Editing Mushi Uta:Volume 14 Chapter 2 (section)

== 2.06 Harukiyo Part 6 ==

Golden lightnings blew from the surface toward the sky.

Having become a flaming ball of heat, Harukiyo leapt to the side to dodge the lightning. He also swung his arms toward the swarms of C-butterflies filling the highway.

“Hahaaa!”

Harukiyo’s Mushi—a Great Yama tiger beetle wreathed in raging flames—swallowed the highway. Asphalt instantly turned into liquid, and a storm of bright red, burning dust and steam blew.

Harukiyo landed on the edge of the bisected road.

The ground he’d been standing on until now was decimated, and the C-butterflies and body doubles also left.

However—

“Damn, so annoying.”

A golden surged gathered at the sneering Harukiyo’s feet.

Electric lines gathered from all directions like they were bomb fuses—and the new lightning attack tried piercing Harukiyo.

He leapt to the side to dodge, but the countless C-butterflies got in his way. By bursting and connecting to each other, they became a cage of surging electricity.

Harukiyo rode a heat wave, managing to escape from the cage a moment before it clamped down on him.

“Flames and electricity is a poor matchup, eh. My attacks just keep passing through.”

Falling safely and rising again, he ran on the highway while wrapping his body in flames.

Harukiyo aimed for the direction the semi-trailer went to, but the C-butterflies stubbornly blocked his path.

He nimbly leapt to the sides while dodging the cage of electricity and gold.

“That’s why this doesn’t feel like a proper matchup at all. How can I even fight this monster who’s thrown away her personality and uses her ability endlessly in a city where you can find electricity wherever you go?”

Harukiyo rounded his body. He transformed himself to a fireball and launched himself from the surface like a missile.

Leaping over the highway, he landed with both legs on the wall of a high-rise building on the side of the road. This impact caused the entire building’s glass to burst, melting it bright red and caused it to rain down on the surface.

C was chasing after Harukiyo.

Golden fuses surged from the surface to the building, unleashing lightning that possessed enough power to kill in one strike.

“I can do something as long as I find out where the real body is.”

Kicking at the wall, he dodged the lightning. This time he went straight through the shopping arcade’s roof like a meteor and alighted down the surface. The ground caved in from the impact of the landing, and all surrounding structures cracked with him at the center.

All the shopping arcade’s billboards flickered—and golden lightning pierced through the merchant district. Harukiyo dodged the strike by a hairsbreadth, leaping to the high-rise building’s side again.

A bright-red fireball being chased by golden fairies and C-butterflies.

The pair’s game of tag destroyed Akamaki City little by little.

“C’s real body should be somewhere next to a huge electricity source. It can’t be anything plain or it wouldn’t have been able to support the amount of power and information volume she has. Since she wasn’t in the SEPB’s Fort, had she taken over a civilian power plant?”

While flying all over town, Harukiyo thought rationally.

He heard a ringtone from his pocket. As he pulled out his cellphone, he saw he got mail.

“Head 12 kilometers to the southwest, then keep going south.”

This was probably the current location of the semi-trailer housing Alpha.

It being still on the move meant that it did not fall into C’s hands.

“Looking at it in reverse, C also doesn’t want her real body to be found. Therefore, she wants to kill both of her opponents together while they’re retreating. Since all of us just finished our big operations, none of the Mushitsuki are at full power right now.”

Including himself.

The damage inflicted to Harukiyo by his fight against Sleeping Beauty was by no means light.

Even now his breathing was slightly elevated. Normally he wouldn’t be this tired.

“Lemme just say it now, but this really feels like a losing battle. Could someone even inflict any damage to C at all in that state? Maybe someone who could take care of these masses of lightning that are her body doubles—”

Like Sleeping Beauty, Arisu.

Or perhaps—the one who destroyed everything she touched, Fuyuhotaru.

About to mumble this name, Harukiyo closed his mouth.

“Anywho, it’s meaningless unless you strike the real one. So it’s also meaningless for me to fight against C like this. —I won’t let you take advantage of my games, though.”

Although he cared nothing about Mushi and Mushitsuki—it felt far more important for him to cling to an opponent when he designated them as people he didn’t like.

“I only saw the very prologue. Your reason to want to die still looks to be far, suicidal guy.”

Chasing the semi-trailer that had Alpha, Harukiyo stood inside a vast park.

As he did, many Revived surrounded him as one.

“Haha, so you used your head a little and set up an ambush on me? But—you really are lookin’ down on me.”

