Volume 3, Chapter ?: Welcome to Zenmetsu Village Part 24-27

This chapter is updated by wuxiaworld.eu

Part 24 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)

“Ugh,” groaned the mystery freak after stepping out of the rental car.

What lay before her eyes was an unmaintained forest where the rotting branches of the trees covered the sky and the tall undergrowth left the color of the ground a complete mystery. Nature here was destroying itself like a bedridden old man with bedsores.

“Are you sure we should follow the map? We aren’t going to get stranded are we?”

“The rental car refuses to run, so we can only investigate in the areas we can walk to.”

To be honest, with the almost complete lack of clues, I was beginning to doubt Hasebe Michio was even in Four Mountains.

Finding them after those snake Youkai made me incredibly uneasy, but we had a prisoner’s shoe and an old map of Four Mountains with an X marked on it. It might lead us to nothing, but it was worth trying.

“More importantly, mystery freak, are you sure you’re okay in that swimsuit-like outfit?”

“I can’t exactly take off anything else! B-but if you beg me enough, I might consider stripping further.”

“I mean the opposite, you idiot.” I pointed into the thick greenery we were about to head into. “Do you really want to walk through there with exposed skin? The small branches will scratch at your skin and who knows how many mosquitos and centipedes there are. This is no place for a nice picnic.”

“That’s what the bug spray is for!”

“How much do you think that will really help? And you have moisture all over your body from this fog.”

“Th-then what am I supposed to do?” she asked.

I pointed toward the unmoving rental car.

“The most sensible answer is for you to wait here.”

“No! I can’t send you off alone into a forest that might be filled with Youkai. You’d definitely get your butt kicked and never come back!”

Dammit! I can’t say she’s wrong!!

At the very least, it’s true there were some snake Youkai!!

I rubbed at my bangs with one hand, and half-resignedly stuck my upper body into the rental car’s driver’s seat to unlock the trunk. I checked inside the trunk, but only found a spare tire and a tool set.

Damn. No good.

I had no choice but to toss my jacket over the mystery freak’s head while she wore what basically amounted to a swimsuit.

“Cover yourself with that. It’s better than nothing.”

“U-um, wouldn’t spraying on tons of bug spray help?”

“Using too much will lead to chemical irritation. Remember: this is a chemical that sets off the bugs’ danger sense so they will keep away.”

With that said, I pulled out the largest wrench from the rental car’s tool set. I took the lead, used the tool to sweep aside the underbrush that was over a meter tall, and stomped on through.

Dammit. Making a path is such a pain. I’m obviously wasting three times the energy I would be otherwise.

The mystery freak took advantage of the human bulldozer ahead of her and simply walked through the path I had made.

“Detective, why are you trying to make me fall for you even harder?”

“Would you rather take the lead?”

“There are a lot fewer bugs than you said there would be.”

“The fewer the better.”

…But that does bother me a bit, too.

The thick and extremely grassy smell of greenery filled my lungs, but I could not sense much of an animal smell. I could not spot any animal droppings or remains. It was as if there were no living creatures besides us.

It was as if all of them had suddenly disappeared just like Hasebe Michio and the police officers from the prisoner transport vehicle.

After we walked through the forest a while, the green wall came to an end. A clear area covered in rotting dead grass spread out ahead of us. As we continued on following the map, we found a number of structures made from sharpened logs. They were likely meant to stop cars from entering the area. We passed by them and came across an area with a few run-down shacks made of plywood and galvanized sheet iron and an area with a few large thatch-roof houses with crumbling roofs.

The largest of the houses looked like it would cost between 20 and 30 million yen for the house alone. It would have cost 15 times that had it had been made with Intellectual Village brand name materials and by Intellectual Village craftsmen.

These larger houses seemed out of place with the rest of the abandoned village.

“It doesn’t look like anyone is living in them. It must have been decades since they were abandoned.”

“So this is the rumored Zenmetsu Village,” said the mystery freak as she walked up next to me. “But I see some new footprints here. Look.”

“Whose are those?”

I was suspicious. One set of footprints was large and the other small, but their shape was quite similar. They looked like ready-made leather shoes.

“Maybe it was a couple like us.”

“Okay, no more comments from you.”

The footprints continued in a different direction than the mark on the map. I was curious about both, but I decided to deal with the mark on the map first since we knew we could reach it. Hasebe had not been wearing leather shoes and I doubted he had a woman with him.

“Uuh… Not having internet access makes me even more worried. We only have this hand-drawn map to rely on,” complained the mystery freak.

“We have no choice.”

“Dammit. If only I could contact my usual information broker.”

“I’ll ignore that for now since we’re in the middle of a crisis, but I’m going to keep it in the back of my mind for later.”

I looked down at the map and the mystery freak grabbed onto my shirt with one hand.

“It looks like there’s something around here. A few lines are drawn in.”

“Do you think they represent roads?”

“I don’t know. They don’t travel from the center of the village and outwards, so they might be something else.”

“Like ravines?”

The fog was too thick to see even a few meters ahead. I wanted to avoid making an accidental misstep, so I decided to continue on with caution.

“Where’s the mark on the map?”

“Not far ahead… Oh, is that it?”

The mystery freak pointed toward a vague shadow in the fog.

But…

“It looks like a shrine.”

“You might want to call it a former shrine.”

There was a building, but it had been reduced to nothing but a pile of rubble. Amid the large amount of broken wooden material, pieces that had been scorched black as if in a fire were common. The destruction could not have been natural. This looked like the aftermath of a group swept away by violence rather than the work of a single person. The way the shimenawa and…nusa did you call them? Anyway, that paper folded in zigzags. The way they were blowing in the wind was a bit depressing.

I can tell a shrine was destroyed here, but what does it mean?

There was a mark here on the map in Hasebe’s boot, so there has to be some kind of meaning.

The mystery freak tilted her head.

