Tokyo bombing incident Nth time

“If I had to set a condition, it would be to wait an endless amount of time, until I possess the controllable power to accomplish this.” Yuri looked back. “Or you could find someone else, someone else with sufficient ability. This isn’t a matter of conditions, but rather a matter of my ability. That’s all I can do. —Or perhaps you should consider pleading with Lord Train?”

“Then…then I choose to weaken the tiger’s side.” The hybrid spirit didn’t hesitate for long. “I knew it all along, I knew that Lord Train would not respond to me…I’m counting on you, sir.”

Don't do this! You're putting pressure on me!? Yuri screamed silently inside.

“You didn’t hesitate for long, as if this wasn’t the first time you’d heard this question.” Yuri grasped the claws extending from his wing again and began to communicate with the other.

“I’ve asked myself many times, if I could turn back time, would I still gamble on being able to reap such a huge reward? The answer is no, absolutely not.” The hybrid spirit’s voice was very low. “If I had already decided not to try to gain it in the first place, then naturally I can also accept losing it completely now.”

Yuri nodded and got back into focus.

It is easier to block communication between the two cores than to bring them together. Perhaps the real difficulty lies in simply blocking communication between the two cores without directly tearing the hybrid spirit in front of you in two.

Judging from the low, painful howls coming from beside him, the hybrid spirit truly felt like it was about to be torn in two.

Yuri felt that the spiritual essence in his body was also being steadily depleted, which was not necessarily a bad thing.

The connection wasn't completely severed, but it should be enough... What if it were completely severed and the result would be an explosion? Next, we need to go all out to deplete the tiger's strength.

Without consciousness as the dominant force, relying only on the most basic instincts, it is theoretically easy to deal with—the main question is whether weakening it will have a practical effect.

Stopping thinking about it, Yuri began to mobilize his forces, striving to exhaust it.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

About half a minute later, Yuri stopped what he was doing.

It wasn't very successful, falling far short of Yuri's ideal vision of "completely destroying the redundant core with a single effort."

After being weakened to a certain extent, the total amount of other parts that were not completely cut off is increasing, and has reached a balance with Yuri's efforts—like a spring that has been compressed to its limit, which Yuri cannot press down any further with his strength, but will bounce back as soon as he lets go.

It has already been suppressed to a certain limit; further input of spiritual essence will be useless, and besides...

"Ughhhhhh—" The hybrid spirit next to him was almost unable to control its screams. It was time to use the last move.

"Alright, now it's your turn. Go all out to solve this problem!" Yuri shouted, reminding the hybrid spirit.

You have to rely on yourself for everything!

The hybrid spirit struggled violently, and Yuri followed for a few more steps before being left behind.

Before being thrown off, Yuri could sense the hybrid spirit's actions; it was throwing away the other suppressed core.

Yuri watched quietly from the sidelines, awaiting the final outcome.

Yuri didn't have to wait long for this moment.

Soon, the sense of separation in the hybrid spirit intensified again. Then, it thrashed about on the ground for a while, and its body began to twist—a large amount of spiritual energy overflowed from its body.

Failure... or success?

Unlike the material realm, this spiritual energy was not formless and shapeless, but rather formed a tangible vortex. Yuri had to hold onto the solid disc he had been sitting on to avoid being blown away by the vortex, while the nearby spirits had already retreated to a greater distance.

After the brief outburst, a spirit that looked like an eagle was left behind, lying helplessly on the ground.

"Are you alright?" Yuri sensed that the other person was extremely weak, but the previous confusion had mostly subsided. "Is it over?"

"Thank you, thank you for your help! I will repay this kindness. Whenever you need help, I will come immediately—" The bird spirit slowly stood up. "Is there anything I can do for you right now?"

To be honest, no, but Yuri was still very happy that he had successfully done his good deed.

The experimental treatment was a great success, but the cost was... damn it, I unknowingly lost more than half of my spiritual essence. This was almost as strenuous as when I tricked the fire spirit last time; the cost of directly fighting the previous hybrid spirit might have been less.

