"BOOM——————!!"
The mont the teorite landed, a deafening roar echoed, the earth shook violently, and a fierce blast wave hit the school building like a shockwave, shattering the windows and sending glass flying.
"The shaking... has it stopped?"
Crouching in the corner of the hallway, Natsuki Waseda hugged her head and asked nervously.
"Mhm, it's stopped."
After confirming the shaking had stopped, Yutsuki stood up and walked into the Class 2-4 classroom.
Fortunately, although the classroom was in shambles, the students here were used to the tornt of earthquakes and spacequakes, and their evacuation drills were well-practiced. They were all crouching under their desks, and it seed no one was injured.
"Shido, Tohka, Origami, are you guys okay?"
"We're fine, no injuries."
"Ugh... mostly fine, just my ears are a bit..."
"No damage sustained. Bodily functions normal."
Hearing Yutsuki's voice, Shido and the others stood up from under their desks, covering their ears and shaking their heads, seemingly a bit deafened by the huge roar.
What exactly happened? With this doubt, Yutsuki stepped over the glass-covered floor to the window and looked out at the sports field.
The sight before her instantly made her gasp.
"Holy crap... you've got to be kidding ."
The originally spacious sports field was gone, along with the surrounding flower beds and part of the street. As if the space had been gouged out, the familiar street and campus had turned into a scorched black crater. And in the center of the crater, a black, blocky object could be seen radiating scorching heat that distorted the air.
"M-teorite?"
Soone muttered the na of the object.
"N-No way..."
Hearing this, Tama-chan-sensei, who had just joked about summoning a teorite to crash into Japan, instantly lost her strength and fell to her knees.
"Uwaaaaaaah! Tama-chan-sensei really summoned a teorite!!"
"Did she really sign a contract with a demon without knowing it?"
"Tama-chan-sensei!!! Don't dieeeeeeeee!"
The students cried out in wails and ran towards Tama-chan-sensei, whose eyes had rolled back in her head.
"Yutsuki... this shouldn't be sothing Tama-chan-sensei summoned by signing a contract with a demon, right?"
Shido asked with an uncertain expression.
"Well... although the timing was so perfect that even I almost believed it, don't worry, it's just a coincidence. Tama-chan-sensei didn't do it."
Sighing, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, Yutsuki looked at the crater ford by the teorite crash on the sports field.
Tamae Okamine is just an ordinary human.
If one looked closely, they could see several tal debris resembling chanical limbs crushed within that scorched black teorite.
"That should be a Bandersnatch... DEM's drone. In other words, the crash of this teorite is related to them."
"DEM?!"
Shido widened his eyes in surprise.
"Shouldn't their targets be Spirits? There was no spacequake alarm right now, why would they do this?"
Origami raised her doubt.
"I don't know..."
Shaking her head silently, Yutsuki's expression was sowhat grave.
Beelzebub. That was the omniscient Demon King Westcott had taken from Nia. This unexpected situation could only an that the enemy had taken action after acquiring so information that their side didn't have.
"Anyway, let's contact Kotori first. I believe she's already started investigating on her end."
Just as Yutsuki finished speaking, everyone's phones rang at the sa ti.
[Everyone, head to the temporary command room imdiately. A Spirit has appeared!]
———————————
Ratatoskr Underground Facility, Temporary Command Room.
The mont he walked into the command room, Shido could feel the extrely tense atmosphere.
"Kotori, sorry to keep you waiting."
"Shido, you're here. How are Tohka and the others?"
Seeing Shido, Kotori nodded and asked.
"They've basically all evacuated to other rooms."
Shido answered. At the security checkpoint, Tohka and the others had separated from Shido. Although being asked to stand by in another room made Tohka and the others sowhat dissatisfied, once a Spirit appeared, Shido had to go and conquer her. It was better for the Spirits not to see such scenes.
"Also, Yutsuki said she wanted to help evacuate the crowd at school, she'll co over a bit later."
"I see..."
Hearing Shido's words, Kotori couldn't help but realize.
Indeed, since this disaster wasn't a spacequake and there was no alarm, the response from the shelters and air-raid shelters was obviously slower than usual, and the citizens were more shaken than before. With Yutsuki's ability, she could indeed help people complete the evacuation sooner.
Although she understood this, Kotori still felt a slight headache.
"Shido, please tell Yutsuki-nee next ti. Try to avoid acting alone in situations like this. Have her notify beforehand, and I'll send people to handle it."
"Alright... I understand."
Shido nodded with a bitter smile.
"Kotori, what do you an a new Spirit has appeared?"
"Mhm... it's a bit difficult to explain. To be precise, our side hasn't fully grasped the situation yet either."
Seemingly struggling to organize her words to answer Shido's question, Kotori, sitting in the Commander's seat, frowned in distress.