“Did Hasebe destroy it?”

“If so, why would he mark down its location to remember it?”

“So the shrine was already destroyed.”

“But what does the mark mean?”

“Maybe he had something convenient hidden in the rubble.”

We exchanged a glance.

We moved the rubble as much as we could and finally discovered a clear plastic bag.

It contained some old bundles of money and a rusted blade.

“This looks suspicious.”

“There’s three million yen here,” I muttered. “Huh? But wait. Doesn’t that mean this wasn’t the first time Hasebe Michio has been in Four Mountains?”

That belated thought came to me.

And in the next moment, something heavy struck the back of my head after a full swing.

“Bh…gh…!?”

Pain instantaneously exploded in my head before vanishing as the sense exceeded its limits. Instead, the pain from my neck bending so suddenly stabbed into my mind.

I had been attacked from behind.

By the time I realized that, my vision had been greatly shaken and I had fallen to the side.

Who?

As I lay collapsed on the ground, I desperately tried to focus my shaking vision. My gaze landed on a man of about fifty. He wore a jumpsuit. However, it was a bright neon orange and the back had a prison identification number printed in large letters, so it was not something one saw every day.

It was a prison uniform.

There was only one possible identity for this man swinging up a branch as thick as a human arm.

“Hasebe!?”

The wrench I had used to brush aside the undergrowth had fallen from my grasp during that attack. I kicked at Hasebe Michio’s leg while lying on the ground. He lost his balance but still managed to swing down his blunt weapon. His aim was off, so he only tore up the ground right next to my face.

“Dch!!” groaned Hasebe.

Standing it up and knocking it down once more must have been too troublesome because he placed the thick branch horizontally across my neck and pressed his weight down on it. I frantically grabbed at the thick branch as well, but I was still at a disadvantage. I heard a creaking sound as that branch as thick as an arm crushed my Adam’s apple.

“…Wait. Why…are you…doing this…!?”

I moved my mouth, seeking air.

And then I spotted something that left me in shock.

It was even further above than Hasebe Michio who was leaning down on me. There I saw the mystery freak’s face which had become completely expressionless. She held the large wrench I had dropped.

Not good.

Not good! Not good!!

Mystery freak, why are you unhesitatingly coming forward to split Hasebe’s head open!?

“Damn…it…!!”

I tried to cry out, but had difficulty producing a voice. I tried to escape from beneath Hasebe, but it did not work well with his weight pressing down on me. I still managed to move bit by bit as if sliding along the ground.

And then gravity seemed to suddenly disappear.

I felt as if I were sliding backwards down a playground slide.

…Didn’t the mystery freak mention some lines on the map that might be ravines!?

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”

I rolled down to the bottom of the ravine along with Hasebe.

Instead of falling from a vertical wall, it felt more like sliding down a steep slope for three or four meters.

Rather than ground made of earth, a cold, highly-transparent river waited at the bottom.

With a loud splash, I sank into the water headfirst.

Seeking oxygen, I sought the surface almost on instinct alone.

“Buhahh!!”

My head broke the surface. I greedily sucked in oxygen. The river was only about a meter deep and three meters wide.

Hasebe was…

Where is Hasebe?

As soon as that thought came to mind, someone grabbed the collar of my dress shirt from behind.

I was tugged back by a powerful force and my head sank back under the cold water.

“Gbh! Gbagbhh!!”

Why is Hasebe Michio attacking me?

I had thought the odds were high his request for a retrial would go through and he would be found not guilty of murdering the president of Kuroyama Electronics Group, but it was looking like the charges might not have been false after all.

Or perhaps he had mistaken me for an assassin from the regional police or the corporation.

“Ha…sebe…!!”

I somehow got my head out of the water before it was submerged once more. This repeated a few times.

The situation looked hopeless, but I had been able to manage something during that time.

I had learned where his feet were.

I frantically moved my arm in an attempt to sweep those feet out from under him.

As if our bodies had switched places, our positions suddenly changed. Hasebe fell and his body sank into the cold water.

“Hasebe! Do you understand what you are doing!?”

I grabbed the collar of his prison jumpsuit with both hands and lifted him up.

He was gasping for breath as he dangled down from my arms, but he was smiling.

He looked nothing like a decent citizen who had been wrongly imprisoned for a crime he had not committed.

“To be honest, I had already given up,” said Hasebe as if spitting out the words. “But by some coincidence, I made my way out of the transport bus. And of all places, in Four Mountains where I had hidden some stolen money 30 years ago. I figured there was no harm in trying. Betting on a coincidence isn’t bad at all!!”

“What are you-…?”

“I don’t know if the driver suddenly disappeared or what, but the bus flipped over. The police officers who came running out of their cars also vanished. It was exhilarating. I don’t know who did this or how, but only an idiot wouldn’t take advantage of it!!”

“What are you talking about!?”

As I asked that, I suddenly lost my balance.

Hasebe’s hand was on the end of my necktie.

…Dammit! He kept talking about meaningful things to draw my attention away!!

I frantically tried to remove Hasebe’s hand, but he tugged on my tie before I could. My head sank into the water like a dog on a chain. Even worse, the water was clear enough that I could see Hasebe was stepping on my tie.

He got me…

Now I can’t get my head above water!!

“Gbh…gbhbgh!!”

I struck Hasebe’s leg with my fist and dug my fingers into his shin, but it was no good. I instead began to think about undoing my tie.

Sh*t, sh*t, sh*t!! The knot has soaked up so much water it’s tightened up!!

“Gbh…bghbgh…If you…splash…not…gh.”

Hasebe seemed to be announcing something in triumph above, but I could not hear it well through the water.

It seemed he had more to say.

The air in my lungs tried to force its way out of my mouth in pursuit of an exit. I grew dizzy. My fingers dug into my tie’s knot with enough force to almost break my fingernails. I tried to force it looser.

