They couldn't fight it at all.
Red P had terrifyingly high damage and range. It could practically snipe across half the map, and its accuracy was damn good too.
It was much harder to deal with than Medea.
They couldn't even get close.
Honestly, after Kazuma Satou, Hachiman Hikigaya, and the others reviewed the battle, they felt that "Medea" really hadn't been that difficult.
She seemed to have plenty of mana, but she had no effective offensive abilities. All she could do was summon some weak Dragon Tooth Soldiers, making her less than half as threatening as "Souichirou Kuzuki."
"Mm, I'm so tired. I can't move anymore, oyster~"
Hachiman Hikigaya looked up at the sky and the Golden Fleece circling around him. Sleepiness washed over him, and he yawned.
"I... ah... I'm closing my eyes for a bit."
"You're going to sleep on the concrete?"
Shido Itsuka's eyelids were starting to droop too.
"Can't walk anymore. Nothing we can do."
"I've never been this excited in my life. I seriously can't move."
"Zzz~"
Hachiman Hikigaya fell asleep again, lightly snoring.
"So tired... oyster, oyster~"
"I'm doing okay. I trained a bit lately. Sigh, I got screwed over and sent there by that idiot goddess. I thought I'd marry a princess, defeat the Demon King, and reach the peak of life.
Instead, I hauled bricks, mixed cement, plastered walls, slept in stables, and woke up every morning to a stink. I got reincarnated into another world, only to work construction every day. I really couldn't take it anymore."
"That sounded rough."
"There are always spacequakes where I live. They're pretty dangerous, so I have to find ways to win over those Spirits who passively cause disasters. That way, I can protect some cities and keep them from being harmed or exploited by bad people."
"Spirits? Girls?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"You damn normie! Why does a trap who fooled me into falling for him get to have a harem?!"
"I didn't want to cross-dress either! When did I fool you into falling for me?! And stop slandering me! I... that's not a harem!"
"You bastard! Shido Itsuka, you trap who fooled me into falling for you!"
"I... you... Kazuma Satou! You... you're such a damn dog!"
Kazuma Satou and the others chatted, traded insults, and recovered their strength at the same time. After just a few exchanges, they had provoked Shido Itsuka until he turned red.
When had Shido Itsuka ever met people like this? He instantly turned into a bright red kitten.
"Mm! That felt good..."
After getting his fill of insulting people, Kazuma Satou took Yu's Footprints Map from his backpack, checked their location and direction, then looked over several important resource points.
When he saw the Emiya Residence, he suddenly remembered that he still had a keycard.
Kazuma Satou's first thought wasn't what he could find inside.
It was whether he could go in and sleep after opening the room with the keycard.
Would it be a little safer than outside?
He glanced at the map. The only problem was that it was a little too far away.
In real life, Mahiro Oyama had an extremely unhealthy level of physical fitness, and the same was true in the game.
After the battle that afternoon, the rush here, and the struggle in the water, she was practically about to collapse.
Kazuma Satou, Hachiman Hikigaya, and Shido Itsuka were doing a little better, but they were still within the range of ordinary people.
They were exhausted too.
He forced himself to stand.
"Let's go. Let's find somewhere to sleep."
"I really am tired."
"Let's just stay in one of the houses nearby for the night."
"Works for me. We can look for them while we're at it..."
Suddenly, Kazuma Satou felt someone tugging at the corner of his clothes. He turned and looked down. It was Mahiro Oyama.
"What is it?"
"Mmm, mmm, mmm."
Mahiro Oyama looked terrified as she pointed toward the other side of the pier.
There was a public telephone beneath a streetlamp.
The receiver hung straight down, its cord stretched long.
Which NPC was so immoral that they'd walk away after making a call without even putting the receiver back?
The public manners in Fuyuki City were pretty awful.
Kazuma Satou took two steps forward, intending to put the receiver back.
