"What a grand shrine..." Chika looked at the scene before her and couldn't help but mutter: "It looks a bit like a scene that would only appear in a game."
Actually, the shrine hosting the Obon Festival was also a major local shrine in Chiba, which could already be considered quite grand. However, compared to the architecture in front of them—which could practically be described as ridges and peaks rising one after another—it felt like there was no real difference from a dusty local earth god temple by the roadside.
First came a very slight movement, seeping out from the cracks in the stone steps.
Spookish blue shadows slowly floated up from between the stones, from beneath the lanterns, and from the junction of shadow and light.
They had no clear outlines; they were just unstable clumps of light and shadow, like reflections in water being broken apart and then reassembled, only to continue deforming in the next instant.
Then they began to gather, occupying the steps.
At first, it was just a few scattered wisps wandering along the edges of the stone steps, but soon there were more and more, as if drawn by some unseen force in the dark, beginning to converge toward the stone steps.
The gaps between the lamplights were filled up bit by bit; the blue light and orange fire interlaced, coexisting bizarrely.
Miko took off her glasses, wiped them, and put them back on her face, her expression a bit ugly: "Those spookish blue shadows... I can still see them even while wearing this..."
"The Mystic Eye Killer essentially acts on the wearer, sealing the 'Mystic Eyes' of the person wearing it. But it won't have any effect on things that you 'were supposed to see anyway'."
Asakura explained: "In other words, even if someone is a muggle right now... um," speaking up to this point, he realized that Miko and Chika were not witches and should also be counted within the scope of muggles, so he changed his words: "Even if an ordinary person came, they would still see these things."
"What are these things?"
Chika poked a spookish blue shadow and found that it actually felt subtle to the touch, like touching a bubble with a bit of resilience, and also a bit like jelly: "They actually have collision volume?"
The spookish blue shadow let out a 'pop' sound.
"Oh, it can even make noises, it feels kind of cute?"
The pink-haired girl said in surprise, while the shock she had felt upon seeing the spectacle had already vanished from her face.
It was hard to say whether she was thick-skinned or simply possessed a strong mental capacity for acceptance, but she said: "Are they raw souls?"
The so-called raw souls are a part of the soul of a human or intelligent creature, the kind that is often drawn like a mochi in anime.
"No," Asakura replied, "they are vengeful spirits."
"Eeh-eh-eh-eh?!"
The pink-haired girl paled with fright, her hand still maintaining the posture of poking the blue jelly: "Vengeful spirits? This thing?"
Pop.
The blue jelly said.
Immediately afterward, the phantoms all outside the shrine began to emit 'pop' sounds.
The scene was eerie with a hint of horror, giving one the illusion of being surrounded by cawing crows.
Then they began to draw closer.
Bit by bit, slowly but continuously closing in.
The stone steps were no longer simple stone steps; the blue shadows flowed upon them, covering over them like water. They crawled flat against the ground, some sliding down along the edges of the stone steps, while others poked out part of their forms from the shadows of the lanterns, as if testing, or perhaps measuring.
After barely a few breaths, the steps were densely packed with the figures of these things.
Chika took a step back, pulling away from the swaying spookish blue shadows, her little face full of dread.
"What should we do now?" Miko also asked Asakura worriedly: "They have occupied the mountain path, so we can't go up like this..."
"Though it would be fine to just burn them away directly..."
Asakura looked at those phantoms that had already begun to gather toward them, took a slow breath: "But it just so happens I have a new toy, let's give it a try—"
[Mission accomplished, obtained a new magic spell]
Then he exhaled gently.
At that exact instant—
The air abruptly tightened.
"—[Might]!"
It didn't have the dazzling radiance of the infinitely powerful [Candle], nor was it sinister and terrifying like [Snake].
What the magic spell [Might] initially displayed was only weight.
An indescribable pressure, bypassing Chika, Miko, and the others, spread out in all directions from the center of the mountain path.
It was as if mountains were breathing, or as if the high sky had suddenly pressed down.
The flames in the lanterns suddenly halted; all the light seemed to be pressed down by an invisible hand, standing straight and erect, and even the sound of the waterfall's water became deep and low, as if separated behind a thick curtain of water.
Asakura did not raise his hand.
He didn't even move half a step.
That wave of pressure was not triggered by an action.
Instead, the 'existence' itself was permitted to manifest.
In the next instant, the closest shadows distorted violently, and the originally flowing spookish blue light and shadow suddenly collapsed, as if crushed from above by a colossal force; its outline was pressed flat, and then it began to fracture from the center.