Hurry up.

Hurry up!!

“Gbah!!”

I finally escaped the bonds of my tie and broke the water’s surface in search of air.

But two hands pushed my head back down.

Hasebe’s face had an odd smile on his dripping wet face. That moisture was more than just the fog.

“Hase…agh…Hasebe!!”

“They should have left it alone. I annihilated everyone like I was supposed to. No one was left. So what does it matter if one last thing hadn’t been dealt with!? It wouldn’t have caused anyone any problems that I ran away!!”

It sounded more like he was making excuses to himself than he was talking to me.

And then it hit me. An unpleasant feeling ran down my spine.

Zenmetsu Village. That village of annihilation.

The legend concerning that empty village we had seen on the way here.

The psycho killer of the sort that delighted the mystery freak.

“Was it…you? Were you the one that killed this entire village!?”

“Sh*t! Sh*t!! Yes, it was. That was under the old system!!” replied Hasebe Michio with a mocking smile as he tried to force my head underwater. He was what you could call the “true culprit”. “Calling me a client of the Kuroyama Electronics Group sounds nice, but I was always forced into just barely scraping by. The entire run-down downtown area was a step away from starvation. Kuroyama wanted to keep a set level of disposable troops to force their inconvenient dirty work onto.”

“Kh…!!”

I grabbed the back of Hasebe’s hands as he tried to force my head down. I dug my nails deep into them.

Hasebe’s expression twisted in pain, but he maintained his position.

Dammit. I can tell my mind is falling toward pessimistic thoughts. By the time I start considering DNA tests and dying messages, it’s all over!!

“Are…cough…Are you saying…cough…you attacked the village so the company could profit!?”

Did he think he could win?

Did he think he could silence me?

As Hasebe breathed heavily, he spoke as if encouraging himself.

“I was part of a group. That village was opposed to the construction of the semiconductor factory. I don’t know why, but they were strongly opposed to the factory using the underground water. It was a nuisance, so we were ordered to eliminate them and make it look like the work of a crazy killer.”

…How could this be?

But it was not over yet.

The nightmarish reality continued.

“We were rewarded nicely after finishing the job. For insurance, I hid that in the remains of the village along with what I plundered during the attack. …But I let my guard down. My name had not been removed from the list of disposables! Someone had killed Kuroyama’s president during some internal struggle and my name was used. Most likely, some executive who had changed the ‘inside’ of the semiconductor factory had taken measures before the president could criticise them!!”

“Even if you were innocent of killing the president, you still faced a fate worse than death if the truth came out about Zenmetsu Village during the investigation. Is that why you had to run away before the retrial!? Because it would look too suspicious if you withdrew the request for a retrial that the victim group was asking for!?”

“Yes…that’s right!!”

Hasebe poured even more strength into his arms and my head sank beneath the water.

Gbh!! Dammit… Water is…getting into…some odd places.

I somehow brought my head back above water, but I could not breathe properly due to coughing too much.

“Cough!! Cough cough!!”

“I was cut off in every direction! Kuroyama was too clever. After being kicked out of the United Hive, my factory was completely under their control, but it was only a client on paper. Even if I claimed they ordered me to crush the village after cutting off all ties, no one would believe me. They would think it was a bluff meant aiming for a plea of insanity!! It would never reach Kuroyama! Whether my conviction was found to be wrong or not, I would still be sent down to the very bottom!!”

My fingertips were trembling.

The lack of oxygen must have been finally having direct effects because I could feel my strength fading. The situation was only going to grow worse from here.

Am I really going to be silenced like Hasebe wants?

Dammit.

Isn’t there something?

Isn’t there anything I can fight back with?

“Running away is the only way I can survive, so of course I’m gonna run! I’ll run to the ends of the earth!! I was a victim from the beginning. I was trapped in the system of poverty Kuroyama had created, so I could not escape by any normal means. And now I can’t escape without being willing to kill again!!”

Suddenly, I heard something slice through the air. The sound came from directly above me. I did not have time to look toward it because it dropped down in an instant.

A heavy metal wrench thrown from above the ravine struck Hasebe Michio in the head.

That stupid mystery freak!! Do you have any idea how hard I’ve been working to keep you from dirtying your hands!? And there’s no way you could aim properly in this fog. What if you had hit me!?

“Cough cough cough!! Sh*t!”

But I did not have time to give into my anger.

As strength left Hasebe’s arms, I quickly moved away. If I could escape his grasp, I could get out of the water.

As I tried to adjust my position, I saw something unpleasant.

Hasebe Michio had received quite a shock from the blow to the head, but he moved as accurately as an automated factory’s robot arm to reach out and grab the wrench that had bounced off his head.

Not good.

Not good!! If he starts beating me with that, I’ll have no way of fighting back! If I try to block the blow with my arms, it’ll just break my arms. I know various disarming methods based on aikido to aid in arrests, but I don’t think any of them will work when I’m in the water and have no footing!!

“Stop, Hasebe.”

“I’m sick of hearing about how people are supposed to be good deep down.”

“You’re well known. You’re more than just a criminal. The press is treating you like a hero who was falsely convicted. Your face and name are all over the internet and the talk shows. 150 million people know you! You can never escape. If you kill me here, you will be reported the instant you approach civilization!!”

“When in a flaming building, you head to the roof where the flames have yet to reach despite the danger. If I head back to prison, only the death penalty awaits no matter how the trial goes. Even if I know it’s a dead end, I can only continue running away from the wall of flames behind me!! There is no other path left for me!!”

He shouted angrily back at me.

As I saw him raise that heavy wrench, I felt my throat dry up.

Is this it!?

But at that point, I finally realized something.

At some point, another elderly man had approached behind Hasebe Michio. He was horribly dirty and his clothes were nothing more than old rags.

“…I remember you.”

“!”

Hasebe turned around in surprise when he heard the other man mutter at him.