Harukiyo attempted to just break through without minding them.

“Tired as I might be, it’s still not enough to let some small fries like you stop me.”

He was standing on a lawn where in normal times a father and son would be playing catch. Although they were smack dab in the middle of capital, there was no need to fear C’s lightning in places with no electrical conduction like this.

Harukiyo turned into a fireball and accelerated as the Revive charged at him.

And not their Mushi, but their actual physical bodies.

“What the hell are you doing? You wanna die?”

Harukiyo blew away those people leaping right at him with heat waves.

However, the Revived then came charging at him from behind without flinching at all.

“Tch—”

Turning around, Harukiyo tried waving them away again. And then he saw—

A golden flash surged.

Between the Revived leaping at Harukiyo—electrical discharges formed in air, preserved the bare minimal distance to be able to leap between them and through it make the line of lightning reach Harukiyo.

“GAAAAAAHHHHH!”

His sight was dyed in gold and Harukiyo’s entire body was engulfed by the impact.

Even so he was able to avoid a direct strike due to his experienced reflexes. Although he sensed danger and leapt back, the aftershock caused by the lightning erupting from the surface touched Harukiyo.

People’s bodies conducted electricity.

C gathered her Revived in a straight line and used them instead of wires.

“—…!”

With his hair raising smoke and his entire body becoming black with soot, Harukiyo tottered.

The remaining Revived tried leaping at him to finish him off.

However, they all stopped in place.

Their expressions—were filled with fear.

“—What an ugly way of fighting.”

Holding out the moment before collapsing, he glared at the Revived.

The flame demon’s blazing eyes paralyzed the controlled Revived.

“If you’re gonna come at me, use your own damn powers—”

The heat wave blowing with Harukiyo in its center threw all the Revived back.

“Don’t let yourselves get used like tools so easily! You pieces of shit!”

Howling, Harukiyo transformed into a flaming sphere yet again.

“Were all of you born just to be used as pawns by someone? Living such half-assed lives, all you’re doing is showing how pathetic you are!”

After turning the entire field to ashes and melting the fence and all electric lights around, he flew out of the park. While crushing parked cars and knocking down buildings, he was setting the entire urban jungle ablaze.

“You’re pissing me off even more than C…! If you seriously wanted to live for real, you can’t fucking surrender like that just because you became Fallen or died—”

Defeating further Revived coming to attack him, he was going after the semi-trailer—

He stumbled down.

As Harukiyo’s legs became numb, he crashed headlong into a mailbox.

“Guh…!”

C’s electric attack inflicted Harukiyo some hefty damage.

Although it hadn’t been a direct hit, his body was exposed to quite the high voltage. Even remaining conscious was a struggle, and he couldn’t shake off the remaining numbness of his body easily.

“—It’s finally gotten more like a ‘disaster’, eh? Haha!”

However, Harukiyo sprang to his legs, moving.

A moment later, C’s lightning assaulted the mailbox.

While the tattered remains of tape from his face and burnt hairs fell off, Harukiyo kept moving. If he didn’t, his body would turn into ashes the next time for sure.

“Oh, so you’re not broken. You’re as tough as me.”

Hearing a ringtone, he pulled the cellphone from his pocket.

“Five kilometers to the south.”

The semi-trailer’s current location was written on the cracked LCD screen.

The distance between the two was certainly shrinking.

However, rather than Harukiyo being fast—it was the semi-trailer being slow. He had a bad feeling about it.

“I wanna keep stringing C along like this and use her—but I can’t really say that, now can I. Should I blow her off for a while?”

There were C’s body double fairies, the C-butterflies, as well as the Revived coming at him in droves.

Leading all of those to the trailer would put it in danger.

Since the semi-trailer moved slowly, it meant that Ume and Haruka were fighting hard to protect Alpha. Drawing so many pursuers to them would amount to suicide.

“—Nah, I can’t do that. If I take a detour and Ume and Haruka are finished off in the meantime, that’d be seriously uncool. I’ll lose my chances to play with that suicidal little shit.”

While running on heat waves, he emitted heavy, painful breaths.

“Or actually… I don’t think I can shake ‘em off even if I try to.”

He was hit by C’s lightning while his injuries from his fight against Sleeping Beauty still remained.

In this situation, was there a reason for him to protect Alpha just because he didn’t like him?

“Doesn’t seem like C’s trying to kill that suicidal guy… should I just withdraw?”

If he just gracefully gave up and waited for his strength to recover, he could then look for Alpha again.

These thoughts went through his mind—but Harukiyo laughed them off.

