Chapter 28: A Lesson from a Professional Exorcist
Reverence aside, Yotsuya Miko hadn't forgotten that she faced the same problem.
What do I do?
Eat, or not eat?
Miko suppressed her nausea, gritted her teeth, and slowly picked up a fish ball from the bento box with her chopsticks.
Just then, that long tongue suddenly extended from the darkness again. With lightning speed, it darted toward the fish ball held in her chopsticks.
"Eh!"
Under this sudden attack, although Miko maintained a calm expression, her right hand trembled slightly.
The surface of the fish ball was smooth and hard to grip to begin with.
With Miko's hand trembling like that, the fish ball immediately slipped from between the chopsticks and fell toward the dusty ground.
Plop...
The sound of the fish ball hitting the ground was faint, almost inaudible. Yet, it acted like the starting gun of a hundred-meter race, instantly triggering a change in the hundreds of evil spirits.
"You. Can. See. Me!"
"You. Can. See. Me!"
"You. Can. See. Me!"
....
Looking at the twisting, writhing evil spirits emitting bone-chilling roars, Miko looked at Yoru with teary eyes and stammered.
"S-Sorry... I..."
"It's okay."
Yoru waved his hand, checked his phone, and smiled.
"You persisted for forty-seven minutes, reached this floor, and even got to the step of eating the bento. You've done very well already. Now..."
He put down his bento box, stood up, dusted off his clothes, and walked slowly in front of Miko. Looking at the hundreds of restless evil spirits, his smile vanished.
"It's my turn to take action."
As his voice fell, Yoru clasped his hands together. Under Miko's incredulous gaze, a wisp of black mist extended slowly between his palms, finally forming a pitch-black weapon resembling a Tang sword (straight sword), devoid of a handguard.
He pointed the tip of the blade at the hundreds of spirits in front of him and said calmly.
"Come on."
"You can see me!"
Hundreds of evil spirits crowded together, emitting ferocious roars, and lunged at Yoru standing there.
"Spear."
Facing this scene akin to a terrifying hell, Yoru simply whispered one word. A pitch-black spear formed in his left hand.
Then, adopting a textbook javelin throwing stance, he hurled the spear with all his might.
Whoosh...
The astonishing force behind the black spear allowed it to pierce through dozens of evil spirits in a row, creating a momentary void in the tide of spirits that resembled a black wave.
Next, facing a spirit that had lunged close to his body—its mouth emitting black mist and about to bite his neck—Yoru showed no panic. He reversed the longsword in his right hand and pinned the spirit, along with its twisted head, directly onto the concrete floor.
He even had the leisure to explain to Miko behind him.
"To deal with evil spirits, piercing the head is the best method. Most spirits can be destroyed this way. But just to be safe, grinding them into powder and watching them dissipate into black mist is the most secure method."
At this point, Miko was so shocked she couldn't say a word.
Every time Yoru swung his blade, even if the black Tang sword merely grazed them, the spirits would instantly turn into smoke and vanish without a trace.
Some faster spirits broke through the blade's defense and successfully approached Yoru.
But it was all in vain.
Even the most terrifying-looking evil spirits were pierced by black spikes that suddenly emerged from Yoru's body before they could touch him. Like the spirits cut by the sword, they instantly turned into nothingness.
"Is... Is this Yoru's true strength?"
Miko watched the scene before her, disbelief filling her golden pupils.
It was hard for her to connect this scene with any exorcism stories she had heard.
Rather than calling it exorcising evil spirits...
It was more like a massacre of evil spirits.
It possessed a kind of simple, unadorned beauty of pure stat-checking dominance.
Yoru: "Almost got killed by this group of spirits. Luckily, I was one step ahead."
Stand (JoJo), Deity Gates, Great Golden Dragon, Deep Forest Emergence, Mid-field Ult.
Are you hurt?.JPG (Note: Naruto references).
Just as the hundreds of evil spirits were disappearing rapidly—either slain or devoured by Yoru—a strange sound suddenly came from the stairwell. It sounded like many people gathered together, whispering in unison.
Miko couldn't hear a single word of the specific content.
She only felt that the moment she heard the sound, the hair all over her body stood on end. Even her school uniform was instantly soaked with cold sweat seeping from her back.
"Th... That is..."
Whoosh!
Like a speeding train passing by, a gust of wind swept through the area.
A monster as thick as a python, four or five meters in diameter, with a head that split open to reveal a vertical eye, crawled rapidly from the stairwell into the hall.
"Holy sh*t!?"
Seeing this strange thing appear suddenly, even Yoru was stunned for a moment.
"Why does this thing look so much like a glans..."
Before Yoru could finish saying that word, he saw the python-like monster reveal rows of sharp teeth glowing with cold light on both sides of the split in its head.
The strange whispering sound grew louder and louder.
The monster's head—whether it was an eye or a mouth was hard to tell—shot out like an arrow from a bow, biting fiercely toward Yotsuya Miko standing not far away.
Facing this monster's sudden attack, Miko was completely scared witless; her thoughts ground to a halt.
All she could see were the two rows of sharp teeth getting closer and closer, and that vertical eye filled with endless malice.
"Sigh. No choice then."
Watching the monster pouncing on Miko, Yoru's face showed a look of facing a formidable enemy for the first time. He dropped the black Tang sword formed from spirit energy, extended his right hand toward the monster, and shouted low.
"Come out."
As these two words left his mouth, Miko saw an incredibly pale giant hand with sharp black nails on its five fingers appear instantly in front of her.
"Th-This is what I saw on the train last time..."
She recognized this eerie giant hand as the one she had seen on the train.
As expected, is this also one of Yoru's "abilities"?
While Miko was thinking, the sharp black nails on the pale giant hand had already pierced fiercely into the body of the snake-like evil spirit.
What burst out wasn't blood, but black mist.
The snake spirit's head twisted violently, seemingly feeling intense pain.
Coincidentally.
As Yoru clenched the fingers of his right hand while watching the scene, he sucked in a breath of cold air.
Why did this evil spirit have to look like that?
It made him feel a bit of phantom pain in a certain part of his body.