Chapter 248: Ichinose and the Others Decide, Raijin Appears. (Patreon)

Chainsaw Man world.

As the spatial door swung open, Chris stepped through with the Enma Blade in one hand.

The moment his feet touched the ground, he sensed that something about the surroundings was off.

Among the rubble, on a toppled utility pole, even in a sewer grate not far away, a few crows and rats were staring at him with unnatural eyes.

It was as if the instant they turned and spotted him, their attention had locked onto him and nothing else.

Chris knew exactly whose handiwork this was.

After all, not long ago he had snatched Horikita Manabu right out from under her nose and cut off her control over him.

Knowing Makima, she'd do anything to stop him from showing up again and wrecking her so-called "plan to build a perfect world without suffering." A little extra vigilance on her part was only natural.

Still, she probably didn't have much energy left to spare on him right now.

By his count, the Gun Devil was about to make landfall in Japan.

That was an essential link in her plan, so naturally it mattered more to her than keeping an eye on him.

As for the Gun Devil, which held only 20% of its fragments, Chris had little interest in it.

Joining the hunt was far less fun than watching the show.

Whether to kill it or let it live, he'd leave that decision to Miyabi Nagumo and the others.

With that thought, Chris raised his right hand.

As the [Mountains-and-Rivers Realm Map] slowly unfurled in midair, light flickered, and a group of figures in Advanced Nurturing High School uniforms appeared one after another.

"Whoo—"

The moment Miyabi Nagumo landed, he noticed the change in his surroundings.

He swept his gaze over the dense mountain forest around them, then looked toward the faint outline of Tokyo on the horizon. Doubt flickered in his eyes.

"We're not in the city?"

"Don't tell me there are more devils out in the middle of nowhere than in town?"

Chris turned around and shook his head, answering as if it were nothing:

"Never heard of that rule."

"Mostly, when I came to find Student Council President Horikita a couple of days ago, I cleared out the devils in Neon on the way. How many are left, I honestly couldn't say."

"But Makima, the Control Devil? I didn't have time for her back then, so I left her alone."

"So I just picked a random spot. Whether you go hunting or come up with another plan, that's up to you."

Hearing such a humblebrag, Fūka Kiryūin narrowed her wine-red eyes thoughtfully.

"The Control Devil... as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, I'd guess she holds the same standing as the Darkness Devil."

Kiryuuin glanced at the classmates beside her who still hadn't equipped any strong items, and frowned.

"We'll be fine."

"But some people on the team haven't scraped together enough points. One random AOE and it's a total wipe..."

Before Fūka Kiryūin had even finished speaking, the fluffy lion ears on her head twitched. Her eyes turned razor-sharp, and she whipped around to face the sea!

"Something's coming!"

Before her classmates could follow her gaze and see anything—

"Fwip-fwip-fwip—!!!"

With a sonic boom that tore through the air, bullets by the thousands crossed dozens of kilometers like a rainstorm and howled straight for everyone's faces!

In that split second—

"Nurufufufu—protecting students is a teacher's job!"

A strange laugh rang out, and a bright yellow figure darted in front of the group like lightning.

His tentacles became afterimages too fast for the eye to follow, weaving a net so dense that nothing could slip through.

"Clink-clang-clink!"

Bullets pounded the tentacles like hail, each impact landing with a dull thud.

But the Gun Devil's mechanism was to lock onto heads and shoot indiscriminately, so it didn't stop just because the first wave was blocked.

The flood of bullets never let up, and Koro Sensei, drenched in sweat, could only keep swinging his tentacles to hold up the shield of afterimages.

"Oh dear, this is getting a little tricky."

Nearby, Gojo Satoru raised an eyebrow behind his blindfold. He bent down and picked up a deformed bullet from the ground.

Through the blindfold, he studied the strange fluctuation lingering on the slug with his Six Eyes.

"So this is... a devil's ability? There's definitely something to it."

