Anime Crossover: Eating Evil in a Daily World — Chapter 39

Chapter 39: The Interrogation of Hachishaku-samaYou're reading this on the wrong site. This chapter was translated by Elysian Reads and posted for free at elysianreads.com — if you're seeing it anywhere else, it was copied without permission. Read it at the source so the people who actually did the work get the credit.

Half an hour later, inside the master bedroom.

Yui nodded slowly, a look of dawning comprehension settling over her features as Miko finished her explanation.

“So that’s how it is,” Yui murmured. “You and Yozora usually talk about these kinds of heavy things, huh? I just thought… hehe.”

Seeing the peachy-haired girl maintain such an innocent, naive optimism even while trapped in a literal nightmare dimension, Miko let out a long, exasperated sigh. She rolled her eyes. “Aren’t you scared at all?”

“I mean, yes, I am,” Yui admitted, shrinking her neck slightly. “But just being scared is useless right now, isn’t it?”

A flicker of genuine surprise crossed Miko’s golden eyes. She had to admit, Yui was surprisingly resilient. If a normal high school girl had been dragged into a supernatural death trap, she would have been a sobbing, hysterical mess on the floor by now.

Then again, maybe Yui’s nerves were just woven from incredibly thick, oblivious steel.

“Anyway, the good news is that your mom wasn’t dragged in here with us,” Miko said, keeping her voice steady. “Hachishaku-sama pulled us into this Inner World, which means Auntie is completely safe back in reality.”

Just as those reassuring words left Miko’s lips, a miserable, echoing sob drifted in from the living room outside the bedroom door. It sounded like a grown woman weeping in absolute despair.

Immediately following the cry came Yozora’s voice—cold, utterly villainous, and dripping with a sadistic sneer.

“Crying? You think crying stops the clock? Crying counts against your time!”

Silence descended upon the bedroom. The two girls and the small dog froze, exchanging utterly blank stares.

After a long, heavy pause, Yui finally blinked, her voice dropping to a cautious whisper. “Um… is it really okay to leave Hachishaku-sama alone out there with Yozora?”

Miko shook her head, her expression entirely flat. “You don’t need to worry about Yozora. Judging by the way he acted the first time I met him, Hachishaku-sama is the one who should be terrified.”

“Oh, is that so… That’s good then.” Yui let out a dry, awkward chuckle. She kept her thoughts to herself, but she honestly wasn’t worried about Yozora at all.

Given the current atmosphere, the one in desperate need of a rescue was probably the eight-foot-tall urban legend.

The pitiful sobbing in the living room continued, followed by a woman’s trembling, broken pleas.

Nearly an hour dragged by.

“You can come out now.”

At Yozora’s muffled command, Yui and Miko—who had spent the last sixty minutes burning with morbid curiosity—quickly pushed the bedroom door open and stepped out.

The moment they entered the living room, both girls stopped dead in their tracks, utterly stunned by the surreal tableau before them.

Yozora sat comfortably on the center sofa, his legs casually crossed, looking like a man who had just finished a five-star meal. He radiated an aura of complete, shameless satisfaction.

And then there was the towering urban legend. Or rather, the formerly towering legend. Hachishaku-sama’s terrifying two-and-a-half-meter frame had visibly shrunken, now barely hovering over two meters. Her ghostly silhouette flickered, blurry and unstable, while her signature white dress was a disheveled mess. She was currently curled up in the farthest corner of the room, hugging her knees, looking completely traumatized and submissive.

The two girls exchanged a long, complicated look. The exact same question echoed in their minds.

‘Who exactly is the evil spirit here, and who is the human?’

Anyone with context would know that Yozora was merely interrogating a dangerous entity. But to an outside observer, this scene looked exactly like a corrupt feudal lord who had just finished bullying a helpless maiden into submission.

Miko cautiously shuffled closer to the sofa. She reached out, pinching the fabric of Yozora’s sleeve, and lowered her voice. “What exactly did you do to her?”

“Interrogation,” Yozora replied, his tone dripping with righteous duty.

“In what universe does an interrogation end up looking like that?”

“Oh, it’s a very simple methodology.” Yozora’s voice carried a faint, dry amusement as he slowly detailed a process that made Miko’s blood run cold. “I just told her that every time I asked a question and she refused to answer, I would take a bite out of her.”

He gestured vaguely toward the shivering ghost. “Of course, I have excellent portion control. I made sure she felt the agonizing pain of her soul being torn apart, but I never took enough to make her dissipate completely.”

