Chapter 45 Let’s Wreck the Seiryuusai Festival with Evil Dragon! ⑥
Edited by: Kanaa-senpai
Midnight was closing in—the very peak of the Seal Dragon Festival—and the whole plaza had worked itself into a feverish buzz, guests pressing shoulder to shoulder until the air itself felt tight. The festival lanterns went out all at once, plunging everything into a hush of shadows. Then ghostly blue flames flickered to life like moth lamps, casting a dim, wavering glow over a wooden stage… floating in midair.
Gasps rippled through the crowd as people craned their necks up. A few of the newer guests still looked genuinely stunned that a stage could just hang there in the air, but anyone who’d lived with this thousand-year-old rite long enough only spared them the faintest, knowing smirk. To act surprised now was like wearing a sign that said you didn’t belong here.
Thirteen men stood up there, all of them middle-aged and dressed in formal montsuki haori and hakama. Embroidered family crests marked them as the Branch Family of the Shiryuin Clan, and I caught the subtle tightening of brows from the more old-fashioned guests below. They’d noticed the same thing I had—because if the Head of the Main Family, the sworn guardian of the nation, wasn’t here at the climax of the festival, then this was… unprecedented. In all the Seal Dragon Festival’s thousand-year history, the Head had never once been absent.
”What are those Branch Family bastards planning, meddling in a rite that’s lasted a millennium…?”
That they were here, stepping out of the shadows to stand brazenly on the main stage, meant something. It was the kind of thing that hinted at a revelation—yeah, like Seiichi had said, the sort of revelation that could change the whole world. It wouldn’t necessarily derail Yaten’s and my plan… but it was too weird a coincidence that our schemes were colliding at the exact same moment.
Whatever trick they were about to pull… nothing could possibly get in the way of Yaten, the Evil Dragon who could wipe out the world—
—Or so I thought.
My whole body jolted when I felt it. A monstrous pressure, foul and crushing, surged from the floating stage above. It was… on par with Yaten. My skin prickled, my throat locked up, and I wasn’t the only one—screams tore through the plaza as everyone else sensed it too. The Branch Family had been hiding a trump card. And its strength, just from its aura alone, was easily the equal of the world-ending Evil Dragon at my side.
But more than that… it felt too much like Yaten.
Not Yaten as she was now, but from before—before she became a mother. The pure, unshackled essence of an Evil Dragon. Humans shouldn’t have been able to leash something like that. Whatever the Branch Family had been plotting, they’d definitely crossed the line. Bringing out something that could end the world, here, in front of visiting dignitaries from all over… it was beyond madness.
The Branch Family men stood calmly, eyes sweeping the growing panic as if it were all expected. And then, to quiet the chaos, the Branch Head—Seiichi—lifted a pitch-black orb high above his head.
”Everyone, please. Remain calm. This—” he said, voice smooth, “—is something completely under our control.”
”What… the hell…?!”
Black miasma gushed from Seiichi’s orb, roaring upward like a waterfall in reverse. It was thick, suffocating, like someone had boiled down Yaten’s own miasma until only raw evil sludge was left. It coiled high above us, twisting, swelling, until it spun itself into a massive cocoon of darkness. The sheer size of it blotted the sky from edge to edge of my vision, like some black celestial body lowering itself onto the earth. Every single guest in the plaza froze, locked rigid by the primal terror of such power.
Seiichi and his men smiled as if basking in that fear.
”We have succeeded in creating a clone of the Evil Dragon,” he declared. “For a thousand years, the Evil Dragon’s miasma has leaked from the Underground Temple. We gathered it. We condensed it. And now, we have birthed a puppet of our own—a Void Dragon—indistinguishable from the real thing!”
”Are you insane?! You’re unveiling this… this thing at the Seal Dragon Festival—”
”Inji-sama, rest assured!” one of them called out over me. “This Void Dragon possesses no soul. It has no self, no will. It will not move without our command. In short—we now hold the power to end the world itself in our hands! With this, even world hegemony would be easy!”
In short, Seiichi and the other twelve Branch Family men were drunk on power. They’d created a puppet monster equal to the Evil Dragon, and now they couldn’t even pretend to hide their arrogance.
”You realize what this much miasma will do to unborn children, don’t you?!” I shouted. “Do you even know how many pregnant women are here tonight—how many babies are at the Seal Dragon Festival right now?!”