Fūka Kiryūin nodded, her expression cold. "It must be."

"Only a devil could unleash a strike of this scale, indiscriminately, from this distance... Maybe the Gun Devil?"

At that moment, Akane Tachibana, the Student Council secretary, finally snapped out of it.

She raised her wrist and opened the [Controller] interface. On the three-dimensional projection, only a handful of highlighted red dots remained within Tokyo's range. Without hesitation she tapped the one nearest to them.

[Target: Makima (Control Devil)]...

She skimmed over Makima's practically unbeatable damage-substitution mechanism, and Tachibana hesitated for a moment.

After weighing the pros and cons, she kept Makima only as a backup candidate for a sneak attack and tapped another huge red dot instead, one rapidly closing in on Neon's mainland.

[Target: Gun Devil (20%)]

[Value: 145 points]

[Traits: Its foundation is humanity's fear of firearms, and it draws its power from that fear. Limited to only 20% of its mass, its strength falls far short of the complete Gun Devil. Even so, it can move at bullet speed and fly. Its movement alone generates a shockwave capable of destroying cities, and it attacks every human along its path without discrimination. Within a certain range it can strike with guaranteed-hit precision, and its power pierces buildings and strong defenses. Extremely destructive.]

[Fatal weakness: Ultra-long-range indiscriminate strikes. Without enough speed and defense, you'll be killed in a single hit. But at its root, it was summoned through a temporary contract that cost a year of lifespan from every American. It is a time-limited release of a 20% fragment body, so its power is relatively limited, and it has no intelligence of its own.]

"Indiscriminate attacks, huh..."

Gojo Satoru muttered, looking at the Controller panel.

He raised a slender hand and formed a hand sign.

"Too bad my [Limitless] can't be expanded wide enough to serve as a temporary barrier for everyone."

"But combining Limitless with Blue to create a localized gravitational shift? Buying you a little rest, Koro Sensei, is no problem."

"Nurufufu, thank you so much!" Koro Sensei didn't mind at all. Still waving his tentacles, he teared up with gratitude. "It's no trouble. This is Gojo Sensei's kindness, after all!"

This heartwarming display of teamwork left Jiraiya, another "guest teacher," with a rather complicated look on his face.

It wasn't that Jiraiya felt Gojo Satoru was stealing the spotlight. He had simply realized, quite suddenly...

that the ninjutsu he took such pride in had nothing that could protect everyone against an attack of this scale.

Plain Earth Release couldn't stop it unless it was mixed with a huge amount of Sage Chakra for a qualitative boost.

And with a ninja's body, if Koro Sensei and Gojo Satoru weren't tanking up front, he might get skewered by a stray bullet and drop dead while still gathering Sage Chakra.

"How sad..."

The Toad Sage muttered with a long face.

Feeling utterly useless, Jiraiya could only turn his attention, with a helpless sigh, to Akane Tachibana, Miyabi Nagumo and the other students discussing strategy. He figured he'd see if there was any support work he could help with.

But just then.

The sky-filling rain of bullets stopped dead.

Fūka Kiryūin, the keenest of them all, was the first to frown. She stared at the distant sky and said in a low voice:

"The Gun Devil's red dot is still there, but the attack has stopped... Has it already clashed with Makima?"

Chris rubbed his chin with a finger, thought for a moment, then spoke.

"If Makima defeats the Gun Devil and takes control of it, she'll gain its abilities directly."

Chris looked at Miyabi Nagumo. "Stacking abilities like that is rough on freshmen without gear... Want me to move you somewhere else first?"

"No need."

Miyabi Nagumo refused without a moment's hesitation.

He tapped open the Controller interface on his Black Sphere Watch, looked at the score marked for Makima, and licked his lips in excitement.

"Even the highest-value one, the 'Death Devil,' is only 260 points. Sure, Makima's control mechanism is a bit of a pain, but we don't have to fight her to the bitter end."

Miyabi Nagumo swept his eyes over the group behind him.