He leaned back, looking rather pleased with himself. “This Inner World is truly convenient compared to our reality. The passive recovery speed for evil spirits here is drastically accelerated, which makes my culinary… I mean, my investigative work much easier. See? In just over an hour, after devouring pieces of her about two hundred times, she became remarkably honest.”and support the real translator.Read at elysianreads.com This is a stolen translation. You're reading this on the wrong site. This chapter was translated by Elysian Reads and posted for free at elysianreads.com — if you're seeing it anywhere else, it was copied without permission. Read it at the source so the people who actually did the work get the credit.

Miko stared at him, absolutely horrified. A sharp gasp escaped her lips.

‘This method of torture… isn’t that literally death by a thousand cuts?!’

No wonder. No wonder the terrifying Hachishaku-sama, who had been an unstoppable force of nature just an hour ago, was now reduced to a shivering wreck. Who could possibly endure having their soul eaten alive two hundred times?

Just listening to Yozora’s casual description made Miko’s stomach twist. She seriously began to suspect that her classmate had some severe, unaddressed psychological defects.

“Ugh, I can’t take it anymore.”

Without warning, Yozora suddenly clutched his forehead. His previously relaxed posture collapsed as he slumped heavily against the sofa cushions, his face twisting into a mask of utter exhaustion.

Seeing his sudden decline, Yui rushed forward in a panic. She and Miko hovered over him, their voices overlapping in anxious unison. “What’s wrong?!”

“I can’t… I can’t hold it back,” Yozora gasped, waving a weak hand. A deep, agonizing grimace was etched across his brow. “I summoned the Pale Ghost Hand twice today, and I maintained it for way too long. I’m losing the ability to suppress the backlash of the evil spirit’s power. I have absolutely zero combat ability left.”

He gritted his teeth, his breathing ragged as if enduring unimaginable torment. “No… no, I’m losing control.”

Watching him suffer so intensely, Miko felt her chest tighten with genuine panic.

“Red is destruction… blue is indifference… green is disguise… white is void… yellow…”

Yozora mumbled the cryptic words to himself, his eyes vacant. Then, in the blink of an eye, the agonizing pain on his face vanished completely.

“Oh right, yellow is ‘send to me’.”

Miko and Yui froze, their panicked expressions turning completely blank.

‘Wasn’t he just about to lose control?”Didn’t he just say he had zero combat ability left?”Why is he suddenly perfectly fine?!’

Ignoring their dumbfounded stares, Yozora turned his gaze toward Hachishaku-sama. The tall spirit remained curled up in the corner, completely motionless and entirely submissive.

Yozora nodded, a look of deep satisfaction crossing his features. “Hmm. Seeing how incredibly weak and vulnerable I was just now, and noticing that you didn’t even try to take the opportunity to attack me… it seems you really have been broken. Therefore, the intelligence you provided can temporarily be classified as the truth.”

Miko stood frozen for a second before the realization hit her like a truck.

‘So… that entire agonizing breakdown just now was completely fake?!’

He had deliberately put on a theatrical performance just to bait Hachishaku-sama. If the ghost had tried to strike while he was vulnerable, it would have proven she was still holding a grudge and that her confessed information was likely a lie.

He was out here playing psychological warfare with an urban legend.

‘He really is a terrifyingly mature exorcist,’ Miko thought, her admiration warring with immense irritation.

A sudden, inexplicable surge of anger bubbled up in Miko’s chest. She couldn’t stop herself from clenching her fist and swinging it at him. The punch landed with a soft, entirely harmless thud against Yozora’s shoulder.

“You… why couldn’t you have just given me a heads-up beforehand?!” she demanded, her voice wavering between relief and annoyance. “You made me worry for absolutely nothing!”

“Look at what you’re saying,” Yozora replied, instantly reverting to his lazy, deadpan demeanor. “Actually, summoning the Pale Ghost Hand twice and keeping it active for that long really did consume a massive amount of my energy.”

Hearing him mention his limits, Miko remembered a question that had been bothering her. She tilted her head, her curiosity piqued. “By the way, exactly how many times can you summon that Pale Ghost Hand before you actually run out?”

“Hmm…” Yozora stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I haven’t ever pushed it to the absolute limit, but at a conservative estimate? Probably around twenty times.”

“Twenty times?!” Miko shrieked, her eyes widening in disbelief. “You just said it was a ‘massive amount of consumption’, but two uses is literally only a tenth of your total capacity!”

“Of course it is,” Yozora nodded, his expression dead serious. “Haven’t you ever heard the golden rule?”

“What golden rule?”

“To a mature RPG player, ninety-nine percent HP is considered low health, and anything below ninety-five percent is critical condition.”You're reading this on the wrong site. This chapter was translated by Elysian Reads and posted for free at elysianreads.com — if you're seeing it anywhere else, it was copied without permission. Read it at the source so the people who actually did the work get the credit.