The moment the distant tram finally clattered along its tracks past Hibiya Park,
Su Wen saw countless operatives from the Exorcism Department pour out from every direction and seal off the area.
At that same moment,
he seemed to make out countless crystalline threads floating in the dusk:
They were not spring fluff drifting on the wind, but tens of millions of Silver Spider Silk threads surging from underground, winding around the edges of Ginza's glass facades, clinging to the steel skeletons of Shinjuku's skyscrapers, and weaving translucent cocoons amid the changing traffic lights at Shibuya Crossing.
Even
the densest concentrations of spider silk
lay among Fukagawa's crooked Edo lattice windows.
The flickering leaves of the afternoon were sliced by the threads into diamond-shaped patches of light, like candlelight filtering beneath the eaves of Tokyo's row houses a century ago.
Su Wen reached out and touched the drifting glimmers in the air. He sensed an atmosphere similar to Deep Tokyo, but the feeling was faint, so faint that it might vanish in an instant:
"Is this your ability too?"
Hearing him say that,
Caroline, who was gradually disengaging from her overclocked state but still could not leave because she had already descended into the deep zone, answered with a soft laugh:
"Sublimation Lineage:
Digitization—the syllables of aether.
The aether movement, the wind harp of the Aegean Sea, Atlantis's distant melody.
They were all derived from the dragon race's spirit words.
No need to thank me. I merely gave those idiots from Tokyo's Spirit Disaster Countermeasures Division a 'small hint.'"
But clearly,
perhaps they were not the only two waiting for everything to settle, nor was Natsume Chie the only one still asleep.
Not far from the station,
on an observation deck mingled with the evacuating crowd,
a young man in