Chapter 26 (Patreon)

“They’re all dead. Once the bodies are dealt with, we can bring down the barrier.”

Some time later, just after Yuki Tsukumo dispelled the Curtain, she and Ragnar Kagenou stepped back into the plaza.

Yuki Tsukumo glanced at him. “So. What kind of woman is your type?”

Ragnar gave her a look. “This really isn’t the time for that.”

Every person in the plaza was staring at them.

All of them wore the same eerie smile.

“What the hell is this...?” Yuki muttered.

“Why is there a Cursed Spirit here?”

“Get up... get up...”

They kept repeating the same phrase over and over, their voices rising and falling in unsettling rhythm.

Every one of them looked wrong.

Too uniform. Too stiff.

Like puppets strung together by the same invisible thread.

Their smiles didn’t belong on human faces.

And then, little by little, the voices began to feel distant—almost unreal. Their mouths were moving, but the sound itself no longer seemed to come from them.

It was as if it were falling from the sky.

The next moment, rain began to drizzle down.

Soft at first.

Then steady.

Raindrops tapped against the stone pavement with a quiet, rhythmic sound.

As the rain spread through the plaza, the atmosphere grew even stranger.

No one spoke.

The entire place fell into a suffocating silence.

Only the sound of rain remained—endless, cold, and unnervingly loud in the ears. It stirred irritation, restlessness, and a creeping sense of dread.

The smiling people stood there in the rain, all of them facing Ragnar and Yuki.

Whenever the rain passed through their bodies, their forms distorted for an instant—

then immediately returned to normal.

Patter.

A footstep splashed somewhere nearby.

Both of them heard it clearly.

But there was no one there.

Even stranger, the puddles on the ground didn’t ripple at all.

Then, just ahead of them, a girl in black appeared.

She wore a black dress and a black hat.

Her skin was deathly pale, and her features were blurred, as if hidden behind a thin veil. Her eyes were shut, but the way she stood there made it feel like they could open at any moment.

Ragnar narrowed his eyes. “You ever seen a Cursed Spirit like this before?”

Yuki snorted. “Why are you asking me? This is my first time seeing something this creepy too.”

The girl’s figure wavered faintly within the rain and mist.

For some reason, she blended into the scene so naturally that the eye wanted to slide past her.

Like the world itself was helping her hide.

Whoosh!

Yuki swung Garuda, which had shifted into whip form, and lashed out at the Black-Clad Girl.

The whip cracked through the air—

but the girl slipped away in an instant.

Yuki’s gaze sharpened. “She dodged?”

Ragnar’s expression cooled. “So she’s not some ordinary Cursed Spirit.”

Yuki attacked again.

And again.

Each time, the Black-Clad Girl avoided it with unnatural ease.

“No matter what I do, she slips past it...” Yuki muttered.

“Is she some kind of conceptual type?”

Ragnar watched closely. “No. Your whip is passing through her.”

He could see it clearly.

Garuda wasn’t missing.

It was connecting—

and still failing to touch her.

“Looks like I can’t physically interfere with her existence,” Yuki said.

At the same time, the Black-Clad Girl didn’t seem interested in approaching either of them.

It was almost like she was waiting.

Yuki’s gaze shifted to the crowd. “These normal people have been assimilated too.”

Her whip swept across the mass of bodies, and for some of them, it passed straight through.

“Get up... get up...”

A woman’s voice drifted around them from every direction.

Low. Depressed. Cold.

Ragnar stared at the Black-Clad Girl standing motionless in the rain, her eyes still tightly shut.

“This feeling...” he said quietly. “It’s almost the same as what I felt in the second layer of that Curtain in Romania.”

For some reason, irritation was starting to build in his chest.

Beside him, Yuki blinked.

For just a moment, she could have sworn she saw the Black-Clad Girl open her eyes.

But when she looked again—

they were closed.

The rain spread farther.

And farther.

Its range widened with every passing second.

Yuki clicked her tongue. Garuda was useless like this.

She considered using her Cursed Technique instead.