"All you need to do is send the classmates without lifesaving items to other, relatively safe areas to farm points."

"As for me, Kiriyama, Kiryuuin and the rest... we're staying here."

Seeing Miyabi Nagumo's stubborn, won't-turn-back-until-he-hits-the-wall attitude, Chris stopped trying to talk him out of it and nodded. "Sure."

"Then once I've sent everyone off, I won't be coming back. I have to get back to [Snowfield] and deal with the Holy Grail War."

Miyabi Nagumo and Fūka Kiryūin exchanged a look and nodded in unison. "No problem. Leave it to us."

Hearing that the group would split up, Jiraiya asked on reflex:

"Then... which side are we teachers going with?"

Miyabi Nagumo turned his head slightly and looked at Jiraiya, and at Gojo Satoru and Koro Sensei, who had both caught their breath by now.

Although the three guest instructors were no slouches, he had no intention of relying on them too heavily on the main battlefield.

"Dealing with devils is something we'll handle ourselves."

"Teachers, could you please look after the freshmen who still need to grow?"

"After all, whether it's Chris's game or our own fight, we have to finish it with our own strength in the end. However..."

Miyabi Nagumo's words suddenly broke off. He turned to Chris as if he'd just remembered something.

"Before you go, let me plant a Flying Thunder God mark on something of yours first."

"On the way to the White House, I spent plenty of time in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber practicing this ninjutsu."

"I'd love to test it myself. Can this so-called 'space-time ninjutsu' really cross the boundary of the Backrooms?"

...

Meanwhile.

Snowfield.

While Chris was away in the Chainsaw Man world, the rest of the group hadn't been idle.

Using the Black Sphere [Controller]'s radar scans, plus Hiyori Shiina's practically omniscient angel [Rasiel], they had searched out every last detail of the Snowfield Holy Grail War's Servants and Masters.

The purposes of the Masters, their identities, the Servants' true names and their fatal weaknesses... all of it was laid bare.

But with this near-total knowledge came a problem.

In a sense, the more they knew, the harder it was to make a move.

Because in this Holy Grail War, designed by magi like Faldeus, the vast majority of the Masters had really just been dragged in as innocents.

Take Pale Rider's Master, Tsubaki Kuruoka. She was only a poor little girl whose parents treated her as a magical experiment.

Berserker Jack's Master, Flat, was a genius with no common sense, but at heart he was a cheerful, kind-hearted good person.

And Richard the Lionheart's Master, Ayaka Sajyou, was simply an unlucky girl who'd been pulled into this whirlpool for no reason at all.

Faced with these vivid faces on the screen, Honami Ichinose, Nanase Tsubasa and a few other girls all looked pained.

If this were nothing more than a monster-hunting battle, they wouldn't hesitate to draw their swords.

But to take innocent lives just to earn S Points? They truly couldn't bring themselves to do it.

Of course, to absolute pragmatists like Ryuuen, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka and Amasawa Ichika, this kind of saintly moral agonizing wasn't even worth mentioning.

"Put away that laughable pity of yours."

Ryuuen gave a cold laugh and laid out the core problem bluntly.

"What's really blocking our clear isn't whether to kill these Masters. It's that True Archer, Heracles, who's been contaminated by the Mud!"

"That guy is holding a shameless Noble Phantasm like [Usurper of the Heavenly Winds]. If he gets the chance to steal a few powerful Noble Phantasms, he can turn into the most troublesome super boss of this exam in no time."

"What the hell... Does the Heracles legend even have a thing like that?"

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka added from the side:

"Also, he's already been eaten away by the Mud. If he's killed now and his soul returns to the Grail carrying the Mud, then even if it doesn't immediately turn Snowfield's Greater Grail into the pure evil of 'Angra Mainyu' like in Fuyuki City..."

"A surge in the Mud's activity will still interfere with us getting the Phoenix Orb hidden deep inside the Grail system. That runs against our final goal."

