Reckoning

"I have to... destroy everything."

"What are you doing, Mai?!"

Maki sensed an extremely unsettling shift in the air.

Mai closed her eyes and gripped the shattered weapon tightly with both hands. She began crazily burning through her life force. Her Construction Technique was pushed to an unprecedented peak. Her skin began to crack, blood streaming from her seven orifices. She was using her life to forge one final key for Maki—a blade sharp enough to sever all the shackles the Zenin Clan had borne for a hundred years.

"No!!!"

Maki roared, trying to stop her, only to find her body becoming strangely heavy and strangely light at the same time.

All cursed energy, along with Mai's presence, rapidly vanished. When the last trace of light faded, Mai's body collapsed limply into Maki's arms. In her hand was a pitch-black longsword wreathed in dense deathly aura. It was a weapon bought with a life.

"Mai?"

Maki trembled as she reached for her sister's face. Cold. Breathless. At that moment, the air froze.

Maki slowly rose to her feet. She felt the world change. The sound of the wind, the rhythm of dust hitting the ground, even Ogi Zenin's heartbeat through several walls—all of it became crystal clear. The last burden of cursed energy had vanished. The true Heavenly Tyrant descended at that moment.

Ogi Zenin pushed open the door, only to see his daughter standing there with hollow eyes and a ghostlike figure.

"Why... what did you do? Where are the cursed spirits?!"

Ogi Zenin froze.

Maki did not answer. She simply vanished. Yes, vanished. Within Ogi Zenin's Grade 1 sensory range, Maki's presence had dropped completely to zero.

Splat!

Ogi Zenin did not even see Maki swing her sword before his head, still wearing that stunned expression, flew toward the dungeon's low ceiling. Blood splashed across the stone walls.

The slaughter had officially begun.

Sword in hand, Maki walked out of the Forbidden Vault step by step. Each footfall left a bloody print on the ground. Only Mai's final words remained in her mind: Destroy everything. The Zenin Clan's corridors became a battlefield of carnage. Members of the Kukuru Unit fell in rows, and no one could even see the path of that shadow.

Naoya Zenin stood in the courtyard, his pupils contracting as he watched his blood-soaked cousin approach.

"It's him! No, you're not him!"

"This speed, this frequency that Projection Sorcery can't capture at all..."

In his visual world, where every second was divided into twenty-four frames, Maki Zenin's figure leaped through them with brute force.

"Impossible... you cursed-energy-less trash... how could you possibly reach his level?!"

Naoya screamed, his body leaving countless afterimages in the air.

Maki Zenin said nothing. Her eyes were hollow, and in her hand was the black longsword Mai had traded her life for.

Bang!

No one even saw the movement. Naoya's proud speed was as fragile as waste paper ripped apart by a gale before absolute physical violence. Maki's longsword never left its sheath; a single strike from the scabbard smashed Naoya straight into a stone lantern in the courtyard.

The sound of bones breaking was especially piercing in the deathly silent Zenin estate.

"Cough... gah!" Naoya curled up amid the rubble, vomiting blood in great mouthfuls. His once-neat blond streaks were now covered in dirt and gore. He struggled to rise, but Maki's foot had already slammed down onto his chest.

Pressure. Pressure enough to flatten steel.

"As you are now, you're not even worth drawing my sword for." Maki looked down at him, her voice colder than ice.

Just then, a burst of golden-pink light flared at the Zenin Clan's shattered vermilion gates.

Shiyue Shuo stepped over the corpses one by one. Ignoring the half-dead Naoya on the ground, he walked straight up to Maki, his gaze fixed on the already-cold Mai in her arms.

"Give Senior to me."

Shiyue Shuo's voice was hoarse.

Maki's body trembled slightly, and the hollowness in her eyes finally rippled violently. "...She's gone."

"I think I may still have a way." Shiyue Shuo reached out and took Mai's body with a forceful, unquestionable motion.

He looked at Maki, the blood-covered ground reflected in his golden-pink eyes. "Leave her to me."

"...Can you save her?" Maki's voice trembled.

"It's only a possibility. I'll do my best. Senior is important to me too." I still need the sword in your hand. That shouldn't affect you, right?

"It doesn't. Take it."

Shiyue Shuo reached out and accepted the black longsword.

Maki stood there in silence for three seconds. Then she turned and looked at the Kukuru Unit members trembling in the shadows of the corridors.

The slaughter began anew.

It was a one-sided massacre without the slightest suspense. Every corner of the Zenin Clan was filled with despairing wails. Maki was like a black hurricane, reaping the lives of everyone with Zenin blood in their veins.

At last, before a Japanese-style room leading to the rear courtyard, she saw that woman. Her mother.

The woman who had once insulted and denied them countless times for the family's honor now trembled as she clutched a kitchen knife, her eyes filled with frantic terror.

"M-Maki? You've gone crazy... you've really gone crazy..."

"Mai is dead." Maki stated it flatly, the bloody footprints beneath her feet extending all the way to the woman's toes. "Because of this family. Because of you so-called elders. I'm sending you to see her now. Is there anything you want to say?"

The woman collapsed onto the floor, the knife in her hand dropping onto the tatami.

Just as Maki was about to throw a punch, Naoya Zenin—somehow using the last remnants of cursed energy from Projection Sorcery—lunged from the shadows at her side like a ghost.

"Die! You lowborn bastards!" Naoya's facial muscles twisted completely as his dagger stabbed straight for Maki's back.

Maki sensed it. With her current physical strength, she could even clearly hear the vibration of Naoya's fingertips cutting through the air.

She did not move.

Splat!

The expected agony never came.

That mother, who had always been timid, submissive, and cruelly sharp-tongued, somehow found the strength to throw herself behind Maki at the critical moment. Naoya's dagger plunged viciously into her chest, its tip piercing through her body.

Maki's pupils constricted sharply.

"Run... hurry... go..." The woman spat out a mouthful of blood. Her hand clamped tightly around Naoya's wrist, using the last of her strength to stop him from striking again.

"Even so, I won't forgive you." Maki's voice was so low that only she could hear it.

She spun and threw a punch, whipping up a violent gale as it shattered Naoya's knife-wielding arm. Then she followed through with a sweeping blow, precisely smashing Naoya's head apart.

Naoya Zenin, the once-arrogant heir, was reduced to a lump of mangled flesh, dying at the hands of someone he had despised most.

Her mother fell to the ground, her breathing rapidly fading.

Maki looked at her without shedding a tear. She merely wiped the blood from her hands in silence.

"It's over."

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