Chapter 252: Chris, Could It Be... He's Your Sister's Dad? (Patreon)

The instant he stepped out of the Mirror World, a gale laced with Age of Gods mana slammed into him.

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka didn't hesitate. He activated his Stand.

"The World!"

As the golden Stand rose behind him, a wash of gray-white swept out from his body like a tsunami, stripping every color and every sound from the world.

Everything faded. The wind died.

In this ashen realm where even the laws of nature had frozen solid, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka tilted his head back.

His gaze slid past countless threads of light and shadow, up to the goddess hanging in the heavens, and to the Bull of Heaven coiled behind Ishtar. It blotted out the sky, and its phantom image alone was enough to make the earth tremble.

'What incredible versatility.'

Ayanokōji marveled at it silently.

Honestly, he was a little jealous of [The World].

After all, it had started out as nothing more than a drop from Kars, an "Ultimate Life-form" worth a measly few dozen points.

Next to the high-end fights they faced now, with enemies worth two or three hundred points and some even tangled up with gods and concepts, Kars would barely rate as a roadside mob, the kind of thing you borrow on a whim.

And yet an item dropped by a low-point monster like that could lock down Ishtar, who had just reclaimed the full power of a goddess.

Was it simply that items carried across worlds weren't affected by differences between systems? Or had the Black Sphere system quietly patched in some kind of strength compensation for them?

Ayanokōji had no way of knowing yet.

Still, he'd gotten reasonably familiar with [The World] inside the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, so he knew its limits and its time cap well.

Even with his current setup being far from bad, and his Ripple and Ki training having come into their own, his Time Stop topped out at a mere thirty-odd seconds.

On a battlefield that changed by the instant, thirty seconds was neither long nor short, and he couldn't afford to waste a single one.

He shook off the brief reverie. Ayanokoji Kiyotaka blurred, hopped across the chunks of rubble hanging in midair, and rapidly closed the distance to Ishtar.

Out of respect for the goddess of heaven, he didn't use an ordinary Parasyte attack. He dropped into a slight crouch, brought both hands together at his waist, and set his stance.

It was the signature move Koro Sensei had taught them: a high-grade ki blast that compressed the Ki refined inside the body to its absolute limit, then released it all in a single burst.

In other words...

The Koro Sensei Beam!

With Ryuuen having made the call, for the sake of the bigger picture, to pour every item point the class had saved up into him, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka's current stats were something else. In both physical strength and depth of Ki training, probably only Chris could still keep him under his thumb in all of Advanced Nurturing High School.

Golden light compressed in his palms at a frantic pace.

His target was Ishtar. More precisely... the homunculus Philia.

After all, the Ishtar before him wasn't the goddess's true body. She was only an echo of the goddess possessing an Einzbern homunculus, so the vessel's durability was limited.

It made for one of the few weaknesses this goddess of heaven had in the modern world.

Of course, knowing a weakness was one thing and actually killing her was another. Her temple domain was already complete. Unless he could wipe her out in an instant, without giving her so much as a chance to use a goddess's authority, killing a god with a Time Stop first strike alone was nearly impossible.

Ayanokōji was in the habit of covering every angle and keeping several plans ready. So for now, he only meant to test how solid her defenses were.

And while he was at it...

The muscles in Ayanokōji's right arm squirmed. Parasyte Zero, evolved several times over, silently split off a black fragment wrapped in Venom symbiote.

He needed that Venom to get over there and see whether it could snatch a bit of Ishtar's flesh in the chaos.

Once they had flesh tissue, it could serve as the resonance medium for Kushida Kikyo's [Straw Doll Technique].

It couldn't be helped. The mechanic-kill of the [Shadow-Devouring Soldiers] was out of reach for now, and Little Peanut, whose strength was absurd, was stuck inside Chris's [Mountains-and-Rivers Map] and couldn't be used. Naturally, Ayanokoji Kiyotaka wanted to play it safer.

So...

"Ten, nine, eight..."

The countdown ended. Ayanokoji Kiyotaka's eyes sharpened.

"Time, begin to move."

"BOOM—!!!"

The gray-white drained away, and color flooded back into the world in an instant.

