Ultraman Legend of the Light Chaser

The visitor's defenses were bombarded by a burst of light, and the instantly activated defense mechanisms were sufficient to complete the final task desired by the unknown hand.

"Nagi!"

Chapter 162 Falling into the Nightmare Realm (4k)

In the underworld lies the River of Oblivion; crossing it leads to the Netherworld, and beneath your feet lies the Yellow Springs. The water is all blood, a foul and filthy place to be avoided.

Red flowers bloom on the shore, their beauty ever-changing; one is called the other shore, the other is called the red cluster of flowers.

Originally a mythical creature, now named after this place, it truly resembles a hell on earth.

The visitor's barrier, like a shattered butterfly wing, has lost its support.

However, the rather thick steel gate instantly evaporated, and the "River of Oblivion," sealed for many years, could finally be seen. Even Mizoro Momoko couldn't grasp Saijo Nagi's hand, and Mephisto watched as the giant fell into the River of Oblivion, while Rouge was swept into the River of the Dead.

That is, of course, the "river" of the dead. Every drop of water is a memory. When you come into contact with it, the scenes, experiences, and emotions it carries all rush into your mind.

Encountering alien beasts rarely yields a positive outcome.

Saijo Nagi struggles in this "river".

"Tick."

The Shinjuku disaster: A boy was holding a girl's hand when The One took a step forward, splattering flesh and blood all over the girl's face.

The girl was still holding hands when she was pulled down. She looked down in a daze and found herself holding a severed limb. The sweetness on her lips had not yet faded, and she smelled another sweetness on her nose.

"Tick."

The monster gnawed through a camping tent like a wild beast, its barbed tongue curling up intact or half-eaten people. The person in the scene covered their mouth with all their might, crouching like a rat among the bushes.

That night, the Milky Way was in full bloom, the bright moon hung high, and carefully picked bouquets of flowers were scattered at my feet.

"Tick, tick..."

The endless night seems to never end, like the forest path I walked as a child. Behind the next tree, there might be a bright future, and my mother would be waiting for me there. But as I walked to the next tree, and the one after that, I could never find her again.

As the giant fell, the "waters" of the River of Oblivion began to stir.

It's hard to say if it's really water. When it's calm, it is indeed like a still lake. But now it looks like thousands of dragons are dancing, as if an invisible hand is wrapping around the sacrifice that has fallen into this place. The swarm of snakes has found its desired prey.

Kazuki Komon was stunned by the sudden turn of events.

Both of the Dark Giants are Mephisto.

One had bloodshot eyes, the other had eyes as black as ink.

Perhaps the one who came later was Goroki Shinya? But why was it that when he saw the figure jump down from the height, the figure was shining with light?

He knew he couldn't figure this out in a short time, so he rallied his spirits and ran toward where Nexus had fallen.

With the puppet blocked, he was able to run along the wall to the edge of the River of Oblivion.

A mass of... wildly swirling, pitch-black darkness.

This was the scene he saw; the only bright spot was half of the giant's face, with vein-like things clinging to it like ivy, pulsating as if alive.

"Vice-Captain! Vice-Captain Saijo!" he tried to call out, but the giant did not respond. Instead, the dark thing inside "noticed" him. The dragon swept across the edge, and he was so frightened that he took a big step back.

The two Mephistos started fighting, and the base, which had barely quieted down, was thrown into turmoil once again.

When Komon Kazuki turned around, he found that his retreat was blocked by a rock as tall as a person. The lake water rolled down like a curtain, flowing into the River of Oblivion through the gaps, but there was no sound of water hitting the bricks at the bottom, and it disappeared silently.

……

Shiori Hiraki woke up in a dark, now-cooled-down passageway.

The water rose up to her calves, and she was woken up by the cold.

"Komon?" She remembered what happened before she lost consciousness. It seemed that Komon Kazuki had fallen with her. She stood up by holding onto the wall, one of her legs was injured by a brick, and she could only drag herself along.

