Hinako Shimizu didn't look again at the villagers below the hill, torn between shock and joy. Her gaze dropped to the ground.
She could feel it—the earth beneath her feet was still trembling, as if something deep underground were surging, like blood through veins, like the beat of a heart.
Her hexagonal eyes, glowing with orange-yellow light, pierced through the thick earth and revealed the most troublesome situation of all.
Molten magma churned wildly hundreds of meters below the surface, slamming against fragile rock strata and cracking them open again and again.
The arsenic and sulfur minerals once suppressed by the seal had, under the seismic tremors, dissolved entirely into the groundwater, forming pitch-black streams of poison that surged upward through a dense web of fissures—mere moments from breaking through the surface and drowning the entire village.
If that toxic flow were allowed to erupt, the poison gas the Water Dragon had spewed earlier would look like child's play by comparison. All of Ebisugaoka would become a wasteland where nothing could grow, and even the surrounding towns would be caught in the disaster. The consequences would be unthinkable.
"There's no other way..."
Hinako Shimizu sank her entire mind into the earth. Her formless psychokinetic will spread out like a dense net, plunging downward along the thread of her thoughts, wrapping precisely around the churning magma and the poisoned water.
In that instant, every nerve in her body drew taut. Her Ultra psychokinesis became like an invisible giant hand, pressing down hard on the restless magma flow, forcing it back into the depths of the magma chamber, sealing off every fissure through which the poison sought to rise, cutting off the venomous groundwater from any further path upward.
Little by little, the trembling of the ground subsided at a visible pace. The ruined walls and broken structures that had still been swaying came to a complete stop. The ground beneath the villagers' feet grew steady once more, with none of the earth-shattering shaking from before.
"The ground... it's stopped shaking?"
A young man stamped his foot against the dirt road, confusion spreading across his face. Just moments ago it had been impossible to stand steady—now it was as calm as if nothing had happened at all.
"It's that giant... he suppressed the earthquake!"
A woman holding a child widened her eyes, her voice trembling with disbelief and delight.
"Ultraseven! He can do that too?"
The middle-aged man beside her was equally stunned and thrilled—he'd never seen this on TV, Ultraseven having some kind of earthquake-suppressing ability.
"Could that be Ultra psychokinesis?"
An elderly man murmured this, his worried gaze fixed on Hinako Shimizu.
Suppressing an earthquake while fighting a monster at the same time—could she really manage both?
Hinako Shimizu had no time to spare for the villagers' reactions, because what she was doing was harder than anyone could imagine.
Unlike the idealist Back World, in the real world her energy was finite.
It was deep night now, the sky pitch-black with barely any moonlight, and not a trace of sunlight to draw on.
Nighttime already left her energy naturally depleted, and now that she had to devote most of it to maintaining the Ultra psychokinesis holding back the crisis underground, her energy was draining twice as fast.
In the battle ahead, using her light-based abilities was going to be nearly impossible.
Just then, a piercing sound of rock shattering came from the cliff face across the way.
From the deep crater the Ultra Kick had carved into the mountainside, a roar even more savage than before tore through the dust and pierced the night sky!
The Water Dragon's massive, snow-white body slowly rose from the rubble. A huge dent still marred its neck where Ultraseven's kick had landed—the cold-rock scales there had shattered completely, exposing the dull gray flesh beneath. Its once-ferocious head hung tilted to one side, clearly badly wounded.
But what made the skin crawl was that metallic minerals were steadily fusing themselves into those shattered wounds.
From cracks in the earth, all kinds of minerals rose up like colorful fountains from deep underground, flowing backward against gravity, automatically binding themselves to the Water Dragon's wounds and filling in the dents bit by bit.
In just a few dozen seconds, the wound on its neck had healed over more than half, leaving only a faint trace behind. Its body had returned to full strength, as if it had lost none of its power.
What's more, its body had grown even larger than before. Having absorbed the energy of the rock, the cold-rock scales on its hide had thickened another layer, gleaming with a chill white light under the moon.
Its murky gray-black eyes stared fixedly at Hinako Shimizu, brimming with fury.
A seal that had held it asleep for a thousand years had just been broken, and the moment it tried to vent its pent-up rage it had been kicked flying. That humiliation drove what little reason it possessed completely into madness.
The Water Dragon suddenly whipped its massive body around.
Its serpentine tail lashed out on a gale of wind, snapping trees in half along its path, sending splinters flying, grinding stone to powder, and plowing a trench three meters deep into the ground.
Hinako Shimizu darted aside just in time, her agility and combat instincts far beyond human, narrowly dodging the lethal blow.
The ground caved in with a thunderous crash where the tail struck, dust billowing upward. She used the momentum to drop low, planting both legs and kicking off the earth, her body shooting forward like an arrow to the Water Dragon's side. Her right fist clenched, cutting through the air with a heavy, muffled sound, and slammed hard into the not-yet-healed wound on its neck!
Thoom!
The dull impact rang out. An Ultra Punch sent the Water Dragon's massive body reeling sideways.
And yet, that was all it accomplished.
In the material world, the power of the Kaidan known as Ultraseven had its limits—compared to the Water Dragon, a deified embodiment of geological upheaval, it still fell short.
"Roarrr!"
Struck hard, the Water Dragon's colossal white body arched sharply. Seizing the instant when Hinako's old momentum had spent itself and new strength had yet to gather, it twisted its body with lightning speed, its thick serpentine form howling through the wind straight toward her, coiling to ensnare her.
This was the deadliest killing move a python could use, and the Water Dragon wielded it to devastating effect—a body weighing tens of thousands of tons, once wrapped around its prey, could crush steel to dust in an instant!
A jolt of alarm shot through Hinako Shimizu. Her eyes locked onto the Water Dragon's movement, her legs coiled with power, and she launched herself upward, her body rocketing skyward like an arrow loosed from a bow, narrowly escaping the Water Dragon's lethal coil.
"Roarrr—!"
Missing its strike only stoked the Water Dragon's fury further. Its murky eyes locked onto Hinako Shimizu suspended in midair, its massive jaws snapping open as a thick, yellow-green cloud of poisonous breath surged out like a tsunami. Everywhere the toxic mist passed, the very air corroded and rippled with distortion, so dense that even moonlight couldn't pierce through the lethal fog.
This poison breath was even more potent than before, carrying a pungent stench of sulfur and rot—anything it so much as grazed would wither, corrode, and crumble to ruin!
Hinako Shimizu had no time to dodge fully. Her silver-red form carved a narrow, perilous arc through the air, but the poison breath still grazed her shoulder, corroding a shallow black patch into her skin.
Waves of burning pain spread along her nerves, but she didn't even furrow her brow.
Most of her focus remained locked deep underground, where the great net woven by her Ultra psychokinesis still held the churning magma pinned down with unyielding force.
Even a single moment's distraction would let the underground crisis erupt completely, and all of Ebisugaoka would be plunged into ruin beyond redemption.
Hinako Shimizu twisted sharply at the waist, using the momentum of her airborne stall to execute a crisp, clean backflip. The instant her feet slammed down onto the ground, her body had already surged around to the Water Dragon's rear. Her right hand tensed, fingers straightening into a fierce Ultra Chop, and she struck hard at the weak point where the base of its tail met its spine.
The base of the tail was a serpent's natural weakness by nature—and even though this creature had been transformed from the head of Yamata no Orochi, it was still, at its core, a serpent.
____
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