Ishtar, who'd still been brewing her divine wrath, hadn't even noticed the anomaly of time being cut out from under her. Before she knew it, her vision was filled with pure white light!

The Koro Sensei Beam was already shoved up against the tip of her nose!

"What?!"

The sudden strike made Ishtar's beautiful eyes contract. On instinct, to protect her borrowed body, she moved to pull mana into reinforcing her defensive magecraft.

But she was in the wind-up phase of her casting!

If she forcibly diverted mana now...

Either her charging Noble Phantasm, [Hammer of the Sky, Before Which the Eight Wastes Kneel], would be cut short,

or the phantom of the [Bull of Heaven], currently crossing planes to manifest, would fail to coalesce into a fully physical form.

In that hair's-breadth moment, she weighed her options. Princess Hengfei's illusions were providing interference, so the Noble Phantasms of Alcides and Enkidu couldn't lock onto her right away.

Ishtar clenched her silver teeth and made her choice without hesitation.

She redirected the vast mana that sustained her Noble Phantasm into the Bull of Heaven, while condensing an reinforced Age of Gods barrier in front of her.

"Crack—!"

The blinding white beam and the Age of Gods barrier collided with a thunderous roar.

Age of Gods mana was of exceptional quality, but this point-blank burst, packed with all of Ayanokōji's Ki and Ripple, still forced its way through the barrier's critical point!

"Ugh...!"

Ishtar let out a muffled grunt as the blast hurled her several hundred meters across the sky, smashing through layer upon layer of clouds!

The hit had landed, but Ayanokoji Kiyotaka didn't lower his guard.

He could sense that the Venom fragment he'd sent out had lost its connection to him the instant it touched Ishtar's protective divine light.

'I hope it got the flesh...'

There was no time to confirm the result. Ayanokōji used the recoil to flip back in midair, his gaze sweeping down to the Heroic Spirits below, who'd been hesitating because of the illusions.

"The Ishtar in front of me is the real one!"

"Don't let the illusions fool you! Move, now!"

At his words, the great heroes, who'd already been wary of Princess Hengfei's phantoms, saw through the sham in an instant.

"I see... What a nostalgic, cunning trick, Ishtar."

Enkidu sighed, raised a hand, and clenched it around the empty air.

"Chains of Heaven (Enkidu)!"

Countless gleaming chains tore out of the void and shot straight for Ishtar, still airborne from the blow, to strangle her!

At the same moment, Alcides drew his great bow without a flicker of doubt.

"Nine Lives—!"

Conceptual arrows steeped in Hydra venom turned into a rain of black meteors that sealed off every escape route the goddess had.

And as time resumed its flow,

Ryuuen and the others, who had followed right behind Ayanokoji Kiyotaka through the Mirror World passage into the battlefield, now showed off their tactical chops as well.

In the roaring wind, Kouenji Rokusuke turned into a streak of azure lightning.

He darted through the Bull of Heaven's thunderclouds and caught the chunk of Ishtar's flesh as it fell, still wrapped in the venom fragment's remains.

Meanwhile, Arisu Sakayanagi and Ryuuen, still on the ground, locked their eyes on Humbaba.

"Richard! Hippolyta! Forget the crazy woman in the sky and take Humbaba down first!"

Ryuuen's cybernetic eye flashed red as he raised a hand and began charging an incineration cannon.

Arisu Sakayanagi also used ribbon magic to back up Richard and Hippolyta below.

"The pressure the Bull of Heaven brings is no joke. If we wait until it fully manifests and then it teams up with Humbaba, this mobile turret... it'll be a real pain."

"Let's send him offstage first!"

With Arisu Sakayanagi's help, Richard, already stacked with Divine Speed, became a golden streak and tangled with Humbaba, now and then firing off golden beams.

Hippolyta wasn't idle either.

She poured all her divine energy into the battle axe in her hands and activated her Noble Phantasm, [Wrath That Overturns Arrogance], about to bring it down with a savage chop—

Just as Humbaba was about to be focused down,

"Heh heh... Ha ha ha ha!"

A shrill, mad laugh rang out from high in the sky.

The laughter carried divine might, as if it came from the deepest reaches of the heavens and echoed directly inside everyone's heads.

