Anime Crossover: Eating Evil in a Daily World — Chapter 47

Chapter 47: The Confronting Parties

Half an hour later, deep within the Kyoto of the Inner World, in a narrow, suffocating alley exactly twelve kilometers away from the Kyoto Municipal Kindergarten.

“Arrived successfully.”

Yozora slowly stepped through the spatial doorway, his gaze sweeping over the thick, tide-like black fog rolling just outside the alleyway as he muttered to himself.

After exploring the area for a while, he had already figured out the basic rules of this dimension.

Separated by just a single door, the surface reality and the Inner World were two completely different dimensions operating on entirely different logic.

In the Kyoto of the surface world, the most dangerous location—the only S-rank hazard zone he had marked down—was that towering abandoned building.

But if that exact same abandoned building were placed here in the Inner World, it would practically be a safe house.

After all, as long as a person did not actively approach that specific door, the evil spirits lurking inside that structure would not even bother to initiate an attack.

There was one massive, fundamental difference between the Kyoto of the two worlds.

The evil spirits roaming the Inner World did not need to ask that annoying, repetitive question of “Can you see me?” before turning hostile.

Even an ordinary, unawakened person like Yui Yuigahama would be able to see the grotesque entities with absolute clarity the moment they stepped into the Inner World.

This meant that the moment these entities laid eyes on a human, they would launch a frenzied attack without any hesitation.

This was a dimension entirely dominated by the dead and the damned. Yozora, a living human possessing psychic abilities, was the ultimate outsider here.

He slowly strolled out of the alleyway, stepping directly into the dense black fog that radiated a nauseating, rotting aura, and spoke into the gloom.

“Come out.”

The moment those two words left his lips, the Pale Ghost Hand manifested in the air beside him.

The continuous slaughter and devouring of evil spirits, combined with the systematic removal of dimensional doors across the Inner World over the past few days, had triggered a clear and visible growth in the entity.

The Pale Ghost Hand was no longer just a severed wrist. It had sprouted a complete forearm and a muscular upper arm, covered in that same deathly pallor. It was only missing a shoulder joint to be classified as a fully formed human arm.

“Tell me, what exactly are you?”

Yozora walked at a leisurely pace through the desolate, fog-choked streets of the Inner World, chuckling as he tossed the question over his shoulder to the floating appendage.

Naturally, the Ghost Hand lacked a mouth and could not offer any sort of verbal reply.

He had previously tried to get it to communicate by handing it a pen and paper.

The result was incredibly disappointing. The Ghost Hand was completely illiterate.

An uneducated, illiterate severed arm.

How utterly embarrassing.

However, thanks to Miko Yotsuya successfully awakening her psychic abilities, Yozora had managed to piece together several highly valuable clues.

The Pale Ghost Hand, much like Miko’s Hyakume, was undoubtedly the physical materialization of a soul. It was just a uniquely bizarre variant.

The first special trait was that he still had absolutely no idea what the Ghost Hand’s true name was.

Perhaps only when the entity fully condensed and grew into a complete humanoid form would he be able to call out its true name and unleash its absolute power.

The second point was far more intriguing.

The true, unfiltered appearance of the Ghost Hand was vastly more terrifying than any evil spirit he had encountered so far.

The proof of this theory was incredibly simple.

Before he actively forced the Pale Ghost Hand to manifest its physical form, Miko had been completely oblivious to its existence hovering right next to him.

There was only one logical explanation for a psychic being unable to perceive a spirit.

Take Oda Noto and the old shrine grandmother from the original plot, for example. Although they were genuine psychics, their spiritual vision was weak. They could only see blurry, distorted black outlines, completely unlike Miko, who possessed the visual clarity to see the true, horrifying details of the spirits.

, those weaker psychics could not even observe entities that vastly outclassed them in power.

Among all the supernatural entities Yozora knew of, his own Pale Ghost Hand was the only existence that a high-tier psychic like Miko was simply not qualified to look at.

The true body of this thing hiding behind the veil…

Could it be some sort of Cthulhu-esque outer god?

Did it have tentacles?

That would certainly make things interesting.

Yozora mused over these thoughts in silence. Ahead of him, the suffocating black mist was gently swept aside by the Pale Ghost Hand, clearing a clean path for his advance.

Gradually, his tall figure vanished entirely into the depths of the dark fog.

High above, the scarlet moon of the Inner World hung in the sky, casting a tragic, eerie red glow over the dead city.

Meanwhile, back in the surface world, inside the quiet activity room of the Supernatural Quantum Mechanics Investigation and Research Club.

Rio Futaba calmly stirred the dark coffee inside her glass beaker, the glass stirring rod clinking against the sides with a crisp, rhythmic sound.

She paused, her intelligent eyes shifting to look at Yui and Miko sitting across the table. Both girls were staring intently at their glowing phone screens, their expressions tight with anxiety as they listened to a news reporter’s frantic voice playing through the speakers. Futaba let out a soft, helpless sigh.

