Night fell over Sumida Ward, Tokyo.
Beneath a dense canopy of clouds, a towering golden spire, 634 meters tall, pierced the sky like a flaming sword intent on slicing through the heavens.
This was the very top of the Tokyo Skytree. Here, fierce high-altitude winds howled, their roar mingling with the distinct sound of a hamburger wrapper being torn open.
And, the sound of a young man muttering to himself.
"Ah~ Rias said the target would show up between five and eight, but it's already past seven... Couldn't the intel be just a little more precise? Waiting for over two hours has made me hungry. Might as well eat first..."
The young man took a bite of the double beef burger he'd bought from the shopping street below two hours prior. His dark eyes, however, weren't reflecting the bustling night view of Tokyo or its myriad lights.
Instead, they were fixed on something far in the distance... a pitch-black, abandoned, unmanned port.
Before he could even properly savor the bite, the boy's eyebrows suddenly lifted slightly. He seemed to have finally spotted something unusual in the direction he was watching, letting out an irritated click of his tongue.
"Speak of the devil... Can't they even let a guy finish his meal in peace?"
With that, he took a step forward, melting into the wind, his form vanishing into the air like dispersed ink.
Meanwhile, within the abandoned port, waves crashed rhythmically against the pier. The dark water mirrored the distant, brightly lit Skytree.
Bright headlights cut through the night's darkness. Four black Mercedes-Benz sedans, staggered in a parallel formation, rounded a bend from the distant port road onto the coastal side, cruising at sixty kilometers per hour before pulling to a stop by the docks.
All car doors opened simultaneously, interior lights activating at just the right moment. Illuminated by the bright yet soft glow, sixteen men in suits, sunglasses perched on their faces, looking every bit like bodyguards, exited the vehicles in unison.
The scene resembled something straight out of a gangster transaction.
"Finally here. Been waiting ages for you lot..."
A rough voice spoke up, but it didn't belong to any of the sixteen men.
It wasn't even coming from the shore. It came from... the water.
Using the scattered light from the four sedans on the pier, one could dimly make out a powered-down speedboat floating quietly near the shore. Inside, a burly man, well over two meters tall with wild hair and a beard, muscles bulging, lay back casually, legs crossed, hands behind his head. A locked briefcase served as his pillow.
He only slowly opened his eyes when he noticed the commotion from the disembarking men, revealing almond-shaped, eerie green irises.
Without a word, the wolf-eyed giant flipped himself up from the speedboat, grabbed the briefcase behind him, and stepped onto the shore, striding before the assembled suited bodyguards. He placed the briefcase down on the ground.
The soft thud of the case hitting the pavement caused the bodyguards clustered near the cars to instinctively take half a step back.
"Here's the item you wanted. Where's the money?"
"R-Right here..."
After a second of silence, one bodyguard, also holding a briefcase, mustered his courage and stepped forward. He placed his case on the hood of a car, pushing it across the gap towards the wolf-eyed man.
"Hmph."
The wolf-eyed man didn't say much. He took the briefcase containing the money, opened it, and his eerie green eyes reflected the neat stacks of ten-thousand-yen bills inside. After a cursory flip-through to confirm it wasn't stuffed with waste paper, he snapped it shut again.
He then placed his own briefcase, the one he'd brought, onto the car hood and pushed it over.
"Alright, that concludes the transac—"
"Ciallo~ Since you've come all this way, why the rush to leave?"
Before the wolf-eyed man could finish, faint footsteps echoed from directly behind the bodyguards—from the narrow alley between the dock warehouses. A somewhat muffled young man's voice, tinged with a faint Kyoto accent, accompanied the steps.
"Who's there?!"
"Who is it!"
Like a sudden clap of thunder on a clear day, the sixteen bodyguards, who just moments ago were cautiously facing the wolf-eyed giant, instantly spun around. As they turned, pistols materialized in their hands from beneath their jackets. Sixteen tactical flashlights mounted under the barrels converged like stage spotlights, illuminating the newcomer.
Just as his voice suggested, he was a young man, perhaps seventeen or eighteen years old. He had a lean, tall build that wasn't overly skinny, dressed casually as if he'd just come from the gym. He still held half a hamburger, the unswallowed food puffing his handsome face out slightly.
"Hanakain Fubuki, current acting head of the Hanakain Onmyoji family in Kyoto. Dedicated to serving high-net-worth clients, accepting all exorcism and demon-slaying jobs. My personal number is 185... Oh, apologies, got carried away with the ad spiel. Cut the last part."
Reciting the advertisement with the fluency of rote memorization but little genuine feeling, as if forced into it, the young man took another bite of his burger. He raised the remaining half, still wrapped in paper, and waved it casually at the men before him.
"Alright, let's get down to business. All the 'humans' here can leave now. The goods stay, though. And you, wolf-eyes over there, the Stray Devil, come with me. Remember to help carry both my cases, thanks. I'm eating, so my hands are full. Cooperate, and I can have Rias send you back to the Demon World in a relatively gentle manner. Next time you want to visit the human world, please go through the proper channels and register at the Demon Special Zone first, thank you..."
His utter disregard for everyone present was striking. In just a few sentences, the ownership of both briefcases had changed hands in his narrative.
But reality, quite clearly, wasn't some power-fantasy novel. The protagonist couldn't just flex his aura and have the villains immediately bow down in submission. Besides, if they folded at the first sign of a threat, they wouldn't qualify as villains.
"Stray Devil?" one of the suited bodyguards muttered, frowning.
