By the time the company's support squad arrived, the entire nuclear crater was carpeted in fleshy vines and tendrils—an expanse of women's faces and limbs like a grotesque set from an adults-only tokusatsu.
Other companies had also noticed that bombardment was basically fertilizer for the "flower," so their attacks had paused.
Li Pan stood on a rooftop already being overgrown, waving a signal wand to guide his people in. This time the arrivals were A-Qi, Ashiya Shigui, Yamazaki Ayato, and Armored Hovercar .18.
Kotaro had gone to fetch the divine palanquin; Rama's crew weren't monsters or super-cyborgs and would simply die in this nuclear soup, so they stayed back to handle rollbacks.
Hovercar .18 hovered to the roof, opened its bay, and spat out gear.
"Boss, Security has issued top-tier nuclear and biohazard alerts—all companies are to cease hostilities and evacuate the Old Capital district's civilians.
"Until that thing is handled, nobody will hit us; likewise we're forbidden to attack others—committee penalties if we do."
Li Pan pulled on a military HAZMAT suit, rolling his eyes.
"With radiation this high the drone chips are fusing. Nobody knows what's happening inside. What's a 'penalty' gonna do?"
".18" replied, "Let's cool it. Their net-attacks just stopped. Top-end cyborgs won't care unless they take a direct nuke; I'm reading other corps forming science teams to go underground for the Grail. We have to move."
"Fine. At least they're useful for once. War-room, now.
"You all see it: rollbacks failing, 0791035 rampaging out of control, the Grail lost. How do we retrieve and clean up the target? Speak freely."
A-Qi had already winched the shredder up via the hovercar and handed Li Pan Shiranui Kiriko's HR file.
Li Pan took it. "Shigui—ley-node, Dragon King, your turf. Can you handle this? Reseal?"
Ashiya, holding paper fetishes—one eye azure, one crimson—sent his blue and red ogres to scout the meat-flower while he answered:
"I can't. The monster's already on the grand ley nexus, and I don't have the power to shake earth-veins. Each Ashiya head, upon taking the Six Paths seat, leads Onmyōryō rites to reinforce the Dragon King Shrine's seal.
"To prevent cracking, the rite is oral tradition only. I didn't inherit formally; I never learned the seal.
"And we don't have time. I think Shiranui used the Grail plus demon power to brute-force a tear in the Sixfold Seal, but she's still short—only a corner ripped.
"Records say if the seal is fully undone and the Dragon King wakes, seas will overturn and the land will shatter.
"She's still borrowing the Grail to rip the wards. Sooner or later the Dragon King wakes and wipes out Night City—no, all Honshū."
Li Pan frowned. "You're sure there's really a dragon down there?"
All he'd seen in that shabby shrine was a tablet. And if something that big and strong existed, why hadn't he sensed any qi?
Ashiya nodded.
"Eighty, ninety percent. We spirits have always known about dragons here.
"Onmyōryō records: the spirits settled this world after discovering a mythic being—a slumbering dragon. They used the dragon's breath and heartbeat to boot Earth-0791's great leyline network, transmuting mana, weaving a planet-wide spirit grid.
"From then on, anywhere in the world, through spiritists, rites, and arrays, magic was possible.
"Thanks to the Dragon King they magified this planet.
"Then the Dragon King suddenly stirred—magic grid blew out, an explosion erased the spirit empire and its starcraft; their civilization broke, the grid ran wild for millennia, and they regressed to rustic tribes.
"That's why when Oda first arrived, one cruiser and a batch of gene-mods crushed this world so easily.
"Since then, sealing the Dragon King—preventing dragon, spirit remnants, and mythic beings from waking—has been Onmyōryō's and later Oniwa's main mission."
Li Pan scowled. "Then what's with Kōga? After all these years they still want to unseal and steal dragon-power?"
Ashiya blinked. "They? So it's not just Shiranui? The Kōga Twenty-One Houses are in?"
Li Pan nodded. Yamazaki mused:
"Not surprising. Even before Takamagahara lost, extremists researched Legion tech and spirit magic—committee-banned black tech.
"The tech gap was yawning; some hoped if they could master magic or lost Legion systems, they could pull a hairpin turn and win."
