Tomochika let out a guttural cry that sounded like it was enough to injure her throat.
Couldn't you try to be a bit cuter when you scream?
Having finished interrogating Chelsey, they had continued their descent of the emergency stairs and were now on the second floor of the hotel.
"Oh, it's a cockroa—"
"Don't say it! If you say it out loud, it feels like they'll burrow into my brain, too!" Tomochika interrupted in a panic. On the walls of the stairwell, a huge number of bugs — mostly cockroaches — had gathered. Totally unmoving, the insects waited all around them.
"He said he used insects and small animals too, so I presume these are watching us."
Although it was impossible to tell exactly where the bugs were looking, Yogiri definitely felt like he was being watched.
"Can't we do something about them?!"
"I guess. I could just wipe them out —"
"Do it! This is exactly what your power was made for!" Tomochika once again cut him off.
"I mean, I could, but then they'd probably fall off the wall and start rolling down the stairs."
Even if they died, their bodies would remain and would probably get in the way. While Yogiri wasn't especially bothered by the idea of stepping on them, it seemed that Tomochika didn't share his indifference.
"Ugh, then things would only get worse! No killing allowed!"
"But if we leave them alive, they might jump at us or something. Even these bugs could probably kill a person if they tried."
"No, no, no, no matter how gross the..." She seemed reluctant to say the word "cockroach." "The Georges are, they couldn't actually kill you, could they?!"
"By 'Georges,' you mean the bugs, right? With this many, I bet they could. For example, if a whole bunch of them crawled down your throat and suffocated you, or burrowed into you and attacked your organs from the inside."
"Yuuki Tachibana...you have officially made me angry!"
Maybe because she had begun to imagine those scenarios, Tomochika became strangely tense.
"For now, it seems like they're content to just watch us, so let's get outside."
"What if they jump at us?"
"I'll kill them...but of course their dead bodies will still be flying at us."
"If that happens, I'll probably have a nervous breakdown, so thanks in advance for the help you'll have to give me."
With her eyes almost completely shut, she let him guide her carefully down the stairs. The feelers of the gathered insects turned to track their movements, so as he had thought, they were certainly being watched. For now, at least, it didn't look like the creatures planned on attacking them.
Thinking over their current situation, Yogiri came to a conclusion. "I should probably kill Tachibana."
"Yeah, I guess. Though it doesn't seem like it'll stop them at this point."
He was somewhat surprised by Tomochika's callous answer, but it just went to show how much sending the bugs after them had upset her.
"Dominators are a pain. At this rate, the whole world will be against us." From the Puppeteer, they had managed to gain more information about a Dominator's abilities. As Yuuki had said, he was gaining new subordinates at an accelerating rate, and he had full control over all of them. What's more, he could take any of the energy acquired by his slaves, and could even borrow their skills. Yuuki Tachibana was a terrible danger to not only Yogiri and Tomochika, but to everyone. If they left things as they were, a large portion of the world would be under his control in no time at all.
"He's waiting for me to leave the city, right? So should we?"
"If things go as I expect, we won't have to bother."
When they reached the landing between the first and second floors, the bugs all began to stir.
"I have a very bad feeling about this!"
Killing intent. Yogiri could now see countless, unavoidable lines of black stretching out from the bugs towards him. Acting as one, they seemed to be preparing to jump at him all at once.
"Seems like they're looking for a good opportunity to kill me."
"I thought so! I don't care about stepping on them anymore, please, just kill them! Though with this many of them, I might die either way!"
"Well, I don't really want them crawling on me either."
There was no hesitation when he released his power. If he left them as they were, they could gather in even greater numbers and attack him at any time. Even if he detected their killing intent, dealing with them constantly would be too much of a pain. On top of that, the more Yuuki's control expanded, the less freedom they would have to act. Eventually, their current plan of casually looking for a way back home, or even just reuniting with their classmates, wouldn't be feasible anymore.
"Die." Yogiri unleashed his power, but there was no change in the bugs.
"After all this time, now it doesn't work?!" Tomochika's last hope of avoiding the insects had failed, leaving her visibly shaken.
"I'm not going to claim that's impossible, but I've certainly never seen it fail before."
