"Oh?"
Major Debes, still in his terrifying black bear form,
his dark brown bear ears twitched slightly.
His massive head slowly turned toward the source of the voice.
It had not come from the main battlefield between the Marines and the Kiheitai,
but from the flank where he had been facing off against the blonde female gunslinger.
Then he saw a figure casually stepping through the wreckage and bloodstains littering the ground, walking toward them.
Wooden sandals struck broken chunks of concrete, producing a crisp, steady rhythm.
It formed a strange contrast with the chaotic slaughter surrounding them.
The first thing he noticed was the medium-short hair, dark as night, glinting with a dim purple sheen beneath the sunlight and hanging loosely around his shoulders.
A long, slanted lock of bangs fell over his face, half-concealing his bandage-wrapped left eye.
The hollow beneath the bandages and the remaining emerald right eye, like a cold star in a deep abyss,
formed the most striking features of that handsome yet dangerous face.
A slender smoking pipe rested loosely between his thin lips.
Pale blue smoke curled upward,
blurring the faintly amused curve of his mouth.
He held a beautifully curved katana in one hand.
Though it remained sheathed, an icy killing intent already seeped from it.
The butterfly patterns intricately embroidered in gold thread across his kimono
seemed to quiver faintly with each step he took.
Demonic and gorgeous.
His bearing carried more than a hint of Nurarihyon's style.
"Purple hair, one eye, a butterfly-patterned yukata."
The muscles on Major Debes's savage bear face shifted, revealing a grin filled with recognition and intense interest.
Then his deep voice rolled out like muffled thunder.
"So that's it. You're... Takasugi Shinsuke."
The other man had been highlighted in the mission briefing.
One of the