"The plan has begun?"
The man in the black Kariginu spoke with a voice like a blade tempered in ice.
But the old man merely slowly opened his eyes, the other's distorted reflection mirrored in his clouded pupils:
"Let the child go.
"Beast and Mikado have both vanished. What is happening now is far more than just Abyssal Contamination..."
His withered fingers brushed over the yellowed fragments of the Kojiki on the table, and dark red blood suddenly seeped between the pages.
Compared to Miyasugi Miyuki's light footsteps, however,
Iwakame Hiroaki, the burly man from the Tokyo Spirit Disaster Countermeasures Division, moved with far more explosive force. He drove an off-road vehicle into the late night amid the engine's roar.
But with them—and even more people—taking action, Tokyo's police force was already nowhere near sufficient.
That was why, even though a Transcendent Crisis had erupted at the platform near Chie's home, support personnel did not arrive until ten minutes later.
Meanwhile,
Three hundred meters beneath Okutama Town, Tokyo:
A secret laboratory built entirely of steel lay hidden within the granite strata like a slumbering iron beast. Some of its massive doors were even engraved with forbidden runes from the Golden Crow Hiding Sea Scripture.
At the very heart of the laboratory, numerous hexagonal alarms formed a ring across the dome,
allowing countless scarlet beams to pierce through floating Spiritual Energy particles and divide the entire underground plaza into forbidden domains of intertwining light and shadow.
Teams of researchers in tightly sealed Protective Suits escorted modified subjects back and forth across the plaza.
Clearly,
Tsukishima might have possessed a somewhat special identity, but she was most likely only one of the subjects being studied in the modification program.
Even so, her disappearance had triggered certain butterfly effects.
Inside an extremely important