Chapter 583: The Demon God Appears

Chapter 583: Chapter 583: The Demon God Appears

Skirt-Flipping Maniac: ? Kotonoha Katsura-chan? No way?

Saten Ruiko’s face was stupefied, her eyes brimming with astonishment. Even if that girl was precocious, this kind of man-and-woman business...

Machete Girl: Kotonoha Katsura is still just a child!

Katsura Kotonoha, for her part, clearly didn’t believe her little sister harbored any such strange notions about the group leader. After all, the two of them had never even met in person. At most they’d had a few conversations across the void, how could that possibly count as "designs" on anyone?

Doujin Artist: Oh yes, even more mentally mature than you, Kotonoha-chan. Don’t forget, Kotonoha-chan: you told us yourself that your little sister is always asking you for information about Anzen-san.

Machete Girl: That should just be curiosity, shouldn’t it?

Katsura Kotonoha froze, and even her own tone lost its certainty. Come to think of it, her little sister did seem excessively concerned with the group leader’s affairs.

Curly-haired Guy: Heh heh. A woman’s fall, as a rule, begins with curiosity.

Foul-Mouthed Mask Guy: That’s exactly right, and your Uncle speaks from deep personal experience on this matter, I am uniquely qualified to speak. Think of my beautiful ex-girlfriend. Curiosity about me came first. Then, drawn in by my irresistible charm, she fell, step by step!

Skirt-Flipping Maniac: "Irresistible charm"... (emoji: awkward grin)

Pretty Boy from Skull Island: (emoji: awkward grin)

Foul-Mouthed Mask Guy: Damn it, what’s that supposed to mean, you little punks? Are you looking down on Uncle’s charm? This behavior is wrong, you know. This is a crime!

Doujin Artist: Don’t be so awkward about it. It’s not your charm we look down on, it’s just you, plain and simple.

Machete Girl: "Charm," he says. Mr. Deadpool, which part of your body exactly do you imagine carries this trait?!

Katsura Kotonoha found it all a bit absurd.

She didn’t actually hate narcissists, but she felt that narcissism should at least rest on some foundation. This Deadpool, where, precisely, was the evidence of his alleged charm?

Katsura Kotonoha, for one, could not see it.

Whoosh-whoosh-whoosh.

Even as she thought this, she held Janet’s slender waist tight and flickered through the dense jungle. In truth, a distance of a few hundred meters normally took her a single Shunpo.

But the Borneo jungle was like a maze, forcing her to wind and weave along crooked paths, which ate up quite a lot of time.

Tap.

Another flicker, and Kotonoha and Janet’s figures came to a halt at the edge of a thicket. Before them, not far off, burned the light of fires.

Hoo. Hoo.

Janet, hauled along at such speed, was clearly struggling to adapt, and it took several rough breaths before she recovered. From the small satchel at her side she took out a locator custom-made by the Holy See, glanced at it, and said softly, "This is the place."

"Mm." Katsura Kotonoha nodded, her gaze settling on where the firelight fell.

It appeared to be an enormous platform, ringed with burning torches. Natives dressed in strange grass skirts, their bodies covered in blackish-red tattoos, danced and circled ceaselessly around several standing pillars at the center.

"What are they doing? Some kind of festival?" Janet asked, bewildered.

"No. It looks like a sacrifice." Katsura Kotonoha drew a deep breath, a flicker of anger crossing her face.

Her vision was not hindered by darkness, and she could see with ease what hung on those pillars. They were people. People who had been cut open and gutted.

There were white people and black people among them, clearly none of them natives of this tribe. Looking at the scattered clothing and broken equipment at the pillars’ base, she could roughly guess: these were the members of the Temple whom the serpents hadn’t swallowed earlier.

Using human corpses as offerings, the thing they worshipped was probably connected to that "Demon God," then?

Katsura Kotonoha fell silent. Her original plan was to watch and wait for the "Demon God" to come enjoy its offering. But she soon discovered that among those bound to the pillars, there was still a "living person."

She was a blonde girl, not gutted like the corpses around her. Yet she too was motionless, her eyes and expression carrying no ripple at all.

If Katsura Kotonoha hadn’t seen the girl’s mouth moving as she spoke, she would have taken her for another corpse.

"Your ridiculous conduct will bring total annihilation down upon your heads?" Reading the shape of the girl’s lips, Katsura Kotonoha pieced together her words.

It left her rather bemused.

The girl could barely save herself, and here she was, threatening the natives? And what exactly was her situation, why did she keep feeling that this girl was different from ordinary people? Even in the midst of such a calamity, how could she remain so composed?

Katsura Kotonoha’s curiosity about the girl grew intense.

CRUNCH.

At that very moment, a pitch-black palm suddenly burrowed up out of the ground.

"Wawa-gha!"

The instant the palm appeared, every last native of the headhunting tribe erupted into fanatical howls. They danced and gesticulated wildly, venting the frenzy in their hearts.

"Ah." The blonde girl had seen the palm appear too, but her expression still showed not a trace of fear. She released only a sigh, heavy with sorrow.

"Is that... is that the Demon God?" Janet’s breath caught, her whole body trembling.

She hadn’t witnessed the Demon God with her own eyes back on the Great Snowy Mountains, so it had never quite registered with her. Seeing this great black hand now, she finally understood what manner of monster her dear friend had been fighting.

The aura of the abyss radiating from the great hand put every pore on her skin on high alert. A bone-deep cold climbed her spine and shot straight into her brain.

Janet whipped her head away, unable to bear more than a single glance at the thing. Those few short seconds had nearly frozen her soul solid.

Janet was certain of it.

If this thing were loosed into a city, it could turn the entire place into a city of the dead in an instant. This was no joke, the abyssal aura alone billowing off its body was more than enough to do it!

Compared with this great hand, the evil spirits and wraiths she had faced before were little brothers, mere nothing. No wonder it was called a "Demon God." So such evil beings, transcending all reason, truly did exist in this world!

Humm.

Before their eyes, the Demon God’s five great fingers slowly spread open. In the very center of its palm appeared a blood-red vertical pupil, fixing itself in a hard, unblinking stare on the blonde girl bound to the pillar, as if studying its subject with great care.

"Ah." The blonde girl sighed once more, then spoke, unhurried: "It really has been a long time. Leraje, Agares, Amon, and Paimon."

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