Thanks to the Bloodline Purification Rite trend, almost every woman in the exorcist world was pregnant. Which meant, because of this grotesque little show of force, a thousand innocent lives were now in danger. And no matter how twisted those lives might be by their incestuous unions, snuffing them out before they’d even drawn breath was something I couldn’t accept.
Yaten had been so careful, always mindful of the Innocent Lives. But here the Shiryuin Clan—the ones meant to seal the Evil Dragon—hadn’t even considered them. The thought made me sick.
Seiichi just smiled down at me, all delight and poison.
”There is no need to worry about lives rotted by taboo.”
”…You can’t be serious,” I breathed. “You actually mean that?”
To dismiss the lives of over a thousand infants… it was practically a declaration of war on everyone in the exorcist world. The next generation, the heirs of its great houses, and he was saying—without even blinking—that he didn’t care if they died.
Seiichi’s gaze swept over the pregnant women below, cold and unashamed, like he was staring at something repulsive. The other twelve men mirrored it, sneering down without a shred of restraint. That open disgust… it was rejection. They’d given up on the exorcist world, sickened by how the Bloodline Purification Rite had spread.
”You yourself, Inji-sama, have lamented the state of our world,” Seiichi said softly.
And when his eyes met mine, it was like he thought he’d found an ally. Like he saw someone else who’d kept his sanity in this world of madness. He was sure—completely sure—that I’d see it too. After all, when you’ve watched your friends and even your own family slide into incestuous ruin because of the Rite, even the Main Family’s Head, a mere puppet, might start to feel like the only sane man left.
”If things have strayed this far from sanity,” Seiichi said, almost gently, like he was confiding in a comrade, “then we must resort to… radical treatment.”
A chill ran straight down my spine. His tone was calm, but what he was actually saying was monstrous enough to freeze blood. He was talking about wiping out over a thousand innocent lives just because they’d been conceived through incestuous union—and because they held in their hands something that could supposedly “resolve” all the resulting problems: the Void Dragon. With that, these thirteen men of the Branch Family had convinced themselves they had the right to swing the axe, to cut down everything, all for the sake of “restoring order” to the exorcist world.
And maybe they could… because they had actually created something equal to the world-ending Evil Dragon. Their egos had swelled so grotesquely that they probably couldn’t even see the ground anymore.
”Snap out of it!” I shouted up at them. “You’ll turn every single exorcist in the world into your enemy!”
Seiichi’s smile didn’t so much as twitch. “That’s fine. The noble houses that have drowned in the Bloodline Purification Rite can be dismantled and rebuilt properly—by us, who hold the Void Dragon. But first… let us show you a little demonstration.”
The black orb in his hand flared, and at the same moment, the immense dark sphere blotting out the sky began to crack. Thin lines, like veins of pale light, crawled across its surface. At first they were small, like tiny hairline fractures—but they spread fast, jagged and wild, until chunks started to break loose. From the widening gaps, black fog burst out in violent gusts, raw miasma flooding the air.
Then the darkness split apart entirely.
With a sound like shattering glass, the whole false star blew open, and through the storm of shards, something tore free—a dragon’s head, shaped out of solid night, forcing its way into the world. The sphere disintegrated around it, raining fragments of shadow as the enormous form uncoiled, so huge it seemed to link one end of the horizon to the other.
It was the manifestation of the Evil Dragon’s Clone.
Its colossal body stretched well over one ri—four kilometers—its sheer size proving that the legends about a dragon as vast as a river hadn’t been exaggerations after all. One swing of that massive tail could erase a city. Those clawed, night-colored limbs could carve bottomless trenches into the earth with a single swipe. And its body, sculpted from pure miasma, radiated a crushing power that felt like it belonged to something absolute, something beyond mortality.
This was not a bluff. This was real—a thing that could end the world. And standing there, looking perfectly composed, Seiichi of the Branch Family finally had the kind of weapon that made his madness… believable.
”So this… this is the thing that drove the Branch Family to rampage,” I whispered, my voice barely working. “A clone of the Evil Dragon…”
The Void Dragon’s pressure was so intense it took everything I had just to force words out. It wasn’t just big—it radiated the aura of a transcendent being, the kind of overwhelming presence that declared it stood outside the rules of this world.
Across the Seal Dragon Festival plaza, hardly anyone was still conscious. Even the scions of exorcist houses, trained from birth, had crumpled like paper the moment it appeared. The Void Dragon didn’t even need to move. It just hovered there, far above, silent and utterly still, yet that alone made every living thing want to prostrate itself in terror.
