Chapter 4: Hyakki Yagyō (The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons)
Beneath the distant sun, the streets appeared empty and somewhat desolate. Most of the rows upon rows of shops had their doors open, yet the interiors were devoid of people. A water bottle, selected and placed on a counter in a convenience store, sat by a cash register that emitted a faint, rhythmic beeping, yet no one was there to take it.
If Shirou and the others had wanted to take them, they certainly could have. The beverages on the shelves stood behind wide-open doors, as if it mattered not at all to them who carried them away.
Everything seemed to have frozen at the final moment of normal operation.
"You don't think... we can actually drink these, do you?" one of the officers muttered, staring at the scene.
But the joke wasn't funny at all. Beverages manifested in a city that was clearly an abnormal phenomenon—and they were drinkable? What difference was there between that and the water of the underworld? Though they didn't know where the counterfeit Snowfield City was physically located, if it was being manipulated by human hands... this essentially belonged to the realm of Fantasy Realization, something the police force only saw in files, far beyond their reach, bordering on the territory of a Magician.
"It's practically like Magic..." John observed the goods on the shelves.
Shirou, looking somewhat distracted, walked past but still joined their idle chatter: "Is there no other magecraft that can achieve this? At least, that should still just be a bottle of water, right?"
"Probably not, at least none I've seen," John explained uncertainly. "It's not a question of the water. Mr. Shirou, imitating the shape of bottled water or recreating a tool with similar functions isn't theoretically difficult. But if it weren't appearing in this empty city, that object would be indistinguishable from a normal one outside; it's an almost perfectly normal physical replica. I've heard that the Grand Magecraft of Creation is something we usually don't see in a lifetime, so you might not be familiar with it and think a bottle of water is no big deal."
Of course, much of what John said was theoretical knowledge he had encountered—nothing more than reciting from a book—which he hadn't fully understood until seeing it with his own eyes today.
A perfect replica possessed a terrifying nature. It didn't just represent the means and degree of completion of the magecraft, but what about the cost? There were at least thousands of such items in this city. If the city was operating on the will of some entity, how could it continuously reproduce such miraculous things without any apparent consumption?
The law of equivalent exchange for prana was being violated; the very rules they followed were being forcibly rewritten before their faces. Thus, for everyone belonging to the police force, this eerie city evoked a hair-raising sense of hollow vastness.
Compared to them, Shirou, walking inconspicuously at the front, had long since shifted his attention, concentrating on several other corners.
"..."
Shirou also briefly wore an expression of deep thought.
"Mr. Shirou, did you find something?" John asked from the side. On his back, he carried the Noble Phantasm longsword that Shirou had projected. This sword had been handed over to the police to handle, allowing them to sense the positions of personnel holding the fragments at any time.
Part of the road to the hospital and the road leading away from it were the same, so Shirou was seeing the same street conditions for the second time. Because of this, Shirou perceived subtle differences in details compared to when he had arrived.
"The car parked in the corner seems to have moved fifty centimeters since I last saw it. I'm wondering if I remembered it wrong."
Though it was likely an illusion, he couldn't say for certain. Any change should have some kind of meaning, but Shirou wasn't skilled at contemplating the symbolic methods of magecraft. After all, Shirou was, at the end of the day, only a third-rate magus. Matters concerning first-rate magi should be left to first-rate magi to ponder. If Rin, Sakura, or even Illya were here, they would likely have figured it out by now.
"If that's a joke, it's a terrifying one," John commented with a strained expression.
"Is it far to that address with the clue?"
"No, at our current pace, we should arrive in about an hour," Shirou replied after calculating. "Though the journey might be a bit boring, it's actually better if nothing happens... Well, I mean to say that peace is a blessing."
'I hope so. Let us advance to the destination safely. Please, gods and buddhas.'
Despite the thought, the air felt abnormally viscous. John likewise uncomfortably placed his hand on his scabbard.
"We hope so too... Eh?"
A sudden change occurred. A rustling sound echoed from the gaps between the shops.
To Shirou, it was a sound he might have heard several times, but to John, it was utterly foreign—something he could only vaguely recall hearing during some half-awake, half-dreaming state. Immediately afterward, "certain objects" burst out from the shadows like a dam breaking. They moved almost in a sliding fashion, traveling in a rapid straight line.
"!?"
The members of Clan Calatin targeted by the "certain objects" reacted at the very last second, their gazes freezing as they raised their longswords.
Clang!
A metallic hum rang out as the black object was knocked back slightly. But the man also wore a shocked expression; although he felt he had inflicted a cutting wound, he hadn't finished the opponent in a single blow, realizing it would take at least two or more.
"Yani!!"
John, at the head of the squad, reacted. With a belated shout, he immediately rushed toward the attacked officer.
However, before he could reach him, a thunderous crack erupted beside him, drowning out even the shouts. A streak of blue light brushed past John's uniform, drawing a line even faster than the black objects' assault.
Before John even had time to draw his weapon from its sheath or run more than two meters, a violent gale blew from nearby. John shielded his eyes with his hand. When the wind dissipated and he looked forward, what he saw was a blazing, pale-blue flame.
The black object had already been reduced to wreckage. The portion that should have been the lower body had vanished, and the entire form collapsed toward the ground, beginning to dissipate like mist.
"Humanoid, black...?"
Before it completely vanished into mist, the remaining parts allowed all the police members to witness its true form. Shirou released the string of his bow, the limb of the bow dipping toward the ground.
What was vanishing was a humanoid form composed entirely of black particles. It wasn't transparent; even as sunlight fell upon its body, it didn't make the pitch-blackness any more translucent. Instead, it vividly displayed the boundaries of its silhouette as if it had absorbed the sunlight.
It was like a single strand separated from the black mist they had seen elsewhere. Everyone present felt a powerful sense of déjà vu.
"Thank you... That was truly timely support." John and several members closer to Shirou prioritized thanking him. Even for the one or two who possessed ranged weapons like javelins or throwing knives, there was a momentary pause before they finished their sentence.
"It's fine. With your strength, you could have handled it even if I hadn't stepped in."
Shirou's gaze remained fixed on the completely dissipating black shadow.
'Another black shadow.'
Similar to the "mist," there was more than one person who used "black shadows." Sakura also used black shadows, but the characteristics were distinctly different. Sakura's "black shadows" were shadows, or shadows transformed into shapes mixed with something else; but these "black shadows" were composed entirely of black dust.
This counterfeit Snowfield City was indeed very abnormal.
"I'm going up to take a look."
Leaving a reminder for Clan Calatin, Shirou leaped toward the buildings. He first sought a building taller than two stories, then stepped onto its windowsills, ascending floor by floor.
At roughly the fourth floor, Shirou could finally see the cityscape of the counterfeit Snowfield.
"This is..."
Even Shirou's words caught in his throat.
The sparsely populated counterfeit Snowfield remained so—however, it was now interspersed with clear anomalies. On several streets a certain distance from Shirou and the others, various magical beasts were racing. In various corners, there were black hazes that looked like black spots polluting a canvas.
Simultaneously, several gargantuan skeletons of unimaginable size wandered in the distance as far as the eye could see. They were like moving skyscrapers, turning the counterfeit Snowfield into a subversive city of activity where skyscraper-sized entities that were not buildings were mixed among the actual high-rises. This was a sight Shirou hadn't seen at all initially.
Clan Calatin seemed to finally notice a giant skeleton approaching their area. Looking at the white skull rising above the obstructing buildings, they let out cries of alarm ten-odd meters below Shirou.
This city had quite literally become the venue for a Hyakki Yagyō.
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