Moreover, this one in front of me just partially self-destructed, so it's probably impossible for it to provide me with spiritual essence. Perhaps... perhaps I could inquire about what the Shadow Realm looks like from the perspective of a lower-level spirit. Judging from the bird spirit's appearance, it certainly wouldn't mind answering.

Chapter 110 Journey Through the Shadow Realm: The Unchosen Future

An hour later, the bird spirit completed its rehabilitation exercises and took flight again.

To be precise, it is actually the spirit of an eagle.

It provided Yuri with a lot of useful and useless information, and it was clear that it had tried very hard. Then the two waved goodbye (the eagle spirit waved its wings, which no longer had claws).

I've accomplished another task, even though it resulted in a loss... but it's still a good deed.

Before the next question arose, Yuri hurried back to his car—he had just sensed that many of the spirits around him were watching him and whispering.

If another person suddenly appears asking him to treat a rare and difficult disease, he'll be in trouble.

Yuri, who was almost fleeing, noticed something strange as soon as he boarded the train. He had boarded the train outside a long carriage, but he immediately appeared in that small square room.

Moreover, it seems that Line 2 has been waiting for quite some time.

Why here?

“Because I can certainly control where the passengers go, that’s not important. What’s important is… good effort, Yuri, my friend.” Line Two clapped enthusiastically. “Tell me, why did you do this? Why did you help that hybrid spirit?”

"What do you mean, why do I do this? He begged me so earnestly, and I could help him. What other 'why' is there in this situation?" Yuri slumped on the table, no longer caring about his image after doing this once before. "He said you never meet with hybrid spirits. Is that true?"

“It’s true.” Line 2 nodded. “A long time ago, I would welcome them onto the train and treat them as ordinary passengers—but some of them would attack other passengers, and others would take advantage of me and expect me to help them…and I couldn’t.”

"You can't?" Yuri repeated the last few words.

“Do I look like someone skilled in precision operations? It would be easy for me to crush them and solve their problems… but forget it.” Leaning back in his chair, Line 2 looked up at the ceiling, moonlight streaming into the carriage. “I can’t do this, but even if I told them I couldn’t, they wouldn’t believe me.”

Yes, Yuri himself was bitten too.

After a moment of silence, Line 2 spoke again, "I've been thinking about something... Have you ever considered living in the film industry? Settling down permanently?"

“I don’t understand why you’re asking that. I’ve never thought about such a thing,” Yuri replied immediately.

“Because of your friend? If you’re talking about that girl, you can see her in the Shadow Realm, though it might take a while—but werewolves can always find a way to get there.” The Train Spirit didn’t look at Yuri. “I did say they wouldn’t dare go to the Rat King’s lair in the Shadow Realm, but you don’t have to live in a particularly dangerous place—for werewolves, the Shadow Realm is their home, and the material world is just a second home.”

"Why do you want me to stay here?" Line 2's attitude was clear, but Yuri didn't know the reason. Why?

“The shamans have been gone from this world for decades. I’m not sure where they went, but it looks like they won’t be coming back.” Line Two turned around and looked into Yuri’s eyes. “You have a choice. You can stay in the Shadowlands. You have the ability to accomplish many things, just like today. You can heal these distortions instead of destroying them.”

“I’m not a spirit, so staying in the Shadow Realm definitely won’t—” Yuri’s words were interrupted.

"Are you really not a spirit, Yuri? Are you really sure what you are?" Line Two shook its head disapprovingly. "I think you can choose to become a spirit, why not?"

"Why?" Yuri asked back in the same tone.

"If you settle here, become a spirit, and offer help to visiting spirits without being too greedy—I'm not asking you to be free, just don't charge too much—you'll soon build a reputation no less than mine." After a brief pause, the train spirit continued to explain the benefits of this behavior, "As long as you don't make enemies of others indiscriminately, others certainly won't bother you. Even the Rat King won't lay a hand on a shaman doctor who helps other spirits, after all, he's a hybrid spirit."