Even for vengeful spirits that had absorbed five hundred years of ritual power, they were far too weak against the power at this moment.
There was no explosion, no struggling.
It was merely, thoroughly, wiped away.
The blue light shattered into tiny specks of light, lingering in the air for less than a breath before completely dissipating.
The shadows behind came to a halt; it was not a voluntary stop, nor had they crashed into an invisible wall of [Scale], but rather they were pressed down.
Like a originally surging flow frozen mid-course, they held their forms in a forward-stretching posture, yet could no longer move forward even a single step.
The pressure continued to diffuse.
It was not a violent impact.
But a continuous, stable suppression.
The gravel on the mountain path vibrated gently, the dust within the crevices of the stone steps was squeezed flat against the ground, and even the temperature in the air felt as though it had been pressed down by a degree.
The shadows began to collapse.
Not all of them.
But starting from the very front, retreating backward layer by layer.
The closer a shadow was to Asakura, the faster it split and ruptured.
Their forms could not be maintained under the pressure; their outlines collapsed like rolled-over ink traces, stretching out, and then abruptly snapping apart.
Some shattered directly into powder.
Some looked as if they were being scorched, their edges emitting unstable flickers, and then the entire clump faded into dimness.
The shadows further back seemed to finally realize something.
The originally converged flow began to lose control.
They no longer moved forward, but abruptly turned toward both sides like a scattered school of fish, frantically fleeing toward the edges of the mountain path; the spookish blue light slid across the stone steps, colliding and misaligning with one another, losing the orderly oppression they originally possessed.
Yet the escape did not go smoothly.
That wave of pressure did not give chase, or rather, this magic spell itself did not possess the concept of chasing.
It merely diffused outward in that manner—slowly, yet unstoppably.
After moving several steps away from Asakura, every single wisp of shadow could still feel that heavy covering; they retreated further and further away, yet were entirely unable to thoroughly rid themselves of that aura from beginning to end.
Some shadows fled into stone crevices.
Some ducked into the dark corners cast by the lanterns.
There were still others that suddenly came to a halt halfway.
They could no longer move.
It was not that they were caught, but that they were forcefully pinned to the ground by the sheer aura.
The pressure dropped a layer deeper.
Like an invisible, colossal hand slowly pressing down from above.
The spookish blue light and shadow on the stone steps were forced flat against the ground, their originally floating forms pressed into a thin layer.
Their outlines trembled, yet they could no longer lift themselves up.
That was not physical strength, but a gap in tiers.
It was an absolute suppression of existence over existence.
The air nearly solidified.
Even the mountain wind looked as though it were pinned in place.
The prostrate shadows trembled upon the stone steps, their forms faint and blurry.
They no longer attempted to draw close, nor did they attempt to flee.
They merely lay prostrate low right there.
Looking exactly as if they were waiting.
And also looking as if they were acknowledging.
Further away, the shadows that had not yet been affected by [Might] completely dispersed.
The spookish blue light vanished bit by bit from both sides of the mountain path, sinking back once more into the deeper shadows.
As for the portion that remained on the stone steps, they lay prostrate quietly.
Devoid of any provocative posture, devoid of any upward extension.
They did not even dare to let their edges touch the area beneath Asakura's feet anymore.
The mountain path was revealed once again.
The lamplights recovered their original swaying.
The sound of the waterfall's water became clear once more.
Yet that sense of oppression did not disappear.
It merely existed there stably.
Like an invisible mountain, towering in the center of the night.
And those spookish blue shadows lay prostrate on the stone steps, no longer possessing even a single shred of room for resistance.
"How amazing..."
Chika's eyes blinked cutely as she looked at Asakura: "Is this the new move! So strong, it's way too strong!"
However, Asakura himself wasn't all that happy.
Although the effect displayed by the new magic spell was indeed not bad, it was merely nothing more than that.
For the time being, the magic spell [Might] gave Asakura a feeling somewhat like the Conqueror's Haki in One Piece—it belonged to the mob-shredder category of monster-clearing skills, possessing a nearly crushing-tier advantage over living beings with a status lower than his own, capable of insta-killing small fry on a large scale.
But the problem was, Asakura wasn't afraid of group battles in the first place; the magic spell [Candle] itself possessed large-scale destructive power, and the compound magic spell [Phosphine] was even more capable of mass-killing enemies through an effect similar to a chain reaction, even to the point of burning a planet to cinders.
In comparison, [Might] didn't seem quite that formidable.
