Cold, despair.
Like falling into an ice cave with no one around on a winter night.
Gotō Hitori's eyes widened in disbelief. Tears, which she thought had dried up, uncooperatively filled her eyes and streamed down her cheeks.
Impossible... This is all a dream... Hurry! Wake up quickly! This illogical nightmare!
How could her family and she just be on a trip? There are many such villages around Tokyo. Why would monsters suddenly appear, and why was calling the police useless?
At least until just now, she had only been afraid.
Because even though something had happened, she had already called the police. As long as she called the police and stalled for time, everything would be fine. That was a ray of light in the darkness, and the psychological bottom line that allowed ordinary people to live so peacefully in the world.
But when she heard the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department tell the people here that someone had called the police, that light shattered. In the deep sea, there was no longer a trace of light, only heavy pressure, a sense of suffocation, and unknown giant creatures swimming around.
Like a drowning person who finds their last rope disintegrating, Gotō Hitori incessantly cried out for non-existent hope, shaking her head, her eyes rolling as if she were about to faint, trying to deny everything happening before her.
However, at that moment, the sensation on her body pulled her back to reality from her crumbling mental state.
It was the large hand that had been covering her mouth, making her somewhat uncomfortable, that had been removed.
Keli disdainfully wiped his hand, which was wet with what he didn't know was sweat or tears, on her pink tracksuit.
He then stood up, pulled out a dagger from his Pregnant, and walked straight out under Gotō Hitori's terrified gaze.
"Who are you?!"
As Keli walked out from behind the Buddha statue, an interrogation echoed in the main hall, followed immediately by a scream.
Then there was a sound of striking and Keli's voice asking questions.
Gotō Hitori was so nervous that she completely failed to hear what was said.
Gotō Hitori didn't even know how she managed to move; she had always been afraid to speak to strangers, let alone in a situation like this.
At this moment, she didn't even know what was happening outside.
But the extreme fear demanded that she do something, and her reason was forcing her to understand the current situation.
So, Gotō Hitori also poked her head out from behind the Buddha statue.
Under the night sky, the candlelight danced with the breeze, and its flickering light allowed Gotō Hitori to see clearly: dazzling red splattered onto the sacred golden statue.
And the man wearing a mask, who had given her a fake name earlier that made her laugh, was holding a dripping human head in his hand and placing it on the offering plate where fruits had been.
The smell of blood and the shock of the scene twisted a nerve in Gotō Hitori's brain until it frayed.
The dim firelight struck the cheap, black mask, revealing the matte finish of artificial leather, and brighter than the light were his eyes, reflecting firelight and blood, filled with what seemed like anger or some other emotion.
Ignoring the red patterns staining his new clothes, Keli held the dagger, turned, and walked out of the hall.
"You... what are you going to do?"
Just as she didn't know how she came out from behind the Buddha statue, Gotō Hitori didn't know how she managed to ask that question.
But at this moment, the worry for her family and the feeling of helplessness filled Gotō Hitori's heart; that sense of disarray was confusing, yet it made her cling desperately to one thought in her mind and put it into action.
Keli turned to look at her, shook his head, and gave her a brief utterance.
"Kill!" 4
Hesitating for a moment, realizing that if those two monks returned, her best outcome might be starving to death, Gotō Hitori summoned the greatest strength of her life and rushed out on legs so frightened they felt like they could collapse at any moment.
Meanwhile, at the inn.
Sato Kazuma had been searching everywhere since a moment ago; he heard someone come upstairs and quickly insert a key, attempting to open the adjacent room, so he immediately found something to forcefully insert into the keyhole to prevent it from being opened.
At the same time, feeling that something was wrong, Kazuma began to rummage through drawers and cabinets, looking for any weapons for self-defense.
Kazuma also smelled a strong fragrance, as if telling him how many people were outside the door, and heard violent banging on the door and a man's angry shouts.
"Bastards! What do you want?! I've already called the police, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department will be here soon! I've also recorded a video and posted it online! If you don't want to go to jail, don't move!"
