The forest was too quiet.
Aiko knelt inside her relocated tent, sharpening a stolen dagger with methodical strokes. Every scrape of metal echoed like a shout in the suffocating silence.
Her ribs still ached from Yuriko's final blow, and her cursed body—stats locked at 1—trembled from the effort of lifting the blade.
Kami-sama hasn't spoken since the waterfall.
She glanced at the Eagle-Eye Totem in the corner—a wooden owl statue Michael had purchased. Its jeweled eyes stared blankly.
No alerts. No guidance. Just… nothing.
Have I displeased him? The thought slithered into her mind, venomous and familiar. After all he's given—shelter, weapons, justice—why would he stay?
Aiko gripped the dagger harder, the edge biting into her palm.
No. Kami-sama is testing my resolve. I must prove I'm worthy.
She stood, wincing as her bruised ankle protested. The tent's entrance flapped open, revealing the moonlit forest. No birdsong. No rustling leaves. Just the oppressive weight of incoming death.
Tatsuya is coming.
Her makeshift armor—layers of stolen cloth and a cookpot breastplate—felt laughably flimsy. She'd set traps: tripwires strung with bells, a pit of sharpened sticks, even a wasp nest rigged to fall. But against an S-Class Kagekiri?
It was like throwing pebbles at a typhoon.
"Kami-sama…" Her whisper cracked. "If you can hear me… I'm ready."
Nothing.
The totem's eyes remained dark.
…
Tatsuya crouched in the canopy, motionless as the moonlight carved his silhouette into the pine needles.
Below, the girl's tent sat innocently in a moonlit clearing—canvas fluttering, campfire dead.
Pathetic.
His fingers brushed the twin kodachi at his hips. Mist Cutter and Bone Drinker hummed hungrily. The target—Aiko Minamoto—hadn't moved in seventeen minutes. He'd counted.
First Principle: Assume the trap exists.
Tatsuya's nostrils flared.
No birdsong. No insects. Even the wind held its breath.
The clearing reeked of rookie mistakes: a half-buried tripwire glinting near the eastern thicket, a disturbed patch of earth masking a spike pit. Child's play.
Yet…
His pupils dilated, activating Shinobi Sight. The world sharpened into layers—flickering auras, residual magic, the sticky aftertaste of divine interference.
There.
Faint blue sigils shimmered around the tent's perimeter. Guardian wards. Not Aiko's work—crude, but pulsing with unfamiliar energy. A onmyōji, a powerful Japanese magician, that Himari had warned about.
Tatsuya's mind replayed the evidence he'd found on his way here:
He first found the corpse of Yuriko Matsuda, drowned in a waterfall. Fatal wound: amputated hand.
But even before that, he was briefed by Saeko about multiple accounts of "miraculous" interventions—earthquakes summoned, weapons and horses materialized fom the thin air.
The onmyōji that had been helping Aiko must be at or above his current strength, Tatsuya concluded, he hadn't came this far by underestimating his enemies.
He checked Aiko's status again, and again, he confirmed that she's weak as a paper.
This is a lie. Or a lure.
Either way, the interference was real.
But, what kind of school of magid did the onmyōji specialize in?
He unsheathed Mist Cutter and sliced the air. The blade's curse-sealing runes flared blue, revealing lingering spell fragments.
Wait… What are these?
Smoke Bomb… Bear Traps… and … Relocation magic?
Tatsuya's brow furrowed. Spatial magic required precision only achieved by high level casters. Yet the residual energy here was clumsy, unstable—like a child smashing a hammer to perform surgery.
Deliberate misdirection?
He paced the clearing, boots avoiding tripwires with preternatural precision. Every trap was a crude deterrent, but the spacing…
Her guardian possesses overwhelming resources but zero combat discipline.
Amateurs. Absolute amateurs.
Tatsuya paused at the cliff's edge.
No. This musn't be.
All this was a bait for him to lower his guard, to make him think this is just an easy kill.
Her real protector will come at the last very second to strike him down with some unexpected magic!
It must be so.
Tatsuya smiled with relief.
How smart and prudent he was for not striking down the girl earlier, even though he'd arrived here one hour early, and had plenty time to do so.
This is a deliberate trap for him to jump in.
How They underestimate me!
Tatsuya starts pacing again, until his eyes suddenly shot open.
What to do against an enemy at least as powerful as him? Or potentially more powerful?
What to do against an enemy that lays traps for him?
It was time for…
That…
It's gotta to be them!
Reaching for his pouch, Tatsuya unsealed the Kekkai Stones. They floated silently, embedding themselves in a triangular formation around the clearing. The wards flickered.
Absorption initiated.
He smirked.
A hand seal summoned his shadow clones. They melted into the darkness, approaching from north, south, and west. The eastern tripwire snapped.
Twang!
A wasp nest plummeted. Clones disintegrated into smoke, re-forming behind the spike pit. The pit collapsed. Clone Two fell, impaled—then burst into black flames, incinerating the spikes.
"Crude," Tatsuya murmured. "But resourceful."
The real trap ignited next.
As Clone Three neared the tent, Aiko's stolen dagger shot from inside—guided by a shimmering thread of divine light. It pierced the clone's eye.
Tatsuya's Shinobi Sight dissected the thread: Telekinetic assist. Low-tier divinity. Predictable.
He palmed a Kyōfu seal. "Let's see your god bleed."
Inside the Tent.
Aiko's hands trembled as she gripped the dagger. The tripwire alert had been a feint—now silence.
They're here.
Her traps were gone. No bells. No footsteps. Just the suffocating weight of being hunted.
Kami-sama, I need—
A guttural screech ripped through the night. The tent's wards flared crimson, then shattered. A shadow blurred past the entrance.
She lunged with the dagger.
Air.
A kunai whistled, slicing her cheek. She stumbled, tasting blood.
"Pathetic." The voice came from everywhere.
Aiko spun, slashing wildly. Her blade caught cloth—empty. Laughter echoed.
Think. He's probing. Waiting for Kami-sama's move.
She dove for the Eagle-Eye Totem. Its eyes were dark.
No…
A boot cracked her ribs. She flew into the tent pole, canvas collapsing. Moonlight illuminated her attacker—a specter in black, twin blades dripping void.
Tatsuya tilted his head. "No miracle? How… disappointing."
He raised Mist Cutter.
Aiko closed her eyes.