“Hee hee hee… What a rare guest.”
The Human Spider’s voice was sharp and piercing.
She hung upside down in midair, her massive abdomen wriggling slightly as she spat out more sticky white threads.
Yuki Asahi stood on the ground covered in fungal hyphae and slime, ignoring the Human Spider.
He raised his head slightly, his golden eyes gleaming coldly in the darkness.
From the surrounding shadows, dozens of pairs of scarlet eyes lit up.
Those were the modified “failures”—still bearing human outlines but with the features of arthropods, drooling as they stared greedily at this intruder.
“Is this all you’ve got?” Yuki Asahi’s voice was flat.
“What?” The Human Spider was stunned for a second, then flew into a rage. “What a big mouth! Kids, tear him to shreds!”
A roar exploded instantly.
Above ground, the Management Department members on standby felt the tremor beneath their feet, but it lasted only a minute.
The once noisy underground space was now left with only heavy breathing and the sound of liquid dripping.
It was monster blood, dripping from Yuki Asahi’s fingers.
He stood in a sea of corpses and blood, his white shirt already dyed dark red.
His golden eyes showed no fluctuation as he coldly stared at the Human Spider still hanging in midair.
The Human Spider’s seductive human face was now twisted in terror.
“You… what kind of monster are you?!”
The Human Spider shrieked. Her abdomen suddenly shot out a huge white web, trying to trap this god of death, while her eight legs frantically scrambled to escape deeper.
Yuki Asahi reached out, grabbed the incoming web, and then—yanked hard!
The immense force transmitted along the silk. The fleeing Human Spider felt an irresistible pull.
“Aaaaah—!”
Her massive body was dragged back, slamming heavily into the ground, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Yuki Asahi walked up to her step by step, then stomped his foot on her face, which was still screaming in terror.
Crunch.
The sound of a broken jaw silenced the scream.
“Tell me, besides this place, how many more bases do you have? How many people?”
Yuki Asahi looked down at her, a dangerous gleam in his eyes. “Or rather… you rats, what exactly do you want to turn Tokyo into?”
“Mmgh… mmm…” The Human Spider struggled in agony, completely broken by the overwhelming power gap.
Just as Yuki Asahi was about to apply more pressure and shatter her psychological defenses completely…
His intuition screamed a warning in his mind again.
And this time, it was a hundred times more intense than at the wedding!
Not from the Human Spider beneath him, but from… all directions!
Yet the Emotional Control ability hadn’t detected any other emotions in the vicinity.
“Who?”
Yuki Asahi suddenly looked up, his body dodging backward in an instant.
Almost the moment he left his original position—
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Several energy beams of different colors precisely blasted the spot where he had been standing.
The hard concrete floor was instantly vaporized, along with the unlucky Human Spider, blown to dust.
Before the smoke cleared, dozens of figures emerged like phantoms from the depths of the dark tunnel, the ventilation pipes overhead, and even from the shadows themselves.
At least thirty people.
They wore uniform dark gray combat suits, featureless white masks on their faces, and emanated a presence far beyond those mutated Semi-Devourers.
This was… an army.
An army composed entirely of high-level Espers.
“Does the Sewer Home have this kind of trump card?”
Yuki Asahi’s heart sank, but he knew this wasn’t the time to think.
“Since you’re here, then die together.”
Without any further words, he pushed off with his legs, ready to charge again.
But this time, things were different.
The moment he started moving, the three mask-wearers at the front raised their hands simultaneously.
Gravity Field: Hundredfold.
Space Solidification.
Mental Shackles.
Thud!
Yuki Asahi felt as if a mountain had suddenly been dropped on his back.
His originally sprinting form instantly became sluggish.
The space around him seemed to turn into solidified amber, crushing his body from all sides.
Worse, a chill mental force drilled straight into his mind, trying to lock his consciousness.
“Get out!!” Yuki Asahi roared. His golden eyes seemed to burn with flames.
He forcibly endured the triple suppression, stomped forward one step, and punched.
Boom!
The air exploded. An invisible ability user who tried to get close was sent flying by the shockwave, his chest caved in.
More attacks followed.
Fire, ice, lightning, telekinetic blasts…
These thirty-odd Espers coordinated flawlessly, like a precise killing machine, methodically grinding down the trapped beast.
Yuki Asahi charged left and right, his wounds growing by the second.
“Damn it…” Yuki Asahi gasped for breath, holding the Sword of Severing Illusions, kneeling on one knee, blood dripping from his chin.
He looked up at the cold masked figures around him, a sense of helplessness welling up inside.
Just then, the crowd parted.
A man in a white robe, wearing a mask engraved with a golden cross pattern, walked out slowly.
He looked at the tottering Yuki Asahi, said nothing, and simply extended a finger toward Yuki Asahi’s forehead.
Yuki Asahi wanted to dodge, but his body was already locked tight by several binding abilities.
No light. No energy fluctuation.
But in that instant, Yuki Asahi felt… his connection to the world cut off.
Not a physical severance, but a “circuit break” at the level of consciousness.
Like a TV unplugged from its power source—a broken video resource halfway through a movie.
His vision plunged into darkness. His thoughts stalled.
Even the last trace of anger hadn’t had time to erupt before it faded into nothing.
Thump.
“Target captured.” The white-robed man withdrew his finger, and an English-accented voice came from beneath the mask.
“Take him away.”
……
A splitting headache.
That was Yuki Asahi’s first sensation upon waking up.
He struggled to open his eyes. Instead of the damp, dark sewer, he saw a glaring, sterile white.