Ashiya added,
"Whether they pass is another matter—but not impossible. The spirits already built a planetary grid through the Dragon King. If you repair the grid and re-ignite it via the Dragon King, you can boot latent magic immediately.
"Even if they fail, a sip of dragon-power goes a long way—so long as the low-probability 'Dragon wakes' doesn't happen.
"I just wonder how they plan to repair the grid—only spirit arcana can do that, and those archives should be locked by Takamagahara…"
"Ah!" Yamazaki snapped his fingers. "Back in Hakone, when we went for the jar, Miss Shiranui was stealing spirit grimoires when she got caught.
"Later President Ōkubo heard the manager liked spirit antiques; he turned over not just the jar but piles of artifacts—Miss Shiranui took charge of cataloging them…"
Li Pan glared. "And you didn't say sooner!?"
Stone-man Yamazaki sighed and glanced at his stone bead bracelet.
"I… wasn't thinking straight then…"
Ashiya chanted a verse; a baseball-sized fireball bloomed in his palm. He tossed it; it hit Hovercar .18's reactive armor with a whump, scorching it.
".18": "Hey!"
Ashiya shrugged. "Whatever she did, some of the grid is active. My basic Fireball used to light cigarettes; now it's a grenade."
Yamazaki looked at the swarming "pollen" from the women's mouths.
"Spirit magic scale relies on high-density spirit motes. Those dust plumes are probably motes in some activated state."
Li Pan frowned, then the picture sharpened.
Right—Shiranui hiding at the hot spring so long was for Taotie; when she dropped the jar, it meant she'd found a better target. Judging today, she dove deep into spirit magic.
Not just Shiranui: the Kōga houses clearly had a plan to unseal the Dragon King and light the grid.
Their ceremonial prep to crack Ashiya's Sixfold Seal showed this wasn't caprice; it was a collective act.
Whether they were puppeted by spirits to restore the mythic age, or extremists like Red Tengu aiming to revive Takamagahara with magic/Legion tech—it's hard to say now that they're dead.
From their own standpoint, it made sense.
Unlike Iga, Kōga viewed demon seals as heretical. Borrowed demon power never truly yours—unstable, risky, prone to runaway. Even Kōga Asaji couldn't hold it.
But if they unseal and use the Dragon King to recast the grid, spirit magic revives—and the stronger magic gets, the stronger ninja arts become.
That's breaking the class ceiling for good.
Then Oniwa/Kōga wouldn't be cannon-fodder or vassals—they'd hold their own fate.
They bet—and lost everything at the end…
No, they never had a winnable line.
A-Qi finished wiring a power strip. "Boss, do we use the shredder to wipe her file?"
Li Pan hesitated.
"Looking like that, a rollback won't save her. But she's still our colleague. Any way to bring an out-of-control ninja back from demonization? One last try."
Ashiya's paper men flashed to cinders—his blue/red ogres had died on approach.
"No way. Too many demons fused. Besides the Great Tengu, I saw Bishamonten and Hachiman. Looks like Kōga sent all their jinchūriki.
"Best end her early—better we do it than let the monster wake the Dragon King and turn Night City to waste."
Yamazaki wasn't convinced.
"Does a wipe even work? The cabinet can't reset demon power.
"And so far, the monster hasn't attacked the city. Maybe Miss Shiranui hasn't fully lost it.
"With the Grail, a leyline, and a Dragon King below—if wipe fails and she fully berserks, then what?"
Ashiya thought.
"Ordinary bodies can't bear that many demons—they'd collapse. She's standing because of the Grail.
"Which raises… what is the Grail, really?"
Li Pan frowned.
"Wait—you don't know? Ashiya doesn't have records?"
Ashiya grimaced.
"Boss, it's not onmyō tech. I already self-studied enough; I can't know everything. I was hoping you would tell me."
Li Pan was mostly guessing too.
"Uh… I only know it can quell blood-hunger in vampires, purify rainwater, and rejuvenate people—pretty versatile…"
Yamazaki explained,
"It's a monster that grants wishes to whoever drinks what it holds. I think Miss Shiranui's kept going under fire because of the Grail.
"So either way, we need to recover the Grail first—only then can we handle the monster."