Some information has leaked out, but Yuri is more concerned about the other side right now.

"And then what? Am I just going to work here until I die?"

"I don't want you to work for me. You just need to ask the spirits of the air to spread the word that you can cure hybrid spirits, and soon a large group of spirits will come to work for you. Don't worry about the clientele. Hybrids are one of the most difficult diseases to cure. Even more difficult symptoms often lead to rapid death if not treated on the spot. My friend Yuri, this may not be the limit of your abilities, and it may not allow you to reach the pinnacle of your abilities, but this path is safe and the achievements are equally great."

"Why are you advising me to do this?" The enthusiasm on Line 2 seemed increasingly strange.

“Even I might need medical care one day, and I also have a weaker friend, Yuri. That position is still vacant, and the first one to get there will have a huge advantage.”

"Must I become a spirit?"

"Hey, if you stay in the material world, it will be hard for spirits that need healing to find you. But if you want to stay in the shadow world, you'd better become a spirit, otherwise you'll suffer a lot."

"...I think I need to think about this, Mr. Line 2."

Yuri couldn't make a decision immediately. Line 2 had described a seemingly very stable future to him, but he still... felt that the promise was a bit unreliable.

“No problem, you have plenty of time to think. After all, your current level is still a bit lacking. If a stronger hybrid spirit comes knocking on your door, it will be a big problem.” Line 2 prepared to get up. “If one day you want to go down this path, you can come to the station to find me. I can take you to the Shadow Realm—of course, it is more likely that you will be able to open the Shadow Realm gate yourself at that time.”

As before, getting up at this time means preparing to disappear.

"Wait a minute—" Yuri called for a stop in advance.

Unlike before, this time, at Yuri's call, the train returned to Line 2, displaying a puzzled expression.

"?"

"You just said that the Rat King is also a hybrid spirit?" That's right, that's the question.

"Yeah, didn't you see it?"

“What did I see—” Yuri realized, “You mean that group of little mice with strange tails under the black mist? You didn’t mean that wasn’t the real thing.”

"...Yes, I did say that...that is actually very similar to the Rat King's true form. If you were to see the Rat King's true form, it would be a swarm of spirit rats with their tails joined together—it is indeed a hybrid spirit, although the way it hybridized is different from that of ordinary spirits."

"..." Yuri felt a wave of dizziness.

Very satisfied with Yuri's shocked expression, Line Two added an explanation: "Actually, many... not the majority, but certainly not a minority... many spirits are more or less hybrids. Having grown to their current state, how could they possibly devour their own kind forever? As for digestion... well, if they always waited for the previous one to be completely digested before capturing the next, the possibility of starving to death would be too high."

“If many spirits were like this, how could everyone still discriminate against hybrid spirits?” Yuri immediately noticed the inconsistency. “If that were the case, hybrid spirits would have been considered normal long ago—”

Line 2 didn't speak, but simply nodded to Yuri.

"It's already been accepted as normal, so only the worst part of the hybrid spirits is still hated?" Yuri deduced from his own words, "That's really... reasonable."

"Actually, they're not the worst, just the unluckiest and the dumbest. And the hatred towards them is certainly justified; they're too easily out of control."

"The Rat King certainly doesn't belong to this kind of hybrid spirit?" If it does, then Yuri... Yuri can't do anything about it.

"Of course not. Our Rat King friend... is actually going in the opposite direction. A large number of weak little rat spirits gathered together, united as one, and established their own rat swarm network, expanding all the way to the limit of its capacity—sometimes I wonder if it's because the rat spirits are too weak that there are no conflicts of consciousness?" Line Two stroked his beard. "In any case, in terms of purity, the Rat King's rat spirits are actually very pure, but as for merging into one... I also find it hard to understand how they merged into one. The differences between different spirits are as great as different species, and I have to admit that."

“If what we encountered in the material world wasn’t the original…” Following the Rat King’s condition, we can infer that, “was it the structure of another smaller Rat King? A substitute with the same structure as the Rat King, but not connected to it?”