"Laughable... Truly laughable!"

Ishtar, wounded by the Chains of Heaven and stained with Hydra venom, emerged from the churning black clouds, her eyes blazing like burning stars:

"Mere mortals, small as ants, dare to harm this goddess again and again?!"

"Have you forgotten your reverence for the presiding god of Uruk?!"

Ishtar threw both hands high and roared in fury:

"I will make you witness it with your own eyes... how the whole world is dragged back into the Age of Gods of Uruk!"

"Endure eternal punishment in endless despair!!!"

As her near-curse of a proclamation rang out,

the thick, lead-heavy storm clouds overhead began to spin violently in reverse!

Lightning bolts as thick as giant pythons roared and flashed inside the vortex, as if the gates of heaven were being torn open by force!

The follow-up Chains of Heaven from Enkidu and Alcides's second volley of Nine Lives were all swatted aside like falling leaves before a pressure on par with a creation storm!

Then, as everyone watched,

a golden hoof, big enough to cover the entire sky, slowly pushed out of the storm's eye.

"BOOOOM—!!!"

With a single step down,

mountains and rivers shattered and the earth shook in an instant!

The tremor, as if it could flip the entire crust over, was felt clearly even by Chris, who had just returned to Snowfield.

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka steadied himself, eyes fixed on the change in the sky.

Parasyte Zero thoughtfully opened the Controller and found Ishtar's red dot.

[Target: Ishtar (Inanna / Ishtar's Divine-Authority Form)]

[Value: 300 points]

[Traits: Summons the Bull of Heaven. Once the temple is built, restores her original form as "Inanna," nearly a presiding god! Greatly boosts the Age of Gods density within the temple, granting limitless mana supply across the entire domain, absolute dominion over Age of Gods laws, overall divine enhancement, and cross-dimensional upgrades to authorities such as "Manifestation of Beauty." She can also keep the Bull of Heaven on the field as a permanent calamity storm, filling the gap in decisive-battle-class domain destruction!]

[Fatal Point: Even with the Age of Gods recreated, she is still an echo form, and her vessel remains the homunculus Philia, which is not the same as the goddess's original body. Once she leaves the temple's range, her authority bonuses weaken sharply. Conceptually, she is also still countered by the "Underworld" and by "god-slaying" systems!]

A 300-point boss.

If she was left to do as she pleased, the world's destruction was only a matter of time.

It was clearly beyond what conventional tactics could handle.

Fortunately, Hiyori Shiina's angel had helped plan ahead, so now they only needed to target this weakness of Ishtar's.

Unfortunately, as far as the current battle went, all he could do was wait.

"Za Warudo."

Ayanokoji Kiyotaka wasted no words and summoned The World again.

The gray-white domain of stillness spread once more.

Since there was nothing to be done about Ishtar for the moment, he'd use her stagger while she summoned the Bull of Heaven...

He blurred, changed direction, and landed beside the frozen Humbaba.

His palms came together, and golden Ki compressed again at a frantic pace!

Clear out this annoying support turret first, then worry about the rest!

*

Meanwhile.

In Snowfield, Chris, who had just come back, raised an eyebrow at the vibration under his feet.

He glanced at Ishtar's latest score on the Controller.

Then he looked up toward the edge of the sky, where a colossal storm front, black as ink and crackling with lightning, was already spreading toward them.

"Inanna..."

Chris rubbed his chin. "She can power up again just because the Bull of Heaven showed up, huh. I guess I underestimated Ishtar a bit."

"This Jenga tower of stacked concept buffs... doesn't it feel like she's cheating?"

Standing beside him, Morishita Ai deadpanned the complaint.

Then the girl tilted her head and looked at Chris:

"So, should we head over and help first?"

"Three hundred points... if I remember right, that's only a hair weaker than the God of War Artosh we saw on the Controller before."

"Can Ryuuen, Ayanokōji, and the rest really hold out against that?"

Chris shook his head, unbothered.

"Before we left, we only glanced at Ishtar's starting score. We didn't even dig into the detailed intel."

"Since Ryuuen and Ichinose took the main battlefield, they probably have a plan of their own running. If we barge in and break their rhythm and something unexpected pops up, that wouldn't be good."