It was, one could say, a deadlock with no solution.

Killing him was no good, and not killing him was no good either.

They were stuck in a lose-lose bind.

Fortunately, they had [Rasiel].

After going through all kinds of information, Hiyori Shiina offered a solution.

"If we want to suppress or even purify the Mud inside the Grail, we might be able to ask for help from a Grand Magus whose codename is 'Crimson of Pain.'"

But then the girl sighed helplessly.

"Unfortunately, Touko Aozaki isn't in Snowfield right now. And our fastest member, Kiryuuin-senpai, and Chris, who has spatial teleportation, are both away at the moment."

At those words, everyone fell silent again and began reconsidering their next moves.

Without a doubt, Servants were projections of the dead, Heroic Spirits who would eventually return to the Throne of Heroes once the Holy Grail War ended.

No one felt any burden about attacking them for kill points.

At Honami Ichinose's insistence, the team finally compromised on innocent Masters who'd been dragged in against their will, like Tsubaki Kuruoka and Ayaka Sajyou: save them if they could, and strip their Command Seals to get them out safely.

As for Servants and Masters who were clearly open to talking and could serve as neutral allies, they would pursue alliances and avoid pointless internal losses.

Once the risks of large-scale disaster were swept away, they would take the points off the rest through proper, honorable "duels."

And even better, if they played it right...

"If we could turn the eliminated Servants into something like Heroic Spirit 'Class Cards' and bring them back to our world..." Amasawa Ichika stroked her chin. "That'd be one hell of a deal!"

With the general direction set, the next step was dividing the work.

To keep Hiyori, the core of the operation, safe,

Hiyori Shiina was assigned to wait inside the [Mirror World], guarded by a few people who held Card Decks, like Kei Karuizawa and Amikura Mako.

That way, Hiyori Shiina could use Rasiel's paper fragments in absolute safety to direct the overall situation and manage intelligence.

Everyone else would go do what they wanted to do, or whatever tasks they'd been assigned.

...

Among the groups that split off,

Honami Ichinose took Suzune Horikita to look for Pale Rider and Tsubaki Kuruoka.

They planned to use the Stand ability of [Crazy Diamond], which could repair anything, to try to cure the illness in Tsubaki Kuruoka's body, and through that win her over as a rescue-and-cooperation case.

The all-girl team of Arisu Sakayanagi, Amasawa Ichika and Hayasaka Ai set their sights on Flat, of the Clock Tower faction.

They wanted to see whether he'd cooperate and help make the connection to the current Lord, Lord El-Melloi II.

After all, according to the intel in Hiyori Shiina's Rasiel, Waver Velvet and his crowd of oddball students were rare magi who still retained their humanity.

Faced with the Black Sphere and the Backrooms, higher-dimensional existences capable of ending the world, that clever Lord surely wouldn't cling to a mere Holy Grail War.

And if talks truly broke down, their lineup was also well suited to facing Berserker Jack and the monster named Tia sleeping inside Flat.

It was precisely to deal with the extremely dangerous "New Primate" inside Flat, which the system rated even higher than Enkidu, that Arisu Sakayanagi had deliberately brought so many people along.

As for the pair with no moral baggage, Ryuuen and Ayanokoji Kiyotaka...

They had set their sights on the Snowfield Police Department.

There, Assassin the Zealot and her Master, the Dead Apostle Jester Karture, were in a brawl with the Executor from the Holy Church and the twenty-eight-man monster squad hand-picked by the Master of the fake Caster, Dumas.

Dead Apostles are long-lived beings, or, in the common tongue, vampires.

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka and Ryuuen were convinced that Jester had the ability to forcibly convert ordinary humans into lesser vampires and minor Dead Apostles.

If that conversion ability was used well...

All they had to do was get aggressive: use Jester as a tool to convert the worst criminals, then step in and clean them up themselves.

That would surely bring in a hefty haul of points!

