A fist woven from the interlacing light and shadow of countless Ikiryo came smashing down at Kayako and Amamiya Rin atop the staircase, trailing a howling wind that made the very soul tremble!
Before the fist even arrived, its wind had already scattered Amamiya Rin's black hair. That immense mass was strong enough to interact normally with the material world—one hit, and at the very least his liver and gall would rupture.
And yet, in the instant that pale giant fist was about to land, Amamiya Rin felt the scene around him blur violently, like a camera cutting at high speed.
A moment ago, he had been standing in the stairwell, Kayako close enough to touch in front of him, the colossal Ikiryo behind. [Writing up to here, I hope readers will note our domain—find good books and read novels every day, ttks.tw, super convenient.]
The next moment, he stood in a dim room, a dark brown floor beneath his feet, splatter-shaped stains across the walls, the air thick with a sweet, bloody rust. This was the second-floor bedroom.
Space and time had been swapped!
Kayako had actually pulled Amamiya Rin out from under the Ikiryo's attack and moved him to the second floor.
She had wavered!
"Booom—!!!"
All at once a tremendous crash rose from downstairs, dull as a pile driver packing the earth flat, and the whole house shuddered with it.
Amamiya Rin dashed out of the bedroom and looked down. The fist of that colossal Ikiryo had struck Kayako's body head-on.
Kayako had no power to resist. Her body burst apart like a cheap clay figure, black hair, shredded flesh, and dark ichor spraying everywhere—splashing across the walls, the stairs, the ceiling.
After shattering Kayako's body, the enormous fist came down on the staircase, punching a great hole clean through the wooden steps.
"Hahaha! What a piece of junk—that's all it's got—"
Seeing this, Ago broke into loud laughter. She folded her arms across her chest, a look of contempt on her face.
Scary-looking, but really nothing more than a showpiece.
"Hss… behind you, watch out!"
Just then, Azuki's alarmed cry rang out from the living room behind her.
Ago's laughter cut off in an instant.
A bone-chilling cold spread up from her back without warning, crawling up her spine all the way to the back of her skull.
Kayako, who had just been smashed to pieces, had now appeared out of nowhere behind her, her body nearly pressed against Ago's spine, her livid black hands reaching in from both sides toward her temples.
"Aaah—!!"
Ago's scalp went numb with terror, every hair on her body standing on end. The instinct to survive detonated the spiritual power inside her!
"Booom—!!"
Thousands upon thousands of Ikiryo burst out from every pore of her body like a white flood breaching a dam, forming a surging tide made purely of spirit-bodies that slammed straight into the face of the Kayako beside her, swallowing her form in an instant.
Each Ikiryo scattered into points of light on impact, but more Ikiryo followed hard behind them. Though they lacked the dense mass of the single fused colossus, Kayako was likewise a spirit-body, and the raging torrent of countless Ikiryo was as solid as matter to her, forcibly halting her movements.
Standing amid that pale flood, Kayako thrust her livid black hands into it.
"Rrrip—!"
A sound like thick cloth being torn apart rang out.
Kayako's fingers snapped shut, unleashing a terrifying force that tore several Ikiryo phantoms apart by main strength!
White spirit-light burst apart between her fingers, but still more Ikiryo surged forward one after another, crashing into her, pushing her sliding backward.
Her strength was immense; every sweep of her arm could rip open a swath of Ikiryo. But Ago released too many, an endless flood breaching its dam.
Kayako's body was shoved steadily backward by that chaotic pressure. No matter how mighty her power, she could not break through Ago's resistance.
At the same time, the colossal Ikiryo turned as well, reaching out one great hand to grab at Kayako.
And it was then that something beyond comprehension happened.
"Bang—!!!"
With a dull, thunderous crack, the arm of the colossal Ikiryo reaching for Kayako blew open a massive hollow from shoulder to elbow without any warning!
The Ikiryo's forward momentum jolted to a halt, its enormous body toppling backward as though it had taken a violent impact.
"What the—?"
Ago's face went slack with astonishment. It was exactly like before—harm without any warning, no seeing at all when Kayako had struck.
Azuki was equally bewildered. She sat on the floor behind the sofa, lifting her head to look all around, yet found no trace of any other helper aiding Kayako.
At that moment, on the living room ceiling, the dark brown stain seemed to seep down from the bedroom above, spreading in the blink of an eye into a sheet of sticky pitch-black.