"Hmph! Call the police? The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department is full of our people, you're not going anywhere!"
But this small inn had nothing but two cans of shoe polish, disposable toothpaste and toothbrushes, emergency matches and charging cables, and a barely usable broom handle.
So Kazuma immediately opened the window, confirmed that the attackers seemed to be coming from the front door, and prepared to jump out the window to leave.
Just then, the woman next door's cries came again, along with the man's groans of pain from forcefully holding the door shut.
"Bastards! I won't let you hurt my family!"
"Tsk! Why is an ordinary office worker uncle so persistent?"
Kazuma muttered quietly, but he lowered his foot that was already on the windowsill.
Kazuma's rationality had already told him the escape route, but his heart made him conceive another crazy idea.
"Damn it!"
Why was he such a rotten person who was afraid of pain, afraid of hardship, and lustful, yet completely unable to stand by and do nothing when a little girl was about to be hit by a car?
In the adjacent room, Goto Naoki desperately held the door shut, his eyes splitting with rage as he listened to his wife Michiyo's cries.
But even so, he knew that he and the folding fan breaking the door wouldn't hold out much longer; the other side seemed to have sent someone to find tools like a hammer.
He could only hope his eldest daughter was safe. Thinking about it, as a man, he also felt like crying. Who knew what painful and sordid things would happen if he, his daughter, and his wife fell into the hands of these people.
Just then, a young man's shout suddenly came through.
"Uncle next door! Watch for your chance and take your family and run!"
"Huh?"
The next moment after that voice came out, the sound of the door opening came from next door, and the people outside also seemed to let out frightened gasps and screams.
"Ahhh! Don't come over!"
At the same time, Goto Naoki also felt the force on the door lighten. Although he suspected this might be a trick by the other side to get him to open the door, considering that dragging it out would also lead to ruin, and he couldn't jump out the window with his still-unconscious youngest daughter, he opened the door, gambling on one last hope.
What met his eyes was... fire!
Something burning with raging flames was desperately driving those people away in the lobby.
"Go!"
Picking up his daughter, Goto Naoki called his wife, and the two of them grabbed a wrench they had found earlier. Ignoring his valuables still in the cabinet, Goto Naoki charged out first.
Meanwhile, downstairs, feeling the familiar pain of his body being burned by flames, Kazuma let out a strange cry, but as he cried out, he used his body, which felt stronger than his old self, to pounce on those guys. 3
He poured shoe polish on the quilt, then lit the quilt with matches, and then draped the burning quilt over himself!
A grinning Sato Kazuma, his head bleeding profusely from being struck by a flying iron clamp, but it didn't stop his actions.
He poured cooking oil, which he found only after reaching downstairs, in front of the lobby door, letting the tables, chairs, meditation cushions, and tatami mats burn with raging flames, just like his body. Finally, he blocked the doorway, and was struck directly in the forehead by a cleaver.
Sato Kazuma has died, awaiting resurrection...
Goto Naoki held his daughter, unleashing the last of his body's functions. Thinking of the burning figure he had just seen, he felt a mix of emotions, but at this moment, there was no time to think so much; he had to rush back to his car immediately.
Fortunately, the place where he parked was not far, and he immediately got in with his wife and daughter.
It was only when he fully pressed the accelerator that a sense of terror appeared in his heart.
The car's tires were locked!
Even though the engine was working at full capacity, this only caused the car, with the lock, to break the plastic of the car's outer shell and crawl forward a short distance.
And more people were already surrounding them from afar.
"It's over..."
Goto Naoki despondently took his hands off the steering wheel, looking at his equally pale-faced wife and his youngest daughter in his wife's arms.
But at that moment, two beams of high beams came with a long howl.
"Wayyyyy!"
A cargo truck, with incredibly violent momentum, was chasing those people.
Goto Naoki then realized that those people did not seem to be looking for him; they were just being run over by that truck and scattering everywhere!