Just showing its form had wiped their minds clean. And yet… there was nothing inside it. No will and no soul. True to its name, it was a hollow void.
”This is what you do, when handed power beyond your measure?” My voice came out like a growl. “You use it to kill children?”
Seiichi gave me a serene little smile. “Ah. To still have the spirit for sarcasm… that is why you are worthy of being the Head of the Shiryuin Clan.”
He was bathing in it—this new, intoxicating sense of omnipotence. The moment the Void Dragon had fully manifested, it was like Seiichi believed himself an actual god. The other twelve Branch Family men were the same, their faces slack with bliss. They’d said they were going to give a demonstration, but they were so busy being drunk on their own power they hadn’t actually done anything yet.
I didn’t move. I just let my gaze drift, careful not to provoke them, scanning the plaza to take in the damage.
The pregnant women were still breathing. Good. They hadn’t actually been drenched in miasma yet. They were just unconscious, stunned by the oppressive aura. I could still sense life from their bellies… even the babies clutched in their arms as they’d collapsed, instinctively shielding them. Not poisoned. Not yet. Relief hit me so hard my knees almost buckled.
So that was the Branch Family’s real aim. Not killing outright—they were planning to taint them with just enough miasma to poison the children in the womb, the ones born of the Bloodline Purification Rite.
Above us, the Void Dragon hovered like a marionette frozen in place, not even twitching. And its puppet masters—the Branch Family, with Seiichi at their head—were utterly careless, blind in their arrogance, certain they were seconds from victory. They weren’t even bothering to move.
I glanced at the clock. Just a few minutes to midnight. The Underground Temple was a sealed space, cut off from the outside world, so Yaten probably hadn’t sensed any of this yet.
Which meant there was only one thing I had to do.
I had to protect the innocent lives until Yaten got here—no matter what. Even if it killed me.
I clenched my teeth so hard my jaw ached.
There were over a thousand innocent lives here—tiny hearts not even beating on their own yet—and every single one of them was about to be fed to that thing’s poison. If Yaten didn’t get here in time, they were done for. So until she did, I had to hold the line, even if it killed me.
The plaza was too quiet, like the world itself had stopped to watch the Branch Family bask in their madness. The Void Dragon floated above us in the dark, perfectly still, its vast shape cutting a black scar across the stars. It didn’t breathe. It didn’t blink. It just *existed*, and somehow that alone pressed down on my lungs until every breath felt stolen. The crowd lay scattered across the stone like broken dolls, silk festival yukata crumpled and drifting in the soft night breeze. I could see pale hands still wrapped around small bundles—mothers clinging to their babies even in unconsciousness.
I couldn’t let that be for nothing.
Seiichi stood at the edge of the floating stage, the black orb loose in his hand now like he’d already forgotten he was holding it. His eyes shone with that glazed euphoria of someone who thought they’d solved everything forever. The other twelve Branch Family men were the same, their gazes drifting, unfocused, their lips curled in faint, blissed-out smiles. They really believed they’d become gods tonight.
I swallowed the taste of iron on my tongue and crouched low, using the crowd’s fallen bodies as cover. My fingers brushed the cold stone, and a faint ripple of charm-script flared under my palm before fading—the plaza’s old warding seals, cracked and faded from centuries of festivals. If I could patch even a few, just enough to stall the spread of miasma…
I pressed both hands flat and whispered a line of binding scripture. Light crawled over the worn sigils, sputtered, then steadied into a thin, trembling glow. The air grew a fraction lighter. Not enough, but something. I had to keep moving.
Above, the Void Dragon shifted—or maybe the air just moved around it—but the ripple of pressure that rolled out was enough to make my vision blur. My heart stuttered hard. Even without will or soul, its sheer presence was a natural disaster. No wonder everyone else had passed out.
Just a few more minutes. Yaten would come. She had to.
”Come on,” I muttered under my breath, forcing the words out like they’d anchor me here. “Just hold together a little longer…”
The black orb in Seiichi’s hand pulsed once, a lazy heartbeat of light, and a hush rippled through the Branch Family as they turned their smiles toward it. My gut went cold. Whatever they were about to do next, it wouldn’t be just posturing.
I braced my hands against the stone, sealing charms flaring again under my touch, and locked my gaze on the sky.
Until Yaten got here, every second was mine to steal.
Notes:
• Seiichi – Branch family head, loyal but quietly disturbed by the clan’s decline. Cautious, more grounded.
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Edited by Kanaa-senpai.
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