Then countless strands of long black hair came pouring wildly out of that darkness, cascading down!
Thousands upon thousands of black strands, dense and packed tight.
They hung in the air of the first-floor living room like living black vines, their tips nearly brushing the floor. The entire first floor was instantly filled by this falling hair, the sight as eerie as a spider's lair.
The black hair coiled snakelike toward the nearest white phantom. One Ikiryo tried to dodge, but three strands seized its neck, waist, and leg at once, snapping tight—before it could even struggle it was strangled into scattering white light.
This was only the beginning.
More black hair fell, spread, and wove into a vast net of death, strangling the white spirit-bodies that had invaded the space. Every contraction brought the annihilation of several Ikiryo.
The pale human figure assembled from countless Ikiryo became the prime target.
Hundreds of thick strands of black hair wound around it from every angle, throttling its neck, arms, torso, and legs, sinking deep into that pale light and shadow, trying to snap and shred it apart.
Faced with this, Ago had no time to think about what was happening. She poured out all her power at once.
The densely packed Ikiryo no longer spread outward but, as if drawn by a magnet, swarmed frantically to Ago's side.
One, ten, a hundred… more and more white phantoms overlapped and pressed together, forming layer upon layer of a dense, pale cocoon of light around her.
The black hair surged up like a tide, wrapping the surface of the sphere, cinching tight, trying to crush it—but the sphere of massed Ikiryo was extraordinarily tough, and the gap in sheer mass left the black hair unable to do any damage.
Seeing what Ago did, Azuki immediately copied her.
Enduring the gunshot wound in her leg, she too gathered the Ikiryo she released inward. Thousands, even tens of thousands of Ikiryo swirled around Azuki's body, compressing and crushing inward layer by layer, forming a thick, pale cocoon of light that sealed Kayako's interference outside.
And more than that, the thick cocoons were still compressing, the Ikiryo fusing together. Under Ago and Azuki's control, their power gradually congealed from countless individuals into a single whole.
In moments, two pale giants over three meters tall appeared inside and outside the living room.
Their outlines were crude, only vaguely human, without features, their whole bodies made of shifting white spirit-substance, radiating chaotic, immense waves of spiritual power.
Suddenly, the left side of the abdomen of the colossal Ikiryo Azuki had made caved sharply inward.
As though struck brutally by an invisible mallet, the Ikiryo's light and shadow churned violently, great swaths of white light scattering, the whole aggregate staggering backward—it even knocked over the sofa beside it.
An unseen attack.
No trajectory, no warning, not even the gathering or approach of malice to be felt—the damage simply took effect directly on the Ikiryo's body.
"This again? What on earth is going on? What kind of trick are you playing?"
Azuki shrieked in a frenzy, releasing more Ikiryo to patch the colossus's damage and to further reinforce its mass, but her voice had already taken on a note of panic.
Kayako stood silently in the corner of the living room, her face contorted as if grinning at Azuki, her hollow eyes leaking naked malice.
"You filthy bitch! Bakayarou! I'll kill you! I'll tear you apart!"
Meeting Kayako's gaze through the tangled black hair, Azuki felt her skull throb with pain. Fierce hatred and killing intent rose surging from within, filling her mind, threatening to split her head wide open.
Kill her! She absolutely had to kill her!
This filthy bitch had ruined her show, ruined her happiness—and because of her own misfortune she would strip away this woman's happiness! Such a wretch had to be killed until she could never move again!
Driven by raging hatred, the pale giant raised a thick arm and smashed it down at the black hair hanging before it!
Where the fist passed, the air let out a dull whistle. Before pure mass and impact, those tough strands of black hair were ripped apart in swaths like fragile spider-silk.
Bits of black hair mixed with scattering white spirit-light and whirled through the air.
Ago drove her own Ikiryo giant in to attack as well. That colossus, assembled from tens of thousands of Ikiryo, now carried a mass heavier than an elephant. Its advancing body could snap the net woven from hair, its heavy footfalls making the floor groan.
It swung its fist, smashing at Kayako's head with the momentum to grind everything to dust!
Kayako did not dodge.
The fist struck her square in the face.
"Splat!"
Her head burst apart like an overripe watermelon, black hair, bone fragments, and ichor spraying onto the wall behind her.
