Cyan light motes drifted like dreamlike bubbles.
Flake by flake, the cyan light rose from the lakeside, gathering around Su Yuzu and Kujou Katora.
In the biting cold night, the woman in the tight skirt had eyes that shone brightly. It was as if dazzling light flowed from the bottom of her cyan eyes.
Hayabusa's power could usually only perform a 'Displacement' to swap one person back to a space anchor. To displace two people at once... was almost equivalent to suicide.
But suicide didn't matter anymore.
As long as she could send Lady Kujou and Miss Yuzu back to the Tokyo metropolitan area, anything was acceptable.
In front of that woman on the white bone flower, Hayabusa could see no hope of survival. Even if she didn't commit suicide, she would still die. It was better to send Lady Kujou and Miss Yuzu away.
She spread her arms, and countless cyan light motes flew in unison.
On the woman's shoulders rested the wind, and upon the wind were shining clusters of stars.
Kujou Katora glared at Hayabusa, roaring at her, "Bastard!!!"
"You bastard!!!"
"What are you trying to do!!!"
She propped up her stumbling body, wanting to pounce on Hayabusa, yet it seemed as if she were marking time in place. The distance between the two was so close, yet so far.
Hayabusa gazed at Kujou Katora with unprecedented gentleness. "Really..."
"Can't you be a little gentler, even at a time like this?"
"Lady Kujou..."
" sometimes I really envy you."
"I envy... you and Miss Yuzu."
"Sometimes... I also think about burying my feverish cheeks in soft piled snow, wanting to try falling in love like that."
"What a pity..."
"I only have this bunch of stinking boors around me."
"Hey, hey, hey—" The burly man blocking the way between the girls and that white bone flower looked back with a headache. "Lady Hayabusa, we are still here, you know! We're still here!!!"
"Can't you give us rough men a little face?"
Clearly, they were all people who had decided to go to their deaths. Yet... every single one of their faces bore a bright, hearty smile.
It was completely different from the awkward, strange, and even slightly terrifying forced smiles they usually wore when looking at Kujou Katora and Yuzu. At the final moment before death descended, the smiles of this Death Squad were unexpectedly incredibly free and easy.
"Please, you must live on well, Lady Kujou."
"The road ahead... the road ahead, we cannot walk with you."
Kujou Katora held Su Yuzu horizontally in her arms, biting her lip deadly hard, her shoulders seemingly trembling.
She glared furiously at the woman sitting diagonally with crossed legs on the white bone flower.
Her ruthless crimson eyes seemed intent on carving that woman's appearance into her mind. This hatred... would not deviate even if heaven and earth collapsed.
Kill her.
Even if she had to kill her way into the Edge of Aberration... she would definitely kill her.
Countless cyan light motes flew in unison; that was Hayabusa's ability—'Displacement'.
She had already set a space anchor inside the girls' dormitory at Keigunen Private Academy. What she had to do now was to throw Kujou Katora and Su Yuzu back.
"This time..." Hayabusa looked at Kujou Katora, revealing a triumphant smile. "You have no way to deduct my wages anymore."
On the pitch-black bone fin throne, the plain white bone flower swayed gently.
The almost naked woman propped her face up with the back of her pale, tender arm, her dark golden vertical pupils sizing up those sky-filling cyan brilliances with great interest. She picked up one of the flakes, gently crushing it open.
Watching the cyan light mote shatter at her fingertips, she revealed an amused smile.
The next second—
The smile turned abruptly cold, trending toward madness.
"Wooo—!!!" The woman opened her mouth.
The naked woman, who had been incomparably glamorous just a moment ago, underwent a sudden change in art style the instant she opened her mouth. The woman's oral cavity... was the exact same spectral blue color as the mouth of that terrifying whale-like monster from before, with raging soul fire burning recklessly.
A hollow, nether sound like a whale song.
A mental concussion exploded instantly.
