Munisai’s eyes suddenly shot up.
First, he saw the back of his daughter looking towards the giant wolf. The monster was clearly acting differently now.
Heh, I must still be seeing things… Munisai chuckled in his mind again.
“There is no way… my sword is stuck in the monster’s Jaw? How? Why?”
“Dad!” Jun, hearing her father’s voice again, instantly turned and called out to him.
Munisai gave her a quick smile, both relieved to see the other alive.
“What did that crazy kid do now?” Munisai tried to scan the area around him to figure out what had happened during his stupor.
He tried to move his body up, but the pain in his back and chest held him in place. He realized he wouldn’t be standing any time soon.
“Grrr! Grrrrrr! Grrrr!”
The monster on the other hand kept trying to reach the sword stuck in its tongue, it kept reaching towards it with its claws, but couldn’t quite hit it.
It continuously twisted its body left and right, its annoyance clearly evident.
For a brief second, it almost looked like a puppy trying to touch its own nasal.
Earlier, when Lawkey blocked its attack, and got blown away before he could make Jun a promise, the girl had seen it at the last second.
He stuck her father’s sword in the monster’s inner jaw as a last measure.
What was he up to? She had no clue, but she couldn’t believe her eyes when he forced his feet back up, leaning on his own sword again as if it was a crutch.
Despite his current state, she saw a confident; a cocky smirk forming on his face.
“Relax.”
Lawkey dragged his body up and wiped the blood off his face. Once he felt his balance return, he rested his sword on his shoulder.
“I’ll put you out of your misery, you miserable little mutt.”
Munisai felt an unusual disturbance in the air, nay, in the shadows.
His daughter quickly offered her shoulder, and he took it, ignoring his pride for the time being. His wounds hadn’t completely stopped bleeding, but tensing up his muscles was the only first aid he could do at the moment. Despite the risks that carried, it would have to do for now.
There were more pressing matters, something was going on, but it wasn’t long before he noticed it, the shadows were in fact acting up again.
Why are shadows coming out of my sword’s handle?
“But it’s not that bad, mutt, don’t worry!” Lawkey shouted as he began to move once more, “After all, death is just another part of life!”
Planting his foot in the ground, Lawkey supported his knee, making sure he wouldn’t fall again.
Isn’t that right, Sasaki?
An image of a woman flashed in his mind.
The very woman who taught him how to control his Shadow Manipulation Sign, and the one who always said the same old catchphrase he had just shouted,
Just then, shadow chains began to appear from Eclipsed Dawn’s handle too, and quickly stretched out to connect with the ones coming out of Munisai’s sword. The connection between the two created an arc of shadow chains in the air.
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image [https://i.imgur.com/jVwnunH.jpeg]
The giant wolf, already annoyed by the sword stuck in its jaw, now had to deal with weird purple-ish black chains coming out of it too.
It suddenly jerked its head to the side, pulling on its source of annoyance at a great speed, and Lawkey along with them.
“?!”
Munisai and Jun watched with utter shock as Lawkey’s feet left the ground.
His body launched off the ground, zipping through the air like a bullet. He felt his skin stretch as it collided with the force of the wind pushing against it.
As he reached the position above the giant wolf's last head, he used the opportunity to twist his body around, ignoring its screams of pain.
Using his momentum, he held his sword up above his own head, and called upon all the shadows that would heed his call.
Although almost entirely drained at this point, the shadows still manifested around him and completely engulfed his blade.
The giant wolf noticed him at the last second and went to swing its rock-covered tail at him once more. However, not realizing where it stood, instead of hitting him, its long tail was blocked by the emergency bell Munisai had used earlier.
GONG! GONG! GONG!
It heard the sound of the bell that had previously announced its arrival and alerted everyone in the area to flee.
It quickly opened its jaw to use its trump card.
“GRAAAAWWWWRR!”
As a last ditch effort, it tried to use the shockwaves to repel Lawkey. No matter where the monster would go now, the chains would follow, this was its only option to drive him away.
GONG! GONG!
