This year, the people of Chiba are more inclined than usual to visit shrines.
This year hasn't been easy.
First, there was a typhoon that arrived mysteriously and much earlier than usual—and not just any typhoon, but a super typhoon. It raged all night with wind and floods.
Before there was ti to catch a breath, Chiba Village started acting up again. No one really knows what the problem is, but apparently, the forest there began growing like it was on drugs. Everyone who went to explore it had terrible luck and would spout sothing like "what the hell just happened" to whoever they saw.
But this ti, it seed even worse. In broad daylight, Chiba City suddenly beca as dark as a night in the primitive age. Actually, no—primitive nights still had stars. This place didn't even have that. Just total blackness.
People were sure it was so kind of bad on, though no one knew who the jerk was that dragged everyone into it.
Chiba City had been engulfed in darkness.
Genuinely pitch black—no light at all. All natural and artificial light was wiped out, no exceptions.
The first to vanish was sunlight. The clear sky turned into nightfall.
Then the streetlights that had just turned on, followed by residential, comrcial, and neon lights. Eventually, even car headlights disappeared. In the end, all artificial light sources ceased to function.
Everyone was forcibly pulled into a world of darkness. Stunned by the sudden loss of light, they quickly grew uneasy.
This was a pure darkness modern people rarely experience. Just a few ters away, everything beca an unseen abyss, leaving people lost and disoriented.
Human civilization, developed over thousands of years, had no resistance to this strange phenonon.
People's confusion and unease turned into fear, then, because of helplessness, into uncontrolled rage from their long-suppressed frustrations—leading to chaos and turmoil.
Criminal acts started happening among various people.
In contrast, the only ones who could maintain control were likely those with exceptional abilities—people whom most consider to only exist in fiction.
But even they weren't doing much better.
A power strong enough to cover the entire city could strip away all light, even magical light, regardless of how it was created. Any light that appeared would be imdiately extinguished.
The only difference was—these people knew this was probably caused by soone. Maybe even just one person. Possibly two.
No one bothered to ask pointless questions like "Why didn't soone stop it?" If it could be stopped, the person responsible wouldn't be called a Demon King.
In a room of a certain hotel, an old man and a young man were seated.
The chaos had reached the vicinity, but neither of them reacted—they didn't seem to care at all.
The elderly man, long known as Marquis Voban, had all his attention on the youth in front of him—Hikigaya Hachiman.
"Stripping away light…" The old king who had lived over 300 years murmured thoughtfully, "An interesting authority. What kind of god does this power co from?"
Hikigaya had just stripped away all light from an entire city right before Voban's eyes.
Voban possessed powers strong enough to easily plunge a city into chaos—or destroy it entirely.
To him, Hikigaya's power was equally dangerous.
Humans are born longing for light, and they fear darkness.
It might not be obvious in daily life, but once they lose it, they yearn for it intensely and desperately wait for its return.
In the era when Voban was born, once night fell, the earth would be shrouded in total darkness.
People of that ti always waited anxiously, fearfully, hopelessly, and powerlessly for the sun to rise again.
It's human nature. Because humans are more intelligent than other creatures, they love the light even more.
If you take away the light, you could easily topple not just a city, but an entire civilization.
Suddenly, Voban saw a faint golden light.
It emitted from Hikigaya's chest and vanished in a flash.
"Heh… so it's found …"
Before he finished speaking, a ball of light ford at Hikigaya's chest, gushing out radiant streams of light like a shower of fireworks.
A golden falcon erged from the burst of light and shot toward the window.
Voban's eyes glead. He reached out to grab it.
But at that mont, Hikigaya, who had been sitting with his eyes closed, opened them and moved even faster.
He sprang from the chair and drove a knife-hand strike straight through the falcon.
The blow seed to inflict irreparable damage. The falcon let out a shrill cry, then exploded with a boom, bursting into radiant streaks of light—like a firework blooming in mid-air.
Looking closely, each ray of light was a miniature falcon.
"Vanish!"
Hikigaya's low growl was filled with killing intent. A wave of intense heat erupted from him.
He moved faster than the falcon-light.
As the heat swept across the room, the air beca scorching, and objects dried out and ignited without warning—including the falcons.
In the end, the entire room exploded like it had been hit by a missile. The orange flas stood out starkly in the darkness.
Only two people and one fox survived the blast.
Tamamo-no-Mae had leapt back onto Hikigaya's shoulder at the critical mont, protected by him.
Even ignoring her own powers, her reflexes were impressive.
Hikigaya was quite satisfied. Voban, however, was full of regret and displeasure.
"What a waste…" he said bitterly. "Why destroy it? With that falcon, summoning the god wouldn't have been hard."
He was genuinely heartbroken. The ritual to summon a rogue god had a high chance of failure because a proper dium was needed. What could be a better dium than the god's own power?
In his desire to fight a god, probably only the Sword King of Italy could match Voban.
"Uh… sorry. I saw that thing and just reacted." Hikigaya gave an awkward laugh.
If soone else had said that to him, he probably wouldn't care. But he couldn't treat Voban like that. If Voban hadn't said anything, he wouldn't have realized what he had just done.
Regardless of Voban's motives, Hikigaya owed him one now.
"What a total waste…" Voban was still visibly frustrated.
But there wasn't anything to be done. Technically, that power belonged to Hikigaya anyway. Voban just hadn't expected Hikigaya to destroy it so decisively, without hesitation.
"Don't worry," Hikigaya reassured him. "It probably won't be long before another god shows up. These restless types always do."
"Maybe…" Voban sighed. Witnessing such blatant waste made him feel unlike himself.
After taking a mont to collect himself, he returned to his cold, ruthless deanor.
The darkness had also vanished. Once Hikigaya awakened, light returned to the land.
"Well then, I'll be off. You probably don't feel like chatting with an old man like right now. Let's et again when the ti cos."
As the sound of the wind grew louder, Voban's figure began to blur until it completely disappeared, becoming one with the wind.
"Hikigaya Hachiman, I look forward to the day we fight."
With that final ssage, the wind exploded outward in front of Hikigaya, leaving only a ss behind.
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