The rain-lashed plaza fell silent, save for the fading hiss of dissolving curses. Nanami Kento and Haibara Yu stood back-to-back, breathing heavily. Their synchronized counterattack had been brutally efficient. Nanami's voice had cut through the storm as he invoked his technique: "Ratio Technique: Seven-Three Split!" His short sword, sheathed in the precise logic of his cursed energy, flashed forward. He didn't just strike the fish curse; he imposed a rule upon it, dividing its form into ten invisible parts and striking the precise, weakest point at the seven-to-three ratio. The blade passed through scale and sinew as if they were mist, severing the creature's head in a single, clean motion.
On the opposite flank, Haibara Yu had responded in kind. "Manifest: Straw Doll!" A shambling, straw-stuffed effigy materialized, rooting itself to the stone. An aura of primal dread pulsed from it, and the remaining fish curse shuddered, its movements turning sluggish and clumsy. As it thrashed within three meters of the unsettling Shikigami, the doll's straw arm split open. From within, it drew a scythe of condensed shadow and fear, which swept through the air and the curse's body in one silent, decisive arc. The second Grade Two spirit vanished into motes of fading malice.
The two sorcerers exchanged a swift, assessing glance—no serious injuries. But the oppressive atmosphere hadn't lifted with the curses' defeat. It had deepened. The rain slowed to a malevolent drizzle, and the air grew thick with a new, watching presence. They knew this had only been the prelude.
As they tensed, preparing for the next assault, a black streak shot from the temple's darkened doorway. It resolved into a coiled serpent of obsidian scales and dripping fangs, moving faster than the rain.
Nanami, ever the analyst, met it not with evasion, but with a testing strike. His blade rang against a fang with a sharp clang, spraying sparks. The fang held. "Incredible hardness," he noted, his surprise clinical. The sting of the impact redirected the serpent's rage toward Haibara.
"Don't engage it directly!" Nanami warned, already repositioning. A second strike at its flank scales yielded the same metallic rebound. This was a living fortress.
Understanding, Haibara shifted tactics. His Straw Doll's limbs unraveled with uncanny speed, weaving into a dense, binding net that ensnared the thrashing serpent. It looked fragile but held with supernatural tensile strength.
Seizing the opening, Nanami closed in. Abandoning brute force for precision, he hammered the same junction of scales with rapid, focused blows—a percussive tap-tap-tap seeking a fracture. Finally, a scale cracked. His blade slipped through the breach, and with a wrenching twist, he severed the serpent's spine. It fell limp before dissolving.
The two sorcerers backed away, chests heaving. Their clothes were plastered to their skin by the rain, and the biting cold seeped into their bones. Their cursed energy reserves, ample moments before, now felt dangerously low.
There was no time to recover. From the temple's depths, a new pressure swelled—a slow, seismic anger. The deaths of its familiars had not been a deterrent. They had been an insult. The Earth Deity Cursed Spirit was done sending messengers. It was preparing to step into the downpour itself.
A tremor, deep and resonant, shook the very ground beneath their feet. Within the shrine's ruined maw, a colossal silhouette solidified—not of stone, but of solidified wrath and corrupted faith. The Earth Deity stepped into the storm. The rain seemed to bow around its form, falling heavier, as if the sky itself mourned what was to come.
One moment it was a shadow in the temple; the next, it was the center of the world. It materialized between them with a speed that defied its size, the air cracking with displaced pressure. Time didn't just slow; it snapped taut.
Nanami's analytical mind, usually so swift, could only process a single, horrifying datum: impossible scale.
Haibara's breath hitched in his throat, crushed by the spiritual weight alone.
The Earth Deity moved. Its arm, thick as an ancient tree trunk and sheathed in an aura that warped the rain, swung not with technique, but with the absolute force of a landslide. It backhanded Nanami.
Nanami's blade came up, his Ratio Technique screaming in his mind to find a weakness, any weakness. But some forces exist beyond ratio. The impact was catastrophic. A sickening crack tore through the sound of the rain, the bone in his blocking arm shattering instantly. He was hurled backward like discarded refuse, crashing through a wooden colonnade and into a stone wall with a final, dull thud before collapsing, motionless, beneath a cascade of rubble. Blood, shockingly vivid against the grey rain and stone, began to pool around him, seeping into the folds of the talisman tucked in his coat.
"NANAMI!"
Haibara's scream was raw, torn from a place of pure terror and fury. But the Earth Deity's attention was already on him. There was no time for grief, only survival.
Desperate, he commanded his Straw Doll. The Shikigami lunged, its great scythe flashing in a desperate, sweeping arc meant to sever curses. It connected with the Earth Deity's leg. The sound was not of cutting, but of a blade scraping granite. A faint, white line appeared on the deity's hide—a insult, not an injury.
The Earth Deity looked down, then swatted. Its hand closed around the Straw Doll and simply crushed it. The Shikigami exploded into a burst of unraveling straw and dissipating cursed energy.
The backlash was immediate and visceral. Haibara convulsed, a lance of phantom pain spearing through his own body as his technique was annihilated. He coughed, blood spattering the wet stones before him. His legs gave out.
Is this it? The thought was strangely calm amid the agony. I didn't even get the souvenirs for Senior Kamo...
Darkness swirled at the edges of his vision. He slumped forward, unconscious before he hit the ground. The rain beat down on his still form, washing his blood across the cobblestones and over the talisman at his throat, staining its careful inscriptions a deep, ominous crimson.
The plaza fell silent once more. The two sorcerers lay broken, one buried, one bleeding out. The Earth Deity stood over them, a monument of divine malice, its task seemingly complete. The downpour continued, a cold, relentless curtain on the scene of their defeat.
Patreon Seasay