ll possessing spirits is...”

I trailed off.

The giant semiconductor factory had been sliced diagonally.

The walls were sliced.

The production line was sliced.

The two layers of doors for sterilization, the conveyer belts, the robot arms, the thick metal pipes, the electronic control system, the lights, the floor, the ceiling, the tempered glass, and everything else were all sliced. Kusanagi had cut down everything like mowing over grass.

My upper body had been sliced through again, but that no longer mattered. As long as I could retrieve the kit from the rental car’s trunk within the time limit, I would manage.

The difference in speed between the factory falling apart and my body falling apart was due to the moisture and oils along the slices of my body holding everything together somewhat. Not that the reason mattered so long as I could move.

Thanks to the sliced pipes, a clear liquid began spraying across the production line area.

A single figure stepped forward amid it all.

It was the old woman with Kusanagi hanging from her right hand.

“What are you after?” she asked.

“What would you do if I told you?”

“Is it the ethanol for sterilization? If you ignite it, you can likely envelop me in flames, but you underestimate me if you think that will kill me.”

“True. For one thing, the name Kusanagi comes from it being used to cut down flaming grass to escape harm. It would be difficult to kill you that way.”

I heard a splashing sound.

It was the sound of the old woman stepping forward.

The liquid flowing from a severed metal pipe had already spread out across the floor of the production line.

“What did you want to do here so badly that you were willing to switch faces constantly?”

“I had to correct a mistake.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It does not matter if you do not understand,” said the old woman as she wiped off her face with a hand.

The liquid pouring down from above must have bothered here.

She then said, “Let us finish this.”

“Not a bad suggestion.” I shrugged. “But it is already over.”

“...?”

For an instant – just an instant – the old woman looked truly confused.

And then...

She realized it.

“...You swallowed some, didn’t you?”

“Wait... This water. Is this the pure water used in the semiconductor factory? Wait, but that means...!”

“It is the underground water from the Four Mountains area. ...I didn’t do too much research concerning Zenmetsu Village, but the villagers and the corporation were arguing over the use of the banned underground water, right?”

The old woman was not listening.

She brought a hand to her mouth and frantically tried to spit out the underground water that had entered her body.

Instead of water, a great amount of small snakes came from her mouth.

“Gh...bh...!?”

The sounds coming from her mouth were no longer words.

The snakes had clearly left her control as more and more slithered out.

“Wh-what is going on...?” asked the Sunekosuri while looking flustered.

“The Toubyou are a possessing spirit Youkai that protects its house. But a lot about how the Toubyou distinguished between someone of Four Mountains and an outsider is actually still a bit of a mystery. After all, it seems Zenmetsu Village was a group brought in from outside to quarantine them. And yet the Toubyou were able to distinguish between their family and outsiders. That means they must have used some distinguishing factor.” I raised my index finger. “Was it the people who gave them rice? Was it any baby born in the village? Were the people bound to the Youkai in some sort of ceremony? ...But that raises questions about a certain incident. Why were the residents of Four Mountains living in Zenmetsu Village so opposed to the semiconductor factory being built? Or more accurately, why did they refuse to allow it to use the underground water?”

“Y-you don’t mean...”

“It was who drank the underground water of Four Mountains. ...I think that was what was used to distinguish between the Toubyou’s ‘family’ and ‘outsiders’.” I then pointed my raised finger at the old woman who was suffering as she coughed up more and more snakes. “A standard characteristic of all possessing spirits is that they will provide some form of benefit if used correctly but will bare their fangs at their own master if used incorrectly, used without respect, or used cruelly. This old woman focused more on the Orochi than the Toubyou, so she tried to eliminate as much of the Toubyou side from within her as she could. In other words, she treated it cruelly. ...She had likely been careful not to drink any of the underground water so that she would be deemed an outsider despite being a resident of Four Mountains.”

“And the village’s underground water was used for the semiconductor factory’s pure water?” muttered the Sunekosuri blankly. “B-but! Doesn’t that mean everyone in the factory could have used the Toubyou? They were using Four Mountains’ underground water like it was normal.”

“No. The underground water is the foundation of the semiconductor production. It wasn’t used for the standard water. You saw that water server in the employee cafeteria, right? The jailers obviously used it, but they did not get angry when the prisoners used it too. The prisoners here have no human rights, so the use of water brought in from elsewhere must have been the rule here.”

