ke me.

“Are Youkai really that vague? You make it sound like a Youkai came to be because someone drew an illustration of it...”

“It varies from case to case. Youkai like the Zashiki Warashi or Yuki Onna won’t be shaken so easily, but some Youkai have their role added on afterwards like the Nurarihyon.” I shrugged. “The Aoandon is a special Youkai that can only appear when people tell ghost stories. Tsukumogami only become Youkai after years of being influenced by their environment. It seems the Aoandon has replaced that with 100 ghost stories. Just like Tsukumogami are prepared by their environment like wine or cheese, it is possible the Aoandon’s characteristics can be tuned up by gathering high-quality ghost stories. ...Simply put, it’s a Youkai that can be easily altered by human hands.”

“And you’re saying that’s related to what is happening in Four Mountains?” cautiously asked the detective. “A prisoner disappeared from his transport vehicle and a swarm of snake Youkai attacked... How is an Aoandon related to that?”

“It’s at the core of it all.” I waved the old Japanese paper around. “The person who caused all this...I suppose you could call her the culprit... Anyway, that old woman caused all this in order to make a certain wish of hers come true. But it would have been difficult by any normal means. That was why she got her hands on a Youkai that’s characteristics could be freely remade like clay. She used it to acquire the occult power she wanted.”

“And that was?”

“As I said, the form and abilities of the Aoandon can be shaped by the nature of the 100 ghost stories used. The old woman simply had to regulate the situation such that the Aoandon with the power she wanted would appear.”

However, this was different from creating a Package that built a Youkai’s power into it.

She was twisting the Youkai itself in a convenient direction.

In the past, I had run across someone who had tried to alter an Umbrella Obake and a Lantern Obake to create a controller for all Youkai in Japan like the Nurarihyon. This was something similar.

“Wait, onee-chan. But you need 100 ghost stories for that, right? I don’t know anything about that. Has anyone told any scary stories? Or has it been someone other than us?”

“That area was altered. You could say the creepy ghost stories have been simplified quite a bit. They are all written here.”

“?”

“The curving writing looks really old, so it looks like something from hundreds of years ago, right? But these were written quite recently. Although, I think it used a form of thoughtography to automatically write it rather than have someone physically right it out.”

“...What does it say?”

“Question 1: Why does Shinobu-kun cling to the girl next to him while he naps? Question 2: Rumor has it the junction was created for the sake of a gigantic semiconductor factory. Is that really true, though?”

“Eh...?”

Jinnai Shinobu was left speechless.

Kotemitsu Madoka also looked surprised, so these were likely puzzles related to them.

“Puzzles, riddles, Q&A. ...It seems that is what is being used as the smallest form of the stories. In other words, once 100 puzzles have been answered in the Four Mountains region, the Aoandon Youkai will appear in the real world with a physical body. This is the womb created in preparation for that.”

“S-so that’s it,” groaned the detective. “Four Mountains is stained with a gruesome history thanks to Zenmetsu Village and the Kuroyama Electronics Group. And it has Youkai in it, too. If people begin chatting here, the essence of creepy and scary stories will naturally be mixed in. By throwing a set number of people in here, they will create creepy puzzles and then answer them all on their own.”

There was of course the corporate prison in addition to Zenmetsu Village.

I held up my index finger and twirled it around.

“The Toubyou were a convenient gimmick for creating this puzzle-solving story. You could say they are the ones pulling the strings behind the scenes. Those snake possessing spirits steal the necessary items from others’ houses, so they could be used for all sorts of things. For example...”

They could send those needed for the puzzle-solving to this alternate space.

If someone was having difficulty solving the puzzles, they could place an object nearby to act as a hint.

The appearance of the Toubyou themselves could be used to periodically raise the tension and create an atmosphere of needing to solve the puzzles to survive.

Then again, the Toubyou were possessing spirits that took the actions someone desired. It was difficult to think they had the will needed to act as the mastermind behind it all. It was an even more unfitting position than having the final boss be a computer with a heart.

