Editing BlazBlue:Spiral Shift - Hyokujin no Eiyu (section)

===Part 4===

When the door was completely closed, the area was filled with silence. It was so quiet that the sound of his own breathing and heartbeat became noisy.

Jin stood in the shallow water and focused his attention. He was aware that he was separated from Grimwood and the others, but he didn't have time to focus on that right now.

— Kill.

An impulse whispered in his head.

— Kill. Kill. Kill. Slay. Murder. Slaughter.

Regardless of his intentions, the nauseating feeling of something that was not himself were penetrating Jin's nerves like cold water seeping in.

But no. This was not the voice he heard earlier.

It was not like the voice of Yukianesa, who always comes up with something to shake Jin's spirit and give him the will to kill in the hand that holds the sword.

Earlier, the voice that he heard was...

“.......Rugrurururugrururu...”

In place of the girls voice, which had sunk somewhere in his memory, he heard what sounded like the low roar of a beast. But at the same time, a voice with a strange undulation that would never be uttered by a beast approached from beyond the darkness where Jin was looking, beyond the blue glow of the liquid seithr.

Suddenly, the darkness moved. A shadow abruptly struggled as if it had a mass in the deep blackness and without a sound, a reddish-black line ran like a crack across its surface.

A pair of large eyes blinked at Jin.

And out of the darkness, it emerged.

A large head that seems to have developed only a jaw.

It crawled out of the darkness and fell to the surface. It didn't have a clear torso under its head, and it seemed to be dragging the darkness it had crawled out of.

It was as if only the neck had been forcibly pulled out of the torso and some of the flesh had been peeled off. The head was large and the top was higher than Jin's. Jin would be like a toy to that head. He could easily be swallowed whole.

But even so, Jin felt that the head was still on the small side of its kind. He didn't even know what kind of head this was, yet he was able to tell that.

Jin noticed that his breath was trembling. It was terrifying. The head that appeared in front of him. The very existence of it. The fact that it existed. His soul shriveled up in fright.

But a wave of murderous intent washed over it.

The urge to kill shook Jin.

His head was a mess. He wanted to escape, but he wanted to kill. He wanted to kill it even though he was afraid. He wanted to slash at it, cut off its jet-black flesh, bathe it in black blood and gouge out its red eyeballs.

Kill, Kill. Slay. Murder. Slaughter. Destroy.

"Argh! Shut up a already!"

The voice in his head was ranting and raving, and Jin resisted by biting his lips.

It was the voice of the Nox Nyctores, Mucro Algesco: Yukianesa	that urged him to kill. It was Yukianesa's will. If he let his impulses take over and slashed upon the beast, Jin's consciousness would be easily swallowed and bend Yukianesa's will.

Whether looking at Jin or Yukianesa, the black head trembled as if it were rattling. The jaws, lined with huge black fangs, opened wide.

"Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!"

It barked in a voice so loud that it gave the illusion of the earth shaking.

That was the signal to start the battle.

"Haaaaaaa!"

The water that had dissolved the seithr splashed up and Jin ran.

The urge crawling up his neck made Jin pull out his sword. The silvery white blade froze the air around him. As the cold air spread, a black feeling spread inside Jin.

“I'll kill you!”

Shouting unconsciously, Jin swung his sword sharply at the throat of the head.

The slash made a sound of wet flesh and cut off the heavy object.

But it was not the throat of a black beastly head, but one of the countless black tentacles protruding from an irregularly shaped body part extending from it.

The tentacle that flew through the air splashed up and fell behind the head. As it was, the tip of the tentacle melted into the water and disappeared. The rest of the tentacles attacked Jin at once. Some glided across the surface of the water, while others leapt up high and swung down like whips.

Jin responded to this with the blade of Yukianesa.

He flashed his blade to the left and right, cutting and discarding at random.

But no matter how many tentacles he slashed, the number did not decrease. In fact, the number seems to be increasing instead, and finally, one of the tentacles that he couldn't handle and missed, plunged deeply into Jin's abdomen in a horizontal cut.

"Fu...gu."

His lungs rumbled as he was forced to exhale. He was blown away with such force that he slammed into the wall behind him and fell into the shallow water.

"Ku... Cough!"

When he woke up, choking on the air he hadn't been able to inhale properly, countless tentacles were already closing in on him. He jumped sideways to avoid them and rolled in the water covered with seithr. As if chasing after him, the tentacles slammed into him one after another.

The flying droplets fell like rain.

Jin managed to pull himself up, shoveling his wet sticky hair into a muddled mess and raising his sword.

The sliced tentacles flew up again and fell into the water, melting and disappearing.

The tentacle that had been severed in the middle trembled finely and immediately regenerated from its cross section. The black whip that flew out came at Jin's face.

He almost evaded the powerful thrust, but the force of the graze sliced through Jin's ear and shoulder. The pain that raced through Jin's body disturbed his nerves. Something black was slowly rising from the bottom of his stomach.