“Cough...cough!!”

I heard the old woman repeatedly try to clear her throat, but it was too late.

She could not defeat the Toubyou unless she was prepared to cut open her own stomach with Kusanagi.

“By drinking the underground water, you are now considered the master of the Toubyou. And due to your continued use of Kusanagi which denies the existence of the Toubyou, they have bared their fangs against you as a master who treats them cruelly. ...Unfortunately for you, your fate has already been sealed. There is no saving you now.”

“Th-this is why...I was...cough...opposed to using...possessing spirits...” replied the old woman through all the snakes. And, “So prepare yourself... With no one left to control it...gh...the Package will spread damage around...uncontrollably. It will now possess such power...that you can only call it inexhaustible...”

“...Are you saying the Toubyou and Orochi are not done for yet?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” The old woman whose name I still did not know smiled. “Those were not the Youkai...I originally wanted to control...”

A sticky sound drowned out everything else.

The woman collapsed to the ground and the snakes slithering from her mouth enveloped her body. The Sunekosuri let out a frightened cry. As we watched, that lump made up of hundreds of snakes gradually shrank.

Eventually, every single snake disappeared, leaving nothing behind.

Not even the old woman’s body remained.

Part 30 (Jinnai Shinobu)

To be honest, there was nothing left for us to do once we contacted the fire department.

We only had to wait for rescue to arrive.

...Or so it should have been.

“Dammit...”

“Shinobu-kun, are you okay?” asked Madoka as she peered over at me.

I was unable to provide a proper response.

My thoughts were on what had happened decades ago.

There was a collection of small villages made up of small shacks reinforced with plywood and galvanized sheet iron. In addition, there was a group of larger houses surrounding a cave. The events had occurred in that now-abandoned village.

They had regularly committed infanticide to ensure they had enough to eat. In the twisted tiny society of that village, no one had questioned it. Not only would they selfishly kill them, but they had cruelly kept their graves separate.

The information revealed by the Zashiki Warashi was too heavy for a high school boy born in this age.

“...That’s insane,” I muttered without thinking.

I felt something heavy in the bottom of my gut like when I took a nap directly after eating instant ramen. It had been there since I had learned that information and I could not imagine how long it would stick around. It was possible it would be there for the rest of my life.

“You were not directly involved in this, Shinobu-kun.”

“I know that.”

“And the tradition ended decades ago.”

“I know that too”

Madoka was speaking so indifferently it was possible the information was already nothing more than an entry on a list of dates for her.

“And no matter how much it bothers you, is there anything we can do? If not, worrying about it is meaningless.”

“...Perhaps.”

I felt some distance between myself and this financial monster who could convert anything into numbers and handle it dryly. When I had given into my anger and beaten down that middle-aged man, she had looked at me with such cold eyes.

However...

It was true there was nothing I could do.

It sounded coldhearted, but it was the truth.

“...The rescue team sure is taking its time.”

“Yes, it is.”

“You often hear that it’s best not to move around at times like this, but...”

“What do we do if they just leave us here, Shinobu-kun? Can you tell the difference between edible mountain plants and inedible ones?”

“An Intellectual Village is a carefully-maintained artificial natural environment. Don’t look to me for actual survival skills.”

I recalled there being an “edible plant app” that analyzed a photo of the plant in question, but my smartphone was currently in the Zashiki Warashi’s cleavage. I could always send the photos to her to analyze, but I had also remembered seeing reviews saying its results could be unclear due to shadows in the photo.

And as someone who had always had his parents cook for him, I wouldn’t know what to do even if I was handed a bunch of edible mountain plants. We would probably end up eating half-cooked grass.

“If it comes down to it, we might have to rely on the human ability to survive for a while on water alone.”

“Geh. Isn’t that not actually true? I think you at least need some salt and minerals...”

Suddenly...

We heard a man scream beyond the fog.

Madoka and I exchanged a glance.

“What was that?”

“The fog is too thick to see from here.”

It sounded surprisingly close by. We were near the edge of a cliff, but it was possible the wealthy area of the village was only a few meters down.

But at the same time, those snake Youkai known as Toubyou were slithering around below.

If we remained where we were, the rescue team would arrive. We had no reason to put ourselves in any more danger.

However...

“Hey, Shinobu-kun.”

“What?”

“What if that scream was from the rescue team?”

“...”

That possibility was too horrible.

