Even after the sakura shrine maiden departed from the land of lava and hot air, the white mist persisted.
"..."
Within that chilling space, the masked entity stood.
The sword of ice was no longer grasped in his hand, replaced with nothing.
Now that all of the Objectives were over, and no more Challengers would likely arrive at this Floor for the foreseeable future, its strength was no longer necessary. The landscape would gradually begin to regenerate and restore itself to normalcy, in preparation for the extraordinary pushing force that would inevitably return.
After all, even if he warned every single person whose aims clashed with his own, there would unavoidably be those whose wills couldn't be altered with mere words.
And from what he had observed, she seemed to fit that description to a T.
'She'll come back eventually.'
Before that happened, he could only give the maximum possible benefit of the doubt.