As I explained it all, Jinnai Shinobu began speaking while almost in a daze.

“So it isn’t that we were separated from our classmates. Our classmates weren’t wandering around the forest as well. Madoka and I were the only ones needed for the Hyakumonogatari, so we were sent into some other space?”

“Dammit. So that’s why we found only Hasebe Michio in the forest and the police officers guarding him were nowhere to be found. And once someone was no longer needed to solve the puzzles, they were devoured by the snakes.”

It was all to complete the Hyakumonogatari as quickly as possible.

It was all to bring the Aoandon Youkai into reality. The Toubyou were nothing more than errand runners.

More people were not needed, so they had not been called onto the stage.

The complete lack of bugs and wild beasts was because animals were not needed to solve the puzzles.

To tell the Hyakumonogatari, the Toubyou had taken only those in Four Mountains who had been automatically judged to be useful. They had taken those people to “somewhere else”.

“Then how do we end all this? Can we give up on the Hyakumonogatari and leave Four Mountains? Or do we have to defeat the person who wants the Aoandon?”

That was the tricky part.

I sighed and said, “I have already defeated the culprit. However, the Hyakumonogatari-based assembly is still running. That means it is running on autopilot like a passenger plane without a pilot.”

The autopilot alone could not necessarily make a nice landing.

It was possible that old woman’s final words were now acting as a curse.

The Toubyou, the Orochi, and now the Aoandon.

“And I doubt the culprit who wanted to complete the Hyakumonogatari would have created a stage that would let the puzzle-solving participants escape. The Toubyou are powerful enough to drag us from reality and into some other place. This might be a dream, an illusion, some different coordinates, some different phase, the past, or the future, but it doesn’t matter. ...Those snake possessing spirits can steal whatever is necessary, so they might automatically warp us right back into Four Mountains if we leave.”

“Then what are we supposed to do?” asked Jinnai Shinobu with an audible gulp. “Can we not leave until the Hyakumonogatari is complete? But that means the Aoandon will appear!”

“Yes, it does. It looks like our only option is to have it appear and then defeat it. At any rate, our top priority is destroying the balance that prevents us from leaving the Hyakumonogatari stage. And to do that...”

I trailed off.

My next words never came.

I had realized something.

Shit! I just realized!! God dammit!!

I see! I see! So that’s it! I should have questioned it more when my hand and leg broke through the asphalt too easily when fighting the Kusanagi woman at the corporate prison or when I moved the ruins of the shrine barehanded so easily!! Even if my body has been altered, it should only be effective against Youkai!!

“Onee-chan, what is it?”

My sister’s voice was cut off by a rustling sound.

It was the sound of the dead grass. However, this was no footstep.

It was the sound of small snakes slithering.

“This is bad. As I guessed, it looks like the completion of the Hyakumonogatari had something like a time limit.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“Look around you.”

The Sunekosuri let out a cry of fear before the detective could.

There were snakes.

A mountain of snakes.

The next thing we knew, everywhere we looked in all 360 degrees was filled with a tremendous amount of snakes. It was not that everything had been covered up by a giant swarm of snakes. It looked more like the landscape was made out of a giant mass of snakes.

In fact...

That may not have been wrong.

“Uuh!? What is going on? The ground is soft!!”

“Hey, detective, that man said the entire basin of Four Mountains functions as the Toubyou’s jar, right? Does that mean...!?”

“Everything we saw – the ground, the mountains, the forest, the run-down buildings – was all...all...”

The detective looked down.

He likely regretted having done so.

The ground had transformed into a giant black carpet created from tons of snakes weaving around each other. The dead grass had turned into a collection of small, narrow snakes that looked like tubifex worms. If we had gone to the village, we would likely find the silhouettes of the buildings made out of snakes.

“Is everything here made from the Toubyou!? Everything but the people needed for the puzzle-solving was fake!?”

“It looks like the stage was made to destroy itself if the Hyakumonogatari was not completed within a given period of time. That may have been one of the conditions for creating the Aoandon. If the Aoandon with the abilities the culprit wanted was not created, it would all reset like this.”