I sighed and climbed down the short cliff to check on the scream.

Part 31 (Hishigami Mai)

After watching the final moments of the old woman who controlled Kusanagi, I opened the trunk of the car parked in the parking lot and pulled out the kit used to repair my body. Most of the cars had exploded after being caught up in the Kusanagi attacks. The area had become a sea of flames as if a napalm bomb had been gone off, but it had not reached my car.

“Y-you really are going to reconnect your right arm, aren’t you?”

Rather than sounding relieved, the Sunekosuri looked at me with a disturbed look in his eyes.

“This is half of the reason I am so valuable. I am more durable than a normal human and I can use all sorts of strategies to fake my death. I’m perfect for taking on the ninja-like role of crushing a giant organization after leading them astray with false information.”

“I-I cannot believe you can sew your body together with makeup equipment...”

“That’s just how the kit is disguised. Having a full set of skin-colored materials and precision tools is convenient.”

I temporarily sewed together my upper body that was on the verge of falling to pieces and returned the kit to the cosmetic pouch.

“Damn her. She cut through my breasts three or four times. Did she have some kind of grudge against breasts?”

“You don’t have to show me. And you don’t have to trace your fingers across them either.”

“What? Oh, stop blushing, Sunekosuri-chan. And are you the type of canine Youkai that is still aroused by human nudity?”

“Please do not stand there looking puzzled with those out in the open! Hurry up and cover yourself!!”

You do know the world I live in, right?

My environment isn’t kind enough to let me opt out of fighting if I’m attacked while changing.

Even after mending my body, my workwear was still torn to shreds. I put them in my bag and changed into a tank top and hot pants.

“Okay, we’ve had a short break, so let’s go investigate the abandoned Zenmetsu Village.”

“Eh? B-but wasn’t that old woman the culprit behind all this?”

“Probably. But the changes have not completely stopped. After all, this corporate prison was supposed to have 8000 people between the prisoners and jailers. I see no sign of them returning.”

Of course, it had actually been the few of us who had disappeared, not those 8000.

“Now that you mention it...”

“The culprit is dead, but the Package she used is still running. If we don’t do something about it, we can never return.”

“Th-that’s terrible! Only the culprit could know how to do that! Why did you kill her!?”

“Sunekosuri-chan? Try to think back and remember whether that was any time to get greedy.”

I tossed the canine Youkai in the car’s passenger seat, sat in the driver’s seat, and turned the key.

We left through the main gate that no one was monitoring and drove down the sole road. After a while, we came across an abandoned rental car.

“What’s this? Do they have to flirt everywhere they go? And have they started to naturally attract misfortune too?”

I parked our rental car near this other one and got out, carrying my equipment and the Sunekosuri. Walking through a forest wearing the ridiculously revealing outfit of a tank top and hot pants was suicide, but I could mend my body even if it did get destroyed. Right now, I needed to force my way through.

“Wh-what is this? I am surrounded by nature, but I do not feel very comfortable...”

“That’s because the Kuroyama Electronics Group has a surveillance network spread out all throughout here. Unlike an Intellectual Village which is maintained down to the very foundation, the stench of machinery must be quite strong here.”

But I’m not detecting any hint of insects or wild beasts. Is that because this is the territory of the Toubyou and Orochi? They needed to preserve the quality of the underground water, so they wouldn’t use any pesticides.

We made our way out of the forest and into a run-down abandoned village.

“Where should we investigate?”

“That Kusanagi woman mentioned something about a shrine. Let’s try to find that. If we can find the roots of her techniques, we should be able to interpret what has been set up over the Four Mountains area.”

As we walked around through the fog, we came across an area where the wealthier villagers had gathered. We found some ruins there that had likely been the shrine in question.

However...

“Th-this does not look like it crumbled after rotting away.”

“It was destroyed by someone.”

The village here was jokingly called Zenmetsu Village. That was due to the slaughter that had occurred over 30 years ago. ...But this looked older. It had been destroyed and left to rot before the annihilation had occurred.

Now.

I was a bit worried about pushing myself since I was only temporarily sewn together, but using force was my only option. I pushed away a portion of the mountain of rubble that had piled up on the floor.

“It looks like they just applied a lot of power to the outside to destroy it. The inside is almost untouched. Any writings are probably intact, too.”

“Did you just casually do something amazing? You did, didn’t you!?”

