Ambush

Long Xi stopped retreating toward the parking lot.

He lured the giant Shikigami toward the other end of the street.

It was not heroism, just the simplest judgment.

The parking lot entrance was too narrow, and the crowd was evacuating too slowly.

If the giant Shikigami squeezed inside again, even without attacking, its orbital paths alone would carve the underground space into a maze of dead ends.

The street was a little wider.

More buildings would collapse.

There would be more gaps to escape through, too.

Of course, the deaths would also be a little more spectacular.

[Long Xi: Kids, think I can survive this?]

[You're dead for sure.]

[Streamer, take a closer look. That thing isn't chasing you. It's circling along a set orbit. You need to predict its next step.]

[Where's Dhruv Lakdawalla himself? It orbits around him, so can't you work backward to find the center?]

Long Xi paused when he saw the last comment.

In theory, that was true.

The giant Shikigami was not running around at random.

Its orbital paths revolved around Dhruv Lakdawalla himself.

By observing the arc of each turn, he could roughly determine where Dhruv Lakdawalla was.

There was no guarantee that the old man was still at the stadium, but calculating his position should give an accurate answer.

The problem was that he had no time to find the old man right now.

First, he had to survive this ten-meter monster.

The giant Shikigami crushed the street beneath its feet and bore down on him along an arc.

Long Xi had burned its left hind foot, causing a slight deviation in its orbit, but its overall speed had barely dropped.

Every time one of its four feet landed, it left an invisible cutting boundary. Rebar, car frames, streetlights-anything in the rubble touched by those orbital paths silently split apart.

Long Xi dared not touch them.

Amplifying his Cursed Technique did not mean he could tank a domain's effects.

The orbital domain cut through space. Ordinary defenses were meaningless.

If he tried to take a hit, he would end up like Ryu Ishigori, his head sliced open in a spectacular throw.

All he could do now was briefly sense the orbital paths through the Emperor Bell, then slip through the gaps with his enhanced body.

He swept over a broken bus, planting his toes on the edge of a window. Behind him, the giant Shikigami slammed down a forepaw, instantly flattening the bus into a metal pancake.

Long Xi used the rebound just before the bus collapsed to leap up. White flames condensed into three fiery spikes in his palm and shot straight at the Shikigami's lower jaw.

The Shikigami lowered its head, fixing two of its four eyes on him.

The spikes struck its lower jaw, blasting three scorched marks into it.

The wounds were shallow.

Long Xi had not expected that attack to cripple it anyway.

What he really wanted was to make it raise its head.

Distracted by the flames, the giant Shikigami lifted its chin, briefly exposing its chest and belly. Long Xi twisted in midair, detonated flames beneath his feet, and changed direction, charging beneath its chest.

The skin was thinner there, but it was also more dangerous...

The giant Shikigami drew its forelegs inward, making its orbital paths intersect as it tried to seal off the space beneath its belly. The Emperor Bell showed Long Xi four arcs, like four invisible guillotines closing in from every direction.

"This is a real pain."

Long Xi did not hesitate.

He stepped on a piece of airborne rubble and slipped beneath its belly, his body skimming the edge of an orbital path. A long cut opened across his left shoulder, spraying blood, but it missed the bone.

He was in.

White flames pressed against its belly.

Long Xi did not detonate them immediately.

First, he used a pulse of Cursed Energy to blast open the surface flesh, then compressed the flames into a spinning cone and drilled inward.

The Shikigami's defenses were thick. Heat alone would be blocked by the outer layer. He had to concentrate his Cursed Technique on a single point, like driving a nail.

The fiery cone bored half a foot deep.

The muscles in the Shikigami's belly contracted, forcibly clamping down on the flames.

Long Xi's wrist sank.

This thing did not just have strong defenses. It instinctively blocked invading Cursed Energy.

"Then let's make it even thinner."

He compressed his output further.

The two-hour enhancement granted by his Binding Vow began to show its worth. His Cursed Energy flowed far more smoothly than usual.

The flames stopped dispersing. The white cone narrowed to the thickness of a finger, but its temperature rose, burning a hole through the Cursed Energy blocking it.

The giant Shikigami finally felt the pain.

Its belly suddenly dropped, its enormous body bearing down to crush Long Xi into pulp.

Long Xi released the flames and pulled back, but after barely half a step, he discovered that a new orbital path had cut off his retreat.

He could not go back.

He could only go up.

He planted a foot against the inside of the Shikigami's foreleg and burst flames beneath it, propelling himself up the side of its belly. Its rough skin scraped his palms raw. He dug all five fingers into a fold and forced himself to hang on.

A second later, the Shikigami slammed down.

Boom!

The ground caved in.

Dust blasted out from beneath its belly, while the orbital domain sliced the rubble into uniformly sized chunks.

