Chapter 396: Pale Hands
"Stelle—!!"
Before the Trailblazer could finish her sentence, March 7th's expression shifted into sheer panic. Abandoning her archery stance and completely ignoring the need to cover Eous's chain-exploding apparitions, the energetic pink-haired girl lunged forward. She clamped both hands tightly over Stelle's mouth, desperately cutting off the terrible, atmosphere-freezing joke before it could fully escape into the air. With a strained grunt, March dragged the wildly inappropriate girl backward by the collar.
Plastering on the most awkward, painfully polite smile she could muster, March hastily turned to Hoshimi Miyabi. The Section 6 chief stood there, her usually stoic expression tinged with mild confusion.
"I'm so sorry! So, so sorry!" March stammered, bowing her head repeatedly. "Section Chief Miyabi, please don't mind her! She... she was just fighting a bit too intensely just now! Her brain is probably a little... um... overloaded! Yeah, completely short-circuited! Let's just focus on the enemy first! Fighting! Yes, fighting is definitely the most important thing right now!"
Beneath March's iron grip, Stelle could only let out muffled, indignant "woo-woo" sounds. The tall girl waved her arms wildly, gesturing with frantic precision in a desperate attempt to convey: I'm not short-circuited, it really was a coincidence!
Miyabi's sharp gaze lingered between the struggling Stelle and the sweating March 7th. A faint flicker of doubt crossed her fox-like eyes, but she quickly dismissed it. Just as the archer said, their current priority was dealing with Bringer. Suppressing her rising questions, Miyabi gave a curt nod. She shifted her attention back to the center of the ruined battlefield, where the monstrous target radiated a suffocating, vile aura of pure resentment. Slowly, she rested her hand on the hilt of her katana.
However, for the creature standing in the epicenter of the destruction, Miyabi's arrival was akin to pouring a ladle of freezing water straight into a vat of boiling oil. No—it was more like tossing a lit match into a powder keg of shattered sanity.
Bringer, already driven into a deranged frenzy by his grievous injuries and his complete inability to break through their defenses, froze. The moment the name "Hoshimi Miyabi" reached his ears, his massive frame locked up as if struck by a paralyzing curse. His single, bloodshot eye twitched, catching sight of that familiar, ice-blue figure standing at the edge of his peripheral vision.
An instant later, a terrifying surge of malevolence erupted from his mutilated body. It manifested as tangible black flames, fueled by a toxic cocktail of extreme hatred, festering jealousy, deep-seated humiliation, and absolute madness. He whipped his grotesque head toward Miyabi, his glare burning with lethal intent. Ragged, wet breaths tore from his throat, echoing across the concrete like a broken iron bellows.
"Hoshimi... Mi... yabi!!!"
He squeezed the name out from the very depths of his corrupted soul, the syllables dripping with venom. New Eridu's rising star. The celebrated Hollow Hunter. The successor wielding the legendary blade 'Tailless'. The mere sight of her completely drowned whatever fragile remnants of sanity Bringer had left. In his blind rage, he completely ignored Eous's chain-exploding clones. He ignored Stelle's bat and March's arrows, despite them posing the most immediate threat to his crumbling physical form. In that moment, his entire world shrank down to a single, infuriating target: Miyabi.
"ROAR—!!!"
An utterly inhuman bellow tore from his jaws, shaking the debris around them. His remaining purple, giant hand swept out in a reckless, wide arc, violently swatting aside the detonating Bangboo apparitions. Dragging his mangled, leaking body across the shattered asphalt, he lunged forward, attempting to forcefully tear through the defensive line and pounce directly onto the newly arrived swordswoman.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Eous's explosive clones detonated right against his armored hide. Thanks to several successive stackings, the sheer concussive force of the blasts had become terrifyingly potent. Yet, the point-blank explosions only caused Bringer's massive frame to shudder. The shockwaves failed to halt his frenzied, suicidal charge.
Watching Bringer barrel forward in a state of reckless, hate-fueled delirium, Yanagi quickly evaluated the shifting battlefield. She glanced down at Eous, who was still diligently churning out self-destructing clones in a desperate bid to block the monster's path, and made a swift tactical judgment.
Turning her head, she called out, "Eous, thank you for your hard work! The explosive interception was highly effective! Please retreat to a safe area and rest; we will take over from here!"
In Yanagi's analytical view, Eous was ultimately just a Bangboo. Continuously launching such devastating, high-yield explosive skills had to be draining a massive amount of energy. If pushed too far, it could easily cause irreversible overload damage to the little machine's core. While she had no idea what esoteric methods the Proxies had used to grant their Bangboo such an absurd ability, allowing it to continue spamming explosions was a guaranteed recipe for mechanical failure.