"Then what's going on?!"
"The situation was just right, so I killed Tachibana."
"What?!" Tomochika went stiff, his declaration catching her completely off guard.
Yogiri had merely unleashed his power at the true source of the killing intent, Yuuki himself. Suppose someone, somewhere, had the intention of killing Yogiri. That normally wasn't enough for him to target and kill them. Even if that person had sent their subordinates after him, it wouldn't change the situation. Yogiri's power could only detect the people actually carrying out the act.
But in the case of a Dominator, it was different. A Dominator's power was, at its core, the ability to create a colony. Yuuki was the head, and his slaves were the hands and feet. That was why he could use his subordinates to gather more slaves — those subordinates were like parts of Yuuki's own body.But for the same reason, Yuuki's own killing intent filtered through his slaves and towards Yogiri. All Yogiri had to do was follow that trail back to the source.
"Since Tachibana manipulated the bugs into trying to kill me, I killed him instead."
"You can do that even when you have no idea where someone is?!"
"If they can reach me, then I can reach them. Life isn't so easy that you can attack someone with complete impunity like that."
"It seems like life is plenty easy for you!"
"Really? Japan seemed harsh enough to me."
"Anyway, that's not really important. These things are getting really active!"
The bugs along the walls had suddenly started moving. There was no more killing intent coming from them, so it seemed that Yogiri wasn't their target anymore.
"Maybe they've been released from Tachibana's control now that he's gone."
It appeared that with the person using the skill being dead, its effects had been nullified.
"No, no, no, that's bad!" Tomochika's panicked voice rose a few octaves.
The bugs were starting to jump off the walls. Whether or not they were being controlled, they were still disgusting to her.
"Let's run."
"You're not gonna kill them?!"
"Killing something just because it's gross is bad, isn't it?"
"This isn't the time for that kind of logic!"
The two of them ran down the stairs, reaching the exit at record speed.
◇ ◇ ◇
The emergency exit opened up behind the hotel. Since they were in an alley between buildings, it was fairly dark, but they still had some time before sunset.
Tomochika immediately shut the door behind them. Somehow, they had managed to escape before the bugs swarmed them, but there was probably no need for them to have hurried. Wild bugs didn't tend to attack like that in the first place.
"Thinking about it, there isn't really a reason for us to leave the hotel anymore, is there?" Tomochika said after she had calmed down.
"Because Tachibana is dead? There's still the possibility that his human followers will come after us, though."
Yogiri had decided that running away remained their best option. For all he knew, there were those who had adored Yuuki even without being affected by his Dominator skills. At the very least, staying in the hotel would pose an unnecessary risk.
"So, we're going to run after all?"
"Maybe we should just go on ahead to the capital."
The two of them quickly agreed that it would avoid most potential problems to move on. Leaving the narrow back alley, they made their way towards the main street. But before they reached it, they realized that something was terribly wrong. The area was strangely noisy, in a way that didn't seem like the usual bustle of the city. An angry roar. The sound of something breaking, something else being smashed. Clearly, something out of the ordinary was happening. But from where they were, they couldn't see anything at all."What's going on? Something definitely seems off."
Stepping out onto the street, Tomochika immediately went stiff with shock. Even Yogiri was taken aback by the spectacle.
People were devouring each other.
"What...?" Tomochika muttered, dumbfounded.
Numerous bodies that had collapsed onto the ground were being greedily consumed by distorted, almost-human shapes. Those who ran were being caught, grabbed, and dragged down. The monstrous figures were even throwing themselves at the barricades set up by people who had taken shelter within the nearby buildings, trying to break their way inside.
Their skulls had been caved in.
Their guts had been ripped out and were dragging on the concrete.
Some of them crawled along the ground with no lower bodies at all.
No matter how they moaned and cried as they attacked those around them, it was hard to believe they could possibly be alive and moving. But as sluggish as their movements were, they continued to doggedly pursue their victims.
"I thought it might be some sort of fantasy parallel world thing, but a zombie apocalypse?!"
Desiccated, decomposing corpses were attacking and eating people in the street.
As one would expect, the city had fallen into chaos.