However…

“I remember you!!”

A dull sound rang out.

The dirty man held a stone the size of a baby’s head that he must have torn from the ravine wall. He swung it down toward Hasebe’s head as hard as he could. Blood sprayed out and a bundle of hair was torn off, scalp and all.

A scream burst out.

The dirty man ignored it and slammed the stone down a second and third time.

“Stop…”

I had stood in utter shock for a bit, but the growing color of red brought me back to my senses.

The victor had already been decided. There was no point in going any further.

“Stop!! If you go any further, Hasebe will die!!”

“He…”

The man’s arm was trembling.

He gripped the red dyed stone so hard I thought it was going to break.

Even so, he did not stop moving his arm.

He spat out his words while looking down at Hasebe Michio who had half sunken into the cold water.

“He yawned. He was bored. While slaughtering everyone in the village and stabbing a blade into each of the bodies to make sure no survivors were hiding below the corpses, he yawned from boredom!!”

It was a story from a world that defied imagination.

I wanted to believe this was nothing but the man’s delusion.

But I had seen it.

This was not some eerie labyrinth. The scenery around us was the completely normal scenery in which dozens of people had lived, eaten, napped, and let their kids run around.

And all of that had been destroyed in a single night.

That was the truth.

“…Who are you?” I asked.

“Someone who they framed for all those murders,” replied the rag-wearing man as he dropped the stone in the water and his shoulders moved up and down as he desperately tried to catch his breath. “All this time, I had been so sick of being unjustly called a murderer. But look at this? Now a part of me feels I should become a real murderer. I will become the monster they wanted me to be…”

“You really shouldn’t,” I said. “Surely you saw that Hasebe Michio’s fate will be a miserable one regardless.”

“…”

That comment caused the rag-wearing man to look away from Hasebe.

And immediately afterwards, something happened.

“Solved it.”

I heard a voice.

It was a voice with no obvious source. It was as if I were wearing headphones. It was not my voice, Hasebe’s voice, or the rag-wearing man’s voice. It sounded like a small boy’s voice.

“Solved it. Solved it. Solved the puzzle.”

The voice sounded somehow mocking and also like it was singing a creepy lullaby that had some story behind it.

What?

What was that?

Before I could come up with an answer, the decisive moment arrived.

“That means you are no longer needed.”

A soft and unpleasant noise burst out.

It came from Hasebe Michio who had halfway sunken into the cold water while only partially conscious.

His body grew darker.

No, that was not what had happened.

It was dozens if not hundreds of snakes as thick as a little finger. They slithered up from below the water and quickly covered Hasebe Michio’s entire body.

It seemed the man no longer held any will to resist.

He did not cry out or scream.

As that eerie sound continued, that pure black “mass” clearly shrank in volume. The arms and legs sticking out from it turned at odd angles.

Is he being eaten?

That was what my instincts told me, but it made no logical sense.

Snakes ate their prey by swallowing it whole. They had fangs, but they could not bite off flesh. No matter how many snakes as thick as a little finger you had, it should have been impossible for them to eat something the size of a human.

But then what was I watching?

The volume of the mass within was visibly decreasing. It was like watching butter on a frying pan.

“Wait…” muttered the other man. He walked unsteadily toward the mass of snakes. “Please wait! He is…That man is the one murderer who can prove my innocence! Please don’t get rid of him!!”

“Watch out!! I don’t think those are normal snakes! Stay back!!”

I tried to grab the rag-wearing man’s arm, but he jumped at the mass of hundreds of snakes before I could.

He grabbed snake after snake and tossed them away as if digging through dirt to rescue someone who had been buried alive. The snakes must have had some objective or condition because they showed no sign of biting at the rag-wearing man. They focused only on Hasebe.

However…

“Ah…ah…”

The man’s hands stopped moving.

His eyes were opened wide.

The next thing I knew, most of the snakes had vanished as if dissolving into thin air. And in the spot Hasebe Michio had been in were nothing but a single arm and a single leg floating at the water’s surface. A few snakes remained eating them. The limbs shrank and ultimately disappeared. The snakes had eliminated every last trace that the man named Hasebe Michio had been here.

And after Hasebe disappeared, every last snake disappeared as well.

These black snakes were the same as the ones that had appeared in the hood of the rental car. These strange snakes had something like a gold ring around their necks.

“What is going on…?” I muttered blankly while watching as the rag-wearing man’s back drooped.

What had just happened?

What was going on in this village?

Part 25 (Hishigami Mai)

Um, who did what here again?

Kurumaya Nozomi was the one who had repeatedly stabbed Yamada Ken in the head with a glass shard. Sakai Haruka was the one who had cried out to stop her. Tanish*ta Hajime was the industrial spy desperately bluffing while waving around a toy handgun. Suzukawa Izumi was the young female prisoner. Gogan Sakura was the investigator on an unofficial undercover mission who held a real handgun and was trying to keep the situation from falling into chaos.

The change started with Tanish*ta Hajime, the industrial spy.

“Uuh…bah…?”

I heard a muffled noise.

That questioning voice sound like it came from a mouth forcibly plugged by a gag.

“Gh..bh. Gfh!? Ghh!! Gbgbh!!”

He suddenly held a hand up to his mouth and he doubled over.

Initially, he looked like the victim of poison.

But that was not the case.

What spewed from his mouth was a large number of snakes.

Snakes as thick as a little finger fell to the ground as if a faucet had been opened. He held a hand to his mouth, but the snakes slipped through the gaps between his fingers.

“Gyah!? Wh-wh-what is that!?”

“What is going on…!?”

The change did not stop at his mouth.

I heard a popping noise. Some foreign substance was flowing out like tears. More than ten snakes came from his eye sockets as if forcing their way out of his eyeballs. They came from his nose and ears as well. At this point, anyone could imagine what had happened. It was like snakes or moles moving through the dirt. Tanish*ta Hajime’s head had to be filled with countless tunnels. There was no way he was still alive.

