Who was she?
Where had she even come from?
Sakura Renxin had absolutely no idea.
She didn't even know when that girl had appeared there — or how long she'd been watching.
Had she just shown up?
Or had she been there since the moment Sakura Mai left?
Or perhaps... even before Sakura Mai left — right under the Knight Princess's nose — that girl had already been sitting quietly inside the hot spring pool.
A chill crept all the way up Sakura Renxin's spine.
She couldn't sense any power from that girl at all.
Not the way a non-Esper felt. This was different.
It was as though... the figure before her was nothing more than a phantom.
Close her eyes — and there was no one there.
But open them again.
Gazing into the girl's pitch-black eyes, Sakura Renxin felt as though she were staring into the Abyss itself.
Too unsettling.
That eerie, overwhelming sense of unease and dread was enough to put Sakura Renxin fully on guard, every nerve drawn taut.
The Aberrant at Sakura Fall was only Fourth Sequence.
For that good-for-nothing daughter of hers and Soga Retsu's pair of girls, it shouldn't be anything fatal.
The Soga family's trump card.
The Sakura family's trump card.
Neither had been played yet.
A mere Fourth Sequence Aberrant.
Back when she herself had still been Third Sequence, she'd already been hunting down Fourth Sequence ability users with her sword.
Besides... Sakura Renxin turned over what she knew of Su Yuzu's file in her mind.
[The eighth confirmed case of a rule-type ability user ever observed by humanity.]
A bit of training would do the girls good.
Right now, however, she needed to stay on high alert — every last scrap of focus trained on the girl in front of her.
Sakura Renxin moved to rise.
She made to leave.
The girl in front of her simply kept staring at her, blank and unblinking.
The ground beneath both of them was trembling, ripples spreading endlessly across the hot spring pool and slapping against the dark stone with soft, rhythmic sounds.
Sakura Renxin held her wary stance, eyes fixed on that uncanny girl, one hand braced against the pool's edge as she prepared to step out.
And yet —
In that very moment... a splitting headache detonated behind her eyes.
The sound of water lapping against stone swelled until it was the roar of a landslide, a tidal wave hammering the shore, threatening to smash everything to pieces.
The girl's eyes seemed to light up.
The entire world shrank down to nothing but that pair of pitch-black eyes.
"What kind of demon or monster is this!!" Sakura Renxin dropped into a sword-drawing stance.
At Fifth Sequence, when Sakura Renxin drew the Sword of Erasure, she could hold her own against an ordinary Sixth Sequence ability user.
Before her, the girl in the white dress tilted her head, looking at Sakura Renxin with a vague, curious blankness.
Sakura Renxin froze in place, locked in her sword-drawing pose.
From somewhere above the courtyard came what sounded unmistakably like the mocking caw of a crow.
The Sword of Erasure... was currently with her precious daughter.
Without the Sword of Erasure, without any weapon at all, Sakura Renxin was nothing more than a somewhat troublesome Fifth Sequence Healing-type Esper.
"Sit —" Sakura Renxin kept her expression rigid, working hard to look like she hadn't just embarrassed herself.
She settled back into the hot spring pool and gestured at the girl in front of her.
The girl actually obeyed — and sat down quite docilely.
Sakura Renxin drew a slow, deep breath, composing herself into an air of profound gravity. She fixed the girl with a measured look.
"Do you know..."
"...the origin of life?"
——
Sakura Fall.
The tall, full-figured woman simply extended one hand and clenched her fist.
The ground before her split open in an instant — bottomless fissures tore through the lush grass, savage and merciless, racing outward and surging straight toward Soga Yura.
This was the power of a Fourth Sequence.
Vast, and terrifying.
In their earlier skirmish, the woman had already identified Soga Yura's weakness: her stamina.
Her power, though formidable, could trade blows even with a Fourth Sequence opponent at close range.
But... Soga Yura's disadvantage was just as glaring.
Her physical endurance was appalling.
Possibly no better than an ordinary girl, nothing like what you'd expect from a Third Sequence ability user.
Su Yuzu watched the earth tear apart — and immediately sprinted back, scooping up the girl huddled at the base of the cherry tree and carrying her in her arms.
At the same time —
Phantom-blue lines wove into shape behind Su Yuzu, and the deep crimson Behemoth materialized beneath the falling Soga Yura, catching her before she could plunge into the bottomless rift.
Dai Ling watched Su Yuzu's movements without a shred of feeling.
Something was off —
Su Yuzu had clearly been closer to Soga Yura. Soga Yura mattered to Su Yuzu far more.
So why had she gone and caught that irrelevant attendant student instead?
Was she some kind of saint?
Possible.
But Dai Ling didn't believe Su Yuzu was that kind of saint.
Every person ever chosen by a Throne harbored infinite darkness in the deepest part of their heart.
That darkness, that hatred... enough to burn the world to ash and drag civilization down as a grave offering.
Even the former Saintess of the Holy Royal Court, Saint Michael, was no different.
Even that saintly existence — the darkness within her had been more terrifying than anyone else's.
Then... there had to be a reason.
Dai Ling raised her clenched fist.
The torn earth flipped open in an instant.
The ancient cherry trees of Tsukimisato — centuries, a millennium old — were swallowed into the churning soil and stone.
The whole of Tsukimisato was in the grip of an earthquake.
Even the entirety of the Tokyo metropolitan area could feel the violent tremors.
Beneath the heaving earth, the mantle surged upward, and the swelling rock veins rose like the spine of a leviathan waking deep underground.
Then — in an instant!!
Stone serpents erupted from the depths, like fists hurled from the bowels of the earth, driving straight at Behemoth.
Dai Ling had shifted her entire offensive onto Soga Yura.
Soga Yura, sprawled atop Behemoth, heaved and gasped for breath. The girl's crimson eyes flew wide as the serpent's head began to crumble — just like last time.
But quickly —
The crumbling stopped.
It wasn't fully neutralized the way Soga Yura had dismantled Dai Ling's attack before.
"Did you really think the same trick would work twice!!" Dai Ling laughed, wild and unhinged.
This time... she was manipulating the rock veins from the deep earth itself.
Her power was acting at the very bottom — the earth itself was raising the stone serpents and hurling them at Soga Yura.
Soga Yura's ability simply couldn't reach that far.
But... Dai Ling seemed to have forgotten one other thing.
"Hold on tight!!" Su Yuzu bellowed at Soga Yura.
Behemoth's underside erupted in a blaze of roaring light, launching Soga Yura skyward in a streak of fire.
Behemoth's ascent was far faster than any rising stone serpent.
Su Yuzu looked at Dai Ling.
Lady —
Times change.
But... "Iyaaaaaaaa!!" The girl's voice from the sky shifted rapidly from surprise to sheer terror.
Soga Yura stared down, shaking, as everything below her shrank smaller and smaller.
Cars were the size of fingernails now.
H-h-h-how is it this HIGH——
Soga Yura clung to Behemoth's smooth surface with every ounce of strength she had.
It was the first time she'd ever discovered... that she might... possibly... just a tiny little bit...
...be afraid of heights.
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