At midday, a high, sharp bell rang out through the Zenin clan mansion.
Clang! Clang!
"An alarm bell?"
"What the hell is that racket?"
When the alarm sounded to signal an emergency inside the mansion, everyone stopped what they were doing and began moving in perfect coordination.
The noncombatants assigned to menial work withdrew, while the combatants of the Kukuru Unit and [Hei] scattered in all directions to assess the situation.
The first to notice something was wrong was Zenin Ranta of [Hei].
"Jinichi!"
"Ranta."
"Mai has lost her mind! She just killed Ougi! The Kukuru Unit is moving to subdue her now!"
Even Ranta, the one delivering the report, looked like he could hardly believe it himself.
"Ougi...?"
"Killed... by Mai?"
Jinichi and Naoya both failed to keep their expressions under control at a situation that was far beyond anything they had expected.
If it had been Maki instead of Mai, they might have been shocked, but at least they would have believed it. Maki had more talent than Mai, and she was more ambitious too.
But Mai, quiet and introverted, someone who might not even have been [Grade 3], had killed Ougi, a special-grade vengeful spirit?
It was as if a rabbit had gone mad and beaten a tiger to death.
"For now, leave it to Nobuaki. Our [Hei] will move in after that."
Rather than committing their full force to suppression, Jinichi chose to send scouts first.
The odds of winning in a straight fight were slim. Even if they had, Mai would not have come out unscathed.
"I’m staying here. My bones are still cold."
"Do that."
Settling his uneasy heart by telling himself that even Ougi would have been helpless against a surprise attack, Jinichi headed outside with Ranta.
"If someone attacks Ougi in bed or in the bathroom, he could be caught off guard too. Mai should be able to do that much."
The one thinking so casually was also the Kukuru Unit captain, Zenin Nobuaki.
He had always looked down on the sisters Maki and Mai, and he did not take this incident very seriously.
He simply thought, Ougi let his guard down, and left it at that.
"Hold her down before I get there. If you drag your feet and get chewed out by Jinichi later, it’ll be me, the captain, who has to hear it."
"Yes, sir!"
Following Nobuaki’s orders, the scattered members soon found Mai in the tonshitsu.
Mai stood there blankly, a knuckle-duster on one hand and a sword in the other, waiting for them without any sign she intended to flee.
"Found her! She’s in the tonshitsu! Surround her!"
Tap, pat!
At the squad leader’s command, the Kukuru Unit immediately formed a perimeter and surrounded Mai.
As they waited for an opening to attack, they suddenly sensed something strange.
"Wasn’t it supposed to be Mai...?"
Someone’s mutter voiced what they were all feeling.
The woman before them
did not emit a single trace of cursed energy.
-------------------------------------
Megumi had become the clan head.
Naoya, unwilling to accept that, had attacked Megumi and been crushed.
Before the voices of the faction supporting Megumi could grow louder, they would tie him to orders from the higher-ups and execute him.
That was the full extent of the plan Ougi had told them about.
"Those rotten old men..."
The deaths of the sisters were the signal flare.
There may have been an intention to eliminate the direct descendants most likely to support Megumi, but since Ougi had been the one to propose it, he probably wanted to erase his own stain even more.
What enraged Maki and Mai most was that none of the people involved in the plan objected to the execution of two innocent girls.
The names on the kill list were as follows.
The four members of [Hei], including Zenin Jinichi and Zenin Naoya, who directly spearheaded the plan.
Zenin Nobuaki, the captain of the Kukuru Unit.
And their mother, the Zenin wife who had lured the sisters to Ougi.
'Mai, what should we have done?'
Even if Maki remained with Mai in spirit, the fact that Maki was dead did not change.
Unforgivable.
"All of them."
What should they have done to reach a perfect ending?
Was there no way to avoid this tragedy?
It was too late to think of that now.
'Break them, big sister.'
For now, all she could do was
give herself over to rage and grief.
"Attack!"
At the command, a swarm of Kukuru Unit members rushed at Maki.
Swords from every direction bore down on her in all kinds of trajectories.
'I can see them.'