“Bh.”

I heard another odd noise.

Tanish*ta collapsed sideways.

This did not look like a living human collapsing. It was more like someone had stood a branch up on its side and then let go.

“Gy-gy-gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!?”

The female jailer named Sakai Haruka let out a high-pitched scream and tried to run away. Who had done this? What had they done? How had they done it? What were the conditions? She did not know the answer to any of those questions, so she was simply trying to run as far away from the dangerous oddity as she could.

Ew.

The stomach of her work uniform swelled up like a beach ball. After that…well, I don’t really want to explain it. There was a muffled sound and her entire lower stomach area became dyed a dark red. It was as if a water balloon hidden in her clothes had burst. Dozens of snakes wet with something red slithered out from the gaps in her clothes.

“E-ee!” groaned someone.

That was the limit of what they could do and it changed nothing.

Both the prisoners and the jailers collapsed as they were taken out by the snakes. Gogan Sakura may have held a real gun, but snakes even slithered out of the gun barrel. After her gun malfunctioned and blew her hand off…well, it wasn’t pretty.

Silence fell over the area.

The snakes continued to slither around.

I did not think these were some strange parasites or aliens.

They were most likely Youkai.

Snakes. A swarm. A sudden appearance.

There were several candidates, but I could not be sure of anything yet. When it came to snake Youkai, I suspected the rulers of water, the ones related to ironworking which were derived from them, or possessing spirits.

“A-ahh. Ahhhhhhh…”

I heard the Sunekosuri’s dumbfounded cry coming from the radio.

“Sunekosuri, I have no more need for you there, so come meet me here.”

With that arbitrary instruction, I walked through the fog and cautiously approached the corpses.

I was keeping the optimum level of tension and burden on my muscles so I could move at any moment, but there was no sign of the snakes attacking me. It seemed the attack condition was something other than distance.

…Hmm.

They were scattered around a bit, but there were six corpses lying in the parking lot. The snakes were even wriggling around in the stab wounds in Yamada Ken’s head. This spread the wounds by quite a bit, so the “contents” were spilling out.

I viewed each corpse in turn.

Yamada Ken.

The worst part was the stab wounds on his head. Instead of fresh blood, over ten snakes were slithering out. The pink contents of his head were spilling out, so it was blatantly obvious there was no saving him.

Sakai Haruka.

I did not want to take a peek inside her work uniform, but her disturbingly sunken-in silhouette told me she had ruptured within it. All of her insides must have been taken out as well because she smelled the worst of any of them. It was more than just the smell of blood. A lot of different things had mixed together inside her gut.

Kurumaya Nozomi.

I heard an occasional whistling sound escaping from her, so I initially thought she was alive. However, she was not. I could see snakes in her chest. Her lungs had burst from the inside. As the snakes came and went, they caused the remnants of her lungs to act as a pump. That was sending some air out.

I saw a beckoning cat bottle cap doll poking out from her pocket, so she must have been the one who had placed them in the employee cafeteria.

Tanish*ta Hajime.

They came from his mouth, eyes, nose, and ears. Snakes pushed open every single hole on his face. The structure of his face had been utterly destroyed. It looked like a swollen fugashi.

Suzukawa Izumi.

Large numbers of snakes were coming from her mouth and nose, and her eyes were rolled back into her head. The number of snakes coming from her mouth must have exceeded the limit because her jaw had completely dislocated.

Gogan Sakura.

The explosion of her handgun had blown off her hand and tons of snakes were passing from her right ear to her left. You can imagine what had to have happened to the space between.

“Ahh, how could this happen?” groaned the Sunekosuri as he approached after exiting the factory. “Annihilation…This is a complete annihilation! I thought Hyakki Yakou sent us here to keep this from happening!!”

“What? We were asked to investigate the phenomenon in the semiconductor factory and to eliminate it if necessary. Stop adding on extra objectives.”

“Then if you had been asked to save everyone in the corporate prison, you would have done so!? Are you saying you could have done that with your superhuman abilities!? You could have saved them from this horrible situation!? There had to have been completely normal people with no connection to our world here!!”

“Sorry, but I don’t accept jobs I know I can’t handle.”

You can get emotional if you want, but be careful because it’s only any good for motivation.

And this isn’t over yet.

“Sunekosuri, who do you think did this?”

“Eh…?”

“Is some as yet unseen mystery character hiding somewhere? I suppose it’s possible, but I doubt that’s the case. If someone who could have killed us at any time had been watching from a distance this entire time, they would not have killed them at this time. And since they did not attack you or me, the culprit must not be viewing us from a god’s-eye perspective,” I explained. “In other words, this went just as planned. The mental pillar of the group, the head jailer named Itou Takeru, was killed in the cafeteria and then the top suspect, me, was blown up in the parking lot. One of the suspects panicked and used their occult power.”

“Then one of them used theses snakes? But they were all annihilated!! Did they lose control of the Youkai!?”

“That would make this simpler, but I don’t think so,” I said offhandedly. “After all, one of them is still alive.”

I cracked the knuckles of my right hand.

My body had been modified to specialize in fighting Youkai, but I could still crush a corpse’s head or tear out its heart with a single hand. The human body held more potential for brutality than most people thought.

To put it bluntly, if I thoroughly destroyed each of the suspects’ vitals, the incident would be resolved.

“W-w-wait a second!! But…they were…just look…it was a complete slaughter! How…what!?”

“Don’t be led astray by the shock of the scene. Look at this rationally. Why did the culprit kill everyone? To keep the conditions equal so as to hide their identity. They wanted to be another victim just in case these irregularly released snake Youkai failed and left a survivor.”