"Mhmm~" Hanakain Fubuki shrugged, his gaze flicking past the wall of men towards the wolf-eyed giant, who stood out like a high school sports star among elementary schoolers. He tilted his chin. "What, couldn't tell? Don't tell me you thought those were human eyes... Alright, alright, let's all cooperate here, keep things civil. Otherwise—"
"..."
"..."
This wasn't a negotiation, much less a discussion. It was a blatant threat!
With things said so plainly, there was no room left for talk, especially for the bodyguards. They knew their employer's cruelty.
If they failed to bring back the traded item intact, only one fate awaited them.
Death.
The air grew heavy with silence, the tension ratcheting up, becoming palpable.
"Baka!" - "Idiot!"
Without warning, one bodyguard barked out a curse and pulled the trigger.
The gunshot cracked through the air like a signal. In an instant, all the bodyguards opened fire.
Though they were only semi-automatic pistols, sixteen guns firing together created a short burst density that surpassed even the spray of a single submachine gun.
"Tch, more painful overtime..."
Ignoring the ferocious barrage of bullets hurtling towards him, the young man sighed softly, seemingly talking to himself, before stuffing the rest of the hamburger into his mouth.
The next moment, an intense golden spiritual power solidified, flaring up around his body.
There was no dazzling flash, but the leftover hamburger wrapper in the boy's hand disintegrated into ash in the blink of an eye.
Simultaneously, the bullets fired earlier reached him.
And then... they vanished.
More accurately, they weren't just vanishing; they were being "vaporized."
Had a high-speed camera been filming from a distance and played back frame by frame, it would have shown every bullet melting into molten metal the instant it neared Hanakain Fubuki. Then, in the very next instant, the molten metal itself simply evaporated, disappearing into the air.
The young man walked forward step by step, the spiritual pressure emanating from him growing stronger.
Logically, such intense heat should have instantly incinerated everything around him. Yet, paradoxically, the asphalt pavement Hanakain Fubuki walked upon remained perfectly intact. Not only did it not melt, but it also showed no signs of even softening.
The wolf-eyed giant's eye twitched, sweat starting to trickle uncontrollably down his forehead.
This terrifying level of spiritual pressure... An Onmyoji? Was there someone of this caliber among the Onmyoji?
He knew he couldn't win in a direct fight. As a Stray Devil, he wasn't among the particularly powerful races in the Demon World. He'd chosen to "escape" to the human world precisely because his physical prowess gave him an overwhelming advantage against ordinary humans, making shady jobs much easier and more comfortable.
Like murder and robbery...
But he didn't want to surrender either. Once exiled back to the Demon World, even setting aside the numerous crimes he'd committed in the human realm, he would at the very least return to his previous life: scraping by under the protection of other Demon World lords, essentially doing menial labor.
That was absolutely unacceptable to him.
Unable to win and unwilling to surrender, only one option remained.
Run!
As a wolf-demon, he had considerable confidence in his speed.
Buzz~ Buzz~
Just as the thought of fleeing flashed through the wolf-eyed giant's mind, the phone of the young man steadily approaching them suddenly vibrated.
"Hm?" Hanakain Fubuki raised an eyebrow in confusion.
Rias and Akeno-senpai should be staking out other locations right now. Since he'd already found the target here, why would they be messaging him?
Could it be...?
The boy reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and glanced at the message. The sender wasn't Rias or Akeno-senpai, but someone else.
[Big sis has been home for ages meow, where are you, Hana? Still out at this hour meow?]
Followed by a cute, black cat-face question mark emoticon.
Emmmm~
Hanakain Fubuki lowered his raised eyebrow, switched from typing to voice input, and brought the bottom of the phone towards his mouth, tapping the record button.
"Yeah, I'm still out. I'll be back soon, maybe fifteen minutes or so. And don't touch the big shipping box in the living room, it's the new TV. You already broke one before..."
An opportunity!
Seeing the young man, who should have instantly turned them all to ash, pause to leisurely record a voice message, the wolf-eyed giant's survival instinct flared, his eyes gleaming sharply.
"Get out of the way!"
Abandoning any pretense of peaceful transaction, the wolf-eyed giant swatted aside the bodyguard still holding a gun in front of him. Simultaneously, he stopped concealing his true demonic form. His already rugged face, resembling Wogin from Hunter x Hunter, elongated at the nose and retracted at the jaw, morphing into a massive wolf's head.
His body swelled further, tearing his clothes. Thick, dark fur rapidly sprouted from pores all over his body. Sharp, long claws grew from his fingers and toes.
In less than half a second, he transformed from a burly man into a giant werewolf nearly four meters tall. His menacing, curved claws hooked the handle of the briefcase as he stomped one foot onto the roof of the Mercedes.
Under the immense weight, the car roof buckled instantly, caving inwards. At the same time, the muscles in the werewolf's leg bulged violently, looking ready to explode.
He had gathered enough power. Even with just one leg, this jump would launch him onto a nearby rooftop. Leveraging the innate speed of a werewolf, shaking off even a human with powerful spiritual energy should be easy as... easy as... what was it again?
His thoughts abruptly stopped. A single index finger, wreathed in fiercely burning golden spiritual pressure, touched the center of the werewolf's forehead. In that instant, an overwhelming pressure descended from above, freezing his body solid.
He couldn't move an inch.
Is... Is this really human?!
Simultaneously, the young man's nonchalant voice drifted down from above.
"Dog-spawn, what did you think you were doing?"
As his words fell, a colossal golden spiritual pressure, thousands of times stronger than before, erupted like a tidal wave, sweeping across the entire pier. It then surged skyward, coalescing above the empty port into a gigantic, mountain-sized golden lotus flower, which then slammed down heavily—
Illuminating Ten Thousand Rivers!
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