Chapter 271 - 267: Puppet Demon Spirit

Chapter 271: Chapter 267: Puppet Demon Spirit

The oldest of the six youths was Matsuda Yumi. The other five consisted of Makino Xiangnai and the companions she had spoken of.

Contrary to what Yumi had thought, the so-called "karate big brother," the oldest among them, was actually only eighteen—a young man who had recently graduated high school but hadn’t gone on to college.

Yumi and Xiangnai had been chatting at home. Xiangnai had wanted to learn more about the "Demon" from the "eyewitness," Yumi, while also protecting the older girl from the Demon’s potential retaliation and recruiting her into their group.

But then Yumi received a call from one of her companions, saying something had happened at the television station.

At that moment, Yumi felt a mix of lingering fear, relief, and worry.

They were now just as tense as the police at the scene, mainly because they’d had a brief encounter with the "Demon," but much about it remained unknown.

As for the frontline assault team members, they were another story. These men were an armed force directly under a special agency, a handpicked mix from Japan’s special police and special forces. They had been briefed on the enemy they were about to face, and many were veterans with experience engaging such foes.

The twenty men entering through the underground parking garage were undoubtedly the most tense, as this was the site of the first murder.

The team quietly and carefully swept the entire parking garage. After pausing briefly at the bloodstained area, they slowly approached the elevator bay and the stairwell.

The call buttons for both elevators were pressed. The team backed away slightly, waiting for the cars to descend.

DING~

The instant the doors opened, every muzzle was aimed inside.

There was nothing. Everyone relaxed slightly.

The Commander gave two hand signals. The team split in two, and eight men entered the elevators. Instead of pressing a floor button, they opened the emergency hatches in the ceilings and cautiously climbed on top to inspect the elevator shafts for anything attached to the walls.

After getting the all-clear, the rest of the team entered a stairwell and advanced toward the second floor, as the team at the main entrance would be responsible for the first.

The deeper they went into the building, the quieter it became.

A television station has plenty of staff who work the midnight shift. While it would be less crowded than during the day, it shouldn’t be this silent.

The entire building was as silent as a tomb.

The team that had entered through the front had already reached an area that should have been manned: the reception desk. At least two staff members and two security guards should have been nearby.

The assault team members cautiously approached the reception desk.

"Bloodstains!"

They found blood soaked into a chair, and a pool of it at the corner of the counter.

The blood at the corner was especially disturbing. It looked as if it had been sprayed from a high-pressure hose, leaving a distinct splatter pattern.

Two team members crouched down. One touched it with a gloved hand. It had already coagulated.

The two exchanged a look and stood up, while a team member behind them with a portable camera got a close-up shot of the bloodstains.

None of these men were rookies. Barring the absurd possibility of someone playing with a super-soaker full of blood, there was only one way to produce a spray pattern like this.

Instantaneous decapitation at a specific angle, causing a high-pressure jet of blood from a severed artery.

’The receptionists are likely dead. What about the two security guards?’

The Commander stood up, made a fist, spread his fingers, then pointed two fingers forward.

The team immediately broke into silent three-man cells, spreading out to slowly approach the surrounding areas.

Meanwhile, the assault team descending from the roof was gradually approaching the top floor. This was the executive level, where the station’s top brass worked. The elderly Matsuda Masayuki was typically only here during the day, but the floor was definitely staffed 24/7.

The team carefully searched the executive offices, finding bloodstains in two of them. They also found three separate bloodstains in the hallway, along with a discarded riot baton.

"KSHH~ All squads, report in."

The commander-in-chief’s voice crackled in their earpieces.

"KSHH... Alpha squad has cleared the first-floor lobby. Receptionists presumed KIA. No bodies, no survivors. Proceeding to the third floor."

"KSHH... Bravo squad has cleared the parking garage, now sweeping the second floor. Nothing to report."

"KSHH... Charlie squad has cleared the cafeteria. Nothing to report. Proceeding to the fourth floor."