“Reset...?” Jinnai Shinobu frowned. “You just said reset, right? This isn’t just cleaning up after slicing us to pieces, is it!?”

“If my estimation is correct,” I replied with a slow sigh. I gave the worst possibility I could think of. “This is probably not the first time we have attempted the Hyakumonogatari.”

“Wha-...?”

“From the fact that they can drag us to this ‘alternate location’, it is clear the Toubyou have been assembled in a convenient way. Their ability to steal whatever is necessary may go beyond simply manipulating distances and coordinates. It may allow them to grab objects from the past or future on the timeline.”

If the Aoandon was not completed, they would destroy everything and return it all to the initial point.

In other words, it was constructed in an eternal loop that would never end until the objective was complete.

“We have to go through that life-or-death situation again? Can’t we do something!? Isn’t there anything we can do other than watch this destruction happen!?”

“Tell me everything you know!! Let’s share our information. We are still here because there are still some puzzles remaining that we are supposed to solve. That means we have to share our information to solve them all. If we don’t find all 100 puzzles and solve them all, we can never escape Four Mountains! Our greatest weapon is inside our own heads!!”

At some point, the thick fog had disappeared.

I looked up at the blue sky that had appeared behind it, but then I grimaced.

In the sky, a pure black mouth opened wide.

No. It was all Toubyou. This went beyond just dozens or hundreds of them.

Were hundreds of millions if not billions of those snake Youkai monitoring us while creating a dome over the false Four Mountains area!?

When Jinnai Shinobu, the detective, and the others looked up into the sky as well, they were all left speechless.

Meanwhile, the black gradually ate into the blue of the sky. Over half of it was covered by snakes already.

“Well,” I muttered without thinking.

As if the surface tension of the liquid in a cup had passed its limit, a portion of the black sky crumbled.

“This chapter was a failure...”

Trying to think about evading or defending was useless.

Snakes literally poured down like a waterfall as they fell right onto our

Part 34 (Jinnai Shinobu)

“Ah!?”

I woke up.

I could feel an unpleasant sweat all across my body. My heart rate had increased to dangerous levels. For a moment, I was unsure where I was and it took me a bit to distinguish up from down and left from right.

...I’m on the bus.

It seemed I was on a tour bus driving down the highway.

“Hey, hey, Shinobu-kun.”

I heard Madoka speaking from next to me.

I thought she would also be uneasy due to being unable to keep up with the sudden change. However...

“Is this where I am supposed to ask ‘Shinobu-kun, why do you cling to the girl next to you while you nap?’ ”

Wait...

Wait!!

I remember this conversation.

Isn’t this just before we entered Four Mountains!?

“Jinnai, we’re almost to a zone simply filled with noteworthy things.”

That was my classmate known as the Love King.

Just his face was peering over the seat in front of me and he was saying the exact same things I had heard before.

“We’re almost at Four Mountains. The scenery will change once we leave the tunnel.”

Unlike the Love King, Madoka likely understood.

I exchanged a glance with her and it was clear that we were the only two enveloped in tension.

Which meant...

No, not again.

Once we passed through the tunnel, the bus driver, the guide, our classmates, and our homeroom teacher would all disappear and we would have to solve the puzzles of the Hyakumonogatari in that abandoned village filled with countless Toubyou.

Mai had said that had not been the first time. In that case, it must have been the fact that we had made it to the very end that we “remembered” this time.

There were 100 puzzles.

There were 100 answers.

Until they were all gathered and the Aoandon was born, we would have to repeat this again and again.

I began to panic, but I could not think of any way of escaping the situation.

Meanwhile, the tunnel approached like the mouth of some great monster.

The tour bus was swallowed up.

It did not matter how many times it took.

It did not matter if it lasted for all eternity.

Until the Hyakumonogatari was fully completed, Zenmetsu Village of Four Mountains would be waiting for me.

Notes

1. ↑ Zenmetsu means “annihilation”.

2. ↑ He's thinking of a shide.