At the sight, everyone cried out in alarm. Inuzuka Shigeru immediately caught Yamanaka Takuma as he swayed and hurriedly asked, "What did you run into? Are you all right?"
"I'm fine. I just got hurt through carelessness." Although blood was flowing from Yamanaka Takuma's nose and mouth, it was merely a physical reaction to the shock his mind had suffered. He was not seriously injured.
"The Evil God Worshippers were summoned away. What on earth..." Seeing that Yamanaka Takuma was all right, everyone turned toward the spot where the Evil God Worshippers had vanished. Anyone with a discerning eye could tell that this was the work of the Summoning Technique, but how could humans possibly be summoned?
"Although I didn't get any information about the mastermind, I have a rough idea of what happened." Yamanaka Takuma took the tissues Asuna offered him and wiped the blood from his face.
"Let's hear it," Hatake Sakumo urged.
"I'm afraid that Evil God Settlement was a place where someone raised people like livestock. Everyone there, including the Evil God Worshippers, was 'food' for that person. The mastermind was also responsible for turning those two Evil God Worshippers into what they are now. In a sense, they're like puppets, so using them as summoning tools doesn't seem impossible," Yamanaka Takuma said.
"Then did you encounter some powerful Sealing Jutsu?" Inuzuka Shigeru asked. When Yamanaka Takuma suffered a mental shock, it usually meant he had accidentally triggered a backlash from a sealing formula.
"No. Evil God Worshippers in this state only have a few simple memory fragments. There's hardly any reason to place powerful Sealing Jutsu on them. But the fragments about the mastermind contained an unsettling chakra, perhaps left there unintentionally. That chakra was what dealt the blow to my mind." Recalling what he