In the past, this would have left her helpless, but now that she had been “completed,” every one of their movements was visible to Maki’s eyes.
She would not be touched by attacks this slow, attacks so sluggish they made her want to yawn.
As if time itself had slowed only for her, Maki began moving on instinct.
Thwack!
Her right fist, thrown a hair’s breadth after avoiding a blade, caved in the face of the vanguard member who had rushed her first.
Blood and teeth sprayed out, leaving a brutal mark behind.
"Huh?"
Even as the enemies reeled from her superhuman physical ability, her follow-up attacks flowed on like water.
She caught a sword thrusting in from her left side barehanded, then swung the blade to neutralize the enemies coming from three directions.
The clean arc of Maki’s sword strike left a red crescent in the air.
Slash!
"Aagh!"
She could have ended them with a single blow, but she stopped at crippling their muscles.
These were outsiders who knew nothing about the execution plan. She had no intention of taking out her anger on meat shields just following orders.
Perhaps the Kukuru Unit’s lowest standing, the fact that they had no technique, had shaken Maki and Mai’s hearts in some way.
"U-waaahhh!!!"
Swish!
Thud! Thwack!
Steel-hard flesh and beastlike reflexes.
To Maki, who had entered the realm of the superhuman, the Kukuru Unit members with no technique were no match for her.
As if she had eyes in the back of her head, Maki denied every attack and cut down the squad at speed.
Thoom! Splash!
Stepping over the back of a fallen member, Maki’s two hands moved faster than the eye could follow.
The member who thrust out his sword had not only his blade but his arm bones shattered by Maki’s knuckle-duster and collapsed foaming at the mouth.
The one who tried to lock her joints from the side to force a melee was left rolling his eyes with the tendons in his right arm severed by a single swing.
After that, it was nothing but one-sided slaughter.
Literally, the Kukuru Unit members rolled across the floor with nothing but their breath left, limbs severed or broken.
In the frenzy of blood and flesh, Maki’s sword dance unfolded.
'This must have been the right answer for us.'
When it could have been this easy to bring down.
What, then, had all those customs, rules, and discrimination been for?
The wounds the sisters had suffered under the Zenin name had now carved scars across the entire clan.
'An heir with no technique is a disgrace to the clan. And the other one’s supposedly useless too, isn’t she?'
Thwack!
With one kick, humiliation was sent flying.
'Well, your face and ass are decent enough. You can walk three steps behind me for the rest of your life.'
Slash!
With one cut, shame was severed.
The dam holding back her emotions collapsed, and her movements grew rougher and rougher.
The struggle of a body breaking free, shedding everything that had bound it in blood and sweat, was as tragic as it was beautiful.
Before she knew it, tears were streaming down Maki’s face.
And the more she hated showing them, the less mercy remained in her hands.
"Hiiiiiik!"
The last remaining member, tears in his eyes, still charged at Maki as if he refused to give up to the very end.
Just before the blade could land, Maki’s low kick crushed his shin and spun him through the air several times.
Whirrrrr, thud!
"Uuuuugh...."
"Khhhhh...."
Deaths: zero.
Maki was the only one still standing there.
A man’s voice came from above her as she wiped away the blood and tears.
"Well, that’s surprising...."
It was Zenin Nobuaki, the Kukuru Unit captain.
As soon as the first name on the kill list appeared, Maki’s eyes turned murderous.
'Be grateful, Maki. If you hadn’t been a direct descendant, we never would’ve taken you into the Kukuru Unit in the first place.'
Before entering Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu Technical High School, Maki had once belonged to the Kukuru Unit, so she knew Nobuaki too.
Despite being a man who had joined the Kukuru Unit because he had no technique himself, Nobuaki had constantly looked down on her and tried to put her in her place.
The grudge from back then had long since faded, but what mattered now was that this man had colluded with [Hei] and condoned the murder of her sister.
'Big sister.'
'I know.'
The Kukuru Unit had all been subdued, so now it was Nobuaki and [Hei]’s turn.
From here on out, this was the true time for slaughter.
Boom!
Just as expected, a massive hand burst up from the ground and struck at Maki.
Two palms snapped shut in an instant, trapping Maki inside them.