The intensity of that terrifying sound wave and mental shock even pushed away the lake water; countless ripples turned into crashing waves, spreading across the lake surface.
In the dark red erosion domain, the woman's almost brilliant golden vertical pupils burned blazingly, like torches, like flames.
Almost in an instant, the burly men blocking neatly in front of the girls all collapsed at once.
Even Hayabusa, who was Second Sequence, could not withstand it; her consciousness was crushed in almost a split second.
As the woman fell forward, the cyan light motes also completed the 'Displacement'.
The familiar... slender figure of Lady Kujou vanished instantly amidst the cyan light motes.
But... the girl being held horizontally in Lady Kujou's arms fell onto the grassy ground of the lakeside.
"Yu..."
"Miss Yuzu..."
The world in front of Hayabusa seemed to split into many, overlapping and swaying, the sky spinning and the earth turning. The woman's cyan eyes had already become hollow and lackluster.
"Rest well." She seemed to hear a voice akin to the sounds of nature.
Su Yuzu looked at the fallen Hayabusa.
She could feel that in the instant Hayabusa wanted to teleport her and Kujou Katora away, a matchless mental fluctuation had locked onto her, anchoring her spatial coordinates and detaining her here.
Although Leviathan's mental attack had no way to harm Su Yuzu, it could keep Su Yuzu behind.
But... it was precisely because of Leviathan's mental attack that Hayabusa's ability did not exceed its carrying limit.
Although the woman looked miserably unconscious, it was more that... she had been stunned by Leviathan's mental bombardment. Rather than having overdrawn her life to displace Su Yuzu and Kujou Katora away.
Of course—
Even if Hayabusa had wanted to do that, Su Yuzu would have refused to be teleported away by her.
Clutching her burning, painful chest, Su Yuzu didn't know exactly how many ribs she had broken from Leviathan's bone whip just now.
Probably five or six.
It didn't seem like a lot.
She staggered to her feet.
"It hurts..."
"It really... hurts..."
On the white bone flower, the almost naked woman looked at Su Yuzu with great interest.
She could feel the deliciousness of that girl. No matter how she ate her, her own power would achieve complete completion.
Su Yuzu stumbled as she stood straight.
The girl's standing posture looked a bit crooked because that previous sweep of the bone whip had snapped quite a few of her bones. Yet she stood up just like that.
In the dark red erosion domain, crimson eyes lifted without fear or dread, meeting Leviathan's dark golden vertical pupils.
"Now... no one will see."
Su Yuzu spoke words that Leviathan didn't quite understand.
Different from Catastrophe Beasts or Ascenders. The Chimera Amalgam was the 'Perfect Form' created by the Eye of Insight through sacrificing life. They possessed complete rationality and were not even influenced by the Abyss Will.
In front of them lay the truth of the world.
Su Yuzu looked around her.
There were the fallen combat members of the Fourth Action Division, the fallen Hayabusa, and the Walking Husks kneeling and prostrating in the dark red erosion domain.
The girl's hand pressed against her own chest cavity.
She could touch the traces of the broken ribs.
At the same time... inside a dark red sedan speeding through the mountain foothills late at night, the girl sitting in the passenger seat... her similarly crimson eyes suddenly became hollow.
"No..."
"No..."
"Yuzu..."
"No!!!"
Crack—
Su Yuzu's hand seemed as if it wanted to pierce through her own chest cavity.
In that instant, the moon fell and flowers snapped; stars scattered and rain dispersed.
A completely dark domain descended upon the earth.
It was completely different from the dark red domain of the erosion domain. At this moment... a gray domain that seemed to cover the entire foothill stripped away all color within the domain.
The world turned into a gray-black silent film.
Only the woman's dark golden eyes remained.
And... the girl's crimson eyes, far more brilliant and glorious than hers.
Her eyes seemed to be burning with fire.
Like being reborn from death.
Also like returning from hell.
"You look—" The girl laughed loudly.
"Like a very hefty portion."
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