Their footsteps were the only sound echoing in the oppressive, deathly still corridor of the hospital.
Natsume walked at the front, still holding on to Kaguya, who remained stuck in Steam Princess mode, mentally frozen and stumbling along on autopilot. Yashiro hugged her little backpack, looking around with open curiosity at this space so heavily saturated with cursed energy and resentment.
Ai followed close behind Kaguya. Her face was still pale, but after seeing Teikiri Oiran's shameless, bully the weak and fear the strong performance, the pure terror she had felt toward the unknown had shifted into something more complicated, replaced by a quiet trust in Natsume's overwhelming strength.
As long as she stayed near this man, it felt like there was nothing she really needed to fear.
"Careful."
Natsume suddenly stopped walking and spoke in a quiet reminder.
A short distance ahead, a boy in Shuchiin's high school uniform stood in the middle of the corridor with his back to them, motionless, facing the door of a ward.
"T, that is, he is a student from our school?!" Kaguya snapped out of her dazed shyness and gasped. "Was he dragged in here too?"
"No." Natsume shook his head. Through the Six Eyes, the illusion had already been laid bare. "That is not a person. Just a phantom formed from the cursed energy and resentment in this space."
Before he finished speaking, he did not even bother to lift a hand properly. He simply gathered a thread of pure cursed energy at his fingertip and flicked it lightly through the air.
Pop.
With a sound like a bubble bursting, the student's form twisted violently, glitching like a broken projection, then unraveled into a wisp of black smoke and vanished.
"Oh… so it is food."
Watching this, Yashiro's eyes lit up.
She could clearly feel the pure malice that had spilled out for a brief moment when the phantom was shattered.
For her graduates, this kind of malice was the perfect source of nourishment.
"Natsume-sama," she looked up at him with an eager gaze, "can you leave these things to me? My children are all hungry."
Natsume glanced at the excited girl, then at the closed ward doors lining both sides of the corridor, each one hiding who knew how many similar phantoms, and nodded.
"Fine. Make it quick."
He was happy to conserve his own effort, and it was a good chance to let Yashiro's graduates replenish their strength.
"Yes."
With his permission, Yashiro actually bounced on the spot in excitement.
She waved her small hand and gave the order to begin the feast.
"Go, Ghost Sergeant, Teikiri Oiran. Clean this place out."
"As you command, young lady."
"Hehehe… so I can finally eat?"
With two very different replies, the two powerful spirits turned into twin black vortices, shooting toward the wards on either side of the corridor with overwhelming force.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The Ghost Sergeant and the horde of foreign soldiers behind him became a brutal breach team, kicking down each closed door with the simplest, most violent method. Teikiri Oiran followed right behind them. With a flick of her sumptuous sleeve, waves of blazing butterflies surged into the rooms like a swarm descending on prey.
One shriek after another tore out from the wards.
Phantoms of doctors, nurses and patients, all shaped from resentment, were torn apart or drained dry in an instant under the combined assault of the two graduates. They did not stand a chance.
What truly made Kaguya and Ai's scalps crawl was what happened afterward.
Every time a ward was completely cleared of phantoms, the room itself, along with its walls and door, faded without a sound from the corridor, faded away as if they had been erased from existence.
It was as if those wards had never existed at all.
In just a few minutes, the long corridor filled with dozens of rooms had been stripped nearly bare. Only at the far end, one single ward remained. Its walls were streaked with stains and dried blood, its appearance completely different from the others.
A special ward.
Through the large, cracked glass panel set in the door, they could clearly see a fierce battle unfolding inside.
Two boys and a girl in unfamiliar black school uniforms were locked in a desperate fight for their lives with a shadowy figure wreathed entirely in black mist, its true shape impossible to make out.
The orange haired girl among them seemed to be injured. She was clutching her arm, half kneeling on the floor, breathing hard.
"Oh? Looks like the main course is inside."
Yashiro licked her lips, eyes gleaming as she stared at the ghostly shadow radiating powerful malice within the special ward.