Long Xi clung to the Shikigami's flank, barely half a foot from the nearest orbital path. A layer was shaved off the edge of his sole.

He glanced down.

His burst of power had already brought it down. All he needed to do now was destroy its eyes and break its limbs.

Its combat strength would plummet.

Which meant...

Long Xi had won!

[Go for the eyes! Its head is down, so it can't see its flank!]

Long Xi had been thinking exactly the same thing.

He charged up the Shikigami's flank.

His Cursed Energy-enhanced body displayed tremendous explosive power.

With his fingertips hooked into folds of skin and his feet braced against protruding joints, he climbed as though scaling a moving mountain.

The giant Shikigami located him and immediately jerked its body.

The movement nearly flung Long Xi off.

He thrust a flaming blade backward into its skin, using it as an anchor. The pull nearly dislocated his arm.

The wound behind his shoulder tore open again, and blood streamed down his back.

Pain darkened his vision.

But his enhanced Cursed Energy also pushed his reactions to their limit.

Using the force of its swing, he deliberately let go.

His body hurtled toward the Shikigami's head.

All four eyes swiveled at once.

Long Xi raised a hand in midair. White flames formed a line and pierced straight toward one of its lower eyes.

The giant Shikigami closed its eye too slowly.

The line of fire pierced through.

Pfft!

The eyeball burned through, and white fire erupted from its socket.

The giant Shikigami let out its first low, muffled shriek. Its front half reared violently, throwing the orbital paths of its four feet into momentary chaos.

The previously stable cutting arcs along the street briefly slipped out of alignment. Several veered sideways, slicing past Long Xi's waist.

His clothes split open instantly.

A bloody gash opened across his skin, too.

But instead of retreating, Long Xi pressed forward!

Because this instant was the best opening he had seen since the fight began.

With one eye burned through, the giant Shikigami instinctively threw its head back, completely disrupting the balance of its forelegs.

It still moved along fixed orbital paths, but its injuries had altered their radius. Its left forefoot landed half a meter farther out than on the previous circuit.

Half a meter.

For an ordinary person, that was just a step.

For Long Xi, it was the line between life and death, determining whether he could reach into its Cursed Energy node.

Still airborne, he hooked his left hand into the flesh around the Shikigami's eye socket. Its thrashing nearly tore his entire arm off.

He compressed the white flames in his right hand into an incredibly fine point, like a red-hot nail, and drove them deeper through the eye socket.

"You've got thick skin."

Long Xi forced the words through clenched teeth.

"But your eyes can't have armor too, can they?"

The giant Shikigami pushed off with all four feet at once.

Its enormous body suddenly lunged sideways.

It was not trying to shake him off.

It was trying to smash him and its own head into the building beside them.

As Long Xi watched the wall race closer, only one thought remained in his mind.

You picked the barrier for me! Pick a good one!!

I've already fought two Special Grades!

This thing can't even speak, but it has an Autonomous Shikigami's combat instincts! How the fuck am I supposed to fight it?!

The moment it noticed Long Xi hanging from its head, its first reaction was not to bite wildly, but to use its massive size to ram a wall.

If it hit squarely, Long Xi would be crushed into a sandwich cookie-with bloody filling in the middle.

[Let go!]

[Don't get greedy!]

[The wall! The wall! The wall!]

Long Xi wanted to let go, too.

But if he released his grip now, all his previous attacks would have been for nothing.

Even if I get smashed into it, I probably won't die, right?

Don't underestimate the bond between me and chat!!!

Instead, he poured all his Cursed Energy into his right hand, and the white flames erupted deep inside the eye socket.

Boom!

Flames exploded inside the giant Shikigami's skull.

It was not a massive external explosion, but a piercing surge of heat shooting backward from the eye socket.

The right side of its head swelled from the heat, and another of its four eyes burst. Black Cursed Energy sprayed out along with the stench of charred flesh.

At the same moment, the building was upon them.

Long Xi let go.

The instant he was flung away, he kicked the side of the Shikigami's face, using the force to propel himself clear.

The giant Shikigami's head smashed into the building. Its entire lower section collapsed on the spot, sending concrete and glass crashing down like a waterfall.

Long Xi twisted in midair without looking for a landing spot on the ground.

Because the ground was already covered in orbital paths.

Flames burst beneath his feet, forcing his body toward a tilted billboard. Its supports buckled under the impact. The moment he stepped onto it, the metal shrieked, then snapped a second later.

He did not stop.

As the broken billboard fell, Long Xi used its last bit of support to launch himself toward an overturned bus at the roadside.

He landed, slid, rolled, and slammed his back into the bus.

The bodywork dented inward. A metallic taste rose in Long Xi's throat, and he nearly threw up the temporary red potion he had just drunk.

But compared with that minor setback, his gains excited him far more.

Two eyes. He had destroyed two of its eyes.

Long Xi broke into an utterly satisfied grin.