He raised his head to take a look, his brows furrowing slightly: "Time is limited, let's set off quickly."
"What?" Chika, who had originally been visibly delighted, was taken aback.
Miko tugged at the pink-haired girl's sleeve, gesturing toward the sky.
Chika only then noticed that the full moon hanging high above the summit of the shrine had, at some unknown point, missed a tiny piece.
"Could it be that..."
Is the time that they, the living, can survive in this space limited?
"Exactly."
Asakura nodded his head and said in a heavy voice, "We are already almost unable to make it in time..."
"To think the time is actually so pressing..." The pink-haired girl bit her lower lip. Just as she was about to say something like, 'Don't worry about us, Asakura, you go ahead first!', she heard Asakura continue speaking.
"The late-night slot anime..."
"Why are you still constantly obsessing over that! What kind of program is it anyway? Can't Chika just find a recorded broadcast for you to watch after this incident is over!"
Chika stumbled under her feet, nearly falling onto the stone steps.
"Shut up! Can a premiere and a recorded broadcast be lumped together as the same thing!" Asakura said loudly, "A person like you wouldn't understand."
No, I understand super well.
Chika, who actually also quite liked watching anime, grumbled in her heart.
But no matter what, a favorite late-night slot anime, when compared to a supernatural crisis that was even connected to a grand theme like 'reversing life and death', was clearly not on the same tier, right?
It was just that the young girl felt even if she said it out loud, Asakura wouldn't really accept it.
After all, as a super powerful existence, in terms of his values, perhaps the former was more important than the latter?
Thereupon, Chika, who might perhaps become the next Prime Minister of Japan, decided to use her own way to persuade Asakura to be a bit more serious.
"After this matter is smoothly resolved," the young girl said, "I can think of a way to let Asakura-kun visit your favorite anime studio, you know."
"Huh, really?" Asakura blanked for a moment.
"As the daughter of the Fujiwara family, my power is limitless!" The young girl said with absolute confidence, puffing out her proud chest.
"Since you've put it that way, although I'm not particularly interested in visiting Kyo○ Animation—though even if it's just for the sake of the greater good, although I'm not that interested in visiting SH○FT either, I should be a bit more serious, although I don't have much interest in visiting TRI○GER—"
Not only is he super interested, but this guy even casually brought up three demands!
Miko massaged her forehead in helplessness.
She felt like her running all the way out here with so much effort to tip them off didn't seem to have that much significance...
That being said, after that, Asakura really did become a bit more serious, leading Chika and Miko up the steps.
At the end of the stone steps, a flat stone platform appeared, upon which stood wooden racks hung completely full of paper strips and small bells.
The paper strips were densely packed like white fish scales, trembling one by one along with the extremely faint airflow; the bells were rust-stained, yet under the condition of nobody touching them, they emitted a very light chiming sound, though the echo was subtly and unreasonably long.
Chika's fingertips unconsciously turned cold. Standing beside the wooden rack, she raised her head to look up, only to see that most of what was written on the paper strips were names and dates. The handwriting was a mix of new and old, some neat, some scribbled, looking like what different people had left behind in different states of despair. If she were to trace back to the very earliest few sheets at this moment, perhaps the time on them would be five hundred years ago.
Miko's face turned even paler. When her gaze fell upon a few of those paper strips, her throat felt as if it were choked by something; her breathing hitched, and she forced herself to shift her gaze away.
At the end of the stone platform was a wooden corridor, leading toward buildings at an even higher place.
That colossal building, filled with a Japanese style reminiscent of Spirited Away, hung suspended in mid-air, with layers of eaves expanding outward, and lamplight spilling out from every single tier of window lattices like golden blood flowing slowly;
Below, a massive waterfall cascaded down from a precipice, the white water flow glinting with a cold light beneath the moonlight, forming a bizarre contrast with the warm lamplights around it.
Despite clearly not being Kongming lanterns, the drifting lanterns, which theoretically did not possess a flight function, were not only on the ground but also in the air. As if released into flight by someone, they floated upward slowly one by one, ultimately disappearing before that excessively bright full moon—or perhaps it could no longer be considered a full moon, as the piece it was missing had already become more distinct.
The spookish blue shadows also followed up; they clung to the edges of the hallway like the tide hugging an embankment, neither crossing the boundary nor retreating.
Asakura suddenly had a feeling that those spookish blue shadows seemed to have already submitted to him.
Thereupon, he pointed a finger forward: "Go, scout the path for me."
"Pop."
The shadows obediently floated toward the depths of the hallway.