant smile.
*You absolute moron. You completely miscalculated.*
Snapping his leg upward with explosive, sudden precision, Riko drove a brutal kick straight into the center of Ezo's chest, right over his heart.
"You've got the wrong guy, you idiot!" Riko barked, his voice cutting through the smoke. "My ability is Energy Scan. I can smell exactly how arrogant you think you are, and I can see right through your pathetic facade."
"My mistake. Seriously, I haven't botched an assignment in six years," Ezo sighed, a mockingly self-deprecating smile playing on his lips. "I suppose I'll have to be a bit sharper this time."
Flicking his wrist downward before snapping it back up, he unleashed a towering wall of fire. The flames surged forward like a tidal wave, incinerating everything in their path and trapping Riko within a ring of absolute inferno.
"I've slaughtered countless targets, but I've never executed anyone quite like you," Ezo chuckled, watching Riko through the shimmering heat. "You really are fascinating. I love how you try to sniff your way out of everything. Tell me... what does carbon monoxide smell like to you? The Silent Killer."
Thick, invisible toxins instantly flooded the enclosed space. Trapped within the burning circle, Riko began to choke, his lungs desperately rejecting the completely odorless, unseen gas.
Clawing at his throat, his vision blurred as his face turned a deep, suffocating shade of blue. He stumbled backward, desperately searching for an escape route through the roaring fire, but Ezo was already locking onto his retreating form.
Raising his right hand, Ezo aimed directly at Riko's chest, slowly curling three fingers down into his palm.
"Respect the hierarchy of admin."
[Flame Fact]
Two hyper-condensed darts of pure, volatile flame shot from his remaining fingers. The fiery projectiles pierced straight into Riko's body, triggering a catastrophic secondary explosion that blew the entire area to pieces.
As the smoke slowly drifted away, Riko's motionless body came into view on the shattered floor. Severe burns covered his entire neck, and the right side of his face was reduced to a raw, gruesome ruin.
Staring down at the devastation, Ezo whispered with a sick fascination. "Beautiful charcoal... Ah, mission accomplished."
He turned on his heel to walk away, but his boots suddenly froze against the concrete. An absolute, suffocating pressure seized the air for no apparent reason, forcing his gaze to snap instantly toward the shadows.
Ezo's breath hitched in his throat. "Eh...?"
Stepping out from the darkness was Gojoru Tsuyoi. Ezo locked his eyes onto the newcomer, his smug composure completely vanishing as Gojoru returned the stare with a gaze that was dead and unblinking.
"I returned to this cursed line of work for one reason only—because people actually need help," Gojoru said, his voice dropping into a dangerously quiet register that made the air vibrate. "But trash like you makes me regret the exact hour and second I came back."
"What... the legendary sorcerer? The highest-ranking mage?" Ezo stammered, his smug composure completely evaporating as he instinctively recoiled. "Listen to me, I have a—"
Before the words could even clear his mouth, Gojoru closed the distance in a terrifying blur. His right fist cleaved through the smoky air, carrying a blinding flare of compressed heat.
[Lighter Flash]
The devastating strike connected dead center against Ezo's jaw, the sheer velocity slamming him backward as his boots skidded violently across the concrete debris.
Wiping a smear of crimson from his split lip, Ezo's face contorted into a manic, furious snarl. "You made a massive mistake, you hear me?!" he screamed, his voice cracking with rage. "I didn't even want to deal with you! I just wanted to leave! You're going to pay for this!"
Gojoru's dead eyes didn't even flicker. "It's bad enough I returned to the shittiest job in the world," he muttered, the surrounding temperature plummeting instantly. "Now I have to tolerate your bullshit too? Shut up and die."
A suffocating pressure cloaked his hands as he tightly clenched his fists. Activating his ninjutsu, the sheer density of his rising aura caused the asphalt beneath his boots to spiderweb and crack.