White ceiling, white walls, white metal floor.
This was a completely sealed room, windowless, with only a heavy metal door.
He tried to sit up, only to find his hands and feet locked to a metal chair by some transparent shackles.
The energy inside him… was as still as dead water, completely unresponsive.
“Awake?”
A voice with a somewhat stiff Japanese accent sounded.
Yuki Asahi jerked his head up.
In front of him sat three people.
No masks. Their real faces were visible.
Sitting in the middle was a middle-aged Caucasian man with blond hair and blue eyes.
His gaze was deep as the ocean, wearing a well-tailored black suit with a golden badge pinned to his chest—the design was a sword piercing a crow with spread wings.
On the left was a young woman with red hair, playing with a dagger.
On the right was a burly, bald man.
Their features were clearly European.
“Who are you?”
Yuki Asahi’s voice was hoarse. His golden eyes quickly scanned the surroundings, searching for an escape route—but he soon grew disappointed.
This room was filled with a suppression field targeting Espers, and…
He subconsciously activated his ability—Emotion Perception.
Nothing.
In his perceptual field, the three people before him were like talking stones, emitting no emotional fluctuations at all.
Impossible! Any person with consciousness should have emotions!
“Surprised, Mr. Yuki?”
The middle-aged man seemed to see through his action, a graceful smile curling at the corner of his mouth.
He pointed to a small silver disc attached behind his ear, then to the same spot on the other two.
“‘Mental Barrier.’ This is a portable shielding device we developed specifically to deal with psychic-type Espers like you—especially to deal with you.”
“To deal with… me?”
“Allow me to introduce myself.”
The middle-aged man stood up and gave a slight bow, his manners impeccable yet sending a bone-chilling cold through the air. “We are from Europe.”
“Our name is—the Oath Society.”
“The Oath Society?”
Yuki Asahi quickly searched his memory for the name but came up empty.
“Of course you’ve never heard of it.” The red-haired woman sneered, stabbing her dagger into the table.
“We’re the undead. A band of avengers crawling back from hell.”
“What do you want?” Yuki Asahi asked calmly.
“What do we want?” The middle-aged man’s eyes suddenly turned sharp.
“What we want is simple.”
He walked up to Yuki Asahi, leaned down, and spoke slowly, word by word: “We want that woman’s head.”
“The woman known as the ‘Pale Gray Witch’—Jiang Jian Yue.”
Hearing that name, Yuki Asahi’s pupils sharply contracted.
“She’s already dead.” Yuki Asahi forced down his churning emotions and said, “She died in Central Africa two years ago.”
“Dead? Hahahaha!”
The bald man laughed as if he had heard the funniest joke in the world. “How could that demon die so easily? That was just a play she put on to escape the global hunt!”
“And if she were really dead, then who are the ‘Dark Crows’ that recently appeared in Japan?”
The middle-aged man stared into Yuki Asahi’s eyes. “The DRG’s Dark Crows are her personal guard. They only take orders from her. Since the Dark Crows have surfaced, that means… that witch has returned.”
Yuki Asahi fell silent.
Lies.
Indeed, the appearance of Koji Hattori and those people had completely shattered the lie that “the Pale Gray Witch is dead.”
“Do you know what that woman did in Europe?”
The middle-aged man’s voice grew low and trembling. “Everywhere she went, corpses littered the ground. My wife, my daughter… all died at her hands.”
“All of us in the Oath Society—from Europe and the Middle East—lost our families and friends to her. We swore on the ruins that we would hunt that witch to the ends of hell and tear her limb from limb!”
“So you kidnapped me to…”
“To lure her out.”
The middle-aged man straightened up, adjusted his collar, and resumed his elegant demeanor.
“The whole world knows that the only person that cold-blooded witch cares about is you—Yuki Asahi.”
“You are her weakness.”
“So, Mr. Yuki, we’d like to invite you to cooperate.”
The middle-aged man extended his hand.
“You must hate her too, don’t you? Hate her for dragging you into this whirlpool, hate her for killing so many people, hate her for becoming what she is now.”
“Help us. Just cooperate by sending a distress signal to lure her out. After we kill her, we’ll guarantee your safety.”
“It’s a righteous revenge, isn’t it?”
The room fell into dead silence.
Yuki Asahi lowered his head, his long hair hiding his expression.
Hate?
Of course he hated.
He hated her cruelty, hated her leaving without a word.
But…
Hand her over to these avengers?
Yuki Asahi closed his eyes, Jiang Jian Yue’s face flashing through his mind.
That girl who always thought she knew everything, who always tried to bear everything alone, and who was actually incredibly clumsy.
“What if I say… no?”
Yuki Asahi slowly raised his head, his golden eyes unwavering.
“I refuse.”
“I won’t deny her crimes. If she ever stands before me one day, I’ll kill her with my own hands to end all this.”
“But I won’t become a pawn in your game, nor will I use such despicable means to bait her.”
The middle-aged man smiled, clapped his hands, and turned to the red-haired woman beside him.
“See? I won my bet this time.”
The red-haired woman turned away in annoyance.
The middle-aged man walked toward the door, the red-haired woman and bald man following behind him.
“Whether you agree or not doesn’t really matter.”
He stopped at the door and glanced back. “You being here is enough.”
“Whether she truly cares about you or just sees you as a possession…”
“As long as she’s still alive, she’ll definitely come.”
Clang!
The heavy metal door slammed shut, sealing Yuki Asahi completely inside this white prison.