"KSHH... Delta squad has cleared the top floor. Found five suspected kill sites. No bodies, no survivors. Proceeding to the 17th floor."

...

Hearing these reports, the commander-in-chief’s brow furrowed.

The entire television station was like a silent tomb. The eerie sense of dread was more intense than on any previous mission.

The bullet train incident had been the largest-scale mission they’d ever handled. In the end, they’d had to detonate an entire train car to kill the monster, which had gorged itself on so many people it had gotten stuck inside.

This time, there was no train car to help them.

"Get the mayor on the line. Tell him the situation is critical. We have a major threat, a monster. We need to expand the evacuation perimeter immediately."

"Huh? But we haven’t found..."

"Just tell him! Let him make the call!"

"Sir!"

...

Hanato Doichi frowned as well. The assault team had been inside for a while now without a single gunshot. ’Could it be there are no Demons in there?’

Logically, until they experienced the power of human firearms, Demons tended to assume humans were lambs to the slaughter—physically weak and possessing no special powers.

This doubt had barely formed when a series of rapid flashes erupted from behind the glass curtain wall around the ninth floor. A moment later, the faint sound of gunfire followed.

For the three Knight Order reservists, the light and sound were more than obvious.

But the firefight lasted only a dozen seconds before stopping, leaving it unclear who had won.

...

On the ninth floor, one member of Alpha Squad’s six-man team had been decapitated, his blood sprayed across half the wall. Another was desperately clutching his neck, but the gaping wound in his carotid artery and the blood pouring from it left little hope for his survival. A third had lost several fingers and was holding his rifle one-handed, fighting through the pain.

The three remaining uninjured team members held their rifles at the ready. While one covered their rear, the other two kept their sights fixed on a black Shadow behind a desk.

The sound of hurried footsteps approaching from outside made them breathe a sigh of relief.

The dozen or so reinforcements who arrived spotted the black Shadow the moment they entered the office. They immediately assigned men to cover it while others rushed to provide emergency first aid to the wounded.

One team member kept a camera trained on the black Shadow on the floor.

It was a thing two or three times the size of a human, pitch-black like a sheet of oiled tarpaulin. A fluid like ink bled from beneath it.

What was truly horrifying were the seven or eight mismatched eyes on its surface. They looked like eyeballs stitched onto the fabric, and they were staring at everyone.

Its gaze seemed to be focused on the rifles in their hands.

This realization sent a chill down the spines of the newly arrived team members.

"Put another mag into it!"

The Commander’s order was exactly what they wanted to hear.

DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA....

Muzzle flashes flared again as they riddled the black mass with bullets, as if flogging a corpse, splattering the inky black liquid everywhere.

"KSHH~ Command, this is Alpha. We engaged a monster. Target is down. We have one KIA, two critical. Repeat, we engaged a..."

By the command vehicle outside the cordon, the commander-in-chief let out a small sigh of relief upon hearing the message.

There were casualties, but it was far better than the suffocating tension from before.

"KSHH~ Evac the wounded. All other units, continue the sweep. If you encounter a threat, you are authorized to engage and destroy. No prisoners!"

"KSHH~ Roger that!"

...

The three reservists stared gravely at the building.

’Is it over?’

Meanwhile, the six young men and women, lost in their own heroic fantasies, were also waiting anxiously. From what they could see, the police didn’t seem to be in league with the Demon, so they were genuinely concerned for the officers’ safety.

But then, one of the boys’ faces suddenly paled. He fought it for a few seconds before he couldn’t hold it back any longer, clutching his chest and dry-heaving.

"BLEGH—URK..."

"What’s wrong, Ah Rang?"

Xiangnai asked with concern as she wiped his mouth and offered him her honey-pomelo tea.

"I’m fine," he gasped. "Much better, thanks. I just... suddenly couldn’t breathe. My whole body was in agony, I felt so sick... I just wanted to throw up..."

PS: Chapter two for Thursday.