"What was that?"
Ryoma sprang to his feet at once, grabbed Ama-no-Sakahoko, and rushed outside. Oryou-san followed close behind, seeming almost to float out.
Mama Bear and White Yukina hurried after them as well.
Yet once outside, what greeted Ryoma was—
Clang—
A gigantic sword made of fish bones came crashing down at him.
"Don't you dare hurt Ryoma!!!"
With a roar that resembled a dragon's cry, Oryou-san suddenly burst forth with terrifying speed and shattered the massive fish-bone sword with a single punch.
"Miss Hoshikuma, Miss Bear Weaver, these are the things you saw in the lake during the day, right?"
Ryoma did not draw Ama-no-Sakahoko. Instead, he placed his hand on the hilt.
Under normal circumstances, he still used a sword more often. After all, he was a swordsman of Hokushin Itto-ryu. Though he could not compare to Sakumura and the others, he was still fairly skilled.
And standing opposite Ryoma, descending from the mountain path, were—
Chang Ghosts.
A great many Chang Ghosts.
At a glance, there were already over a hundred of them.
".Were the Chang Ghosts you originally created ever that huge?"
Within her heart, White Yukina asked Black Yukina.
"..." Black Yukina seemed unwilling to answer.
But most likely, they had not been.
After all, they had been made using humans as materials. Even if they had soaked in water and bloated, they should not have changed so drastically. But these before them—
Just by visual estimation, these Chang Ghosts were already around five meters tall.
Other than Kurokawa Hideo, no Chang Ghost could reach such a height or strength. Yet these before them were—
"Just who made these things...?!"
There was a trace of disgust in Oryou-san's eyes.
These were corpses—corpses that had turned into this—
She did not want to touch these