Chapter 85: Reunion with Saya Takashiro

“Let’s go down as well. We can’t just stand by and watch them die.” Night Star slowly drew the Twin Swords of Illusion from their scabbard. A faint starlight glimmered along the blades, leaving shimmering, dreamlike trails in the air with every motion.

With wooden sword in hand, Saeko Busujima was the first to strike down a zombie near the car. Though she hadn’t known Takashi Komuro and the others for long, they had become close companions in these recent days. She couldn’t bring herself to simply watch as they died.

As soon as she moved, Saeko’s attacks were swift and fierce. With a spinning leap, she sent several zombies flying, then smashed the head of another with her wooden sword. The bloodlust awakened within her quickened the tempo of her strikes, leaving no zombie able to approach her.

Her mastery of sword-drawing techniques had advanced by leaps and bounds, and with three consecutive heavy blows, she shattered the skulls of three zombies. Yet compared to the sea of zombies now clogging the wide road ahead—at least a hundred and fifty, by her estimation—it was still a drop in the bucket.

Night Star gripped the hilt of his sword gently and strolled toward the horde as if taking a leisurely walk after dinner. Perhaps sensing the approach of a living being, the nearest zombie—a blood-soaked creature with its jaw muscles torn—lunged forward, arms outstretched. Night Star glanced at it, then looked away, dismissing it entirely. As the zombie was about to collide with him, he shifted his body at a subtle angle and slipped through its grasp.

Behind him, the zombie’s head split cleanly down the middle and fell to the ground, spilling nauseating blood everywhere. To be honest, this number of zombies was nothing to Night Star; the terrain was perfect for his sword-drawing techniques, which could unleash sword energy in sweeping arcs. But he had little interest in using such methods.

Night Star wasn’t one to bother with unnecessary exertion. His only goal was to rescue Takashi and the others, not to waste effort slaughtering every last zombie. The sword-drawing art required no special energy, only stamina. However, as a soul without a physical body, his stamina remained fixed—better than most, but not inexhaustible.

Moving with deceptive slowness, Night Star never let a zombie touch him. Each time one neared, he would evade and dispatch it with casual ease, passing through the horde in a matter of moments to reach the other side. Meanwhile, Takashi was forced to retreat, unable to recover his spent bullets as the zombies pressed in. Their remaining space to maneuver was shrinking with every step.

“Saeko, have everyone block their ears. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” By then, Night Star had slung the Twin Swords of Illusion onto his back, and two short blades had appeared across the backs of his hands—no one knew their purpose. Trusting Night Star completely, Saeko relayed his command, and everyone plugged their ears, though some did so with puzzled looks.

“Howling.” Night Star slowly raised his arms, crossing the short swords. Takashi was baffled—wasn’t now the perfect time to use that massive arc of sword energy to mow down the zombies? What was Night Star planning? Confused, he unconsciously let go of his ears, intending to speak up.

He regretted it immediately. Centered on Night Star, a massive shockwave exploded outward, like a pair of tuning forks colliding. The shrill, deafening sound hammered into Takashi’s brain, filling his skull with a thunderous roar. His mind went blank; before he could cover his ears again, he collapsed, knocked unconscious by the blast.

The others, though their ears were covered, still felt the muffled shock pass through their hands. Each of them pressed harder, struggling to block out the pain. For the zombies—who now relied solely on hearing to sense their prey—the sound was devastating. Their hearing, heightened many times over, became their undoing.

The wave of sound nearly split their heads apart. Without the ability to feel pain, they convulsed and toppled over. In an instant, the road was littered with their twitching bodies. After gathering the souls of the fallen, Night Star returned to the car.

Most of the group still clutched their ears. Though the noise had ceased, the ringing lingered, and they glared at Night Star with a mixture of resentment and complaint. “Night Star, what on earth did you just do? Do you have any idea how awful that was?”

Night Star shrugged, unconcerned. “But the zombies are all dead, aren’t they? Actually, I’ve been meaning to ask—why didn’t you just go over the top?”

He pointed to the gap between the car roof and the wire fence. Everyone looked and realized the car was pressed tightly against the fence, and the roof was just a little higher than the wire. Crossing over would have been easy, and the fence was low enough for an ordinary person to climb. They weren’t zombies, after all.

“We knew that, of course. But we couldn’t just abandon Miyamoto,” said Saya Takagi, whose blood had been running hot as she fought.

“But none of you tried to help her, either. You just kept killing zombies, like you were all determined to die together.” Saeko shook her head in exasperation. Thinking back, it would have taken only two people to lift Rei Miyamoto to safety. Had the spirit of shared hardship gotten to them all?

“Big brother, look! There’s a group of people in strange clothes coming!” Alice pointed toward the wire fence, where a team in riot gear was running over. The shockwave Night Star had unleashed was impossible to ignore. In truth, it was partly why he’d chosen this method.

“What happened here?” The rescue team stared in astonishment at the rows of collapsed zombies. None looked as though their heads had been struck—the only known way to kill them.

“Can zombies really be killed by sound waves? But generating that kind of sonic force would be incredibly difficult…” Saya adjusted her glasses, thinking quickly.

“Saya, you’re alive! Thank goodness!” One member of the rescue team, apparently the leader, removed her helmet and smiled at Saya with heartfelt relief.

“Mom!” Saya cried, recognition lighting her face. She flung herself into her mother’s arms, and the others wisely left the two to their reunion. Takashi, meanwhile, was ignored for the moment; in this world, a person lying on the ground was easily mistaken for a dead zombie, and anyone unaware of the truth might attack him if he suddenly got up.