The headless body swayed, then toppled backward.
"Ha! That felt good—"
Ago's excited cheer had barely begun before it caught in her throat.
Because before her, right where that headless corpse had fallen, another Kayako appeared out of nowhere.
Still the same bloodstained white dress, still the same twisted posture, and through the gaps in her black hair, that one eye was watching her, silent and still.
"Go die…"
Azuki's lips twisted, and the pale giant threw another punch!
Kayako's body was once again smashed into pieces, her flesh and blood plastered across the floor.
But the next second, in another corner of the living room, a third Kayako crawled out of the shadow of the wall.
"Is there no end to this?!"
The giant Ago controlled charged forward too, raising its foot and stamping down hard on the newly appeared Kayako!
"Bang!!"
The floor was stamped into a gaping hole, and Kayako's body was crushed down into the level below, reduced to a smear of pulped flesh.
But almost at the same instant, from the black hair hanging off the ceiling, a fourth Kayako slid down like dripping tar and landed on the giant's shoulder.
She reached out a livid black hand, clawing for the giant's eyes.
"Get off!"
The Ikiryo giant backhanded its own shoulder.
Kayako was slapped flying, crashing into the wall, the sound of shattering bone clearly audible as her body slid limply down.
But it was useless.
A fifth, a sixth, a seventh… Kayako appeared from every corner.
Crawling out of the closet, rising up from beneath the floor, walking out of the kitchen, condensing from the shadows in the air.
Their movements were stiff, their faces ghastly pale, their black hair loose and hanging. Their one shared trait was those eyes brimming with resentment, fixed in a death-stare on Ago and Azuki, making the fury inside the pair blaze higher.
The pale giants flailed their arms wildly, punching and kicking.
Each blow could easily rip a Kayako to shreds and smash her body to pulp.
More craters were pounded into the walls, the floor shattered, a length of the stair railing snapped off, and nearly half the living room was torn down.
Kayako's fragments were everywhere.
On the walls, the floor, the ceiling—dark ichor and shredded flesh smeared over everything, the sweet, bloody stench thick enough to sicken.
And still she kept appearing.
"What on earth is going on?! Can't she be killed?!"
Ago's voice began to tremble.
She could feel her power draining away.
Every attack, every moment of sustaining this vast aggregate, was rapidly burning through the Ikiryo she released.
Her total reserve of soul-force was still immense, but at this rate…
"I don't believe it! Smash her! Keep smashing! Tear down the whole house! See where she can hide then!"
Azuki shrieked, and the giant she controlled seized a load-bearing pillar and wrenched at it with all its might!
"Crack—CRASH!!"
Half the pillar broke, and a large chunk of ceiling collapsed, dust and splintered wood raining down.
Just then, the left flank of the Ikiryo giant caved in without any warning, letting out a muffled crunch like rotten timber breaking.
The warning-less attack, its source unseen, had come again.
And this was only the beginning.
Bang!
A hollow suddenly burst open behind the knee of Azuki's giant's left leg. The whole leg buckled forward into a kneel, its enormous body losing balance and crashing heavily to the floor.
Crack!
The side of Ago's giant's head abruptly caved in a great chunk, as if struck full-on by an invisible battering ram, the whole head twisting out of shape.
Splat!
Azuki's giant was trying to prop itself up with its arm when its chest suddenly blew open in the center—through that massive hole, front to back, one could even see the wreckage of the floor beyond.
The unseen attacks came again and again, no trajectory, no process. Only the result of the damage, appearing out of nowhere on their bodies.
"The attacks… where are they coming from?! How is this being done?"
Azuki looked around in panic, but could make no sense of anything. All she could do was frantically squeeze out more power, releasing more Ikiryo to pour into the giant's body, patching the enormous wounds that appeared from nowhere.
But the damage kept stacking up in defiance of all reason.
The two Ikiryo giants suffered grievous wound after grievous wound—knees shattering one moment, waists run through the next. All they could do was keep filling more Ikiryo into the giants' crumbling bodies, like endlessly pouring water into a broken barrel, unable by any means to stop the water from draining away.
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🔥 New history: Zenless Zone Zero: Rewriting Fate in New Eridu — read it on The_Mikudayo
📚 Forty chapters of advanced reading at Walnut-chan, and it goes straight into keeping the translations on schedule
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