Dhruv Lakdawalla

[He killed it! He actually killed it!]

[That was Grade 1, right? Wait, wasn't the streamer below Grade 2? Dude, you're cheating!]

[Badass!]

[Don't celebrate! There are still pterosaurs overhead!]

Long Xi rolled off the giant shikigami's head and fell into a pile of rubble.

He didn't get up right away.

Not because he didn't want to.

His body had emptied out in an instant.

The binding vow's enhancement was still active, but that string of explosive attacks had nearly drained all the cursed energy he could muster. Even the rapid replenishment from Black Flash couldn't make it available fast enough.

His right hand trembled. His left leg, grazed by a trajectory, was bleeding heavily. Burns and lacerations covered his back, hurting as though someone were stirring steel wire through his flesh.

Unless some king descended from the heavens in a furious, ferocious entrance.

He was probably dead this time, wasn't he?

He'd just killed a shikigami. One with Special Grade power ought to count as a Grade 2 Cursed Spirit...

Where was his reward?

Hurry up and appear, damn it.

Long Xi's consciousness was already blurring. He was on the brink of death, and every breath sent the pain of his torn body ripping through his chest.

Kawahara's voice carried over from the parking lot.

Several other Assistant Supervisors stood around him.

"Mr. Long Xi!"

"Stay back!"

Long Xi shouted back, bringing up the blood in his throat with that cry.

He pushed himself up from the ground and looked skyward.

The Pterosaur Shikigami Swarm had arrived.

He turned toward Kawahara. Apart from those Assistant Supervisors, nobody else was there. Chiharu Takayanagi was nowhere in sight.

The cursed tool she'd held was now in Kawahara's hands.

There was no better choice under the circumstances. After all, Chiharu had an innate cursed technique, so the ordinary people had a better chance of surviving with her leading them.

That cursed tool could probably break through their defenses, right?

On second thought, that was impossible...

But none of that mattered now.

There were more pterosaur shikigami than he'd expected.

He'd read plenty of power-scaling debates in his previous life... In his estimation, there couldn't have been more than five, at the absolute most.

But... he'd still miscalculated...

Black winged shadows circled high overhead, each following a different radius, their trajectories weaving into a tightening net.

The giant shikigami's domain on the ground had vanished, but a domain in the sky was beginning to form.

Dhruv Lakdawalla hadn't given him time to breathe.

In fact, Long Xi suspected this had been his real objective all along.

The giant shikigami had been there to push him to his limit.

The pterosaurs were there to finish him off.

Maybe killing the giant shikigami had driven the man into a rage.

Otherwise, he couldn't imagine how someone as weak as him had drawn this Special Grade's attention.

Had he sent everything out, without even keeping a shikigami nearby to protect himself?

Then was the man himself... somewhere nearby, too?

"An old man playing dirty with tactics..."

Long Xi raised his hand, and the Emperor Bell chimed softly.

He'd shaken it countless times in succession, and dense cracks now covered the entire bell.

It wouldn't have surprised him if it burst apart the very next second. All Long Xi could do was pray it held together a little longer.

The trajectories revealed by its chime made his scalp prickle.

There was almost no unbroken safe route through the air.

If he used the same highly mobile fighting style as before, the aerial trajectories would slice him in half the instant he jumped. He could only stay low to the ground and look for chances to shoot the pterosaurs down one by one.

But the pterosaurs wouldn't come down to duel him.

They were waiting.

Waiting for the net of trajectories to close completely.

Long Xi drew a deep breath and compressed his remaining flames into his legs.

He coughed up blood again, unable to hold it back, and bloody tears began streaming from his eyes.

Even if his cursed energy could replenish endlessly, prolonged use still placed an enormous burden on his body.

Especially the aching that radiated through every inch of him.

That only made him feel more sick.

I have to tear an opening first.

He fixed his gaze on the closest pterosaur shikigami.

That pterosaur had the shallowest dive angle and the widest trajectory radius.

If he interrupted it before it completed its circuit, he could tear a temporary opening in the aerial net.

Long Xi pushed off and raced low across the ground toward a leaning building.

The pterosaur shikigami immediately dived.

It didn't charge straight at him. Instead, it swept in from above and to the side along a fixed trajectory. Its claws were merely an extra threat; the truly lethal part was the space-slicing trajectory left in its wake.

Long Xi didn't look up.

His cursed-energy-enhanced senses listened to the flow of the wind.

The instant the sound of wing membranes cutting through the air drew close, he rolled sharply forward, dodging the claws while planting a palm against the ground.

