Chapter 32: Death wave.

“People from the maple puppet school normally use comatosia as their main poison.” Hiro explained as she sat down on the couch. “It isn’t technically lethal but it does put a person into a permanent coma which results in them starving to death. If you want to get rid of it, then you have to stay conscious until your body processes and then expels it. If you give in to the poison and fall asleep before then than you’re never going to awaken.”

Okimodo nodded drowsily before responding. “How long does it take to be processed.”

Hiro cleared her throat before answering. “It can be passed on very quickly if you drink a lot of water. It’s in your blood which means it’s expelled through your urine.”

Okimodo nodded. “Understood.”

He was about to head down into the main carriage before Hiro suddenly added. “I’ll use my death seeds to disperse the death energy from the poison among the chasing assassins. That should help to reduce the effects.”

Okimodo nodded before leaving.

Shipo who had remained largely stoic after finding out that Hiro put death seeds on him and his brother finally spoke up after Okimodo left. “How accurately can you perceive the assassins?”

“I can sense the proximity of their life and death energy.” Hiro answered. “It allows me to tell what speed they’re moving at as well as their health. What bothers me is that most of them have suddenly stopped moving and are still back at the tunnel. I wonder why that is?”

Hiro focused on the death energy Okimodo was accumulating and channeled it across to the assassins. The more seeds she had attached to a particular person, the faster and more effectively she could manipulate their life and death energy. Most of the assassins had only a single death seed attached to them so the amount of death energy she could send to them in a short amount of time wasn’t much.

Far back at the tunnel many of the assassins who had all deactivated their various concealment abilities suddenly became exhausted. It was as if a force was compelling them to seek rest and sleep.

“You sneaky little…” One of the super resonators, a thin short dark skinned man dressed in a purple suit sneered mockingly. His hair was styled into a five pointed star and he had rainbow glasses obscuring his eyes. His name was Cosmic Keith and there was a guitar strapped to his back.

He suddenly unstrapped the guitar from his back before pulling back its neck to reveal an unsheathing blade. Without warning he attacked every other super resonator he saw, slashing them to bloody ribbons.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” One of the super resonators protested as they desperately fended off his attacks.

“Is he not going to honour the truce?” Another one sneered as both of their arms fell off to reveal two machine guns.

Cosmic Keith immediately retreated into the darkness of the tunnel as the bullets tore after him. At the next moment both of the two super resonators as well as several others were torn to pieces as if being shot by countless invisible bullets. Keith reappeared from the tunnel and said to the few survivors. “Let your deaths lead to my success.”

“What the hell is this guy talking about?” One of the injured survivors transformed into a giant reptilian humanoid before charging at Keith on all fours.

It weaved its way around his sword slashes while snapping at him with its needle like teeth.

Keith was bitten across the abdomen and had several organs torn out in an explosion of blood.

“Idiot.” Keith smiled ghoulishly as blood gurgled in his throat.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

At the next moment the gaping hole in his body disappeared, reappearing on the reptile monstrosity.

The creature immediately collapsed to the ground dead.

Keith heaved a heavy sigh. “Now that enough death energy has been gathered, I’ll send it back to you as a greeting gift. Junior…”

Back on the train Hiro’s eyes widened as she sensed an immense wave of death energy coming straight towards the train. In her mind it appeared as a vast tsunami that was about to engulf the crimson duchess.

“What’s wrong?” Shipo asked noticing the woman’s pale expression.

The train suddenly went around a tight right curve as it entered a hilly area of the country.

Hiro immediately grabbed Shipo and dashed through the window shattering it.

The two tumbled down the hillside as the wave of death energy engulfed the rear two carriages of the train. Okimodo who was in the third to last carriage was too busy downing a massive tub of drinking water to notice anything. The passengers at the back of the carriage suddenly went silent however as all of the voices coming from the second to last carriage had disappeared.

Okimodo finished drinking himself full and placed the massive tub down back where he found it. His stomach had been greatly expanded from all of the water and he felt the urge to piss already. He quickly made his way past the increasingly uneasy passengers and entered into the toilet. After finishing his business he felt as good as new and was free of any desire to sleep or rest. He entered into the second to last carriage which had grown ominously quiet. Upon looking into the nearest compartment he stumbled upon a terrible sight.

Four corpses were slumped in their seats as if they had been killed mid way through a conversation. Their bodies were practically mummified without a trace of moisture. It was a father and a mother as well as their two daughters.

Okimodo went over to the next one and saw a similar sight. This time it was just three women. All of them were mummified in the exact same manner as the previous four passengers. He then progressed on to the third and then the fourth and then fith. All of them were filled with corpses. Okimodo grew wary as he wondered if the enemy responsible for this was still lurking around. Fear gripped his heart as he thought about his brother and Hiro. He quickly activated spectrum dash and darted all the way back to the guard cab.

When he saw that the place was empty he was caught between concern and relief.

Soon two thuds could be heard on the roof outside in the darkness before Hiro and Shipo entered the guard cab and looked around.

“Shit.” Hiro said as she reassumed her plain looking disguise and brushed past Okimodo and headed down to the carriage.

“What the hell happened?” Shipo asked concealing the fact that he was relieved to see his brother.

“I could ask you the same thing.” Okimodo responded. “I’m not too sure how it happened, but everyone on the last two carriages has died.”

“What?” A cold chill ran down Shipo’s spine.

Hiro re entered the room with Lyon, Veronica and Butchy.

Okimodo looked on surprised as he saw that those three were still alive. “How did you survive the attack?”

“I sensed the attack comming at just the last second.” Veronica explained as her eyes glowed ominously. “Since I’m a demonic resonator I’m quite good at dealing with death energy attacks. It seems that this attack was made by a person from the life and death school. In order for them to be able to wield death energy in its raw form without using death seeds they must at least be a class six super resonator.”

“A class six?” Shipo let out a long suffering sigh.

“How the hell are we going to deal with something like that.” Okimodo frowned.

Both Okimodo and Shipo were class three so naturally there was little chance of victory against a class six even with their advantages as Azurai.

“You don’t have to deal with them.” Lyon said speaking up. “We will. You just have to stay here and guard the train. We will fight them.”

Beside Lyon and Veronica, Butchy was as stoic as ever, not even slightly intimidated by the upcoming confrontation.

Hiro wore a fearful and panicked expression as she protended to be a normal passenger. “Please don’t leave me alone here, I’m scared.”

“Just stay with the two shang rokai.” Veronica smiled warmly before exiting on to the roof with her two companions.

Okimodo and Shipo both watched on as the three super resonators leaped up into the darkness and out of view.

“This is going to be rough.” Hiro said as she sat down and ran her fingers through her hair. “If this class six resonator is THAT class six resonator then we’re going to have a much more difficult time than expected.”

“How long do we have left until we reach Corone?” Okimodo asked looking over at his brother.

“If I’m not wrong we still have around seven or eight hours left.” Shipo answered honestly.

“Well isn’t that just fantastic.” Okimodo sighed while cursing internally. Doing jobs as a shang rokai was turning out to be much more tedious than he expected.

End of chapter 32.