This is a stalling tactic... no, it's more than that.
A thunderous crash. The sound of tearing.
The sky darkened before his eyes. Monstrous shapes blotted out half his vision, shrieking and howling, yellow pus dripping from their jaws, teeth razor-sharp and glinting cold. They came down on Nanami Kira like artillery shells raining from above.
Killer Queen.
A faint pink glow flickered. The monstrosities swarmed him like flies descending on a cake, smothering him in a writhing mass—but then came the soft click, and the creatures shuddered, contracting inward—
And detonated.
Severed limbs and blood sprayed outward.
The monsters blasted into the air. Killer Queen's right foot touched down and launched upward, a blur of black fists flickering between the creatures. Every punch sent a shattered body flying, disintegrating mid-air into clouds of fragments.
A blur of black fists everywhere, leaping across every monster. Severed limbs everywhere. Shattered bodies everywhere. But by the time Killer Queen landed, the swarming horde had crumbled to ash, dissolving under the midday sun.
Kira's expression grew heavier. He glanced over his shoulder. Sure enough, from around the corner of the road, one dark head after another poked out, wearing grotesque, exaggerated grins and babbling nonsensical phrases:
"Money, I need money..."
"Receipts—do you need receipts?"
"Work, work, work."
Tch.
She'd known all along he would take this route.
So she'd deliberately positioned Cursed Spirits here to ambush him.
Kira frowned.
No one should have known about this hidden route. Nanami Kira was an intensely private man—he kept everyone at arm's length.
Except the hand.
This path to the cinema was one he often walked with his girlfriend, side by side, on their way to see a film.
My fingernails are getting harder to control...
Hoshino Ei... one thing was certain: she'd predicted he would go home first, then head straight for the cinema, and would inevitably take this shortcut. His every thought had been read.
Kira recalled something Hoshino Ei had once said:
"Kira-kun, my dear Kira-kun, I understand you better than anyone. Your every thought, your every wish—oh, how I love you... No, no, I must possess everything about you. That's love, isn't it? Isn't that what you taught me, Sensei? That's love!"
She had been lurking beside him all along. The hand had stayed at his side like some obsessive voyeur, greedily absorbing every detail of his life.
By nature, Nanami Kira was a man of extreme vigilance toward the outside world. Business trips made him uneasy. Upon returning home, the first thing he did was turn the doorknob into a bomb. Every place he went, he treated with suspicion and caution.
But his own home was the exception. Only within those walls could he find true peace, true release.
And that was exactly where Hoshino Ei had observed him—completely unguarded, completely exposed.
While he knew nothing about his enemy at all.
What was her endgame?
Kira had no time to think it through. The monsters behind him were already surging forward, howling and charging, and in an instant, a dense carpet of dark heads filled the alley—wave after wave, like swarms of black flies.
God only knew how dense the population in this slum was.
Before those jagged nails could reach him, Killer Queen had already flashed in front of Kira, a fistful of gravel clutched in one hand. It hurled the stones into the packed human tide.
Explosions bloomed from within. The creatures were packed so tightly that a single burst reduced several to ash.
But the gaps filled instantly. More monsters surged forward to plug every hole, massing together into a black train of bodies, bearing down on Kira.
Killer Queen spread both arms wide, planting itself between Kira and the oncoming wave. The wall of bodies slammed into it. Killer Queen's feet sank deep into the ground, cracks spreading outward—
"Look at me!"
"Look at me!"
A small blue tank dove from Killer Queen's arm and collided head-on with the meters-long human freight train. In the first second of contact, the train began disintegrating, fire blossoming from carriage after carriage of compressed flesh.
Sheer Heart Attack tore forward with devastating momentum, crushing everything in its path—countless heads, countless bodies, countless torrents of blood—all ground beneath its steel treads, all reduced to ash.
In the span of a heartbeat, a clear road had been carved through the horde.
But the road didn't last. Monsters poured in from behind, plugging the gap once more.
The heat was oppressive. Temperatures had stayed high all day. Uneven air density from the blazing sun made some currents rise and others fall, warping the view ahead into something wavering and indistinct, like footage on a broken black-and-white television.
The heat made Kira irritable. His patience was nearly spent.
If he couldn't break through, he'd just kill them all.
He looked at the swarming Cursed Spirits—misshapen, varying wildly in size. Some were human-sized. Some were no bigger than frog droppings. Others were as large as trucks, blocking half the street. Kill them all.
Boom—
Sheer Heart Attack began racing along the walls, faster and faster, its sinister skull-face like a streaking black phantom as it plowed into the horde.
Against a human-wave tactic like this, Sheer Heart Attack was the ideal weapon. Steel treads grinding everything in its path, its indestructible body making it unstoppable. Even its usual weakness—prioritizing the hottest target—didn't matter here. It didn't matter who it hit first. Kill everything.
It carved its way through, leaving bodies and fresh blood in its wake. The bodies and blood erupted into ash in the explosions that followed. From a distance, it looked like a red brushstroke trailing behind Sheer Heart Attack—vivid as fire—but an eraser wiped the brushstrokes away almost as fast as they were painted—like fireworks bursting against the sky.
Brilliant for an instant, then desolate once more.
Amid the shrieking, the swarming horde thinned and thinned... until at last, every monster had been annihilated.
Not even corpses remained. The explosions had erased everything. The entire street stood empty.
Sunlight finally crept past the tall buildings and spilled into the hollow mouth of the alley. Birch trees swayed gently, rustling.
Beyond that, not a sound. The street was impossibly quiet.
Nanami Kira stood in the center of the road and wiped nonexistent sweat from his forehead.
Just now—just moments ago—he had killed over a hundred Cursed Spirits.