However, Yanagi was entirely unaware of the truth. At this exact moment, Eous was practically overflowing with near-infinite energy, courtesy of the Holy Stone: Origin Core lodged safely within its chassis. The little Bangboo was thoroughly enjoying its shiny new skill, reveling in an unmatched sensation of absolute, destructive power. If anything, it actually wanted to detonate a few dozen more rounds just for the fun of it.
But before the mission, Wise had repeatedly drilled a specific instruction into its programming: Follow the commands of Section 6's Deputy Chief Yanagi during all Hollow operations.
Thus, despite feeling a distinct sense of lingering dissatisfaction, Eous obediently ceased condensing its explosive phantoms.
"Eh-nah~"
Pattering away with rapid, tiny steps, the Bangboo swiftly withdrew from the frontline danger zone, docilely retreating to the safety of the rear lines.
It took up a position right next to Paimon. The floating fairy was hovering nervously, keeping a close eye on the battle and remaining on high alert, ready to deploy Paimon Star for an emergency rescue at a moment's notice. Together, the two diminutive companions took on the crucial task of guarding the rear.
With Eous's barrage of explosions finally ceasing, the last frustrating obstacle in Bringer's path vanished.
He locked his frenzied gaze onto Hoshimi Miyabi. The shattered remnants of the crystallized armor clinging to his body groaned and creaked, pushed to their absolute limits by a suffocating, overwhelming infusion of Ether. The grotesque, gaping wound on his waist writhed violently, dark energy spilling from the lacerated flesh.
Completely ignoring the terrifying agony tearing through his side, Bringer raised his two massive, purple hands. He tightly gripped the hilt of his ten-meter-long demonic blade, his frenzied killing intent so thick it practically materialized into a physical pressure in the air.
He coiled his muscles, preparing to put his mad intentions into action and violently cleave through the defensive line.
But just as he prepared to strike—a sudden, horrifying change occurred.
An indescribable, invisible fluctuation slammed into the battlefield without a single warning. It carried an ancient, crushing coercion, accompanied by the chilling sensation of being coldly, clinically observed.
The very fabric of space around Bringer violently twisted. The air rippled outward like a calm pond disturbed by a heavy stone. Then, with a sickening tearing sound, several jagged, irregular fissures ripped open in the empty air.
The depths of these spatial tears were pitch-black and entirely devoid of light, seemingly acting as gateways to a dead, alien dimension. Lurking within that suffocating darkness, one could vaguely sense countless cold, merciless eyes quietly observing the physical world.
A second later, several massive, pale hands slowly extended from the void. They were distinctly different from the corrupted, purple limbs Bringer had summoned earlier.
These new appendages possessed a deathly, sickening pallor. Their skin was perfectly smooth, resembling polished bone rather than living flesh. But the most chilling detail lay in the center of their palms—a single, massive, indifferent eye was embedded in the flesh of each hand. The eyes were wide open, a strange, eerie light flickering deep within their slit-like pupils.
One of the largest pale hands drifted forward. Its movements appeared deceptively sluggish, yet it crossed the distance faster than a visual afterimage. Spreading its five long fingers wide, the eye in its palm coldly locked onto its target. With a single, inescapable grab, it clamped down violently onto the back of Bringer's neck and shoulder blades.
The sheer, absolute suppression of power was instantaneous. Bringer's furious forward momentum was halted dead in its tracks, as if he had slammed headfirst into an indestructible titanium wall. The crushing weight forced the behemoth straight down to his knees.
CRACK!
The impact of his knees shattering against the concrete sent a massive spiderweb of fissures racing across the ruined ground.
"Urgh...?!"
A ragged, desperate sound of struggle tore from Bringer's throat. The madness in his single eye intensified into sheer panic. The dense Ether surging through his veins flared fiercely, his muscles bulging as he desperately tried to break free from the sudden, overwhelming restraint.
But it was entirely futile. More giant, pale hands slithered out from the dark fissures, their movements carrying a terrifying, almost programmed indifference.
One giant hand clamped directly over his head, the eerie light from its palm-eye piercing through the gaps in its fingers to blind Bringer's frenzied gaze. Two more hands slammed down onto his struggling arms, pinning them immovably to his sides. The final two hands slammed into his torso from the left and the right, crushing inward with the unstoppable force of colliding mountains.
In the blink of an eye, Bringer was completely swallowed up. The pale, eye-embedded hands locked together, encasing the monstrous enemy in an airtight, faintly pulsating cocoon of bone-white flesh.
The sheer bizarre, eldritch nature of the scene shook everyone on the battlefield to their very core.
"Those hands... they're suppressing him?" March 7th slowly lowered her bow, her ice-blue eyes wide with absolute bewilderment. "Wait, aren't they supposed to be on the same side?"
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