"What is this?!"
The supernatural scene before her had given Mamiya Yuka the fright of her life.
If a brain dissolving could still be chalked up to some extraordinary disease, then what was unfolding before her eyes right now was something else entirely—pure, unambiguous surreality.
But shaken as she was, the sight of it all could not suppress the fierce, burning love for the supernatural that lived deep in Mamiya Yuka's heart.
"This is insane... truly insane..."
She sprinted back another few dozen meters. Only after confirming that no sound could possibly reach her at this distance did she immediately yank up the camera hanging around her neck, aim it at the bizarre spectacle inside the lobby, and hammer the shutter release like a woman possessed.
Click! Click-click-click!
The camera lens faithfully recorded every inch of the surreal tableau unfolding inside the lobby.
The humanoid figures that had clawed their way out of the liquefied brain matter were now standing upright, dazed and aimless.
They looked exactly as they had in life—clothes intact, expressions vivid and alive.
"I... didn't I die?"
After a brief, stunned silence, a young girl murmured softly to herself.
"This place is... a hospital? What's going on?"
"What... what happened to me?"
"Wasn't I at school?"
"Senpai Otomo, you're here too?"
"...My head hurts so much... my memories..."
The resurrected dead stirred with unease. Confusion and dread rippled through their ranks in silence. They looked one another over, confirming each other's existence—their memories frozen at the exact moment their consciousness had dissolved.
More and more of them rose. They filled nearly half the lobby.
"Summoning?! What kind of nonsense is this!"
Kawakami Tomie was caught off guard as well. According to the memory fragments Amamiya Rin had shared, wasn't Aizawa Yuuma's only ability to melt the brains of anyone who heard his apology?
Well. Even though Amamiya Rin had forgotten most of the plot, it was easy enough to reason out.
This was the power of accumulated installments.
As the protagonist of a series, just as Kayako's specifications kept climbing and Tomie's immortal body grew ever stronger, Aizawa Yuuma's abilities had multiplied with each entry. The power to make someone ugly by affecting their cognition, the ability to summon the dead parents of his victims from Hell, the ability to call down hellfire and reduce a target to cinders—
Almost a new ability every volume. If it weren't for the demon's world-ending finale in volume five, had Junji Ito drawn a few more, Aizawa Yuuma's arsenal would have only kept growing.
"Everyone! I'm sorry! I'm so terribly sorry! I've disturbed you all! But please—help me! I beg you, help me stop him!"
Aizawa Yuuma clutched his fractured clavicle, blood flowing freely, and slumped to the ground. He raised his hoarse voice toward the spirits he had summoned.
The resurrected dead turned to look at him. Their eyes were filled with hatred and terror.
"It's him..."
"I remember. He was apologizing to me..."
"My brain melted!"
"You're the one who killed us?"
"How dare you say something so shameless! You kill us and then ask us to fight for you?"
"Monster! I'll kill you! I absolutely will kill you!"
The dead who had returned from Hell had nothing but fury and hatred for Aizawa Yuuma. The moment they understood what had happened, they wanted nothing more than to tear him apart with their bare teeth.
And yet, some invisible binding force prevented them from acting freely. Though their mouths screamed murder at Aizawa Yuuma, their bodies moved of their own accord—closing in around Kawakami Tomie.
Over forty of the dead. Against the total count of victims, that was a drop in the ocean, but this many already-dead individuals could bring down even a Mike Tyson.
"I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY! I apologize to you all! Please forgive me!"
Aizawa Yuuma dropped to his knees once more, utterly devoid of dignity, and prostrated himself in apology before the dead—requesting forgiveness as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Shameless! Shameless animal!"
"What good is an apology?"
"Go to hell!"
The dead cursed and raged at him.
They'd heard enough meaningless apologies from worthless politicians. They hadn't expected to die because of an apology—and they certainly hadn't expected that even in death, this shameless animal would drive them with a few words of sorry.
Cursing him all the while, they surged toward Kawakami Tomie.
"Tch. Can't even rest in peace. You pieces of garbage—would it kill you to stop making my life harder?"
Kawakami Tomie gripped the steel pole with both hands, her attitude the polar opposite of Aizawa Yuuma's. Not a single thought of watching her mouth.
Her gaze cut through the gaps between the advancing dead, locking onto Aizawa Yuuma cowering behind them. Her expression was pure, seething irritation.
After she'd knocked him down with the pole, Aizawa Yuuma had scrambled away at speed. For all his pitiful wailing, his movements were anything but slow—his pain tolerance was clearly extraordinary.
"Don't think for a second that this garbage can protect you! I will kill you! You are something that should not exist!"
Kawakami Tomie drew a deep breath and leveled the steel pole horizontally before her. Her eyes sharpened once more, and she sank into a state of deep Dhyana.
"Shinkage-ryu—Simple Domain!"
Supported by over fifty synchronized consciousnesses, her senses became a single, seamless instrument of perception. The world around her seemed to slow to a crawl. The movements of over forty dead individuals—observed simultaneously by fifty-plus minds—dissolved into countless clear, readable trajectories.
(The nurse on the left—arm raising at a forty-five degree angle, targeting the neck... The suited man to the right-front is faster, weight on his left foot... The ugly girl in the school uniform at the back moves stiffly, opening at the waist...)
Thoughts flashed like electrical current through the Tomie Network without a single word spoken. No language was needed. The collective will controlling this body had already reached its decision.
A single step, and the body slid sideways as if weightless, slipping clean through the gap between two grabbing arms.
Simultaneously, the cold steel pole in her hand struck like a viper—tapping precisely against the inner elbow joint of the nurse's raised arm.
Crack!
A crisp snap. The arm dropped limply at an unnatural angle—but the dead felt no pain. Even with a shattered joint, the other arm still clawed stubbornly toward her.
But Tomie had already spun away, the steel pole sweeping in a backhand arc to crack against the side of another corpse's knee.
That one staggered, lost balance, and toppled—only to immediately press both hands against the floor, trying to clamber back up.
In the same instant, Tomie ducked, pivoted, and brought the steel pole down without mercy onto the back of an old woman's skull, sending her crashing into the corpse directly in front.
Tomie moved with breathtaking agility, weaving through the crowd with clean, efficient motions. The steel pole struck with precision at joints and vulnerable points—every hit shaved away a significant portion of a dead person's combat effectiveness.
She had only a steel pole; the sword techniques of the Yagyu Shinkage-ryu were unavailable, and she could not exert her full power.
And yet—the synchronization of fifty-plus Kawakami Tomies had unleashed the Simple Domain at five hundred percent of its normal capacity.
Fifty-plus observing minds left not a single blind spot. Fifty layers of Breathing Methods supplied oxygen through the neural network, dramatically amplifying the brain's reaction speed. Even surrounded by over forty attackers on all sides, Kawakami Tomie moved as though she had all the room in the world.
Even Amamiya Rin himself, at his peak, could not have performed at this level.
____
👻🔥P- Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Group chat of the Dead
✅ Read 40 chapters ahead on all series.
✅ Get exclusive content and updates.
Help us hit our targets:
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 free chapter for all