An endless point-farming machine, one might say!

But using human lives as bait touched, to some degree, on the moral lines of Ichinose, Nanase Tsubasa and the others.

When it was discussed on the spot, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka had tacitly kept silent.

And he hadn't gone to Hiyori Shiina to use her angel to confirm whether Jester really could turn humans into minor Dead Apostles.

Besides, even if Jester couldn't, it made little difference to them.

They'd just kill him and take the guaranteed base points.

Not only that, Ryuuen even planned to use this chance to try his [Allspark Shard], to see whether it could turn the police department's military-grade weapons into [Decepticons]. If it worked, he could farm even more points and maybe exploit a bug in the presiding god's rules.

On the boys' side right now, setting aside Chris, the true bug,

there was the duo of Ayanokōji and Ryuuen, whose combined strength needed no explanation. Kouenji Rokusuke had the Hogyoku and the Rumble-Rumble Fruit as backup. Ryūji Kanzaki had the Door-Door Fruit for superb mobility. And Katsuragi Kohei and Yagami Takuya could summon ninja armies with their Phantom Masks at any time for support.

With that kind of power on paper,

as long as they didn't do something stupid like charging straight into Goldie and Enkidu's battlefield, they could swagger around Snowfield without worry.

There was no need to stir up arguments inside the team over a difference in philosophy at a time like this.

...

Meanwhile.

Snowfield Police Department, inside the chief's office.

The sheriff, who was also the Master of the fake Caster Dumas, Orlando Reeve, stood before the huge floor-to-ceiling window.

With a ripple of warping light, Francesca, known as the Flying Princess, appeared out of thin air at his side.

She kept up her frivolous girlish act, hands clasped behind her back, and leaned in to peer at the screen behind Orlando that played live footage of the police lobby, chattering with a grin:

"Oh my, rookie."

"Did you get a good look at the world-shaking clash between the King of Uruk and his weapon-friend a moment ago?"

"They flipped the wasteland over, and the earth itself cried out for it. What a sight!"

"There's absolutely no more dazzling opening act in this world, you know."

Orlando didn't even lift his eyelids. He ignored the illusory projection the Flying Princess had conjured and simply turned his head, staring down at the surveillance feed with a face like still water.

In the lobby, the Dead Apostle Jester was lifting a solid wood sofa with one hand and swinging it like a fly swatter at Hansa, the Executor the Holy Church had sent as overseer.

Around them, twenty-eight elite officers, armed with Noble Phantasms Dumas had carefully forged and granted mystic boosts to match the Cú Chulainn myth, had Jester and his Servant surrounded, trying to finish them off.

Orlando took a deep breath and spat out coldly:

"What are you doing here?"

The Flying Princess didn't look the least bit embarrassed. She laughed softly and didn't answer right away.

Instead she skipped around behind Orlando like a little girl without a care in the world.

She hummed a light rhythm, as if practicing the steps of some ancient dance opera.

After a gentle twirl, she reached out and rested a finger on Orlando's shoulder, murmuring meaningfully:

"I take it you didn't have the good fortune to witness the first opening ceremony with your own eyes... So, are you going to miss the overture that follows, too?"

"What a pity that would be~"

Orlando's eyes darkened. He slapped her hand off his shoulder as if shooing away a fly.

He bent down and picked up the saber Dumas had made from the desk.

Then he turned and strode toward the door, with no intention at all of answering the Flying Princess's teasing.

Watching his retreating back, Francesca wasn't angry in the least. Instead she shook her head gently.

She nimbly braced one hand on the desktop, pressed half her bottom against the edge, and swung her slender legs lightly in the air.

"Now then~ let me take a good look."

"Whether you uninvited guests, who were never supposed to exist in this set script, are qualified to become pieces on the board..."

The girl hummed a tuneless song and looked up at the leaden, not-yet-dawn sky outside the window, whispering:

"Well, having witnessed the Uruk king and his friend's earth-shattering battle and still having the nerve to show up on Snowfield's stage."