Chris paused, his deep gaze falling on a huge glass wall not far away.

In its reflection, the faint figure of a gentle girl with long pale-blue hair was just beginning to appear.

"Besides..."

"Hiyori's here, isn't she?"

Morishita Ai followed his gaze, nodded as if she half-understood, and said nothing more.

The very next second after Chris finished speaking,

ripples suddenly spread across the surface of the smooth glass display window.

Then Hiyori Shiina, hugging a thick ancient tome to her chest, stepped out of the mirror.

In truth, Hiyori Shiina had noticed Morishita Ai's presence long ago.

After all, Chris had been standing on an empty street talking to thin air, and with a girl's sharp intuition, curiosity was unavoidable.

Chris had blocked Morishita Ai's aura, voice, and presence.

But a concealment of that level was only slightly better than Yotsuya Miko hiding with an active technique. It wasn't true "complete nonexistence."

So all Hiyori Shiina had to do was use her angel, [Rasiel], to run a quick search of the surroundings, and she could easily follow the thread and find Morishita Ai standing right there.

But Hiyori Shiina was a smart girl, and she had no intention of exposing the disguise to Morishita Ai's face.

She hurried up to Chris and, right in front of Morishita Ai, rose naturally onto her tiptoes and gave him a light hug.

Then she stepped back half a pace and began to explain, her expression serious.

"Chris-kun."

"Right now, Ryuuen-kun, Sakayanagi-san, and the others are on the main battlefield against Ishtar, and they've already successfully allied with the powerful Servants of this Holy Grail War."

"But within the territory of her temple, Ishtar has an unlimited mana supply. With the goddess's authority backing her, killing her by conventional means is nearly impossible."

Hearing that, Chris thought for a moment, then said:

"I see... What if I use the Enma Blade's 'separation' property and try to cut her apart from Inanna's presiding-god concept?"

Hiyori shook her head.

"I'm afraid that won't work, Chris-kun."

"With the Bull of Heaven acting as a wedge, unless we can destroy it at the same time, I'm not sure the Enma Blade could do what we want by cutting the concept alone."

But the corners of the girl's lips curved up slightly, and she followed with her own proposal:

"Don't worry, though. I looked up the relevant intel with [Rasiel], and combined with Ryuuen-kun's and Ichinose-san's earlier plans..."

"I already have a strategy that can deal with Ishtar."

"Oh?"

A flicker of approval crossed Chris's eyes.

He didn't bother explaining just how absurd the Enma Blade's true form really was, and instead went along and asked:

"Walk me through it?"

Hiyori raised her book, its pages turning on their own with no wind:

"I'm sure you remember, Chris-kun, that this Ishtar is essentially just an echo of the goddess."

"She used the temple to take back the goddess's authority, but in the end it isn't Inanna herself descending."

"So, by the mythological principle of conceptual counters, she can still be suppressed by the laws of the 'Underworld' and the power of 'god-slaying' systems!"

Chris nodded.

"Clear thinking. So, do we have anything on hand that counters her directly?"

Hiyori closed the book and answered softly:

"We do, and it's with Ichinose-san and Horikita-san."

"They're currently inside the Noble Phantasm barrier the Pale Rider has deployed."

The girl paused and went on:

"As the embodiment of plague and death, the Pale Rider's Noble Phantasm domain is essentially akin to an underworld."

"That simulated underworld can't fully erode Ishtar's temple domain. But if we use it as a bridge, we can let Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld, who has always been at odds with Ishtar in myth, possess it as a medium and briefly reach across to interfere!"

"That's not all."

"The First Emperor's [God-Slaying Crossbow] is there too. If we fuse the causal concepts of 'Hou Yi shooting down the suns' and 'bringing down the goddess of the sky' into it, we can artificially create a god-slaying arrow aimed squarely at Ishtar!"

"Underworld suppression plus a conceptual snipe... if it hits, she's dead for sure. But..."

Partway through, the girl suddenly paused.

She looked up at the gloomy sky, her brows knitting faintly, her tone tinged with helplessness:

"Sigma was supposed to summon a Lancer, but due to some variable, he ended up summoning a Watcher."