'Chojuro’s technique...!'
As Nobuaki breathed a sigh of relief, drenched in cold sweat, three men appeared behind him.
Zenin Chojuro, Zenin Ranta, and Zenin Jinichi.
The Zenin clan’s strongest group of sorcerers, composed of those at Grade 1 and above, [Hei] had arrived.
With them making their move, Mai must be finished too—just as he thought that,
Tick, roll
something rolled in between Chojuro and Nobuaki at the front line.
The green grenade, shaped like a pinecone and created by Mai after switching with Maki, had its pin pulled.
Perhaps because they were sorcerers used to cold weapons, they had been too slow to react, never expecting modern firearms.
KWA-BOOM!!!
With a deafening blast, flames and steel pellets burst in all directions, tearing Chojuro and Nobuaki’s bodies to shreds and sending them flying.
The moment their deaths were certain, they switched again.
Breaking out of the stone hand, Maki rushed at Jinichi, and at the same time a pair of huge eyeballs formed behind her.
Creaaak
"Jinichi!"
"Hold her there, Ranta!"
Ranta’s technique, which restricted the movement of whoever he looked at, stopped Maki’s body in place.
Jinichi judged this to be the opening and charged at Maki.
"Mai,
switch with me.
I’ll take it.
"
But Maki switched control with Mai even faster.
Instead of the body returning to that of an ordinary person, an enormous amount of cursed energy burst out from Mai’s body.
Whoosh!
'What the hell! Is that really Mai?'
Overwhelmed by the sheer volume of cursed energy, Ranta’s technique was pushed back, and his eyes shook violently.
Not stopping there, Mai turned the crisis into an opportunity and counterattacked Ranta.
Innate technique—
the essence of falling petals.
As a direct descendant, she had learned it.
She had simply never had the chance to use it because her cursed energy was so pitifully small.
The layer of cursed energy wrapped around Mai’s body raised its spikes and shredded Ranta’s eyes, which had been binding her, to pieces.
Crackle!!
"!!"
"D-don’t worry about me, Jinichi!"
As the technique showed signs of breaking completely, Jinichi turned to look at Ranta with a worried expression, but even through the pain, Ranta did not stop.
The sense of duty that Mai had to be killed here pushed bodily pain aside.
Blood streaming from his eyes, Ranta delivered his final cry.
"The reason the Zenin clan exists the way it does now is all because of Toji’s whim! I don’t know how it happened, but Mai has become a monster just like him! Kill her right here, right now!"
Having received his sincere warning, Jinichi immediately unleashed his technique.
A full-power fist strike, aimed to kill.
Above it, massive meteor-like fists formed and flew toward Mai.
'I’ll kill you and only you! You omen-bringing beast!'
For a brief moment, he thought victory was within reach—then the sentence of death was handed down.
"Too late."
Click
By then, Mai was already holding a massive revolver built with her technique.
The hammer snapped, the cylinder spun—
Bang!
Half of Jinichi’s head vanished.
Ignoring Jinichi as he collapsed, scattering brain matter and bone fragments, Mai slowly approached Ranta.
Whether the recoil from his technique had left him deaf and blind, Ranta wore a peaceful smile.
"Did you do it, Jinichi...?"
"No."
His expression was so hateful she could not stand it.
Mai pressed the muzzle to the back of Ranta’s head, where he sat like a condemned prisoner waiting for death.
Bang!
Splash!
With another gunshot, Ranta’s headless corpse fell into the pond.
Blood and bits of flesh spread through the water, muddied by the battle, and the koi that had been swimming lazily through it rushed in like madmen, cheering over the new delicacy.
After a brief glance, Mai lost interest and looked away—only for someone to appear before her.
"How cruel~"
A cousin who had harassed and beaten them since childhood.
The axis of their tragedy, a living witness to the Zenin clan’s rotten nature.
The leader of [Hei], Zenin Naoya, blocked her path.
"You don’t even have a heart, do you?"
A heart.
Well.
Even beasts treasure their young, but people in this family were worse than beasts. There was no such feeling left in them.
"No."
You took it all away.
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