Huh?
Back at the Akihi House, Akihi Yu had asked Xiao Zhi to get rid of some bugs and was preparing dinner when he suddenly froze. A source of mana had become active.
As the creator of all things supernatural, Akihi Yu could clearly sense the state of every source of mana.
Did that mean one of his "players" was fighting?
And not just sparring, either.
Patter, patter, patter—
Hurried footsteps came from the second floor. Akihi Sora came downstairs, clutching her laptop.
"Something new and supernatural has appeared."
What a coincidence.
"Oh? What is it?"
Akihi Sora sat down beside him, placed her laptop on his lap, then leaned against her brother's shoulder.
The video had probably been filmed on a phone. It shook constantly, and the distance made the picture blurry. Of course, that wasn't the point. The point was that it showed a gigantic octopus in the sea beyond the harbor, wrapping its enormous tentacles around a destroyer and shaking it violently.
Uh...
The scene playing on the laptop looked incredibly familiar,
as if Akihi Yu were back in his previous life, playing that classic real-time strategy game, Red Alert, and watching a Soviet squid battle an Allied fleet.
"Where did this happen?"
"Kawasaki Port."
Her slender fingers flew across the keyboard. The live video shrank, and a map of Japan appeared beside it. From Tokyo southward, the coastal cities were Kawasaki, Yokohama, and Yokosuka. Akihi Sora pointed to the sea off Kawasaki and explained to her brother:
"Right here."
"It's a live broadcast by a Kawasaki Port uploader on Niconico."
Niconico Animation, a video-sharing website commonly called N Site, had carved out a place for itself eighteen years ago with its "danmaku" format. It had over two million paid members. Besides movies and anime, it also