The rushing water made her uneasy. It was pitch black here, and she could feel the walls shaking, as well as the booming sounds that echoed from afar along the passageway.

She walked slowly along the road, occasionally catching a glimpse of a figure in the fleeting light.

"Ishibori... a member?" The figure's shape was somewhat strange, as if something was surrounding him, like a loyal guard.

The joy of finding her teammate made Shiori Hiraki completely unaware of anything amiss. She simply thought that she had been in the dark for too long and her eyes hadn't adjusted to the occasional bright light: "Did you find the vice-captain? Did the captain find out that we went to steal from the third laboratory?"

Upon hearing her voice, Mitsuhiko Ishibori turned slightly to the side. Another burst of intense light from the collision of energy struck him, casting an extremely long and dark shadow. Half of his face was illuminated, while the other half was buried in deep shadow.

"Wow!"

Shiori Hiraki suddenly stopped in her tracks, because the half of her face shrouded in darkness... had a pair of deep blue eyes!

Her heart nearly stopped in shock, thinking her teammate had been possessed by a strange beast and was about to transform into a several-meter-tall monster, tearing her neck apart with his pincers. But Ishibori Mitsuhiko didn't move. He simply stood there, quietly observing her. Beams of light illuminated the passageway, and she finally saw the "guardian's" true form—snake-like, dragon-like, like a demon, or a monster conjured from the boundless, cold darkness. It lurked beside its master, black flames outlining its scales.

Shiori Hiraki raised her sidearm, but her low body temperature and numb left leg prevented her from achieving the most standard and stable shooting stance. She tried to breathe steadily, but the water in her body continued to draw away her body heat with each inhale and exhale.

"Who are you?! Where is Ishibori?" Her voice was not as melodious and pleasant as usual.

The shadow ignored her words, looked at her for a moment, and then turned its head away. Shiori Hiraki tried to pull the trigger, but found that her body was no longer under her control, as if she were bound by something, her knuckles fixed in the same position, unable to bend, and naturally unable to pull the trigger.

"You're a little early, but that's perfect... to witness Zaki's awakening."

"Zaki?" This was the first time Shiori Hiraki had heard this word; it was a name...

Words? The other person's gaze had already swept over her and turned to the top of her head.

You may have seen the sun pierce through the clouds, but unlike the warmth of spring or the languor of winter, it is only in the heat of summer, after a downpour, that the sun eagerly tears through the rain clouds, and beams of light pierce through the clouds, cleansing away the delicate moisture.

That's what she saw: rays of light, like knives, pierced through the cracks in the concrete slabs, as if trying to cleave them apart. Then, suddenly, the light turned extremely bright, forcing her to close her eyes. Through her eyelids, she saw the red of flesh and blood.

The cold lake water suddenly disappeared, and she found that her fingers could move again. A feeling of warmth and security filled her chest, and she involuntarily lowered the raised gun barrel.

A breeze blew by, and when she opened her eyes again, she saw a clear blue sky.

Others were brought out, and the silver giant placed them on the grass by the reservoir. They were part of the patrol that had been chasing him and Kazuki Komon. Having escaped death in the sudden turn of events, the group had given up the idea of ​​continuing the chase when they met again. They only stared at Shiori Hiraki for a moment before finally coming to their senses and quietly sitting down to the side.

Black flames spread from the water into the air, and a blurry figure walked out leisurely. He still had the appearance of Mitsuhiko Ishibori, but he looked extremely small in front of the silver giant.

Shiori Hiraki then realized that what he had said about Zagi earlier wasn't directed at her, but rather at the silver giant.

Kazuki Komon once told her that the giant's name was "Samuel".

……

When Jun Sakuma found himself back in the position of an "observer," he knew that the person who had said "I need to rest for a while" had returned.

This time, however, Samuel didn't explain to him how to use each move or how to deal with different enemies. Samuel didn't know that when he was explaining these things, he was so long-winded that he seemed like a different person. Jun Sakuma had the illusion that he was possessed by Karin's homeroom teacher.

