"Traitor—!"
Shrine Maiden Sakuko gave Hinako no chance to rise and dodge.
Hinako had just straightened up when, amid a shrill, anguished shriek, Sakuko lunged at her, the thorned ritual weapon crashing down toward her head. Instinct sent Hinako toppling backward, and she rolled twice across the floor.
The thorned weapon struck the ground with tremendous force, blasting a crater clean through the floorboards.
"Sakuko... why?"
Bitterness spread across Hinako's face, but her body didn't hesitate for even a moment. She scrambled up, snatched the fallen lamppost lying beside her, and swung it in a wide arc at Sakuko's head.
"Crack—!"
The lamppost slammed into the side of Sakuko's face, caving in a section of her deathly pale skin, but it only made her head tilt slightly.
"Traitor..."
Turning back, Sakuko swung the thorned weapon at Hinako in a backhand strike.
"Clang—!"
Hinako reflexively raised the lamppost to block. The weapon crashed down, and the brutal force traveled up through the pole into her arms, shuddering through her entire body and sending her staggering backward.
"Why fight back? I came here to save you! Hehehehehe!"
Sakuko began to laugh, a hollow, eerie sound that raised the hairs on the back of one's neck.
She raised the weapon and brought it down again. For someone claiming to save Hinako, she showed no restraint at all—giving her no room to catch her breath, blow after relentless blow.
Hinako blocked the second strike, her arms going numb from the impact, the lamppost nearly slipping from her grip. The third blow followed right behind it.
"Clang—clang, clang, clang—!!"
Blow after blow rained down, unbroken as a blacksmith's hammering. All Hinako could do was grip the lamppost with both hands and passively absorb each crushing impact. Every strike numbed the web of her hand a little more; every strike left her arms weaker.
"Sakuko, please, please stop!"
Hinako's voice cracked with a sorrowful sob. The skin between her thumb and forefinger had split open, blood running down the lamppost, which was now cracked and slowly bending under the punishment.
"Crack!"
After nearly ten brutal blows, the lamppost—never a proper weapon to begin with—snapped clean in two. The force left over from that final strike sent Hinako reeling backward.
But just as Hinako was about to fall, Sakuko caught her in an embrace.
Closing the distance at astonishing speed, Sakuko threw herself forward, wrapping her arms around her closest friend.
Sakuko, holding Hinako close.
It was a tender, heartwarming scene—right up until the moment Sakuko opened her mouth.
Her mouth split open like a facehugger's, the edges lined with claw-like tendrils. With that gaping maw bared wide, she lunged to sink her teeth into Hinako's face.
Hinako had no time to dodge. That ice-cold body held her in an unbreakable grip, the stench of decay washing over her, and her eyes went wide as she stared into that bloody, gaping mouth.
A wave of violent revulsion tore a last burst of resistance out of her. Hinako threw her head back, then drove it forward with everything she had, slamming her forehead into Sakuko's chin.
—Crack!!!
The dull, heavy impact echoed through the shrine.
Hinako's headbutt, delivered with every ounce of strength she had left, landed square on Sakuko's chin. The mouth that had split open to her ears snapped shut with a sickening crunch of dislocated bone.
Sakuko flinched in pain, her arms reflexively loosening, and she flung Hinako violently away.
Hinako crashed onto the cold flagstones like a kite with a cut string, sliding several meters across the ground. Searing pain shot up her spine to the crown of her head, and stars exploded across her vision.
Her limbs went limp. She clawed at the cracks between the stones, trying to push herself up, but the world spun around her.
Pain! Everywhere, pain! The wound on her stomach was still bleeding, the split at the base of her thumb had torn deeper, a dull ache throbbed at the back of her skull, and her temples pulsed like they'd been stabbed with needles.
Her thoughts were a tangled mess, every breath came with a dull ache, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get up.
Worse still, Hinako's vision began to blur and double. Sakuko's silhouette split into two, then three, then merged back together.
Sakuko staggered back two steps, letting out an even more shrill, unhinged laugh. She raised the thorned weapon but didn't step forward.
Then the golden crown atop her head suddenly blazed with a blinding golden light, radiating outward like sunlight, illuminating the entire shrine.
That light was dazzling and fierce, yet carried no warmth—only an eerie, crushing pressure.
In that instant, Sakuko brought the weapon down.
Hummmm—!!!
Like a tidal wave crashing ashore, an invisible force rippled outward with Sakuko at its center.
"Ugh—!"
Hinako couldn't hold back a pained groan. It felt as though countless steel needles were driving into her skull, and the headache she'd been suppressing finally erupted in full.
Memory, emotion, consciousness—everything that made up her sense of self convulsed violently beneath that invisible impact.
Countless chaotic images surged up from the depths of her mind: Sakuko in the instant before her death, the father who'd hurled a kitchen knife at her, her meek mother, the sister who'd married and moved away, Hisayuki's mask, the games she'd played with Shu, the five hundred yen Sakuko had once borrowed from her... Memories collided and tangled together in a mad frenzy, her thoughts churning into complete chaos. Dizziness swallowed her like a rising tide, draining even the strength to keep her eyes open, and her consciousness began to fall, as if plunging into a pitch-black whirlpool, on the verge of being swallowed whole.
Her vision began going dark, the pain in her body growing more distant and indistinct. She could hear the weapon whistling through the air, could see Sakuko's hollow, empty eye sockets locked onto her with an unmistakable malice.
Am I going to die?
Just like this... here...
Sakuko walked up to stand before Hinako. Slowly, she raised the weapon, aiming it at Hinako's skull.
The weapon was about to fall, about to erase her from existence.
But just then—
A stream of warmth welled up without warning from the deepest part of her heart.
That warmth was faint—like a lone lamp on a winter night, like a single candle flame in a raging storm—but it carried an undeniable presence, soothing her fractured, shredded mind.
That was light!
That was light!
In the chaos of Hinako's mind, a figure suddenly surfaced—a body of red and silver, golden hexagonal eyes, steady as a mountain range, warm as the first light of dawn.
That light welled up from the very depths of her heart, sweeping across the chaos and dizziness in her mind, cleansing away every trace of muddled confusion.
Hinako's unfocused pupils suddenly contracted, snapping back into focus.
She felt it.
That was light! Ultraseven's light!
Back in the material world, in the moment when Hinako had collapsed from the headache, the thread of light-power Amamiya Rin had infused into her body had remained buried in the deepest part of her consciousness ever since. It was that very light's support that had let Hinako resist Tsuneki Hisayuki's mind-control incantation all along.
Now, at this brink between life and death, that sleeping light was fully awakened at last.
"Ultraseven—!!!"
Hinako drew in a deep breath and, gathering every last bit of strength in her body, let out a scream that tore from her very soul.
Ka-BOOM—!!!
In that instant, an overwhelming, boundless force of light erupted violently from every part of her body!
Blinding golden light swallowed the entire eerie shrine in an instant. The bloodstains on the flagstones were purified away by the glow, and the crimson mist dissolved like melting snow and ice.
Within that light, Hinako's body rose higher and higher, transforming into another form entirely.
A silver body wrapped in red stripes emerged; the Beam Lamp on her forehead lit up with a clear, translucent glow, and atop her head, the Eye Slugger gleamed with a cold light within the radiance.
The towering figure of the giant enveloped Hinako's body, standing tall at the center of the shrine.
____
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🔥 New history: DanMachi: Inheriting the Legacy of Alternate Versions — posted on The_Mikudayo