Mass release 7/10
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Boom—
The unsettling creaking finally ended, and the elevator plummeted rapidly. Endo Yo was left to despair, enveloped by the sensation of freefall.
The height of three floors vanished in an instant. When Endo Yo was engulfed by the intense pain of broken bones, the elevator had already crashed heavily into the elevator shaft on the first floor.
Sawada Kyoichi behind him appeared to be dead, his neck slit and gushing blood. His back slid down the elevator's edge, revealing the blood-soaked "M" he had been blocking.
Endo Yo was completely limp inside the elevator, unable to stand.
Fortunately, at that moment, the elevator doors slowly opened. He saw a path to survival and crawled out with difficulty.
He left a long trail of foul-smelling liquid and a mixture of red and yellow bloodstains on the floor he crawled over, but he paid no mind to them. He just needed to get out quickly and have someone call an ambulance for his life.
He endured the excruciating pain, crawling and crawling, when suddenly he felt his whole body burning up.
'Hot, so hot!'
'Wh-what's happening? Why is it so scorching?!'
He found he couldn't move anymore. The world before his eyes blurred, as if veiled in an orange-red haze. Then, a searing pain, as if his heart and bones were incinerating, exploded within his body.
The bone-deep burning sensation was ten, even a hundred times worse than stubbing a thumb against a table corner!
He couldn't think, couldn't struggle; he could only lie there, enduring the endless torment of being consumed by karma's flames.
At this moment, he no longer harbored any hope of survival. He only regretted that the earlier knife hadn't ended his life instantly, forcing him to suffer this burning agony.
In his unending torment, he experienced what seemed like a hallucination.
In a daze, he saw Tsuruta Kusuko slowly walking towards him. But before he could clearly see the smile on the woman's face... that man, Yagami Raito, appeared.
He crouched before him, blocking his view, and mocked him unreservedly: "I told you, didn't I? After you die, you'll go to hell."
The surrounding crowd was terrified beyond belief.
A few of the more timid ones couldn't even hold their phones steady, dropping them to the ground with a clang. The phone screens showed a grotesque image:
A burning humanoid writhing painfully on the ground, leaving a long, dragging bloodstain in its wake.
It was hard to imagine the kind of torment he was enduring. His flesh was separating, his bones burning, and he seemed to be using every ounce of strength he had to crawl out, raising his right hand above his head—only to collapse as his strength gave out. Eventually, he turned into a pile of blazing, smoldering sludge, never to rise again.
The blood-written "M," the self-immolating corpse—this had gone far beyond anyone's imagination.
Someone, suppressing their fear, held up their phone and broadcasted the bizarre scene online.
Someone else collapsed to their knees, looking up at the sky. "Oh God…"
No one noticed the figure walking out of the back door of Araki Finance.
...
Yagami Light opened the Death Note, tore out the page he had written on that day, crumpled it into a ball, and casually tossed it into an unremarkable street trash can.
On one corner of that page, the word "self-immolation" was clearly written.
And after the paper was discarded, the words on it began to burn—from the name to the cause of death—until all the writing was consumed by nothingness, just like the people erased by the notebook.
Knife wounds, elevator shaft falls, human combustion—these were the most painful ways to die that Yagami Light could think of. The sensation of having one's limbs broken, watching one's own blood drain away, and finally being burned alive… it was enough to make someone wish for death.
In the face of such pain, death was the ultimate relief.
Yagami Light stood by the street, hands in his pockets, staring at the roaring fire inside the building. For a brief moment, he saw the woman he had sentenced to death smiling gently at him.
Only when the sound of police sirens echoed from afar did Yagami Light finally turn and leave.
It took about five minutes to walk from there to the restaurant. As he walked, a voice echoed in his mind.
『Special Mission: The Birth of Kira』
『Mission Status: You've sentenced a total of ten criminals to death, including the ringleader. However, it seems there's still someone behind the scenes who escaped your judgment. You left behind the symbol of Kira and used the internet to declare your existence to the world…』
『Mission Evaluation: Completed. Completion Rate: 80%.』
『Rating: Could be better』
『Reward: Master-level Voice Mimicry (your fake voices will be nearly impossible for voice software to detect), Master-level Stealth (you'll be able to evade most conventional cameras and detect poorly hidden surveillance devices)』
"Hm?"
Yagami Light paused.
The one behind the scenes… that was his oversight.
The moment he saw Endo Hiroshi, Light couldn't restrain his murderous intent. He should have used the notebook's power to force the man to reveal who was pulling the strings behind him.
"But it doesn't matter. The police will investigate this incident. By then, I should be able to use Makima's computer to figure out who that 'big shot' Endo mentioned was."
"And when the time comes, I'll kill them too."
Justice must be complete. If a family sins together, they should all die together.
Still, today's reward was a pleasant surprise. While it wasn't as godlike as the full-access powers, it could be seen as a simplified version. The voice mimicry was whatever, but the stealth skill would allow him to freely move through future execution scenes without worrying about cameras or being seen.
The psychologists were right.
Criminals sometimes return to the scene of the crime for a sense of accomplishment, even risking exposure.
Narcissistic, paranoid personalities often revisit the scene, taking pleasure in the public panic and the police reaction. For some psychopaths, killing isn't the ultimate goal—watching others, especially the authorities, react is.
But such analysis didn't apply to Yagami Light.
Just now, when he saw the horrified and stunned crowd outside the burning building and heard their praises and curses, he felt… nothing. There was no sense of validation, no emptiness, not even a trace of satisfaction.
Whether the onlookers cursed, Serves them right, or condemned him, You have no right to kill, Yagami Light couldn't care less.
Even if society and the public refused to acknowledge his efforts, he would still stick to what he believed was right. Silently, he said to himself: "I don't care what they think."
Because from the very beginning, he had only been a hero for his own amusement.
(TL: Now that is the main point.)
...
"Hey, Light-kun, where did you go just now?"
Kitagawa Marin, looking very satisfied, rubbed her full stomach and glanced out the window curiously. "There's a huge crowd over there—and I think I heard sirens. Did something happen?"
"No idea~"
Yagami Light shrugged, putting on an innocent expression. "Whatever it is, it probably doesn't concern us. Are you full?"
"Yup, totally stuffed!" Marin nodded energetically, flashing a sweet smile. As expected of a famous date spot—even without a lover, the food alone was top-tier.
"Well then, since we're done, we should head back."
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