“Th-then…”

“That is also why the snake Youkai are still here. Normally, you try to hide your trump card. If someone can determine the identity of the Youkai, they will learn their weakness. But the culprit is keeping these creepy Youkai on the corpses. That is meant to keep anyone from directly touching the victims’ bodies to check for a pulse or checking the pupils. When you see these grotesque corpses, of course you aren’t going to want to approach the Youkai that did it. Who knows what they’ll do to you.”

I pointed at each of the collapsed figures in the parking lot one at a time.

Yamada Ken.

Sakai Haruka.

Kurumaya Nozomi.

Tanish*ta Hajime.

Suzukawa Izumi.

Gogan Sakura.

“There. That’s the one.”

Part 26 (3rd person)

In the Intellectual Village of Noukotsu Village, today was not just another relaxing day in the Jinnai household.

The household ran a sake brewery, so mid-September, which was harvest time for new rice, was the most nerve-racking time. This was the earliest step of the production process, so it determined whether they could make the start dash or not. No matter how much technology they had, a mistake here would prevent them from making the best possible product.

And so Jinnai Shinobu’s father was constantly calling the city’s rice farmers while Jinnai Shinobu’s grandfather drove the electric light truck around to judge and select the rice. The grandfather had supposedly retired, so the importance of this time could be seen in the fact that he stood on the front lines.

However…

The financial issues of human society did not matter to the Youkai who lived for all eternity.

In the name of searching for what Shinobu had hidden in his room, the large-breasted and glamorous Zashiki Warashi found the high school boy’s secret savings and the flat-chested and somewhat yandere Yuki Onna checked through his hidden porn magazines. However, they then found something unexpected. (Incidentally, a Youkai that protects the house and a yandere both tend to lack a sense of privacy.)

They found an old album.

“This was made with a service that makes high quality prints of the photos in a digital picture frame. That was popular a while back. …After all, digital data tends to get destroyed every few years.”

“Oh, oh, ohh!! S-so this is full of this kind of photo and that kind of photo of Jinnai Shinobu during his younger days? Pant…pant…!!”

“You’re starting to look a little damp overall. Are you sure you’re not going to melt yourself by getting so fired up over this?”

The Zashiki Warashi and the Yuki Onna brought the album into the living room and opened the thick cover as casually as if they were reading a manga volume they had found while cleaning the room.

“This is Shinobu back when he refused to let go of his baby bottle.”

“…What’s this!? His hair is a different color!!”

“And this is Shinobu when he became a wild animal and leapt toward my breasts even when I tried to tell him his bottle was over there.”

“That damn gigolo! He had that much talent that young!?”

A Nekomata muttered in shock a bit away from the two trembling Youkai.

“What are they doing…?”

She had been speaking to herself, but someone replied to her.

It was Jinnai Shinobu’s mother who preferred dealing with the accounting over actually making the sake. As she rapidly entered data into a spreadsheet program on the computer placed atop the low sitting room table, she spoke leisurely to the Nekomata.

“It can’t really be helped. Half of Shinobu’s problems with the Zashiki Warashi are his own fault.”

“What do you mean?”

“Her laziness and her love of video games come from Shinobu’s own actions.”

This woman was not a frugal person who was stingy with money. Instead, she was a math fanatic who grew utterly absorbed in the fluctuations of the parameters. She grinned at the spreadsheet on the screen as she spoke.

“In fact, when I married into the family, that Zashiki Warashi almost never appeared where anyone could see her.”

“…Really?”

“That’s the standard for a Zashiki Warashi, right? You would see her shadow on the sliding door but would find no one there if you circled around behind it. If you left food in the altar room, it would mysteriously disappear.” The Nekomata looked dubious as Jinnai Shinobu’s mother continued speaking. Her fingers raced across the keyboard all the while. “When Shinobu was born, she was still that elusive and eerie existence. However, Shinobu would excitedly go around searching for the Zashiki Warashi. When he was unable to find her he would grow tired and begin to cry. That’s when we began to see her face poking out from behind a pillar. After that continued long enough, she ended up like this.”

“It might be a bit too cruel to lay all the blame on that boy.”

“Probably. Shinobu also gained some habits from her. For example, he always embraces his pillow or something while sleeping.”

A smartphone then began ringing.

It was the phone (that actually belonged to Shinobu) which was placed in the chest of the glamorous Zashiki Warashi’s yukata.

“What? You left on your trip but ended up stranded with a girl from your class? Shinobu, why are you calling? Are you bragging about how great your life is?”

“A-a rendezvous!? Don’t tell me they’re trapped in a mountain cabin and have to strip down naked to warm each other with their bodies!! Th-that is the role that a Yuki Onna should play as mountains and coldness are our domain!”

“I thought seeing a Yuki Onna approaching in that situation led to being stranded and freezing to death,” pointed out Shinobu over the phone. “But that’s not the point. Anyway, we’ve already contacted the fire department, so we should be okay. In the meantime, I have a few photos to send you.”

“Are they erotic photos overflowing with youth?”

“M-making a fish print with the female body!? How twisted!!”

“Hey, could we try to get somewhere in this conversation?” asked Shinobu. “We found a bunch of old kanji and can’t read them. I thought maybe a Youkai who had lived a long life might be able to decipher them.”

“Shinobu, that sounds like a huge pain.”

“Once I hang up, I can call the card company and tell them I lost my credit card. If I do that, the smartphone, the game system’s network play, and the laptop’s internet will all be stopped. And what about the cable TV? I think the ones in my room and your room are both under my name.”

The Nekomata sighed in exasperation when she saw the glamorous Zashiki Warashi prostrate herself in front of the smart phone with tears in her eyes.

The Zashiki Warashi gave a teary sniff and looked through the photographs she had been sent.

“Um… I think this one carved into a stone in what looks like a cave says…‘arrival of the water god’.”

“Any idea what that means?”

“It means they are bringing a snake Youkai in from somewhere else.”

“…Snake?”