Li Pan and Ashiya stared at him.
Yamazaki spread his hands.
"Once the bid passed, the company faxed the Grail file. Didn't you read it? Miss Shiranui surely did…"
A-Qi handed the document over.
"Here, boss. When it arrived, you were out cold—and Ashiya-kun wasn't here."
Li Pan skimmed; Ashiya leaned in.
"Holy Grail / Wishing Cup." As Yamazaki said, it literally realizes the drinker's inner wish. It isn't about what liquid is inside; it's what the drinker subconsciously longs for while drinking.
In theory it can be a booster for power, a panacea for curses/plagues, an enhancer for intellect/strength, a youth elixir, a full heal—any "holy water" you can wish into being.
And yes, if your lamb soup tastes like acid rain and you want pure water to rinse, that works too…
Li Pan nodded. "She wants to revive the Kōga ninjas. So a raise-the-dead draught should be doable, right?"
Yamazaki shook his head.
"No. The temp-hand tests say only the drinker's own wish works; forcing it on others fails.
"Corp tried corpses already—no effect.
"My guess: it's akin to autosuggestion as a placebo—except the 'comfort' and 'expectation' come true."
"Then why is she still struggling?" Li Pan muttered. "If she read the brief before stealing it, she should know it can't resurrect the dead."
Ashiya rubbed his chin.
"I see it. She wants to restore the dead first—then have them use the Grail to restore themselves."
Yamazaki gaped.
"What!? Is that even possible? The cabinet can't roll back the dead."
Ashiya lifted a hand and called another fireball—this one basketball-sized.
"Spirit magic can. They have resurrection, and true summoning/binding of the dead—not onmyō puppets, the person themselves.
"But it's ancient, very high art, needing great mastery and dense mana. Without fully re-igniting the grid: impossible."
Li Pan's eyes lit; he recalled the grimoires and Solomon coins his avatar had stashed in the brother's fridge and nodded.
"Right—what tech can't do, magic might."
Yamazaki's face cracked—what kind of setting am I living in?
".18": "Hey, throw another ball and I'm flattening you!"
Ashiya shrugged and dispersed the flame.
The talk gave Li Pan a plan.
"So 0791035 is trying to use the Grail to restore the ancient grid and cast resurrection for her comrades.
"Even aside from waking the Dragon King, the Committee won't allow Legion-class magic on the surface.
"Forget earth-dragon; the Purge Protocol alone will wipe us. So we must seize the Grail, fast—"
".18" cut in, "Hate to interrupt, but you really have to hurry."
She projected Earth-0791's near-orbit.
Spysat feed: pinprick fireflies of gold appeared from nowhere, gathering in the dark.
They clumped, dimmed—and a regular octahedron popped into being from vacuum.
Even TheM's dreadnought last time, a misshapen tetrahedron, still looked like a ship. This looked like a crystal: some faces mirror-dark, some pitch black, some transparent. Without .18's helper lines sketching edges, you'd think it was an eye trick.
Li Pan, Shigui, Ayato: "What is that?"
All eyes to A-Qi. A-Qi: "Don't look at me…"
".18": "TSC's IDS matches it to an eleven-dimensional warship's 3D projection.
"My sats are top-shelf commercial only—I can only see eight of its projected dimensions.
"Radar never reaches the hull—screened outside—so I can only rough its outline. Model and owner unknown."
Whoa… 11-D warship. Sounds sick…
Li Pan's inner hillbilly slipped. "What's that worth?"
".18": "No clue. Rumor says the latest ninth-grade high-D ships are purpose-built to purge Legion remnants.
"Some can collapse an entire stellar system into a black-hole seal—WARP500 can't escape.
"Boss, if you don't move, Earth—no, our solar system—gets flagged as Legion scum and purged!"
Li Pan sighed.
"What did the Legion stragglers do to deserve this… Fine. No time to chat. We move—take the Grail, then… wipe 0791035."
.
.
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⚠️ 30 CHAPTERS AHEAD — I'm Not a Cyberpsycho ⚠️
The system says: Kill.Mercs obey. Corporates obey. Monsters obey.One man didn't.
🧠💀 "I'm not a cyberpsycho. I just think... differently."
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