Not far in front of Su Yuzu, a pair of inhuman, dark golden vertical pupils slowly opened.
Far more brilliant, far more radiant than the eyes of any other Aberrant Su Yuzu had ever seen.
The dark golden vertical pupils spilled light through the darkness like molten gold, and at the corners of the woman's eyes that light lifted and drifted, like burning flame. Like some ancient dragon opening its eyes in the dark.
Those eyes were brimming with amusement.
And beneath the amusement lay a majesty, a sheer weight of presence, so terrible that Su Yuzu felt the world itself freeze over.
It was no illusion—
The darkness and the terror inside her dorm room had thickened into something almost physical, and it had closed around Su Yuzu completely.
That near-solid darkness, that terror — she had brushed against something like it before. A domain.
An erosion domain.
And more than that — an erosion domain unfolded by a "Throne."
The woman who had appeared out of nowhere inside her own dorm room was a "Throne."
A "Throne" far more powerful than Kirishika or the "Seat of Evil."
Su Yuzu had already half-guessed who she was.
An incomplete "Seat of Evil" had been a Sixth Sequence horror all on its own. Which meant—
Something more terrifying than the Sixth Sequence "Seat of Evil," something still roaming this land— there seemed to be only one such person left.
Her own Senior. Her Senpai.
Once the strongest Valkyrie of Imperial Capital University, once hailed as the hope of The Empire.
And then she fell, contaminated an entire town in a single instant, and became, with terrifying speed, the most dreadful and most impossible-to-subjugate Aberrant in all recorded history—
"The Abyss of Eternal Smiles."
Kujou Iruka.
Once, a rule-type ability user whose power went by the name "Arrow of Sure Hit."
Su Yuzu had never once imagined that Kujou Iruka would turn up here. That she would turn up inside Keigunen Private Academy.
In the game, Kujou Iruka's preparations to invade the Tokyo metropolitan area had been impossible to miss.
She bore the title "The Abyss of Eternal Smiles" for one reason: of every known Aberrant, only Kujou Iruka's erosion domain had never once been withdrawn since the day it was first unfolded.
That pitch-black erosion domain wandered the land like a natural disaster.
To animals and forests it was almost entirely harmless.
To human beings it was a forbidden domain, an apocalypse on the move.
Satellite cloud imaging could even pick out the erosion domain Kujou Iruka had unfolded, and chart her path across the map, in perfect detail.
So whenever Kujou Iruka drifted toward a town, the Assault Department would immediately mobilize personnel to help evacuate the local residents.
What else was there to do?
Throw lives away?
Back then, the Saintess of the "Holy Royal Court," Saint Michael, gave up her own life and still only managed to hold Kujou Iruka outside the Tokyo metropolitan area.
Even so, the Tokyo metropolitan area lost an enormous amount of land.
Chiba, where Su Yuzu had run a mission alongside Kujou Katora not long ago, had once been densely populated.
All of that changed the moment Kujou Iruka set out to attack the Tokyo metropolitan area.
It had been the main battlefield of the final clash between Kujou Iruka and Saint Michael.
The land there was eaten through by Calamity Aura. Trees and vines grew wild and unchecked; animals of every kind, and Walking Husks, spread across it.
Apart from a scattered handful of towns, only a few Laboratories were still stationed out there.
She was the disaster itself!
She was the Abyss itself!
In the game, the sign that the World Boss interception battle was about to begin came when Kujou Iruka's erosion domain abruptly abandoned its aimless wandering.
And drove straight at the Tokyo metropolitan area.
Su Yuzu had assumed it would go the same way here.
What she had never dreamed of was that Kujou Iruka would slip into the Tokyo metropolitan area without a sound — into Keigunen Private Academy, into her own dorm room — without a single alarm going off anywhere.
Think it through, though, and it made perfect sense.
In the game, the reason Kujou Iruka had led an army straight into the Tokyo metropolitan area was Saint Michael's lingering radiant power.
That power, born of [Word of Command: Light], bound even Kujou Iruka with a force nothing else could match.
Which was why, for such a long stretch of years, Kujou Iruka had put the Tokyo metropolitan area out of her mind and wandered the land, apparently without any purpose at all.
Until—
Until something happened to Kujou Katora.
The game's side quest titled [The Girl with the Broken Song], and the "Broken Music Box" that belonged to Kujou Katora, together laid out exactly what had happened back then at the Laboratory on the shore of Lake Kasumigaura.
Without the miracle Su Yuzu had made—
The Fourth Action Division would have been all but annihilated on the shore of Lake Kasumigaura.
Hayabusa might still have managed, at the final crucial moment, to displace Kujou Katora out of there.
But Kujou Katora had always stood one step from the Abyss. What she would have done, with no Su Yuzu in the picture, on the day her only… her most important person died — that much was obvious enough.
Shaking… she would have gone back to the shore of Lake Kasumigaura.
Raised the gravestones one by one, and buried the music box — the last thing in the world still tethering her — there by the water.
And then Kujou Katora would have said her goodbyes to the girl she used to be, and to this world.
After that—
Kujou Iruka's army marched.
Even walking headlong into Saint Michael's radiant power, Kujou Iruka would have trampled and ground this city that sickened her flat into the dirt.
And now—
The Tokyo metropolitan area had already lost the shelter of Saint Michael's radiant power.
Kujou Iruka could walk in and out of it like walking through empty country.
And more than that—
Keigunen Private Academy, Imperial Capital University — she knew them both intimately.
For all Su Yuzu knew, the woman had been watching her for days already.
That nearly solid darkness set off raw, instinctive panic through Su Yuzu's body.
She was still caught in the middle of it — one hand braced on the wall, one shoe half kicked off. She forced her chin up, and her shoulders and arms trembled uncontrollably.
The beast in her chest crouched low, waiting for its moment.
Waiting, it seemed, for Su Yuzu to fall into that absolute dark.
The hand she had braced against the wall had already found the room's light switch.
Even though she knew perfectly well that in the face of Kujou Iruka's erosion domain an ordinary lamp would accomplish nothing.
Choking on the air—
Su Yuzu heard the soft friction of skin, the sound of a girl rising to her feet.
She stared into those dark golden vertical pupils and their swaying light.
She could almost see it—
Kujou Iruka seated in her chair, legs crossed, chin propped against one hand, sitting the way a queen sits.
Then lowering her left leg without hurry and standing.
Closing in on her, one step at a time.
Click. Click.
The sound of high heels on the floorboards came down straight onto Su Yuzu's heartstrings.
The woman's hand closed around Su Yuzu's wrist.
Exactly the way Su Yuzu had pulled all those girls back from the Edge of Aberration, over and over again.
Like a serpent flicking out its tongue, Kujou Iruka drew upward from Su Yuzu's chest, inch by inch, to her face.
She was tasting Su Yuzu.
A cool, heady sweetness rushed in against her senses.
"Hello there."
"Su Yuzu."
____
________________________________________
💖 Gift for Everyone: Once we hit 50 Powerstones, I'll release +1 bonus chapter to warm your hearts.
🚀 Community Reward: If we reach 20 supporting members, we'll have a +5 chapter marathon across all stories! The romance won't stop.
👻 Come to our secret corner: Search for GirlsLove on (P). You know that's where the magic happens... 😉