I ignored the Sunekosuri’s question and entered the hole in the pile of rubble I had created. As expected, I found a statue of the snake deity enshrined here, bundles of Japanese paper covered with old writing, and other items.

Hmm.

From what I could see, the old woman’s real name seemed to be Kawabata Megumi. She had said she had been an old woman for over 100 years and I doubted this was the name of a descendent.

Everything in the old bundles of paper looked meaningful, but one was mostly an account book. I tossed it aside for the moment.

“This seems to list the records of the village. It’s filled with a lot of personal opinions, though.”

The Four Mountains village had been started as a forced quarantine for those suffering from spiritual harm thanks to Youkai. Of course, it was done in the name of healing them.

The members of this shrine had been sent in to monitor and guide the people so they would not take any actions that would be dangerous to the outside world.

The shrine had split the members of the village into two factions below two different influential families and intentionally robbed them of the ability to battle the outside world by having too much internal conflict.

However...

The members of the shrine had only wanted to efficiently maintain their control over the Four Mountains village. They had not wished for the villagers’ deaths.

When social unrest had occasionally reared its ugly head due to lack of food and less gold dust, the villagers had begun killing their babies. The shrine had tried to put a stop to it but had failed.

When the villagers had tried to buy the Toubyou from outside, the shrine had interfered to stop that as well... And that was where the records ended.

In all likelihood, their role as controllers had been revealed and the villagers had branded them traitors and destroyed the shrine.

Humans are easily deceived, but not many of them like being deceived.

To correct a mistake.

This was why that old woman had stayed here in Four Mountains. The records were the most thorough in the section concerning the drowned babies. She may have given up trying to justify the infanticide and had instead tried to keep track of all the children who were killed before being given a name and then to properly mourn for all of them.

The village itself had been destroyed, so it would have been incredibly difficult to know who had given birth to who. However, it was possible the Kuroyama Electronics Group had a division or a report hidden away somewhere that they had used to ensure they had slaughtered all of the villagers and to ensure no information leaked out.

Honestly.

Once again, it’s that kind noise that ends up killing a professional.

Just like a Package, it had to have taken a system using hundreds of people to maintain that Kusanagi. That was why it had been worth it for her to have the prisoners work for her on the promise of a jailbreak.

“What’s written here looks like a conflict between the Orochi and the Toubyou. Is there nothing else?”

As I read through various bundles of paper, I finally found one discussing the ceremony for the shrine’s rituals.

What’s this?

It was one of the two influential families that had brought in the Toubyou. The other family had been researching a completely different Youkai, but they had moved toward the Toubyou when their original one seemed too dangerous.

That meant a non-serpentine Youkai had to have taken root in the village as well.

Hm.

Hm, hm, hm... Wait a second!!

“This is very bad, Sunekosuri!! If this is true, it’s much worse than the Toubyou or the Orochi!! At least in a certain way!!”

“Eh? Eh? Wh-what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about-...!!”

I trailed off because I had heard a man screaming in the distance.

I left the ruins of the shrine, but the fog was too thick to see very far. However, I recognized the voice.

“That detective.”

“Why are you calmly observing the situation!? Something happened to someone you know, right!? Then you need to go check on him!!”

Hm.

I don’t actually have any obligation to go that far.

If the information on that shrine’s rituals was accurate, it did not matter if you were a professional or an amateur. What mattered was gathering accurate data on what was occurring in the Four Mountains area. And to do that, I might need to ask that detective and my sister some questions.

“I have no choice. Sunekosuri, let’s go mix together our business lives with our personal lives a bit.”

Part 32 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)

“Shit! Shit! What the hell is going on!?”

“Don’t, detective!!”

The rag-wearing man had supposedly been controlling the Youkai known as Toubyou, but he was now being swallowed by a lump of hundreds of the snakes.

I frantically tried to save him, but the mystery freak grabbed onto me from behind.

“Let go, you idiot! At this rate...!!”

“It’s already too late!! Even that man who held the right to control those possessing spirits was taken out. Those snake possessing spirits will never act kindly to a complete outsider like you!! If you approach, they’ll swallow you up as well!!”

“But!!”

It was not that I had all sorts of dreams about the job of police officer. This man had seemed suspicious and I did not believe everything he had told us. But was it okay to just let him die? I was not going to let someone else die before my eyes!

I could hear no screams.

The lump of snakes that had been so large was visibly growing smaller and smaller. That meant the rag-wearing man at the center was losing volume.