White flames exploded! The blast flipped up a concrete slab, sending it right into the pterosaur's trajectory!

The trajectory sliced the slab in half.

But that cut revealed the trajectory's height.

Long Xi raised his hand and fired three flame spikes in succession.

The first forced the pterosaur to tilt its wings.

The second snapped the lamppost beneath it.

The third ricocheted off the broken pole and drove into the root of its left wing.

Boom!

The pterosaur lost its balance. Half its wing membrane burned through, breaking its flight trajectory. It fell from the sky and slammed into the street. Before it could rise, Long Xi was already there, smashing its head with punch after punch.

He landed dozens of punches in mere moments, but without the extraordinary advantage he'd enjoyed earlier.

He couldn't land another Black Flash.

The first one was down.

But the price was that more pterosaurs locked onto him.

Three pterosaurs dived at once.

From the left, center, and right.

The remains of the giant shikigami still littered the ground, restricting his movement. If Long Xi went left, he'd run into the first one's trajectory; if he went right, the second would cut him off; if he retreated straight back, the third one's claws would be waiting.

There was no way out!

Long Xi kicked up a broken piece of the giant shikigami's bone!

The fragment was huge, as wide as half a door. He poured flames into it and held it across his body like a shield!

The left pterosaur's trajectory swept through, shearing away half the bone!

It passed through instantly, like a knife through tofu.

Using that moment of cover, Long Xi flipped out from behind the bone fragment and skimmed past the first pterosaur's belly!

White flames swept upward.

The pterosaur's belly tore open, spraying black blood!

The second pterosaur swept in from the right.

Long Xi couldn't turn in time. He raised his elbow to block its claws head-on. Deep gashes opened in his cursed-energy-coated forearm, and the edge of the trajectory grazed his waist, nearly slicing him open.

His arm was ruined, the wounds deep enough to expose bone. The remaining bone and tendons barely kept it from falling off completely.

He endured the pain and caught the pterosaur's claw with a backhand grip.

"Get down here!!!"

Flames erupted.

He wrenched the pterosaur down to the ground, smashing it onto the giant shikigami's corpse. Long Xi stamped on its neck and struck with the Emperor Bell like a knuckle duster, making it ring before white flames pierced its skull.

The Emperor Bell shattered completely, too. An item he'd obtained barely a week ago had already been wrecked.

It was hard to say whether Long Xi had used it too recklessly or too powerfully.

But it had fulfilled its final task before its demise, successfully killing the second pterosaur shikigami.

The third pterosaur's trajectory had already arrived.

Long Xi couldn't dodge. He could only lean back as far as his body allowed while the slicing trajectory skimmed across his chest.

His clothes split, and a long gash opened in his skin.

His ribs were sliced halfway through.

Any deeper, even a little, and Long Xi would have been cut in half.

Long Xi's physical constitution had improved through his earlier binding vow. In his original condition, he could never have survived that blow.

But even though he'd survived, he no longer had the strength to fight.

Long Xi stumbled back two steps and dropped to one knee.

The edges of his vision darkened, and his mind grew hazy.

He was going to die...

Almost instantly, Long Xi understood the state he was in.

[Stop fighting! Retreat! Hurry!]

[You already killed the giant one! Objective complete! There's no need to fight the pterosaur swarm head-on!]

[Forget that old furry Dhruv for now! Run!]

Retreat?

Where could he retreat to?

The people in the parking lot might have finished evacuating, but how far could those ordinary people possibly have run?

Through the haze, he saw a pair of gentle hands reaching to pull him up, only to disappear a moment later.

He couldn't even remember what those hands looked like.

The pterosaur swarm only had to circle above the entrance for its aerial trajectories to slice open the underground passage, too.

With bloody tears filling his eyes, Long Xi looked up at the sky.

Beyond the pterosaur swarm, he saw a figure appear atop the ruins at the end of the street.

Very old.

His back was hunched, his robes shabby, and deep wrinkles covered his face. Yet when those eyes turned toward him, they held none of the cloudiness one would expect of an old man.

Dhruv Lakdawalla.

The man himself?

Long Xi's chest tightened sharply.

He'd finally appeared.

That meant the giant shikigami's death had forced Dhruv to approach and confirm it in person.

This was an opportunity.

Dhruv's own body was fragile, and he wasn't strong in close combat. If Long Xi could get close, he had a chance to end the fight.

But the net of pterosaur trajectories stood between them.

Leaning on his cane atop the ruins, Dhruv looked at the fallen giant shikigami's corpse, then turned his gaze to Long Xi.