"This special observer isn't a god, a demon, or a hero. It's a pure 'phenomenon.' Ever since it was summoned, it's been watching everyone on the battlefield."

"The Watcher itself has no direct combat power, but its purpose is to raise Sigma into a true Lancer through various trials."

Hiyori said worriedly, "I'm a bit concerned that this omnipresent observer might suddenly jump in for its own purposes and cause some unexpected trouble that disrupts Ichinose-san's plan."

Chris sighed softly at that.

"Total surveillance, huh... It's only natural that you'd worry."

"In that case, let's send that observer offstage early."

"In this exam, we're the only side that needs full control of the intel."

With that, Chris didn't even draw the Enma Blade at his waist.

He simply raised his right hand, put his index and middle fingers together, and swiped a few times at some unseen dimension in the distant void.

"Swish! Swish! Swish!"

A few invisible slashes, too fast for the eye to catch yet glowing a faint deep blue, tore through the sky and vanished beyond the horizon.

Hiyori Shiina, standing beside him, felt the lingering sense of severing in the air and blinked in confusion.

"What was that?"

Chris lowered his hand and explained:

"The complete Enma Blade can be merged straight into its wielder's body."

"And as it happens, the essence of Sukuna's innate technique, [Malevolent Shrine], is the use of 'slashes' and 'fire.'"

Chris said lightly, "I figured, why not combine them and see what happens."

"Now the invisible slashes that [Malevolent Shrine] releases, 'Dismantle' and 'Cleave,' carry an effect like the Enma Blade's 'cutting space and concepts.'"

"The only problem is that this kind of merging at the technique level is a shortcut, after all. If it came to a real contest, it couldn't match the Enma Blade's own Space Slash."

"Still, for dealing with a phenomenon-type being like the Watcher that hides purely through concepts, it works just fine."

Listening to an explanation that sounded like trying to fly by stepping on your own feet, Hiyori Shiina's rosy lips parted in shock, and it was a long while before she could close them.

"...C-can you really forcibly stitch together concepts from different systems like that?"

Chris nodded as if it were obvious.

He didn't elaborate any further.

After all, in the original Jujutsu Kaisen story, while watching Mahoraga adapt to Gojo Satoru's Limitless, Sukuna had simply glanced at it a few times and copied the other side's problem-solving approach.

Then he'd forcibly rewritten the principle of his own technique, stretching an ordinary slash that only worked on "people and objects" into the so-called "World Slash," which cut "space, the world, and even existence itself."

If Sukuna could pull off that kind of pure-vibes hand-waving, practically the author forcing it through by sheer insistence, then surely Chris, the presiding god behind the scenes, could do it too, right?

What of it?

A little cheat doesn't count as cheating!

With that thought, Chris glanced at the Controller's 3D image, where the blurry signal marking the Watcher had gone dark and vanished completely.

He casually asked Hiyori Shiina:

"Alright, the pesky eye in the sky is taken care of."

"Next, I'll head over to the Pale Rider's barrier and see how Ichinose and the others are coming along..."

Chris turned to the girl. "Hiyori, want to come along?"

Hiyori Shiina thought it over.

With her current support role, she figured she couldn't do much for Ryuuen and the others right now.

She might as well follow Chris, and perhaps her omniscient [Rasiel] could help with something unexpected.

She nodded obediently. "Mm, I'll come with you."

Seeing that, Chris gripped at the air with his right hand, and the Enma Blade materialized in his grasp.

He looked at Hiyori Shiina and said softly:

"Then come with me. Get closer and hold on tight."

Blushing, Hiyori Shiina stepped in two paces, then pointed toward the hospital on the far side of the city.

"That's the center of the Pale Rider's barrier, and where Ichinose-san and the others are right now."

"If you could use the Enma Blade to open a door straight there, it would save a lot of time."

But Chris, gripping the hilt, didn't swing right away.

He looked at the distant sky, dyed gray-white by the aura of death, and smiled slightly:

"Let's take it step by step, Hiyori."

"We're uninvited intruders, after all."

"If I cut straight to Ichinose's side and the Pale Rider mistakes us for enemies come to assassinate its Master..."

"That would backfire badly."

"We're going there to talk cooperation, not to hunt points."

