Hands trembling, Sato Hide could not help wiping the beads of sweat gathered at his temple, ready to roll down his cheek. His eyes quivered.
In that instant just now, as his heart clenched and every hair on his body stood on end, all he could see was a blood-red hell of carnage. Countless severed limbs twisted as they broke through the blood-soaked ground, stiffly and horrifyingly recounting the cruelty of that hell. Withered, blood-dripping arms and limbs stretched endlessly onward, filling his entire crimson field of vision, before finally converging like malformed petals into a towering lotus of bloody hell. And within the heart of that blood-red hell lotus, at the very center of all those severed limbs, stood the boy before him. Covered in blood, standing tall amid that crimson terror.
Like the embodiment of death.
In that instant, his heart had nearly stopped. The terror of suffocating through his mouth and nose still lingered in his chest, and his whole body would not stop trembling.
Gulp!
Unable to help himself, he swallowed again. He opened his mouth, wanting to cry out the terror still lingering in his heart, but the scream caught in his throat. Beneath his pounding heartbeat, it turned into hurried, frightened gasps.
Killing... killing intent...
This was... killing intent! As he gasped, sweat seeped from the temple he had just wiped clean, gathering into beads and rolling down his cheek. With that drop of sweat, a look of horror slowly burst forth in Sato Hide's trembling eyes.
A stunned disbelief distinct from his present fear.
Chiba... how old was he? Such killing intent, killing intent so dense that it made everyone suffocate—how could it possibly exist in a child of only eleven or twelve?
What... what had happened to give a child such killing