He groaned and tried to swallow it, and when he looked up, he thought he saw a black head... laughing at him.

It ridiculed him.

Red eyes twisted, deeply cleft corners of mouth distorted, fangs lined up.

The inside of Jin rumbled.

"Ah...... Hah... Aah. AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"

— Kill, kill. Kill the beast. Kill that pitch, black “BEAST!”

His throat trembled, and an unbearable scream rose up. His lungs filled up. His throat collapsed and he stopped breathing. It was as if black water of murderous intent began to circulate through his body instead of his blood. It was as if he was being swallowed whole.

He became awre of so immediately.

But before he could resist, a black emotion rushed in and engulfed Jin from the inside.

"Come on, this isn't like you."

“...Huh?”

Jin's movements stopped as he was startled.

He wondered if I had finally lost his mind. If not, he might have been temporarily addicted to the seithr that soaked his feet.

A voice that shouldn't have been heard over any other voice, but it was so close.

A calm, low, gentle voice. Yet, because he spoke with a coarse inflection, his voice sometimes sounded intimidating and even scary.

The voice of his brother.

"Don't get so hot tempered, you idiot."

It was right behind him. Or maybe it was at his feet. Anyway, the voice of his brother, who had no form, spoke to him as if he was melting into the air around him.

With a single breath, it washed away Jin's spirit, which was coated with Yukianesa's murderous intent.

Like a receding wave, Jin's heart became lighter. The sludge-like heaviness recedes from his internal organs.

His vision stabilized and his breathing was normal.

"Huh... Hehehehe... Yeah, that's right. This is not like me."

Wiping his dirty mouth, Jin smiled thinly.

Jin Kisaragi is calm and collected. In his school days, he was so polite to everyone that he was well-liked and was even made student president.

If he could talk to his brother about such things, he wondered how he would look at him.

Would he be surprised? It would be nice if he was, but he was sure he didn't know much about the school system, so he would probably just ignore it, without much interest.

Whatever it was, his brother is gone.

Jin killed him.

Thinking of this, his disturbed mind was flattened and he felt terribly calm.

"My brother is dead, so there's no one left for me to kill."

There was no one left to kill that can scorch his soul and freeze his heart.

Jin straightened his back and sheathed "his" Yukianesa, eyeing the head of that black beast. His hands remained on the hilt and he sat back.

“I just want to get rid of you."

(To go to the back of this room. To catch up with my friends who went ahead of me. I can't just sit around and wait forever.)

The beasts head roared and another wave of tentacles attacked Jin.

One by one, Jin slashed them away, dodging those that don't make it in time.

There was already no killing intent or fear. His cool green eyes calmly read the movement of the beast's attack. The trajectory was not complicated. He could dodge it if he calmed down. He didn’t have to focus on one thing, just look at the whole picture and slash as necessary.

The tentacles sliced off by Yukianesa fall off and disappear again.

At that moment, Jin noticed that the surface of the liquid seithr had taken on a blue glow. As if to absorb the light, a section of the beasts tentacles lit up and new tentacles regenerated from it.

In short, it sucked up the seithr in the water and used them to rebuild new parts of its body. In other words, the neck itself does not store an inexhaustible supply of seithr.

“...I see, that's how it works."

That small realization gave him a number of ideas on how to deal with it. So, he jumped backward to dodge the tentacles that came at him from above and below, as if they were trying to bite him and as he landed, he thrust Yukianesa to the floor.

At that moment, the water that had spread across the floor of the room, starting with Yukianesa, froze.

The black head reacted as if in agitation. Both he and his tentacles were half-buried in the ice, unable to move. Even so, a few of the tentacles flailed about, shattering the ice and lifting it up, but before they could swing down, Jin's ice blade struck through every last one of them.

The shredded tentacles fell and bounced on Jin’s ice. They didn’t soak up the seithr dissolved in the water and regenerate.

Perhaps sensing its inferiority, the beasts head roared.

As he shook his neck alone, countless cracks appeared in the ice. Without a pause, he jumped up as if to raise himself up, and his neck escaped the ice.

It went straight for Jin.

With that in mind, Jin swung his sword.

A blue-white light ran. Countless ice blades stuck out from below and pierced the flying black neck. The ice that spread out from there covered the neck, turning it into a lump of ice.

“Shatter...”

The flash that Jin released shattered it into pieces.

The cool, sharp sound of shattered glass work littered the area. The ice fell onto the still frozen floor and shattered again, eventually leaving no trace.

Jin puts his sword in its sheath and looked down at Yukianesa.

That murderous voice was no longer heard. It was quiet as if it were just a plain sword. The black head has been taken care of.

“You've taken up a lot of time...”

He wondered if Grimwood and the others have already reached the back. He said he would be right behind them, but it would be bad manners to keep them waiting and worrying too much. Jin turned his back on the frozen room and stepped towards the door leading to the back to follow Grimwood and the others.