If he said it to his face, the other person would probably shut up immediately and retreat back into the Light Chaser's Medal, ignoring him. So Jun Sakuma remained silent; he didn't know if Samuel had acted the same way when he taught Muchini.

He wanted to greet Samuel as usual, saying "Good morning" or "Want to sunbathe?" Oh, right, he'd run into something he didn't know how to handle, and maybe he should add, "Let's go pick Shota up."

But he couldn't bring himself to say it. Before he knew it, he was standing in the familiar, pale space, at the perfect vantage point of an "observer," sharing in everything Samuel observed.

The sky is beautiful, without a trace of the torrential rain of the day before. Back then, the sky was like a piece of steel, but now someone has smashed it with a hammer, and the sky is high and deep blue like velvet.

Two gleaming white blades shot towards the water's surface.

Jun Sakuma had always been puzzled by its energy operation, only thinking that it was probably a piece of the Milky Way. Everyone knew that it contained a bunch of giant fireballs of nuclear fusion, and if you got too close, you wouldn't even have any ashes left, but it was dazzling and beautiful beyond belief.

The light blade braked in front of the dark figure, and the sharp whistling sound seemed to be choked. The dark figure did not move, and Jun Sakuma felt as if he was watching a silent film.

Starting from the blade's edge, the pristine white light was dotted with black, like a brush absorbing ink. Once fully saturated with color, the light suddenly turned around and projected back the way it came!

"boom--!"

The two sets of explosive light blades collided and annihilated each other. The giant had wasted two opportunities to attack, while the enemy, the one who still retained his human form, stood on the water covered by black flames, only slightly shifting his gaze from beginning to end.

That gaze wasn't even directed at the giant; he glanced at a spot on the lake where ripples suddenly appeared, and something like a serpent emerged, wrapped in black flames like ants that had spotted food.

“The River of Oblivion,” Jun Sakuma heard Samuel say.

He also looked intently and, through Samuel's gaze, saw the underwater scene:

Nexus? Jun Sakuma couldn't be sure, because only half of his face was the original one. His other eye was crimson, just like Dark Mephisto's when Shota was a doll. The bright crimson and silver-white had turned into a uniform black, with deep red stripes faintly visible.

He heard the shadowy figure say, "Witness Zaki's awakening," a name that Hirata Shintaro had mentioned before. Zaki was the dark giant who destroyed the visitor's planet.

Is Zagi using the negative energy in the River of Oblivion to corrupt Nexus in order to regain his power?

"Swish, swish..." The sound of turning pages echoed from the void. In a daze, Jun Sakuma seemed to see a thick, old book, nearly ten meters tall, hanging behind the dark figure, its pages open, the slightly yellowed paper turning rapidly.

It paused on a certain page, and then the shadowy figure began to speak—he was far away, but his voice sounded as if it were right next to your ear.

“Your name is ‘Tatsumi’? I thought you would be hiding in…” He flipped through a few more pages and continued, “in this human named ‘Sakuma Jun’.”

“I thought you were dead, in Vitamori,” Samuel replied coldly.

“That was a low-level clone, and you,” the shadowy figure finally looked him in the eye with certainty, “a counterfeit, or rather, a thief?”

……

Komon Kazuki leaped into the River of Oblivion.

He didn't know where he got the courage to jump into the pool filled with what looked like snakes and ghosts.

The vice-captain was a serious person, even harsh. She spoke little, and when she did, her words were so cutting they could ignite anger. She never showed any mercy, even to newcomers.

He's the kind of guy who can make you want to crawl into the ground with just one sentence when he misses the target during practice.

If you were to ask who TLT's internal logistics team least wants to work with, the first name that would be Saijo Nagi, because she's too difficult to talk to.

Secondly, there's Kazuki Komon, because when he first joined the company, he was like a headless fly, not knowing this or that, and his reputation has been dragged down to the point that he's only managed to recover a little bit.

So why did he jump down to save Saijo Nagi?