However, Hachiman Hikigaya, Shido Itsuka, and Mahiro Oyama immediately reached out and forcefully grabbed him.
He turned back and saw the grave expressions on their faces.
"...What exactly is going on?"
Mahiro Oyama said in a trembling voice, "There's a black-and-red thing downstream that looks like a ghost. I just saw it eat an NPC until only a finger was left!"
As she spoke, she suddenly let out a strange cry, grabbed their clothes, and hid behind them.
"Eek! It... ate the finger too."
Kazuma Satou turned around again, but still saw nothing.
Hachiman Hikigaya did his best to remain calm. He stared at the strange entity in his field of vision, calmly observed its pattern, and explained.
"It disappears, then reappears out of nowhere."
"This..."
Among the four of them, Shido Itsuka had the deepest exposure to supernatural power. Looking at that figure, he could clearly feel an almost tangible malice rushing toward him.
"What an evil power."
Kazuma Satou also realized something was wrong. He turned around again... and still couldn't see it.
But he didn't doubt his teammates. For a moment, he had wondered whether Shido Itsuka and the others were pranking him.
But his instincts told him... they weren't.
Kazuma Satou turned back toward Hachiman Hikigaya and the others again.
"What about now?"
"It appeared again, again, again..."
"It's closer!"
"..."
Hachiman Hikigaya felt that this wasn't something they could handle, at least not yet.
But with such a bizarre ability, could they really escape?
Wait... hold on?
"Kazuma, turn around! In the direction I'm pointing!"
Kazuma Satou didn't hesitate. He immediately turned and caught a fleeting black-and-red afterimage.
But it vanished in an instant.
"Don't move! I don't know why, but it seems like it doesn't want you to see it!"
Hachiman Hikigaya analyzed calmly.
"Every time you turned around just now, it moved closer to us. Whenever you turned toward it and were about to see it, it disappeared."
"I understand."
Kazuma Satou stared at the empty patch of ground where it had been.
Suddenly,
The surrounding streetlights began flickering, then exploded one after another. One lamp after another went dark.
Mahiro Oyama shuddered.
Hachiman Hikigaya and Shido Itsuka shouted at the same time.
"It's... putting out the lights!?"
"We need something to light up the area!"
"What can light it up?"
"A flashlight?" "Nowhere near enough!"
At this critical moment,
Cold sweat beaded on Kazuma Satou's forehead. His peripheral vision swept across the moon, and he quickly took out and equipped the Imitation Hecate Wand.
As the wand bestowed upon Medea by the goddess of the moon,
It drew in a vast amount of moonlight and illuminated the surroundings!
He looked ahead into the lit area.
That bizarre black-blood-colored figure was already less than ten meters away from them.
It had even extended strips of cloth-like things that wriggled like tentacles, slowly feeling through the air toward them like nematodes.
Moonlight illuminated the area.
The instant Kazuma Satou fixed his gaze on it,
It stopped.
As if it had suffered some kind of damage,
The black-and-red figure flickered like static on an old television screen, then vanished before them.
Hachiman Hikigaya, Shido Itsuka, and Mahiro Oyama barely dared to breathe.
Kazuma Satou in particular didn't dare blink, staring fixedly at that spot.
The four stood back-to-back, utterly vigilant.
After half an hour of standoff without finding that strange shadow,
Kazuma Satou and the others nodded. Still back-to-back, the four cautiously turned in a circle and checked their surroundings.
Hachiman Hikigaya said,
"It seems to have left."
Mahiro Oyama patted her chest.
"What was that thing? It scared me to death."
"It was... an evil power."
Shido Itsuka looked grave. It was countless times more evil than the power of an inverted Spirit. The two were completely incomparable. It was practically... the embodiment of extreme malice.
"What do we do now?"
Mahiro Oyama asked,
"With something that bizarre around, can we still sleep tonight?"
The three fell silent. The nights in Fuyuki City... were far too wicked.
How did normal people survive in this city?
Before you continue