Instant Death

Yuuki collapsed.

Stefanie, who specialized in regeneration magic, tried healing him, but he didn't show any reaction.

Despite having been in perfect shape just moments ago he fell to the ground without any warning whatsoever -- there was no one around them that could have harmed him, no one had done anything at all.

And yet he had definitely died.

Unable to deny that truth, Stefanie clung to his body and broke into tears with a heartrending cry.

For her, being taken in by Yuuki could have been called a stroke of luck, considering her life as slave until that point. She was always saying empty-sounding flattery like 'As expected of master!', but in her case those words may very well have come from her heart. If nothing else, her grief over Yuuki's death was genuine.

Euphemia on the other hand was still shaking from fear, but finally started to regain her composure. She had been terrified of suddenly dying just like her late master, but it appeared Yogiri didn't intend to kill Yuuki's slaves along with him. ƒr𝙚𝙚𝘸e𝚋𝐧૦ѵ𝒆𝒍.𝒄𝒐m

Mustering all the calmness she could, Euphemia focused her consciousness on her own state of mind and realized: there was no feeling of being controlled. Even when she looked at Yuuki's corpse, the only thought that came to mind was 'Serves you right.'

There was also a strange feeling of a great amount of energy flowing into her, increasing the weight of her soul -- with Yuuki having died, his soul dispersed and was absorbed by the two girls next to him. Most of it dissolved into the atmosphere, but even just a fragment of his soul was gigantic and certainly a blessing of unfathomable magnitude.

――Now then, where should I go from here?

Unhappy with his punishment being no more than death, Euphemia glared at Yuuki's body. A good part of her wanted to rip off his limbs and tear out his intestines that very moment, destroying his body until it bore no resemblance to his original appearance.

That was the kind of tribe Euphemia was born in, a clan with no respect for the dead. Raiding their dead enemies' graves and exposing their corpses to the world was how they silenced their grudges.

"Go ahead, you can have that."

However, surely Stefanie wouldn't sit idly by if she went ahead and ruined the corpse to her heart's content. In the end they were both victims and Euphemia had no reason to dislike her, nor one to fight her.

"…What?"

Stefanie looked up at Euphemia in a daze. It seemed she, on the other hand, had been expecting Euphemia to grief over Yuuki's death just like her.

"You've probably noticed, but we were released from domination; I don't have any more reason to be loyal to this guy. Don't know about you, but I'm leaving."

"I…"

Stefanie was clearly overwhelmed by the situation, but while Euphemia didn't have any reason to dislike her neither did she see any reason for why she should watch over her.

"Well, bye."

She promptly decided to leave the confused Stefanie behind and made her way to the exit. There most likely wasn't much harm in leaving her behind; she was more than strong enough to handle these ruins' first floor on her own.

And on her way to the ruins' exit, Euphemia thought about what to do next.

The first objective was going to be grouping back up with her tribe and reviving her village. As long as her old companions were alive she could trust them to make their way back to their village as well. Thanks to her tribes' naturally well developed physical abilities Yuuki most likely didn't view her clansmen as his usual dispensable pawns, so there was a good chance they were still alive. Looking at it that way, Euphemia realized that there was no need to be pessimistic; she and her tribe could still start anew.

The more she thought about all the things that had to be done the stronger grew her desire to get out of these ruins, but before her feet broke into a full sprint on their own she noticed something strange.

Her throat was terribly dry.

And not just that, Euphemia soon realized that her entire surroundings had dried up. Compared to when she entered the ruins, when they were as damp as one would expect from an underground structure in a primal forest, the current level of humidity could only be called abnormally low. Looking at the ground before her she could even see that small piles of sand had formed.

When she finally arrived at the staircase to the surface and saw the daylight shine in she was convinced that something was off: There should have been no way for the sunlight to illuminate the first floor through the two story high building that the stairs were situated in.

A blast of dry air blew through the corridor.

There was no doubt that something had happened on the surface, but she still had to get out of the ruins and return home.

Bundling her determination, Euphemia ascended the staircase and having arrived at the top the scene she witnessed was as she feared: There was nothing at all. The whole area had been turned into a desert, leaving behind no signs of the ruins nor the gloomy primal forest.

"What in the world?"

It was too much for her to wrap her head around.

Hoping to find an answer to her many questions she looked around her and it didn't take long for her to find a huge spot of darkness in the distance.

Whatever it was, it was black and had no clear shape, only appearing like a bundle of fog that just barely maintained the shape of a human. With massive strides it moved towards Hayabusa, giving a dreadfully ominous impression to anyone that spotted it. Taking another look around her, Euphemia saw that the sudden desertification had passed through the ancient forest in one straight line. It seemed that giant walking shadow was somehow responsible for the abnormality around her.

Aggressors.

Beings of which no one knew when, where or why they appeared in this world. One would expect any and everyone of this world to fear these creatures, but Euphemia actually felt relieved, for the aggressor paid her no attention.

It appeared her stay below the surface had saved her, and since the walking anomaly was heading straight towards the city all she had to do from here was flee the other way.

"Now where did you come from? Sure looks like I found myself a Kurayami survivor."

Addressed by an unknown voice Euphemia hastily turned back around and found herself face to face with a woman in a scarlet red dress. And she realized: She was far from having escaped danger.