“The assembly of the Toubyou Package was incomplete from the beginning! It should be more surprising that it functioned up until now than that it failed now! The engine is already spewing smoke. If you get in the car, you will only be caught in the explosion! There is no safe area!!”

Finally, the snakes began disappearing before our eyes as if they were dissolving into the fog. Just as before, no trace was left of the man who had been enveloped by them. He had completely disappeared.

It was due to this lack of blood or a corpse that I was assaulted by a faint chill.

There was no hint of dignity here.

There was nothing left to bury in a grave. It was as if even the victim’s death was being covered up.

That was when I heard someone walking through the dead grass.

“Uncle...?”

I recognized the voice.

I turned around and found my nephew Shinobu and...someone else. I recalled seeing the girl during the incident in that Fuuka Village hotel.

The mystery freak let out a surprised voice next to me.

“Oh, if it isn’t Madoka.”

“What are you doing here, Enbi?”

As the two girls spoke in high-pitched voices, I heard more footsteps coming from yet another direction.

This time, it was...

“Oh? If it isn’t the detective and my little sister.”

“...Th-this group gives me a very bad feeling.”

It was the mystery freak’s sister, Hishigami Mai, and a Youkai that I was fairly certain was a Sunekosuri. As a Youkai, it would dislike me, so its identity did not really matter to me.

Mai held a bundle of old Japanese paper she must have found somewhere. She spoke in a tone of utter annoyance.

“Is this everyone left? If not, this could be bad. We have no time.”

...I think there was that man at the tollgate, too.

“Hey, wait. Do you know what’s going on in the Four Mountains area? What do you mean there’s no time?”

“How much do you know? If you haven’t figured out the Toubyou yet, this is going to be quite a lecture. If you’ve reached the Orochi, I’ll be a bit impressed. And if you’ve figured out the Youkai beyond that, I’ll hug you and bury your face in my tits.”

“The Youkai...beyond that...?” said my nephew Shinobu in a doubtful voice. “Also, that’s the first I’ve heard of an Orochi being involved in addition to the Toubyou. And you say there’s some other Youkai involved here, too!? What is it!?”

“The Toubyou was nothing more than a convenient gimmick. It was only the means to an end. It was used for the assembly involving the real Youkai.”

“Assembly? Onee-chan, is someone trying to create a Package using the power of some Youkai?”

“Something like that,” replied Mai clearly. “The Youkai behind this incident is a bit of an exception. Even when no Package is being created out of human malice, this Youkai still needs to be constructed by human hands. What is being assembled is the Youkai. It is being made into a form that can naturally exist.”

“Wh-what do you mean?” asked the Sunekosuri with a tilt of its head.

...I see she still doesn’t tell her allies the details of her plans.

“The traditions surrounding a Youkai hold important meaning, but this Youkai alone is different. The assembly becomes the true form rather than the Youkai itself.” Mai waved the bundle of Japanese paper as she arrived at the core of the issue. “The Aoandon. Have you ever heard of the mysterious existence that appears once the Hyakumonogatari has been completed?”

Part 33 (Hishigami Mai)

Now then.

Now then, now then, now then.

The detective, my sister, and the others likely could not read the old writing on the Japanese paper, so I had to explain it all to them.

“The Hyakumonogatari?” Jinnai Shinobu frowned. “That’s the thing where you light 100 candles and blow out a candle each time you tell a ghost story, right?”

“I’ve heard an alternate method that includes having 100 wicks in a single paper lantern ...But wait. Is the thing that appears at the end a Youkai? I thought a ghost was supposed to appear in the dark room.”

“Technically, there is no real answer,” I readily replied. “Some say a supernatural phenomenon will occur such as a poltergeist or strange noises, some say the ghost of a dead human will appear, and some say a Youkai will appear. It is also unclear if it ends with nothing happening or if everyone there will be cursed. ...However, a certain famous Youkai artist consolidated it all into a single existence known as the Aoandon. Nowadays, the Hyakumonogatari is ruled by the base structure of it being a Youkai that is a female oni with pale blue skin.”

“...Um, I don’t quite understand.”

This comment came from the girl I was fairly certain was named Kotemitsu Madoka.

She was a monster in the financial world. It was unfortunate she had no connections in the occult world, but as far as assets were concerned, she likely had the power to hire someone li-->>

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