With the obvious example of Yamata no Orochi, snake or serpent Youkai were often related to twisting rivers and the water damages that came from them.

“Then those are…no wait. I didn’t get that feeling from them. It’s the huge serpents like Orochi or Uwabami that symbolize rivers. The ones I saw were different…”

Shinobu was muttering about something, but the Zashiki Warashi did not pay too much attention because she did not know the details.

She focused on deciphering the old writing in the photos so she could end the danger of an internet annihilation.

“These few account books on Japanese paper seem to be related to a village ritual. They explain the cave. However, the paper is so damaged I can only read bits and pieces.”

“Just tell me what you can read.”

“The village’s source of income came from gold dust collected in a river at the bottom of a ravine. There must have been a gold mine somewhere, but they did not have the technology to search for it or mine it.”

“…I was wondering how that man bought that portable stove and gas cylinder.”

“However, the amount of gold dust they could get was unstable. During years in which they found less, they did not earn enough to live off of which affected the stability of the village’s entire society. They had a common ritual they would use to resolve their worries.”

“A ritual?”

“You could call it ‘thinning the herd’ or ‘leaving fewer mouths to feed’. The ritual was performed by taking any baby born during one of those difficult years and drowning it in the spring in that cave. …Simply put, they would leave fewer people to help resolve the lack of food.”

Silence fell.

This was not a problem with the signal.

Shinobu did not know how to respond to this information that went well beyond what he had expected.

“From the format of this writing, this is something that happened over 100 years ago,” pointed out the Zashiki Warashi.

“Not necessarily,” groaned Shinobu. “There were two graveyards in the village. That’s probably because they had one for the normal villagers and one for the babies that had been killed in the ritual. Thirty years ago was the age of color television!”

No matter what anyone said or how they tried to deny it, what had happened would not change.

Occasionally, that village that seemed frozen in time would not have enough food.

To resolve that, they had continued to drown babies as if it was perfectly normal.

Even as televisions moved from black and white to color, even as bullet trains rushed around Japan, and even as air conditioners became a part of the standard household, it had continued. As if insisting that remaining unchanged was a virtue, they had continued to drown babies.

And if someone had not annihilated everyone living there, it would likely still be happening.

The victims of the incident had been human.

But there was no guarantee that they were all “perfectly innocent”.

“This is the last one. The Japanese paper you found next to a broken jar. …Hm. This must be the snake Youkai you saw in the village.”

“What is it?”

If it was a giant serpent symbolizing rivers, it would be the Orochi or the Uwabami.

But that was not it.

The Zashiki Warashi replied as if teaching a young child how to read a difficult kanji.

“Toubyou. It is a possessing spirit that comes as a set of 75 small snakes.”

Part 27 (Hishigami Mai)

Yamada Ken, Sakai Haruka, Kurumaya Nozomi, Tanish*ta Hajime, Suzukawa Izumi, and Gogan Sakura.

“There. That’s the one,” I spat out as I swung my arm forcefully down.

I aimed for the culprit’s head.

But I missed.

My right hand smashed into the parking lot asphalt up to the wrist. The culprit who had been pretending to be dead had rolled to the side to avoid my arm.

“Tch. You idiot!!”

What the hell!? Why did my hand pierce the asphalt so easily!?

My body was specialized for anti-Youkai combat. If I forced myself to take on a metal panel or asphalt, I would smash my own flesh to pieces.

“Ah…ah…”

As the Sunekosuri let out a dumbfounded voice, I pulled my arm out of the smashed asphalt.

It seemed my attack had not been completely wasted.

A torn-off ear hung down from my index finger.

“How…? But…she was…she was dead just a moment ago!”

“You dumbass. This wasn’t like Yamada-kun’s split head with the brains leaking out or Sakai-chan’s gut that ruptured like a water balloon. If you had paid attention, it should have been obvious.”

I threw away the ear as the figure stared at me and slowly stood up.

The piece of flesh struck the culprit in the chest where it slid down in accordance with gravity.

“Having so many snakes coming from your mouth that your jaw dislocates isn’t enough to kill you. If the snakes were only in your mouth and had not entered your throat or organs, you could continue breathing through your nose,” I said to the culprit. “Isn’t that right, Suzukawa Izumi-chan?”

She was about high school age. As one of the prisoners in the corporate prison, she had been forced to wear unrefined workwear. Or so it had seemed.

However, the Sunekosuri was trembling and said, “Wh-what is that?”

“Don’t ask me.”

“Why is that girl’s skin peeling off to reveal an old woman’s face!? Who is she!?”

“Why don’t you ask her?” I replied offhandedly before smiling. “But the kind of person that disguises themselves as a beautiful girl tends not to be a decent person in reality.”

Suzukawa Izumi, or the old woman wearing her skin, spoke in a hoarse voice with her face half destroyed.

“…Is that so?”

“There was a rumor of a free pass in the corporate prison and alcohol would occasionally find its way in. Whether the person using the free pass was a prisoner or a jailer, they were part of a group that wanted to destroy the corporate prison and they were using the alcohol as currency to negotiate and make deals with people. That way they could gather the items they needed for a Youkai or Package. …That was our theory so far, but it looks like the situation was actually a bit different.”

“Eh? …Oh, I get it! If that old woman could disguise herself as Suzukawa Izumi…!!”

“She could disguise herself as other people too. A single person was using the free pass the entire time. By periodically faking her death and taking over someone else’s face, she could continue taking action while escaping suspicion.”

“…”

“I don’t know how many people are cooperating with her outside the factory, but if she wanted to periodically leave, she must have had some equipment to make periodic contact. Maybe a server that uses a satellite to communicate. And it would of course work on a band that gets past the jammers.”

The old woman said nothing more.

In the very next moment, a great number of small snakes unnaturally slithered out from within the fog.