For Euphemia, a single look was enough. Enough to sense that the person before her was the natural enemy of the weak, a being that preyed on her kind, a violator of souls.

"Mhm, doesn't look like you've got a whole lot of strength going for you. But see, I really don't know what to do about that thing. Let's see whether you can tell me something I don't know."

Fighting was out of the question. Whatever it took, Euphemia absolutely had to get away from that place.

However, the moment she looked into the woman's eyes she lost the ability to move her body.

She was hit by Charm, a skill that temporarily controlled her soul and made it impossible for her to raise resistance.

The woman in the red dress slowly walked up to her, in response to which Euphemia obediently exposed her neck, soon feeling the soft sensation of a pair of lips on her.

Thus, Euphemia learned that the one before her was Lain, sage and Original Blood.

＊＊＊＊＊

It was a terrible match up.

That much Lain could tell right away when she first encountered Kurayami. It was just too ambiguous of an existence, she couldn't even tell where it began and where it ended. She had no idea what kind of creature it was, and actually wasn't certain whether it even had the necessary consciousness to be considered a creature.

Hitting it seemed to achieve about as much as striking at fog, and to make things more complicated the part that came into contact with it withered instantly. First it would dry up, then crumble, then turn into sand. Fortunately, Lain's immortal body was hardly fazed by such an attack, but while her defensive properties may have been enough to let her stand up against Kurayami there was nothing she could do as far as offense went.

She was a vampire, a being that steadily gathered new followers to command. She had impeccable regenerative abilities, she could charm people with a single glance and her transformation ability allowed her to take flight, and those weren't even all of her powers. There was not a single decisive weakness an opponent could abuse, and yet she utterly lacked the means to defeat Kurayami.

In retrospect, Santarou and his ability to command all archetypes of magic should have had a fairly decent chance against it. After all, he did possess the offensive ability required to have driven it away once. Lain held huge magical power within her as well, but her spells weren't anything too special, mostly consisting of regeneration magic and the sages' barrier magic. Other than that her repertoire was rather basic offensive magic only.

In the end, Lain couldn't stop Kurayami from advancing now matter how hard she tried. In fact, it was possible Kurayami hadn't even taken notice of her.

And in such a hopeless situation, Lain found a blonde girl left behind in Kurayami's wake, just vacantly gazing after it.

Under normal circumstances Lain wouldn't bother taking a second look at her, but her unharmed condition in such a place did raise her curiosity.

Lain decided to make the girl her follower.

A Charm would have been enough to make her speak, but a charmed mind's thought process was too fuzzy for a proper interrogation. Just turning her into a follower made things easier.

However, the only thing the girl, Euphemia, could tell her was that she was underground while Kurayami passed by. That was rather disappointing, but after questioning her further she found out that she was involved with one of Sion's sage candidates, and that she had even come into contact with Yogiri Takatou.

"So he can kill people even if they aren't near him, that's quite something."

Now that Euphemia was her follower it was impossible for her to lie to Lain, so if nothing else that was her honest interpretation of what happened.

And assuming it was true, that meant Yogiri could kill people even over long distance.

"Looks like it's roughly 10 kilometers to the city from here."

"It is indeed."

"Hmm, so at the very least he can reach this far."

Lain squeezed any relevant information Euphemia had out of her.

Going by what Yogiri said, just thinking about it was enough for him to kill somebody. On top of that, his power wasn't just limited to humans but could even be applied to objects spawned from magic and things like soul infused dolls.

Most of his targets seemed to have been within his field of vision, but apparently he was also able to kill people that were stealthed as well as far away underground. There was a good chance he had some kind of detection ability.

Of course his instant death power was already dangerous, but Lain believed that his detection was what would turn out to be the real problem. It probably wasn't a coincidence that Yuuki died right as he ordered his slaves to kill Yogiri. He must have somehow sensed Yuuki's order.

In essence, Yogiri's power was going to be harder to deal with than mere instant death magic.

"Might be time for some experiments, I'd love to see what he's capable of."

Lain was starting to think that the Anti-Death Battalion might actually prove unable to handle him, which would mean that blindly sending more killers after him would just be a waste of time and resources. However, even if they were just going to get killed off, she absolutely had to use that opportunity to see Yogiri's power in action with her own eyes.

Its sphere of action, its scale of threat, the properties of it.

His personality. What he liked, what he disliked, what he disregarded.

"And most importantly, whether he could kill even me."

"Apologies, I did not understand that."

Demonstrating her excellent hearing, Euphemia immediately responded to Lain's mumbling. It may have been just the two of them there, but Lain still reprimanded herself for her carelessness.

"Never mind that. This whole Yogiri investigation may just be for naught anyway."

The Aggressor Kurayami was on its way to Hayabusa, Yogiri's current location.

If it was just going to keep advancing like it had been this far then there were most likely not going to be any survivors. There wouldn't be a problem if the sages' celestial protection was able to fend it off, but in the end the barrier was no more than a monster repellent. Whether it was going to be enough to stop Kurayami's power was questionable at best.

"Masayuki's face will be a sight to behold, if nothing else."

She had seen enough to know that continuing to chase after Kurayami wasn't going to change anything.

Unpleasant it may be, Lain was starting to consider asking other sages for support.