"Heh!!"
"I thought you'd be a formidable opponent, but you crumble at the first strike," the Mirror Devil chuckled.
He then sat back down in his chair.
However, Arata, who had just been shot full of holes like a honeycomb by the glass shards, still stood exactly where he was. At this moment, his body was rapidly healing.
"Not dead?!"
The Mirror Devil stood up again in shock.
Though he didn't understand what was happening, he waved his hand again, controlling thousands of shards to violently shoot at Arata once more.
The suffocatingly dense barrage completely shredded Arata into ribbons.
Except this time, the Mirror Devil noticed something fishy.
When the shards passed through Arata's body, it was like passing through a cloud of mist. There was absolutely no physical impact.
Right now, Arata seemed like an incorporeal soul.
"Wh-what is going on?" The Mirror Devil narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing him. With his limited knowledge, he couldn't figure it out at all. He could only ask, "Who exactly are you?"
Arata's body slowly transformed into his Dream Devil form, and he answered unhurriedly, "As for who I am, my twin blades will give you the answer."
In the blink of an eye, he instantly rushed right into the Mirror Devil's face.
The Mirror Devil was startled. Such a rapid dash gave him absolutely no time to react.
Slash!!!
The Mirror Devil's arm was severed with a single strike.
Immediately following, his other limbs also fell to the ground one by one.
Within seconds, the Mirror Devil was completely limbless, leaving only his torso and head.
And most fatally, the tip of Arata's bladed claw was pressed directly against the Mirror Devil's heart.
"I know you can rely on mirrors to piece together a new body, but you cannot regenerate your heart. As long as I thrust this in, you will die without a doubt."
"H-how do you know so much?!"
"Talk. Where are those women?"
The claw pierced inward just a tiny bit.
The Mirror Devil groaned in pain.
"No... don't kill me..."
"Those women are all still alive."
"Send them out first," Arata whispered.
"I can, but you have to make a contract with me first. As long as I send all the women out, you spare my life."
The Mirror Devil wasn't stupid.
He knew the missing women were his only bargaining chip to stay alive. Because Arata had been actively searching for the missing victims, he hadn't killed the Mirror Devil immediately. Once he lost this leverage, the Mirror Devil would have no value left in living.
"Just letting the women go and I spare you? That's too easy."
"What else do you want?"
"I have a question. Why did you send out a Mirror Clone to frame one of us as the killer?"
"If you hadn't sent out a Mirror Clone to fake hiding a corpse, I probably wouldn't have guessed it was a Mirror Dimension."
"This..." The Mirror Devil clearly had unspeakable difficulties, but to survive, he confessed anyway. "My power originally wasn't very strong, but a very powerful devil suddenly found me. He gave me pieces of the Gun Devil's flesh. He didn't make any demands at the time, but just today, he told me to come back, kill Kudo Ran's family, and then pin the blame on you guys."
"Although I didn't know why, considering the Gun Devil's flesh from before, I agreed. I just didn't expect to run into such a thorny Devil Hunter."
Had he known Arata was this strong, the Mirror Devil would absolutely not have sought his own doom.
"Who is the devil that gave you the Gun Devil's flesh?"
"I don't know him. When he came to find me, he was wearing a black cloak that covered his entire body."
Arata pondered for a moment, then said, "I can make a contract with you, but you have to release those women right now."
"No problem!" The Mirror Devil was overjoyed.
Thus, the two of them forged a contract.
Following the terms of the contract, the Mirror Devil released all the missing women.
They slid out from the bathroom vanity mirror one by one, like sliding down a slide.
This scene left Tenten and Peter, who had stayed behind in the real world, completely astonished. Subsequently, they immediately believed what Arata had said earlier about the Mirror Devil and the Mirror Dimension. Furthermore, the fact that the missing women were able to come out was definitely related to Arata.
"I have already let the three women go. According to the contract, you have to let me go," the Mirror Devil reminded him quietly.
"Normally, any devil or human who fails to execute the commands of a contract will die. But if I am not bound by the contract, does that mean I can just go ahead and kill you?"
"You aren't bound by the contract?!" The Mirror Devil was instantly confused.
He had never heard of a devil that could ignore the constraints of a contract. He thought Arata was just joking to scare him.
"Impossible! Once a contract is made, whoever violates it will die! If you kill me, you will die too. You are so strong; trading your life for mine is absolutely not worth it!" The Mirror Devil's face instantly filled with panic. He didn't understand why Arata would be this crazy. Could he be the Madman Devil or something?!
"Is that so? Then I'd like to see if it's really as you say—that violating a contract results in death."
Arata smiled faintly, plunging his bladed claws halfway into the Mirror Devil's heart.
"No..."
Before he could finish his sentence, the Mirror Devil closed his eyes forever.
Arata, acting as if nothing had happened, drew a circle around the corpse until it completely sank into the ground.
Rumble!!
The Mirror Devil died.
The Mirror Dimension suddenly experienced earthquake-like tremors.
Massive chunks of glass rained down from the sky, and the surrounding mirrored walls cracked and shattered to the ground.
At this moment, Tsurugi and the green-hatted man, still trapped in the mirrored corridors, instantly panicked. Because they could feel the realistic physical sensations, they no longer believed they were just in a dream.
Meanwhile, Arata ignored the two and exited the Mirror Dimension on his own.
His physical body lying outside suddenly woke up.
Because Tenten was sitting right beside Arata watching over him, when he sat up, he almost kissed her straight on the lips.
Fortunately, Arata had good core strength and hastily slammed the brakes, otherwise he would have let Tenten take advantage of him.
"Arata, you're awake!" Tenten excitedly hugged Arata immediately, wrapping her arms around his neck and pressing her body tightly against him.
Arata just felt two soft spheres forcibly pressed against his chest.
"Captain Natsume really didn't misjudge you! You actually rescued the hostages!" Peter cheered as well, his six eyes squinting simultaneously as he smiled.
"As long as it's something I promised, I will definitely get it done."
"But why aren't those two awake yet?" Tenten asked, her arms still around Arata's neck, their faces very close.
"It's fine, let them wander around a bit longer." Arata was mentally counting the seconds, wanting to let those two fully experience a collapsing world.
"What is that thing?"
At that moment, Peter's spider sense issued a warning, drawing his attention to Miss Kudo Ran's pocket, which was bulging quite high. It seemed to be holding something.
"Looks like an apple."
"An apple?" Arata pushed Tenten away, instantly feeling his breathing clear up, and walked over to Kudo Ran.
"What are you doing?"
"Seeing exactly what she's carrying in there. It can't be a massager, can it?"
"Uh..." That single sentence made Tenten instantly blush.
Arata reached into Kudo Ran's pocket and pulled it out.
The long-lost apple reappeared once again.
"To think the one pulling the Mirror Devil's strings is also that mysterious devil."
"Mysterious devil? Arata, what are you talking about?"
"Forget it, I'll put it away for now."
Arata tossed the apple straight at the bathroom vanity mirror.
However, when the apple hit the mirror's surface, it sank into it as if sinking to the bottom of a lake.
Having collected the Mirror Devil's corpse, Arata now possessed his own Mirror Dimension. And instead of staying inside it, he decided to just use the Mirror Dimension as a personal storage warehouse.