"Forget it, it's easier to understand if you just look. Show the footage from the scene."
Saying this, Kotori took a braised pork-flavored Chupa Chups from the snack box handed by Kannazuki and pointed at the large screen in the command room.
Shido turned his gaze to the screen. The image showed a complete world map, with many places marked with red markers.
"What are these markers?"
"These are the locations where teorites crashed around the world, including your school. Almost simultaneously."
Kotori said with a calm face.
"These... all of them?"
Shido was shocked into silence for a mont.
"Mhm. Hard to believe, but it's true. There were a total of forty-two teorite crashes globally. After analyzing the locations, we found that many are close to DEM facilities and the bases of anti-Spirit units in various countries. Preliminary judgnt suggests it's highly likely they were sniped by locking onto faint Spirit waves or magical reactions. Your school being affected, Shido, is probably for this reason as well."
"W-Wait a minute. There are crashes even in South Arica! That's the other side of the Earth! Attacking places so far apart at the sa ti... could it be multiple Spirits like the Yamai?"
"No, the Spirit this ti is undoubtedly just one person. And strictly speaking, those weren't just simple teorites."
Kotori shook her head and answered. Seeing Shido's utterly confused expression, Kotori understood her explanation wasn't clear enough. She waved her finger, signaling the crew to switch the footage.
Shido couldn't help but hold his breath.
It was a scenery like an illusion. In a boundless, bottomless darkness, countless stars shone with light. For a mont, Shido thought it was the night sky, but soon, he realized he was wrong.
Following the cara switch, Shido could see a blue sphere floating and slowly rotating in this dark night. And on the surface of the sphere, were white-blue swirls outlined by clouds and oceans.
Undoubtedly, that was the ho planet Earth where Shido and the others currently lived.
"...Space."
Shido said involuntarily.
Then, before he could be srized by this mysterious and beautiful spectacle for long, a human figure appeared in the center of the screen.
It was a girl who looked very relaxed. Her exaggeratedly long golden hair, like Rapunzel in fairy tales, was the first impression she left on Shido. She was wearing a gorgeous Astral Dress woven with constellation patterns, and currently, in her hand, she held a giant staff.
Not at all like being in weightless space, the girl just floated there quietly.
"This is the first Spirit we've confird. We don't have an official identification na for her yet. For convenience, we'll temporarily call her Zodiac."
Saying this, Kotori had the crew switch to the footage from three hours ago.
In the video, Zodiac, who was originally resting peacefully in space, was suddenly attacked by several airships and a large number of drones.
"It was probably Beelzebub, taken from Nia. DEM acquired the location information of Zodiac and dispatched their forces to attack. We only found out after monitoring the suspicious movents of DEM's airships and sending drones to investigate."
Perhaps feeling displeased at always having to take action a step behind the enemy, Kotori frowned and snorted.
"I see..." Nodding in realization, Shido turned his gaze back to the screen and couldn't help but ask worriedly, "By the way, isn't this situation quite bad?"
In the footage, the Spirit was completely surrounded by drones and airships that had deployed their Territories. An overwhelming number of magic cannons were preparing to fire at the Spirit.
"It's fine, keep watching."
Just as Kotori spoke, Zodiac seed to notice the surrounding situation and slowly opened her eyes.
No surprise, no unease. Regarding the crisis she was currently in, the Spirit calmly raised her right hand.
"Michael."
Accompanied by a subtle movent of the Spirit's lips, the giant staff that looked like a key, which Shido had just seen, appeared in her hand.
—[Segva] (Close).
Slowly inserting the front end of the staff into the body of an approaching drone,Zodiac gently twisted the staff to the right. The next instant, the surrounding Bandersnatch all stopped moving simultaneously, as if their power source had been cut off. The Territories wrapping their bodies also vanished into thin air.
After resolving the drone issue, the three DEM airships on standby in the distance completed charging their magic power at the sa ti and fired simultaneously at Zodiac.
Zodiac was seen plunging her staff into the void beneath her feet and twisting it to the left.
—[Rataib] (Open).
An un-transmittable sound fell, and doors resembling black holes appeared around Zodiac, sucking in all the incoming magic blasts.
Then, at the sa ti, the sa doors appeared behind the DEM airships and the other Bandersnatch, returning the incredibly powerful magic blasts back at them.
For a mont, a flower of light blood in the pitch-black world, turning the screen completely white.
When the image cleared again, only countless fragnts of chanical wreckage remained around Zodiac.
Following that, perhaps as a warning, or perhaps simply to express her dissatisfaction at being woken up, Zodiac again used her staff to open doors, gathered the tallic wreckage floating around, and hurled it towards Earth.
Having witnessed Zodiac's rule-breaking, overwhelming power, everyone seed to not know what to say for a mont, and the command room plunged into a brief silence.
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