Denji didn't care about definitions of "noble" or "low-brow" motivations.
Even with one of his arms severed in the clash, he forced his breaking system to charge forward toward the Leech Devil.
"Everyone looks down on the drivers powering my gears..."
"What revenge..."
"What protecting your household..."
"What saving an feline..."
"This and that..."
"Your dreams are all grand, good for you guys!"
"How about we put them to the test?! A Battle of Dreams!"
Denji, his face fully coated in blood, charged forward with unhinged fury, delivering a statement that sent readers into fits of laughter:
"If I manage to execute you! That means your grand dream is worth less than touching a pair of boobs!"
But right before Denji could make direct contact with the monster or use the chainsaw growing from his head...
Squish,!
A slender, meat-colored tongue shot forward first, running directly through Denji's lower abdomen.
It was the Leech Devil's tongue.
Now, Denji truly held zero residual strength to fight back.
He hung suspended in mid-air, like a slab of barbecue skewered on the tip of the Leech Devil's repulsive, elongated muscle.
The Leech Devil spread its jaws wide, offering an polite statement: "I am going to begin consuming now!"
It prepared to swallow Denji whole.
But in that exact moment, on the ledge of an adjacent skyscraper, a slender hand appeared.
The hand formed a specific gesture: the index and pinky fingers extended fully, while the middle and ring fingers pressed flat against the thumb.
The gesture was pointed directly at the Leech Devil preparing to absorb its meal.
The figure behind the hand was... Aki Hayakawa!
He held the posture, closing one eye to focus on the target.
While Shuu Fumiya looked at the page completely flat-footed regarding the purpose, the next second detonated into action.
"Kon,!"
Aki whispered the word softly.
The next second...
A massive, towering Fox Devil's head erupted directly from the air!
In one cinematic snap, the giant fox clamped its jaws shut, completely severing the Leech Devil's head off its neck!
The clamp didn't absorb Denji.
The boy's body went flying through the air from the kinetic force, crashing into safety boards.
Inside the fox's jaws, the decapitated head of the Leech Devil still wore an expression of flat-footed confusion: "Huh?"
Simultaneously, following Aki's arrival, three fresh silhouettes holding Public Safety badges stepped into the alleyway.
One was a mature man bearing a heavy scar running down his cheek, though his posture looked tightly wound and anxious.
The other two were women. One looked petite, innocent, and terrified, wearing a tiny clip inside her hair.
The final woman standing in the corridor looked highly independent.
She had short, razor-cut black locks and wore a dark eyepatch covering her right eye.
She was carrying a different aura,older, highly seasoned, and completely calm compared to the rookies.
Aki looked at the headless mass of the Leech Devil and issued the orders:
"The Leech Devil is officially executed."
"Rookies, focus on evacuating the survivors and civilians."
"Yes, sir!"
The two clearly junior Hunters answered in unison, rushing forward.
Aki turned toward the short-haired woman. "Himeno-senpai, could you support guard duty for any residual threats?"
"No problem at all," Himeno answered with an easy, confident smile.
The chapter concluded with Denji, Power, and the cat being loaded into ambulance transports, heading toward medical allocation.
---
Shuu Fumiya closed the entry, finding the chapter highly engaging.
'Haha, while it isn't as mechanically dense as Edgerunners, Chainsaw Man is hilarious. He is transitioning from heavy-pacing into high-level comedy dynamics.'
His thought returned to Denji's statement about dreams holding no objective hierarchy.
Regardless of whether a dream was grand, borderline pathetic, or fully low-brow, it was still a dream sitting in the center of a human soul.
It was a fraction of basic biology, meaning no moral score existed above it. Only the depth of the obsession mattered.
Shuu Fumiya set his sights on the next comic issue. He'd recently discovered another promising serialization, titled The Divine Race.
Following Chapter Two, The Divine Race finally unrolled the background files containing its worldbuilding.
Cassell College, the elite academy recruiting the high school loser Kaito, was anything but a standard boarding house for the rich.
The students standing inside were absolute powerhouses.
Every student carried components of divine bloodlines inside their biology,making them hybrids or Half-Bloods.
Inside the campus bounds, once you awakened your bloodline, even a seemingly delicate girl could deliver slam-dunks, clear world-record running grids, and lift weights with ease.
The unhinged logic of the college believed that eons ago, Gods ruled the earth.
And humanity had functioned like suffering workers beneath their heels.
But the college directors believed the dominant deities were merely sitting in a sleep status, waiting to strike back and retry dominative control over modern human societies.
Possessing both human souls and superhuman, half-god bloodlines, the task of preventing Divine resurrections fell upon their shoulders.
They trained the best students and deployed them across the globe, monitoring any divine activity and initiating god-slaying directives wherever necessary, keeping the ancient gods locked inside sleep.
And the chronic loser, Kaito, had been flagged by the system as the pinnacle specimen,an S-Rank Hybrid.
The concept offered a satisfying payoff rate.
While the loser template occasionally felt self-pitying to read, the overall visual impact was flawless.
Following the initial slow-burner launch, The Divine Race had triggered a massive rally on the charts, breaking directly into the number ten slot.
While it stood beneath Chainsaw Man, it carried zero residual boost from previous awards.
And over the last two months, Aoyama's residual heat hadn't cooled down.
That was because the Edgerunners anime was currently sitting inside active workstations, keeping the fanbase engaged.
Inside this week's issue of The Divine Race, the chronic loser hit a peak.
Standing inside the campus during an active exercise, Kaito witnessed his upperclassman, Nono, getting "killed" by a random shot.
The visual shock awakened his internal override.
Using the hand-eye mechanics he'd trained playing StarCraft, he drew two pistols and shot down the two major campus titans standing rule over the boards,Caesar Gattuso, head of the Student Council, and Satoshi, head of the Lionheart Society.
While later revealed to be "Freedom Day",an annual simulated combat exercise where rounds were non-lethal, and Nono wasn't actually dead,the incident threw Kaito into overnight fame.
Readers knew exactly how dense he was now: the single S-Rank standing in that position for over a decade inside Cassell.
'The Divine Race is engaging. It even carries a slight sci-fi frequency to it,' Shuu Fumiya thought with interest.
The Half-Bloods relied heavily on firearms and scientific engineering to hunt deities. It made him curious about the mechanics of the combat.
'Among the recent batches, the only title matching speed with Chainsaw Man is this Divine Race.'
'One focusing on Gods, the other on Devils. A perfect match frequency,' Shuu Fumiya smiled pleasantly to himself.
[Translated and Rewritten by Shika_Kagura]
T/N: just... ignore the divine race bs.