Hearing Hiyamaru's description, Rita could now determine who the other party was. Of course... aside from that one, there probably weren't many who could snatch someone directly from her hands, were there?
"So it really was that... Three-Eyed Spider..."
Rita looked thoughtfully at the ice in her hand. Within it, Silver Moon had frozen a trace of the Three-Eyed Spider's aura. Yet even a mere trace of its aura could affect certain creatures.
"Hmph! What a cautious fellow!"
With a soft snort, Rita erased the Three-Eyed Spider's aura from her hand with one hand.
The Three-Eyed Spider was also known as the Nure-onna. It was basically modeled after the Nure-onna of the mortal world—the kind of spider that spun webs where Ai lived and had three eyes on its back.
Of course... the Three-Eyed Spider here could not possibly have been an ordinary spider. It was likely merely an incarnation of some powerful existence, though no one knew exactly what kind of being it was. They only knew that it was called the guardian of hell and had appeared when Ai was lost and weeping after she burned down the village and completed her revenge.
However, the Three-Eyed Spider was no kind creature either. For instance, after Enma Ai took revenge on the enemies who had buried her alive, the Three-Eyed Spider chose that moment to question whether she had done anything wrong. Naturally, Enma Ai had answered no. Most people would have done the same.
All because a dead butterfly had come back to life in Ai's hands—when in truth, the butterfly had merely been asleep—the villagers had treated Ai as a monster, a sacrifice, an offering—she had to die! And at the time, Ai had only been seven years old.
Yet because of Sentaro, Ai had managed to