Dozens of them appeared only a few centimeters from my face. I instinctually took a step back and gravity dragged the snakes down to the parking lot asphalt.

The old woman looked confused.

“Is it that surprising?” I asked with a scornful laugh. “The snakes all came from within the others’ bodies and wounds. The medium is likely the fog. When the victim breathes it in, you can call the snakes into their body to kill them.”

“…Then there should be no way for you to avoid it.”

“How naïve. You shouldn’t think of me as having the same standards as the other creatures we call humans. I am extraordinarily powerful against Youkai and the like. I even have the ability to bite off Youkai flesh and digest it in my stomach. Once they’re inside my body, there’s nothing they can do. I can even purify all of this fog that reeks of Youkai.” And I did not stop there. “A normal human cannot kill a normal Youkai, but the same cannot be said when it is Youkai versus Youkai. That is why people in my business like to use Shikigami. Sunekosuri! If you don’t want to die, bite apart all of the snakes appearing in your mouth!!”

Unpleasant noises began coming from the Sunekosuri’s mouth.

A Sunekosuri was a Youkai without a violent side. All it could do was rub its head up against travelers’ legs.

However, these snake Youkai were only as thick as a little finger and thirty centimeters long.

Speaking purely about size and ignoring their strength and special characteristics, they were like slightly hard sausages. That meant a small dog’s teeth were enough to tear them apart.

“Ueh, uehhh!! Peh, peh! I-I hate creatures without legs! Woof woof!! Ubh!? Gehhhh!! Ow!! What is this ring!? Why is there metal mixed in with them!?”

He seemed to be having it tough since more snakes would appear every time he breathed in the fog.

He was continually biting them and spitting them out, so he did not seem in danger of having his stomach burst. I decided I could safely focus on the old woman.

“Since this was a snake Youkai related to the water in the fog, I assumed it was an Orochi or Uwabami, but it seems I was a bit off.” I got to the heart of the issue as I glanced over at the gold ring-like objects the teary-eyed Sunekosuri was spitting out. “The Toubyou. If I recall, it is a Youkai raised in a jar or pot that comes in a set of 75. In exchange for periodically giving them sake or a rice ball, they allow the master of the home to prosper by stealing gold, silver, and treasure from other houses. They are a stereotypical possessing spirit. …That must have been the characteristic used to make the 8000 people from the corporate prison vanish…no, to make the few of us here go missing. This Package automatically “steals” the people needed for the master’s objective. That produces this spirited away effect.”

“…You do not understand.”

“What don’t I understand?”

“The Youkai I wanted to use was not a possessing spirit!!”

She must have learned she could not directly target me from within, so the arrangement of the Toubyou changed.

Dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of snakes rained down around the old woman. They coiled around each other, bit into each other, became strongly intertwined, and branched off complexly. All together, they created a giant serpentine silhouette.

Wait. Wait just a second.

“You mixed in the characteristics of the Orochi!? Dammit. I should have investigated the abandoned village!!”

“This is closer to the form of the Youkai that should have been in the village. But your regrets are meaningless. My shrine was destroyed long ago. There is nothing left.”

“So ‘Suzukawa Izumi’ was the survivor of Zenmetsu Village rumored to exist within the corporate prison.”

“How long ago do you think I am a survivor from?” spoke the old woman in a whisper with her back to the giant branching snake. “Would you believe me if I said I have been this old woman for over 100 years?”

“I see no reason not to. I have remade and swapped out everything from my fingertips to my internal organs, so it doesn’t surprise me you can alter yourself like that. I don’t really see the point, though.”

“The Four Mountains village was created over 100 years ago as a treatment facility for those suffering from spiritual injuries or other serious harm related to Youkai. Although in reality, it was mostly a quarantine area people were abandoned in.”

“Is there any need to explain this?”

“My objective was to enter the Four Mountains village, intentionally split the group so two powerful families were created, and maintain a constant state of internal conflict. Essentially, I was a spy meant to control Four Mountains. By taking the hatred pointed outwards and turning it inwards, the residents would not try to breach the walls of the village. If all went well, they would be satisfied with their extremely small cycle and extremely small society.”

“…Was that really necessary?”

“But the gold dust in the river gave them the foreign currency they need to contact the outside world. Then when the possessing spirits were brought in, they decided to spiritually arm themselves. That was 30 years ago. This caused the Kuroyama Electronics Group to view them as dangerous. The child drowning going on at the time left the underground water impure, so it was banned for anyone to drink it. Due to the timing, this intensified their opposition of the corporation that wished to use that underground water for the semiconductor factory.”

It happened as I tried to make a surprise attack during a pause in the conversation.

“That was why the Kuroyama Electronics Group planned to take the initiative and annihilate the Four Mountains village.”

The old woman’s hand moved.

“They had yet to complete the Toubyou Package that covered the entire Four Mountains area. It was left behind unfinished.”

She held a container filled with water, sake, or some other liquid. She buried that hand in the branching Orochi behind her.

“That is why I overwrote the Toubyou Package with the Youkai and ritual that village was originally meant to have.”

And she pulled her hand back out.

As if that were their cue, the giant serpent all too easily scattered apart.

“Originally, the serpent was nothing more than the scabbard.”

The old woman held a sword in her hand.

Instead of a single-edged katana, it was a double-edged sword from an older era.

The old woman spoke quietly as she casually lowered that sword that emitted a brilliant light as if it were shining in the sun.

“Its true nature is the production of a sword. The name of the sword that appeared after the defeat of a serpent branching into eight was Kusanagi.”

…Not good!!!

She seriously has the ability to illegally access and forcefully draw out the power of one of the Three Sacred Treasures by following the diagram of defeating Yamata no Orochi!? This has gone well outside the realm of anti-Youkai!!

By the time I realized I had completely misinterpreted how much distance I needed from her, the situation had already begun to move.

A fearsome slash assaulted me like a flash of lightning.

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