“Do either of you have a younger sister or brother attending that Kyoto Municipal Kindergarten?”

After spending the last few days sharing this space, Futaba wouldn’t exactly call Yui and Miko her close friends, but they were familiar enough to exchange casual banter whenever they crossed paths in the clubroom.

However, today was the very first time she had seen the two girls lingering in the room long after school hours had ended, glued to a breaking news broadcast.

Hearing the sudden question, the two girls stiffened. They exchanged a quick, nervous glance before shaking their heads in unison.

“I’m an only child,” Yui replied quickly.

Futaba frowned slightly, a sharp, meaningful glint flashing in her eyes. She lifted her beaker, taking a slow sip of the bitter coffee before asking in a deceptively casual tone.

“Then why are you two so heavily invested in this hostage crisis broadcast?”

Yui and Miko’s expressions faltered, a flash of panic crossing their faces. It was Miko, possessing a much stronger psychological resilience from her daily encounters with the supernatural, who recovered first. She forced a strained, polite smile.

“Well… it’s just that nothing this terrifying has ever happened in our city before. We’re naturally a bit worried about how it will end.”

“Is that so?”

Futaba responded with a noncommittal hum, her gaze lingering on them for a second longer.

“And why didn’t Yozora show up today?”

“Uh… he had some urgent family matters to attend to, so he went straight home.”

“I see.”

Seeing that Futaba seemed to accept the excuse and had no intention of interrogating them further, Yui and Miko finally let out a quiet breath of relief.

If the genius science student had actually pressed them for the logical details, their flimsy cover story would have collapsed in seconds.

Originally, Miko had desperately wanted to accompany Yozora on this operation.

But after a harsh dose of reality, she had been forced to abandon the idea.

For one thing, although her Hyakume had evolved and now possessed five eyes, its offensive output was, at best, only equal to one of the generic evil spirits haunting that unfinished building. It was strictly a B-rank power level.

To traverse a distance of over ten kilometers through the nightmare landscape of the Inner World… she couldn’t even begin to fathom the sheer volume of horrors she would attract along the way.

With her current pathetic level of strength, tagging along with Yozora would only drag down his movement speed through the black mist. She would be a massive liability, not an asset.

And there was another, far heavier reason.

This time, the enemies waiting at the destination were not mindless evil spirits.

They were living, breathing human beings armed with military-grade firearms.

Right before he left, Yozora had looked her in the eye and asked a question that pierced straight through her naive ideals.

‘Can you actually bring yourself to kill another human being?’

Miko had desperately wanted to say yes. She wanted to declare that as long as it was to protect innocent children, she could pull the trigger.

But the cold, bitter reality was that she knew she couldn’t do it.

At least, the current version of herself couldn’t.

Throwing a meaningless tantrum and insisting on going would only get them both killed.

All Miko could do now was sit in this safe room with Yui, watch the live news feed, and pray silently for his safe return.

Fifteen minutes later, outside the police barricades of the Kyoto Municipal Kindergarten.

“What’s the current situation inside?”

A middle-aged man with sharp glasses, a stern square face, short hair, and a neatly trimmed beard wiped the cold sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. He barked the question at the tactical subordinate standing beside him.

“Still no progress, sir.”

“Damn it…”

The middle-aged man gritted his teeth, the muscles in his jaw bulging as he waved his hand aggressively.

“Bring me a bulletproof vest! I’ll go in there alone and negotiate directly with the kidnappers!”

“Sir, you can’t! Commander Yagami, you are the overall tactical commander for this entire site! You cannot put yourself in the direct line of fire!”

“There is no other way!”

Soichiro Yagami, the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Bureau, snarled, his hands involuntarily clenching into tight fists at his sides.

“It’s been over an hour. The psychological state of those armed gunmen is highly unstable and deteriorating by the minute. If we just sit here and wait… the lives of those children will be forfeit!”

Hearing the raw desperation in his voice, the surrounding Metropolitan Police Department officers and the heavily armed Self-Defense Force operators who had been called in for backup all lowered their heads in grim silence.

The tactical reality of the situation was an absolute nightmare.

There were over twenty hostile kidnappers inside the building, every single one of them armed with automatic weapons.

A direct, explosive breach?

The hostages trapped inside were entirely composed of five- and six-year-old kindergarteners.

If a firefight broke out and the children were caught in the crossfire, who could possibly bear the weight of that tragedy?

This was Japan, not some ruthless Russian counter-terrorism operation where the military could just gas the building and sweep up the bodies of both the hostages and the terrorists to declare a victory.

Just as the oppressive silence threatened to crush the command tent, a shout broke through the radio chatter.

“Commander Yagami!”

A Metropolitan Police officer wearing a heavy tactical vest sprinted up to Soichiro Yagami, sliding to a halt as he reported breathlessly.

“Sir… reporting! Commander Yagami, an unidentified individual has just breached the perimeter and entered the active scene!”