"They should at least have a trick or two up their sleeves, right?"

"As newcomers, don't let a little scene like this crush your confidence, okay? That would be so boring..."

At this point the Flying Princess's swinging legs suddenly stopped.

She pursed her lips into an eerie smile.

"Hmm... But come to think of it, if they really do get scared out of their wits, that might be kind of fun too?"

...

By the time Orlando tore himself away and reached the lobby downstairs,

the battle had already been going for a while.

Jester and Hansa, the Executor from the Holy Church, were locked in a tangled brawl.

And the twenty-eight police elites Orlando had hand-picked, though armed with counterfeit Noble Phantasms, still looked fragile amid the fallout of a fight between monsters.

Quite a few had tried to force their way into the fight, only to be caught by the Zealot and killed on the spot as casually as crushing bugs.

Looking at the blood and severed limbs covering the floor, Orlando frowned deeply.

"Even with the Noble Phantasms Dumas made... humans really are still a long way from true Servant Noble Phantasms, aren't they..."

Just then.

"Bam!"

With a dull thud, Jester was sent flying by a heavy, powerful blow from Hansa, hurtling backward like a cannonball.

And his trajectory was about to land him right in front of Orlando, who had just arrived on the battlefield.

Orlando's eyes sharpened. In an instant he drew his saber, ready to meet the Dead Apostle.

Unfortunately, he badly underestimated his opponent.

As the sheriff of a special district like Snowfield, his physical ability and combat skill might be one in ten thousand among ordinary people.

But in the end, he was just an ordinary human without any mystic boost.

Jester, still flying backward in midair, simply twisted his body in an impossible way, used the momentum, and swept the claws on his hands through the air, leaving several afterimages.

"Shhk!"

Orlando didn't even see the movement before an agonizing pain tore through his abdomen.

A gaping wound opened, and blood sprayed!

And it wasn't over.

As Jester landed, he reached back and clamped down hard on Orlando's shoulder, ready to hurl the badly wounded sheriff away like a smoke bomb to block Hansa's pursuit!

Just as Orlando felt as if his intestines would be flung out through the wound, the pain made his mind swim for a moment.

Endless despair and bitterness welled up in him.

'Could it be... that my dream, the goal I set for this city, ends right here, in such a laughable way...'

'In the end, human strength still can't defeat those lofty Heroic Spirits and monsters. Am I unable to protect Snowfield's ordinary citizens, too...?'

Just as Orlando closed his eyes to meet his death,

"Crack—!"

A blinding flash of lightning blazed before his eyes without warning.

The next second, his body felt light, and the pull of being hurled by the Dead Apostle vanished at once.

When he opened his eyes again, Orlando found himself standing steadily on the ground.

Clutching the wound in his belly, he turned his head with difficulty.

What came into view was a tall young man with dazzling blond hair.

What stunned him even more... the youth was wearing a school uniform, clearly the style of a high schooler!

"A student...?"

Orlando coughed up a mouthful of blood and murmured in disbelief, "Are you... a student sent by the Clock Tower?"

Kouenji Rokusuke paid his question no mind.

He simply swept the blond hair off his forehead and turned to Ryuuen, who was strolling over unhurriedly.

"Ryuuen Boy, I recall that Lion God template of yours has healing functions, does it not?"

Ryuuen snorted coldly, which counted as an answer.

He walked up to Orlando and looked down at the badly wounded sheriff from above.

Then he crouched and pressed his hand right over the gaping hole in Orlando's belly.

"It's not nearly as absurdly strong as Chris's [Crazy Diamond]," Ryuuen said casually to Kouenji Rokusuke as he activated the healing module. "But patching him up enough to keep him alive isn't a problem."

Orlando felt his body, which had been steadily bleeding out its life, recover quickly beneath that palm, and the agony began to fade.