“Meaning, I’m going to spend years searching for him again? —Just like with Arisu.”

Sparks of flames came spilling out from his twisted mouth.

“What a fucking joke. I’m not just stubborn, but also short-tempered.”

He resolved himself.

He’d catch up to the semi-trailer as quickly as possible, fend off C and the Revived, and have a blast fulfilling his original goal, comparing his sins against Alpha.

Even if he’d have to keep protecting Alpha for a long time until they reached the secretary’s safe location. Even then.

Because this was the path of the person called Harukiyo, who wanted to enjoy his life to the fullest.

And as for plans on how to accomplish all of this—

“I’m gonna do whatever I like and live to the fullest. So don’t fucking dare stand in my way—”

Nothing at all came to mind.

Having accrued damage and fatigue, his body was extremely heavy.

He was even dizzy, and for a moment his vision distorted.

In this situation where there wasn’t even a lone ray of hope, Harukiyo could do only one thing—laugh it off.

“I’ll burn ya.”

Harukiyo’s eyes were dyed crimson.

The tape covering his face was burnt off and his right cheek became a flickering flame. He also lost parts of his left arm and right foot, turning into lumps of bright red fire.

“Hahaaa!”

Becoming a literal flame devil in accordance to his alias, Harukiyo rushed through Akamaki City. He pierced through large buildings, made the ground under him cave and melted any and all obstacles that stood in his way during his mad rush.

Even C’s lightning couldn’t catch up with Harukiyo.

While turning everything in his path to molten lava, Harukiyo pushed forward.

He finally managed to catch up to the semi-trailer—

“Harukiyooo!”

Standing atop the cargo box, Ume was surrounded by multitudes of Revived.

If Harukiyo had arrived just a little later, he probably wouldn’t have made it in time.

No—you could say they were already in C’s grasp.

“You’re takin’ it real easy, aren’tcha, Ume? Already caught up to you?”

“Don’t be ridiculooous! We can’t go so fast in this narrow road! —Wait, Harukiyo, your face…!”

It was probably an escape route they had no choice but to take after getting cornered. The semi-trailer was parked in a small road sandwiched between apartment complexes, not even part of the main road.

“Welp, back into the fray.”

“Eh?”

Harukiyo spouted fire from his entire body. His thrust arm was wrapped by hellfire in the form of his Mushi, the Great Yama tiger beetle.

“This is mine. —Give it back.”

He swung his arm down toward the semi-trailer.

The large Great Yama tiger beetle of flames shot out of Harukiyo’s arm, crashing headlong against the semi-trailer. The surrounding Revived were blown away—and the flames kept going, swallowing the semi-trailer, including Ume on its roof.

“Gyaaaaah!”

Ume’s scream was drowned by the heatwave and impact.

Vast energy engulfed the semi-trailer, raised it up, and invited it to a world with no sense of up or down.

In this space where the entire vision was dyed in red, what passed through Harukiyo’s mind—

—''I think… there’s meaning to this power.

Was this again.

This was Sleeping Beauty’s evaluation of Harukiyo that she had told him before.

“…There’s nothing like that at all.”

As Harukiyo sneered and muttered this, the flame in his cheek was extinguished. His tattoo patterned after flames was revealed, and even his limbs fused with flames restored their normal appearance.

Then, along with a large impact, Harukiyo landed—

“Gya!”

Right next to the screaming Ume. Meaning, on top of the semi-trailer’s roof.

And the trailer itself—landed atop the hard asphalt.

And that surface was—

“Huh? This is…”

On the highway again.

Harukiyo used a heatwave to carry both himself and the semi-trailer all the way here.

“Y-you carried us all this way? This is crazy!”

“Haha! I really am fucking tired! Hit the gas already, secretary woman! From here on, you can drive as recklessly as you’d like!”

Harukiyo kicked the roof and the semi-trailer suddenly accelerated.

A golden glow was formed overhead.

“Looks like you finally understand. You can’t finish me off with a mere chase.”

Harukiyo looked up the sky, grinning.

“So you’re left with your little favorite technique then, C.”

Appearing from between the clouds was a divine shrine.

Seeing its form, Harukiyo leapt into the cargo box from the hole in the roof.

Inside the car filled with unknown machinery, the guy was closing his eyes again.

“How about at least welcoming me back, you suicidal bastard? The great Yama’s back!”

Grabbing Alpha’s cuffs, Harukiyo flared his eyes red.

“Second round. I’m not gonna let you pretend you’re asleep, alright?”