*

Elsewhere.

Deep inside the underworld barrier simulated by the Pale Rider's Noble Phantasm.

It wasn't the nightmare of mountains of corpses, seas of blood, and rampant plague that outsiders would imagine.

On the contrary, in a core area deliberately sealed off from the rest,

the sun shone bright and birds sang amid flowers, like an idyllic haven far from the clamor of the world.

Honami Ichinose and Suzune Horikita were sitting on the soft grass at that very moment.

They were playing a simple game of cat's cradle with a little girl who looked about ten years old.

"Big Sister Ichinose, look, look! I can make a bear!"

Tsubaki sidled up to Ichinose as if presenting a treasure, her little face beaming with the innocent smile that suited her age.

"Wow, that's amazing! Great job, Tsubaki."

Honami Ichinose reached out and gently ruffled the little girl's hair.

But in truth, deep down, Ichinose and Suzune Horikita were like ants on a hot pan.

With their intelligence, they'd realized the gravity of the situation the moment the Pale Rider deployed its Noble Phantasm.

And yet... they didn't dare make any rash moves.

They knew perfectly well that the Pale Rider, the master of this underworld barrier, had no independent will of its own.

Its every code of conduct was entirely dictated by the subconscious of the girl in front of them!

If they showed any impatience now, or if one careless word slipped out,

and Tsubaki Kuruoka's subconscious flashed even for an instant with a terrifying thought like "they're bad people" or "they want to take the Grail and hurt me,"

then the Pale Rider, desperate to protect its Master, would treat the two of them as enemies at any cost.

So even with their hearts on fire,

the two could only hold their patience and stay, using the snacks and toys they'd bought earlier to play house with Tsubaki.

They were trying to max out her affection that way and lower the little girl's guard.

Meanwhile, they kept turning over in their minds what words to use to guide this poor, immature girl,

so that, without stirring up any of those painful memories, she'd willingly let the Pale Rider fight and become their help against Ishtar.

Unfortunately...

Compared to Honami Ichinose's painstaking, walking-on-thin-ice efforts to resolve things in the most perfect way possible,

the negotiating method Chris chose was rather blunt and rough.

"Zzzrip—!"

The Enma Blade swept through.

A rift in space tore open in the outer wall of the underworld barrier.

Then he strolled in, leading Hiyori Shiina by the hand, like he owned the place.

A "trespasser" who smashed through the wall instead of knocking, naturally set off the Pale Rider's alarm.

Even though Chris hadn't released any hostility when he stepped into the barrier,

for the Pale Rider, whose one and only law was protecting its Master, a Noble Phantasm was apparently still the proper greeting!

[Sword, Famine, Death, Beast (Doomsday Come)]!

This Noble Phantasm could directly read the fear imprints in a target's subconscious, or legend-data lingering in the surrounding environment,

and manifest counterfeits bearing the attributes of "death" and "calamity"!

Having glimpsed Humbaba from afar, the Pale Rider chose to work with what it had.

The next second,

with the ground trembling,

a counterfeit Humbaba roared and planted itself across Chris and Hiyori Shiina's path!

Being a mimic construct, this Humbaba couldn't fully reproduce all of the real one's abilities.

But the Pale Rider itself was a concentration of plague and death, and it had loaded its own lethal erosion concept onto this simulated Humbaba.

So this imposter, if nothing else, was perfectly capable as a minion firing light cannons from range.

Even on the Controller in Chris's hand, it was a 52-point monster.

"Fifty-some points..."

Chris rubbed his chin. "That's on par with a Pillar Man or Muzan, isn't it?"

What was worse,

as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Pale Rider carried an enormous mana reserve of its own.

It was one of the very few Servants in the Holy Grail War that needed no mana supply from its Master at all, a perpetual-motion type that could even actively spread plague to infect nearby living things and drain mana back to replenish itself!

As long as it wanted to, and as long as Master Tsubaki Kuruoka's subconscious still held fear imprints of the outside world,

it could use those imprints to churn out an endless army of calamity beasts on the level of Humbaba!

The thought made Hiyori Shiina's eyes light up in an instant.

This wasn't an enemy at all!

Wasn't it just a mob spawner?!

