'Hair wax…'
The thought had barely formed before Amamiya Rin acted on instinct — but the words died in his throat as a flash of cold steel split the darkness!
There was no time to think. The combat instincts honed across countless grueling dream-battles moved his body before his mind could catch up — he threw himself backward in a sharp rearward lean and simultaneously swung his walking cane upward in a desperate block!
CRACK!
In that single instant, the cane shrieked under an unbearable load and splintered apart, sending wood shards flying in every direction. A force of impossible magnitude slammed through the impact — Amamiya Rin felt his entire right arm go dead in an instant, as though a sledgehammer had connected squarely with it.
He rode the momentum into a staggering retreat of several steps, then wrenched himself upright and barely managed to hold his footing. But a searing line of pain blazed across his left cheek, and warm liquid began trickling down his neck.
He'd avoided the killing blow — but the tip had still found his skin.
'Am I pretty?'
The Slit-Mouthed Woman stood exactly where Amamiya Rin had been a heartbeat ago, holding a pair of large scissors — roughly thirty centimeters long. She asked the question in a low, hollow voice. The blades were slicked crimson, blood dripping steadily from their edges.
Amamiya Rin released both halves of the shattered cane and touched his cheek. The wound was only a few centimeters long.
Such a shallow cut shouldn't be producing this much blood.
'Am I pretty?'
The Slit-Mouthed Woman advanced a single step toward him. Her muffled voice rose from beneath the scarf, and a strange, oppressive pressure closed around Amamiya Rin's body like a shroud.
It was the feeling of a goat before a wolf. A rabbit beneath a hawk's shadow. A fish glimpsing a seagull from below — the primal, blood-deep terror of prey that has come face to face with its natural predator.
For Amamiya Rin, however, killing intent was just killing intent.
A twisted, inhuman soul radiates foul malevolent energy. A righteous, resolute soul radiates brilliant upright energy. When malevolence overpowers righteousness, you get the frozen-in-place phenomenon of horror films — the hapless victim who can't run, can't scream. When righteousness overpowers malevolence, you get the stories of ancient chronicles where ordinary men face demons and do not flinch.
Amamiya Rin gave his shoulder a sharp roll and swung the sword bag around to his front, and opened his mouth.
'Wa——'
The syllable hadn't fully left his lips before the Slit-Mouthed Woman's silhouette blurred — she vanished and reappeared directly in front of him as though she had teleported — and those massive scissors came shrieking through the air with a sound that tore the night, driving straight for his throat.
Too fast!
Drawing the blade was no longer an option. Amamiya Rin instantly repositioned the sword bag and caught the killing blow on it.
The scissor tip punched into the center of the bag. The tremendous force transferred through it and into his chest like a lightning strike — his organs lurched out of place, the breath was slammed back into his throat before it could escape, and the remaining words he'd been about to speak were swallowed whole. The sheer power drove him sliding backward two full meters.
But he had stopped it. Amamiya Rin sucked in a hard breath, yanked the sword bag's zipper open, and wrapped his hand around the bone blade's hilt.
He snapped his arm outward — the long blade cleared the sheath — and under the force of the draw, the empty sword bag flew through the air straight at the Slit-Mouthed Woman.
But a flash of cold steel was all the warning he got. The bag was sheared cleanly in two. And then those massive scissors were already in his face again — hurtling toward his throat with the speed of a thunderclap, ruthless and precise, without flourish, without hesitation. Nothing but pure, annihilating force.
Amamiya Rin's pupils contracted to pinpoints. Every muscle in his body pulled taut. Crimson Lotus Breathing surged to its absolute ceiling — adrenaline flooded his system, detonating a burst of raw speed and power — and the bone blade in his two-handed grip whipped upward in a sharp diagonal slash from below, angling to deflect the strike.
CLANG!
Bone blade met scissors and screamed. The shockwave tore up through the blade and into Amamiya Rin's hands, numbing the web between thumb and forefinger, every bone in both arms howling in protest.
He was driven back several more steps before he could bleed off the force.
(The power gap is enormous!)
This was not strength any human being should possess. Had he not been hardened by compression training — had he met force with force rather than redirecting it — that single scissor strike would have sent him and his blade spinning through the air like scraps of paper.
Since when was the Slit-Mouthed Woman this strong? Didn't the Stubborn Exorcist put her down without even breaking a sweat?
Amamiya Rin stared at the figure before him, a cold dread settling in his chest.
(Rin, you've gone and picked a fight with another nasty one.)
(You never learn, do you? Last time you stuck your nose in where it didn't belong and got tangled up with the Grudge — and that ugly thing still isn't dealt with — and now you've gone and found another ugly thing to bother you.)
(Need help? If you can't handle it, don't forget to beg me — I live in the Setagaya area too.)
...
At the same moment, having caught wind that Amamiya Rin was in danger again, the Tomie Network stirred to life — and a crowd of Kawakami Tomie instances came flooding in to watch the spectacle.
(Someone get here now — please, whoever is closest, come immediately!)
Amamiya Rin set pride entirely aside and sent the call for help directly through the Tomie Network.
This one was bad. The Slit-Mouthed Woman in front of him might not reach Kayako's level — but she was still well beyond what he could handle alone. Without another Kawakami Tomie to help, his only option was to die once and use that to buy his escape.
(Hehe. Since you've asked so nicely, the magnanimous and merciful me shall come to your rescue.)
Amamiya Rin felt no particular embarrassment about asking for help. Kawakami Tomie, on the other hand, was thoroughly pleased with herself — and one nearby Kawakami Tomie immediately accepted the distress signal.
At the same time, the Slit-Mouthed Woman attacked again.
Pure, savage kinetic force — it hit Amamiya Rin like a motorcycle slamming into him head-on. His body was solid by any reasonable standard, but stacked against this Slit-Mouthed Woman, he felt like a child swinging fists at a grown man built like a wall.
No matter how desperately he regulated his breathing and pushed Crimson Lotus Breathing to its absolute limit, he was being completely outclassed in raw power.
Neither Aizawa Chikumo nor Kawahara Miyuki came anywhere close to the Slit-Mouthed Woman in terms of sheer force.
At this rate, he had three seconds before she took his head off.
Could his bootleg Tomie constitution even regenerate a decapitation?
Amamiya Rin wasn't sure. So he reached for his last resort.
(Help me!)
At the razor's edge of life and death, his intent screamed outward through the invisible Tomie Network!
In that instant — scattered across Japan, connected through the Tomie Network, now numbering over sixty — every Kawakami Tomie, whatever she was doing, went utterly still.
Their breathing shifted without their choosing to, falling into lockstep with Amamiya Rin's own rhythm. A faint, thin current of energy traveled back along those invisible neural threads and poured into his brain.
His sympathetic nervous system fired to its absolute ceiling. Blood oxygen levels spiked sharply, flooding his neurons with fuel, and the speed of neural signal transmission surged upward in a sudden leap.
The world seemed to slow to a crawl.
The rush of the wind. His own heartbeat. Even the faint disturbance in the air stirred by the Slit-Mouthed Woman's movements — all of it became razor-sharp, crystalline, reflecting back to him like the perfect mirror surface of still water.
The Slit-Mouthed Woman's figure, until now a blur, resolved in his perception into a clear and readable arc of motion.
The synchronization of sixty minds had pushed Amamiya Rin's neural reaction speed to the limit of what human physiology could achieve — he was now capable of responding within 0.05 seconds.
____
👻🔥Seek: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Danmachi: Summoning Ruri Gokou, And other Chuunibyou Brats
Let's hit these goals:
🎯 100 Powerstones = 1 extra chapter for the public!