"It seems that even weak mouse spirits tend to have a slight bias... Based on my observation, this one should be slightly biased towards disease carriers—at least for each one."

Then, when they gathered together, they became a Rat King, a plague-spreading entity.

Compared to the Rat King himself, it is more like an avatar. Its mental strength may be because it is still connected to the Rat King's main body in spirit, but its physical strength is not as good.

Truly... the world of spirits is full of wonders.

Mr. Hunter, how much of your skill did you lose because of Takemura's trickery back then, to become like that?

"Alright, I think it's time to set off again. The night is about to end—it will be much easier to leave the Shadowlands when the sky is under the dominion of the sun god."

Yuri waved and nodded, indicating that he didn't need to worry about him and that Line 2 could do whatever he wanted.

After Line 2 disappeared, Yuri slumped onto the table again.

Of course, even without creating a human-like entity within its body, it would still be constantly aware of the passengers' every move, but...

Forget it, Yuri doesn't want to think about these things anymore.

Looking up at the sky, it's true that the moon has moved closer to the horizon without us even noticing.

Looking in another direction, the sun god Helios... or, as the locals call him, Amaterasu? In any case, he'll most likely emerge from that direction.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

As the moon goddess departed, the atmosphere suddenly changed.

Yuri felt a heavy pressure on his body, pressed even more intensely into the chair, his body becoming cumbersome—he realized very quickly that the source of this pressure was the sunlight.

A sense of oppression, external to his body, arose in Yuri's mind. Vaguely, Yuri felt that this sense of oppression meant that he should leave the Shadow Realm.

The spirits outside the carriages—not all of them had boarded—seemed to feel the same way; the backs of the abandoned dolls hunched over even more, and some animals had begun to prostrate themselves on the ground.

What's with the sun in the shadow world? Yuri turned his gaze to the enormous light source that was rising.

"—"

Yuri fell to the ground, feeling as if the sunlight had pierced his eyes like an arrow.

He almost shouted out the classic line, "My eyes!"

Fortunately, he quickly realized that he was only experiencing severe glare from looking directly at the sun, and that the golden-white light would not last forever.

"They really have courage. I don't even dare to look directly at the sun god's majesty." Line 2 didn't show up, but still rushed to the scene to mock them.

"Ouch, that really hurts. I've seen the sun in the material world before, and it wasn't this bad back then." Yuri groped his way up and, with his blurry vision, sat back down in his original spot, being extra careful not to look in the direction of the sun. He felt that if he looked any longer, he would die.

"The Sun God isn't as gentle as the Moon God. If you try to fly upwards at night, passing through the clouds, you can feel the Moon God's gentle, scrutinizing gaze—while the Sun God will send you straight back to the ground at top speed, without any buffer." Line Two's voice wasn't loud. "Of course, I forgot to tell you this common knowledge, but experiencing it firsthand is faster, isn't it?"

Yuri was inwardly cursing Line 2's actions when something suddenly occurred to him.

"Was it the same at the Spirit Realm train station? You deliberately made me get off the train to meet that hybrid spirit—"

“No, that wasn’t it, my friend Yuri. In the words of our old friends who haven’t seen magic tricks in decades—” Line Two drew out his words mysteriously.

"What do you mean? What do you mean?" Yuri waited for ten seconds but received no further response, so he reluctantly complied.

"—Fate is twisting around you, Yuri friend. It seems events are easily happening around you. Hahahaha—" This was followed by a burst of uncontrollable laughter.

Is that even human language you're speaking? — Is that even the language of a spirit? Does your spirit possess even a shred of empathy?

The train spirit couldn't hear Yuri's inner rage and continued laughing for a while before stopping. "Of course, I can't see fate, I never have, but you do have that potential to bring trouble, my friend Yuri."

Whether what you're saying is true or false, I don't want that kind of potential at all! Yuri glared indignantly at the table in front of him.

If you focus your gaze on the table, it will be less likely that you will make eye contact with the sun god.

The whistle sounded, signaling the start of the return journey.