With a field like this, the whole Dead Apostle and Decepticon plan Ryuuen and Ayanokoji Kiyotaka had come up with would be pointless!

It was worth who-knows-how-many Kushida Kikyos!

Even Hiyori Shiina was tempted by the thought.

She hurriedly stepped forward and reached out a small hand to tug lightly at Chris's sleeve.

"Um... Chris-kun."

She lowered her voice, wanting to warn him.

But Chris only turned slightly and laid his hand over the back of hers.

"Relax, I've got this. I won't make any rash moves."

Chris squeezed her fingers. "We came here to talk cooperation, after all."

As he spoke, he glanced at the mimic Humbaba, which was baring its fangs and looked ready to breathe a beam at any moment.

"Besides, if the Pale Rider had truly made up its mind to treat us as enemies, it wouldn't be a mere middling Humbaba right now."

"This is more like a show of force, a warning to scare us off."

Listening to his analysis, Hiyori Shiina thought it over and decided it didn't differ much from her own view.

But she still pointed out:

"It does look like this Humbaba has no intention of attacking for now."

"But getting past the defensive line to reach Ichinose-san and the others without provoking it... I doubt that will be easy."

Faced with the standoff,

Chris showed no sign of worry. Instead, he tilted his head back and looked up at the gloomy sky simulated by mana.

He smiled.

"That one's actually the easiest problem to solve."

With that,

Chris let go of Hiyori Shiina's hand.

He put his index and middle fingers together and formed an odd hand seal in front of his chest.

The next second,

the calm gray clouds above the barrier were suddenly pulled by some force

and began to roil and surge violently!

A great mass of cloud gathered into a cumulonimbus and drifted straight toward the barrier's core, the idyllic haven where Ichinose and Tsubaki Kuruoka were.

This was, of course, Chris using Weather Forecast (Stand) disguised as a so-called weather-manipulation technique.

But honestly, in the world of JoJo, while Stand abilities came in endless varieties,

aside from a rare few with multi-stage evolution, most Stand abilities were nearly fixed in form once awakened.

Even a Stand with a growth rating of "A" brought only a very limited real boost in power.

In other worlds, relying on Stand growth alone often felt underpowered.

Only by awakening Requiem with the Beetle Arrow, or by gathering the Holy Corpse parts and reaching the state of "Over Heaven," could a Stand make a true qualitative leap.

But what if the Stand's ability took a different form?

What if it no longer served merely as a spirit at one's back, but existed like an "innate technique" from Jujutsu Kaisen?

Then the ability's power ceiling would no longer be limited by the Stand's own stats, but would scale without limit as the caster grew stronger!

Just imagine.

If you handed a weather-controlling ability like [Weather Forecast (Stand)] to the Tiger Emperor of Heaven, whose single Dismantle could cut a seven-kilometer radius,

the sheer scale of that weather control would be far more outrageous.

Summoning a hundred-meter tsunami, a super typhoon, or even detonating Mount Fuji would be nothing—

and within one domain's coverage, it could roll all four great natural disasters into one!

And as for Chris now...

Never mind the layers upon layers of [Steel Heart] passives stacked inside his body.

Just the cursed energy from the fifteen [Sukuna's Finger] in his hands alone,

controlling it with precision was no difficult matter.

*

The cumulonimbus clouds, secretly steered by [Weather Forecast (Stand)], drifted at the pace of a natural breeze until they hovered directly above Ichinose, Suzune Horikita, and Tsubaki Kuruoka.

Tsubaki, who'd been fully absorbed in her game, suddenly felt the light around her dim.

She looked up and saw the shadow the clouds had cast on the back of her hand.

Then she looked at the dark clouds in the sky.

"It's going to rain!"

Tsubaki turned to Ichinose beside her, her little face full of excitement:

"Big Sister Ichinose, do you want to go splash in the puddles with me?"

"I've never gone out to play in the rain before!"

Honami Ichinose looked at this girl, so cruelly fated, who could only wear an innocent smile in a dream woven from her own subconscious.

A pang of sorrow ran through her.

Ichinose reached out and gently ruffled Tsubaki's hair.

"No can do~ You're still little, Tsubaki, and if you get soaked..."