Lawkey’s body followed the momentum of the chains, getting forced through the radiating pressure being released at him. Even so, he continued to be pulled toward the giant wolf.
Shadows began to erupt from his body, as the shockwaves attempted to push him back again and again. There was a constant battle between two forces pushing against each other.
And then, in a split second, the shadows prevailed against the pressure. The boy was past the shockwaves and inches away from Kerberos’ neck.
GONG! GONG!
He swung his shadow engulfed sword down, and cut through the monster’s neck, going from the wound Munisai had inflicted earlier, to the wound the boy had made at the beginning of the fight.
Just between the scars Tori had inflicted on it seven years ago.
GONG! GONG! GONG!
As he landed along with the last separated Kerberos head, Lawkey looked back towards it.
image [https://i.imgur.com/ba88q4P.jpeg]
You took her away from me, forced her to use most of her energy and to leave me alone… for that, I won’t forgive you.
His thoughts suddenly raced, remembering everything that the Shadowy Woman, the tri-colored butterfly, had done for him.
He started to feel it, a shadow was disappearing from existence. He couldn’t tell what was going on exactly, but his old tutor taught him to be respectable at times like this.
“Rest in Darkness.”
He said firmly as he lowered his gaze.
image [https://i.imgur.com/omzZNUu.jpeg]
“Heh, look at that… stupid butterfly… I actually…” Lawkey stabbed his sword in the ground to stop his fall
The butterfly had said he was too weak to fight the beast, that he wasn’t ready for it yet. But now…
“Take that… I did it…”
A second later, his body lost all its energy and fell down backwards, crashing into the giant wolf’s figure. While the fur on its long form would have normally softened the landing, the occasional luminescent rocks merging with its skin threatened to stab the boy’s unconscious body.
Munisai and Jun looked as their eyebrows stretched to their foreheads, they couldn’t believe their eyes.
“How could he still…?” Jun muttered.
“He did it…” A nervous smile began to form on Munisai’s face.
As conflicted as he felt in that moment, he couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming sense of relief take over him.
A burden that had been weighing on his back for years was suddenly lifted.
Tori… It’s over.
The image of his wife’s dead body flashed in his mind. The gaping wound in her stomach, the puddle of blood surrounding her.
Your sacrifice was not in vain.
My effort didn’t amount to much, but at least this time…
Even if just a little…
I was able to do something…
Then suddenly, he saw the image of Tori's dead body transform and change. She sat in front of him, waving her hand in front of her tongue after burning it on boiling tea.
After noticing her husband looking at her, she instinctively touched the cute hair bun on top of her head and blushed a little with a lowered gaze.
Then she raised her gleaming lavender eyes and looked at him, her bright and beautiful smile shone like the moonlight.
A smile of content, a smile of hope, a smile of acceptance.
Tori...
Please, rest easy now.
Rest in Darkness.
Kerberos had been defeated, that had been clear.
However, Lawkey’s fate, his destiny, or rather, his curse took no breaks.
“He actually did it, the kid saved us!”
First, it was the responsible guard, Tsutomu, who began to get up again. He shouted after having witnessed Lawkey’s last reckless act first hand.
While the guards were fighting the battle of consciousness, they had still glimpsed the last confrontation between boy and wolf.
But no matter what they felt at that moment, their opinion meant very little.
“What are you saying?!”
Tsutomu started hearing footsteps gathering around him. They were getting louder and louder as a crowd quickly revealed itself.
“He brought this on us!”
“It’s the kid’s fault in the first place!”
“He must be a cursed Hyking!”
“He’ll only bring more misfortune on us if he stays here!”
“Throw him back into the valley! Let the monsters deal with him!”
The villagers who had previously hidden themselves, quickly gathered together as a mob, aiming to throw the strange blood-covered, gate-destroying, wolf-bringing, chaos-inducing, cocky kid back into the Shadow Valley where he came from.
Munisai sensed trouble on the horizon.
But he wasn’t about to let them have their way.
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Special Illustration:
image [https://i.imgur.com/OcTzY5e.jpeg]
image [https://i.imgur.com/KQmIY8F.png]