If she increased the mass enough, maybe she’d be able to force contact—

Thud.

A ripple spread across one of the puddles.

Ragnar’s eyes shifted downward.

The raindrops were hitting the Black-Clad Girl.

Yuki seemed to notice it at the same time.

In that instant—

Whoosh!

A golden Noble Phantasm shot out and tore through the Black-Clad Girl’s upper body.

Her torso burst apart.

A thick, dark red liquid spread over the surface of the water.

Ragnar lowered his hand slightly. “Just now... she turned physical.”

His eyes stayed fixed on her half-collapsed body.

“So that’s it. When she’s about to attack, she has to take on a physical form.”

The Black-Clad Girl lay there with only half her body remaining.

And yet—

her reflection in the water was completely intact.

Yuki stared. “That’s it? She’s done?”

Ragnar didn’t look away. “No. The rain’s still falling.”

Yuki’s expression hardened. “Which means she’s not dead.”

The humans that had already been assimilated began to change further.

Their features grew more distorted, their eyes shut, their faces blurred.

They looked frantic.

Unstable.

Like they were on the verge of breaking apart completely.

“Ragnar,” Yuki said, her voice turning serious. “This thing’s bad news. We should pull back outside her territory first.”

She stepped—

and vanished.

Ragnar’s eyes narrowed at once.

“...Yuki?”

She had been standing right beside him just a second ago.

Now she was gone.

“What the hell?”

He stayed where he was and immediately stopped moving.

Yuki must have been taken the moment she moved through the rain.

Step.

Step.

The sound of someone walking through shallow water echoed beside him again.

Ragnar kept still until the sound stopped.

Then, cautiously, he took one step.

Nothing happened.

His gaze darkened.

“I see...”

When that sound starts, moving gets you taken.

A Special Grade.

It had to be.

“Get up...”

A cold, clear voice sounded from directly behind him.

Just hearing it made the marrow in his bones seem to freeze.

A sharp chill ran down Ragnar’s spine, and a wave of cold wrapped around his body.

Impossible.

He had already checked behind him.

There had been nothing there.

No one.

No Cursed Spirit.

Then where had that voice come from?

Drip.

Something touched his hand.

Ragnar’s head snapped to the side—

and his expression changed.

At some point, the Black-Clad Girl had taken hold of his hand.

His arm was already being assimilated.

Golden ripples burst open behind him, and a Noble Phantasm fired instantly toward her—

but in the very next second, it passed straight through her body and slammed into the ground.

Ragnar’s eyes sharpened.

“Can’t hit her?!”

If physical attacks were useless, then what about raw Cursed Energy?

Cursed Energy surged through his arm—

but it still did nothing.

The Black-Clad Girl showed no reaction at all.

Either she was completely unaffected by Cursed Energy...

or his output wasn’t high enough to matter.

[Status Abnormality]: Affected by [Rain Erosion], causing negative effects such as hallucinations, auditory hallucinations, and mental distortion.

“Damn it...!”

The world around him twisted.

The ground, the walls, the entire cityscape began to ripple and flow like water.

His vision stretched unnaturally, as if space itself were being pulled apart.

His body started to feel weightless.

Vague.

Unreal.

And the hallucinations only got worse.

The Black-Clad Girl began appearing everywhere in his field of vision.

No longer with her eyes closed—

but with blank, pale eyes staring straight at him.

Ragnar gritted his teeth and forced himself to endure the mental corruption.

For some reason, his body would no longer respond properly.

The rain that had once fallen only over the plaza was now spreading across the entire city.

Mist rose from the ground where the raindrops struck, slowly spilling outward from the plaza like a living thing.

“...Tch. Just a mutt of a Cursed Spirit.”

Even with his sense of direction collapsing and his vision falling apart, Ragnar still forced himself back to his feet.

At some point, the parts of his body being assimilated had begun turning faintly transparent.

On top of that, semi-transparent arms had started growing from the surface of his body.

The sight of it was grotesque.

Unnatural.

Like something human and something else were being forced into the same shape.