Halfway through, Ichinose caught the disappointment about to darken in the girl's eyes.

Her heart softened, and she naturally relented:

"If you really want to play in the water, I guess it's okay."

"But first you have to go back and put on a little raincoat, okay? That way when you're tired out, you can take it off and change into dry clothes, and you won't catch a cold from wet hair."

Hearing Ichinose agree, Tsubaki let out a cheer.

She nodded hard.

"Mm! Tsubaki's the best at listening!"

She turned and skipped off toward the little wooden cabin the barrier had conjured behind them.

As she ran, she kept turning back to wave at Ichinose and Suzune Horikita:

"I'll go get my raincoat right now! I'll bring one for Big Sister Ichinose and Big Sister Horikita too!"

Honami Ichinose nodded with a smile, her gaze gentle as she watched the little girl dash into the house.

But when Tsubaki's back had completely disappeared,

the smile on Ichinose's face slowly faded.

She pressed her soft pink lips together, lost in thought.

Suzune Horikita, sitting beside her, naturally caught every shift in Ichinose's mood.

She tidied the toys beside her as she spoke in a cool voice:

"I understand how you feel right now, Ichinose."

"Honestly, after learning what she's been through, I don't want to be the one to shatter this beautiful dream either. I don't want Tsubaki to wake up from this brief peace."

Suzune Horikita's gaze turned deep as she looked into the distance.

"But even if we do nothing and stay here with her forever..."

"this Holy Grail War will last only seven days at most. When the war ends and the barrier collapses, she'll be forced to face reality sooner or later."

She turned her head and looked Ichinose straight in the eyes.

"Rather than let her fall into the abyss at the height of her hope, it's better for us to find a way to resolve the crisis outside as soon as possible and take her back to reality."

"And let me heal her body."

"Then, in the real world, couldn't we accompany her to play in the water and spend time with her, openly and properly?"

Listening to Suzune Horikita's reasoning,

Ichinose understood, of course.

"Yeah..."

She answered softly, her voice so quiet it was as if she feared disturbing the girl inside the house. "I know."

"Thank you for the reminder, Horikita-san."

Just as the two girls fell silent, each quietly sorting out her thoughts,

"Creeeak—"

Tsubaki came running out of the cabin.

Comically, the child seemed too impatient to play in the water to bother with dressing properly.

She'd just yanked an oversized bright yellow kids' raincoat over her head without even doing up the buttons, and she tumbled into the curtain of rain like a happy little duckling.

"Sisters! Come look!"

She hadn't gone far when Tsubaki suddenly stopped.

Head down, she pointed at the ground, then waved excitedly at Ichinose and Horikita under the cabin eaves as if she'd discovered a new continent:

"This rain is so weird!"

"The raindrops won't get me wet! They all go off to the side!"

Tsubaki crouched and curiously poked at the wet patch on the ground with her finger. "Huh? There's... writing here?"

At that, Suzune Horikita and Honami Ichinose, standing under the eaves, exchanged a look.

They followed Tsubaki's voice over.

And only then did they notice.

Just as the little girl said, the rain really was strange.

Though the downpour wasn't light, once the drops reached about half a meter above their heads, it was as if they hit some kind of barrier and slid off to every side.

The patch of ground where the two stood was completely dry!

Even more startling,

when the two looked where Tsubaki was pointing,

they saw, on the grass not far away that was clearly soaked through,

a small patch of dry, weed-free dirt.

The countless raindrops falling from the sky didn't splash randomly when they hit that mud.

Instead, as if guided by an invisible brush,

drop by drop, they arranged themselves on the dirt into a clear line of Japanese kana.

It was—

their two names!

Staring at this baffling sight, the two seemed to share one mind.

Honami Ichinose and Suzune Horikita lifted their heads at the same time and blurted out the same name:

"Chris-kun?"

Hearing the sudden shift in the two big sisters' tone and their unconcealed delight,

Tsubaki, crouched on the ground, thoughtfully touched her plump little chin.

The innocent girl blinked her big eyes, looked up at Ichinose and Horikita, and asked almost without thinking:

"Chris..."

"This person called Chris makes you sisters so happy..."

"Could he be... your dad?"