He drew a deep breath, forced himself upright, and asked again:

"You... are you magi sent by the Clock Tower to take part in the Holy Grail War?"

"Sending students who are still in school to fight... And where are your Servants?"

At that, Ryūji Kanzaki, who had just stepped out of empty air through a door using the [Door-Door Fruit], pushed up his glasses and explained with a light smile:

"Mr. Sheriff, you've misunderstood. We're not magi."

"If you insist on putting it in terms you'd understand... we're 'trial-takers' who came to end this false Holy Grail War."

"Trial-takers?"

Orlando was utterly confused.

Suddenly, as if remembering something extremely dangerous, he turned his head on reflex.

He was looking for the Dead Apostle Jester who had just wounded him, and for the assassin who had been lurking in the shadows, slaughtering his officers.

But the moment he forced himself to look up, he saw something that shocked him.

In the center of the lobby,

a brown-haired boy with an expressionless face had appeared out of nowhere and was standing there.

With nothing more than a raised right hand, several black tentacles had pinned the once-arrogant Dead Apostle Jester firmly in place!

His cold gaze swept over Hansa, who stood ready with Black Keys in hand, and over the Zealot on the second-floor railing, who was watching from above with wary eyes.

Finally he turned to Jester, whose veins bulged under the tentacles' grip, and spoke.

"As a high-ranking Dead Apostle who has lived for who knows how many years,"

"you should have the ability to convert humans into minor Dead Apostles, or ghouls, shouldn't you?"

Jester, still restrained, was a little surprised by the boy's monstrous strength, but he neither confirmed nor denied Ayanokōji's question.

He simply curled his lip in disdain, magical power surging inside him, ready to break the bindings with ease and then tear these clueless meddlers to pieces.

Seeing this, Hansa, the Executor, assumed this group of suddenly appearing students were, like himself, mysterious magi with a blood feud against Dead Apostles.

Gripping the Black Keys he used to purify heretics, he pushed off the floor, ready to join Ayanokōji in cutting Jester down.

"Don't move."

But Ayanokoji Kiyotaka merely tilted his head slightly and stopped Hansa in a cold voice.

"He and his Servant can't die yet."

"We have an experiment that needs their cooperation."

Hansa raised his eyebrows high, his Black Keys frozen in midair, and stared at Ayanokōji like he was looking at a madman.

Meanwhile, on Jester's side, after several forceful attempts to break free,

he was horrified to find that he couldn't easily escape even a few black tentacles this boy had casually released!

A jolt of alarm ran through him.

If this eerie human boy really joined forces with Hansa, an Executor of the Church... then the situation today might truly turn against him!

After a moment of quick thought, madness flashed in Jester's eyes.

He decisively raised the back of his hand, where the Command Seals were carved!

"My dearest!"

Jester bellowed toward the second floor:

"Come enjoy this wonderful slaughter with me! Kill every human here... all of them—!"

"By my Command Seal, I order you!"

As one Command Seal's red light dimmed and was used up,

on the second-floor railing,

the one who had just realized, because Ayanokōji had casually named Jester a Dead Apostle, that the magical energy flowing through her was coming from a filthy heathen vampire, a woman devoted to the Hassan faith,

was still reeling in disbelief and humiliation from the massive blow to her faith.

Feeling her body forcibly controlled by the absolute rule of the Command Seal, as if it meant to defy her will and force her to draw her blade and attack,

the Zealot's eyes cracked with fury, and she leapt down from the second floor.

In midair, she glared at Jester with a ferocious face and snarled through gritted teeth:

"Filthy heretic! I will... kill you!"

Yet faced with the killing intent his own Servant was turning against him,

Jester didn't care in the slightest. He even burst out laughing.

He turned his head and stared at Ayanokoji Kiyotaka with the eyes of a chef eyeing a fish on the cutting board.

"Kid, don't you think this scene is simply delicious?"

"This exquisite flavor, mine alone, of being resented by the one I love most... How about we go to hell and die together with it?"