Frieren: — Chapter 96 - Mahito: I Really Am the Buff Bro
Japan's drainage systems are world-famous.
Take the Metropolitan Area Outer Underground Discharge Channel, buried 50 meters beneath Kasukabe City in Saitama Prefecture, locals call it the "Sairyu no Kawa," the Colorful Dragon River.
Five massive vertical shafts, each 30 meters wide and 70 meters deep. A 6.3-kilometer tunnel. Four super pumps that move 200 cubic meters of water per second. Together, the system can handle a once-in-fifty-years flood.
But fitting both flood control and rail transit into a single cramped urban footprint means subway lines and drainage infrastructure inevitably share the same underground real estate. Tokyo Metro and Toei Subway together carry over 9 million passengers a day. Their tunnels pack the earth from 10 to 30 meters down. The drainage mains run deeper still, a whole separate world beneath the world.
"So if we just punch through right here, that should sort it out~"
CLANG....
The consolidated earth separating the underground rail corridor from the deep drainage culvert shattered.
The two independent passages, one above, one below, were ripped open into a single wide, jagged breach. Dark gaps tore across the rock face in every direction.
Wall fragments rained down. Rusted steel frames buckled and fell, crashing into each other, grinding to powder. A haze of gray dust swallowed the entire area.
The train lost its support. The front car dropped, slamming at an angle against the drainage channel floor. The body of the train bent and snapped apart at the midpoint, the rear half wedged between the ruins of the tunnel wall, going nowhere.
Severed lines threw off bursts of pale electric sparks. Ruptured pipes wept dirty water. The whole scene was a mess, chaotic, bloated, wrong.
Atop one tilted section of the broken train, Mahito touched down with an easy, unhurried step. His eyes curved into a smile. The grin beneath them was slow, sinister, and thoroughly pleased with itself.
"Hahaha! Moshi moshi~ Dead already?"
"Ehh~ No way, right?"
He made a show of it, five fingers pressed together, palm raised to shade his brow, scanning the wreckage below like a man checking the weather.
BOOM!
The rubble directly beneath the front car exploded outward in a sharp wave of earth.
Yellow-gray dust curled to a point. Something moved through it, too fast to track, just a shape, an impression, and then it was already in front of Mahito.
White light tore through the space where he stood.
But,
"Heheh! There you are!"
His entire body stretched, pulling upward to two meters. The human shape split cleanly into two halves, top and bottom, connected at the center by nothing but a bare spine, no flesh clinging to it at all.
Himmel's thrust found empty air.
Idle Transfiguration.
By rewriting his own body's information through the cursed technique, Mahito could reshape his flesh however he liked. In a fight, he was a rubber man.
"Heh!"
The sharp laugh hit the air, and Mahito spread his arms wide. The flesh-toned skin of his forearms shifted, hardened, turned the silver-white of bare metal.
WUMM!.
Both arms swept across, the crossing edges reaching for Himmel.
Himmel dropped low and let them pass overhead.
"......"
He said nothing. He watched Mahito's body, read the commit point of the swing, and as those arms locked rigid at full extension, he swung.
WUMM,,!,,
There was no comparison between their speeds.
Mahito's head came off without any delay at all.
But...
Shhh. Shhh. Shhh.
The head spun through the air, long hair trailing, blood spraying from the neck stump in wide arcs that left overlapping rings of red across the ground.
Himmel didn't relax. He had experience with this now, Mahito couldn't be killed that simply.
The instant he'd confirmed who he was dealing with, he'd already switched to Monk.
But the feedback was still wrong.
Strange.
And faster than I expected. Has he gotten stronger recently?
That was part of it, maybe. But it didn't feel like the whole answer.
"Pffha~!"
In midair, tiny arms and legs sprouted from the severed neck. Mahito hit the ground in a form that drove SAN values straight into the floor, grinning the whole way down.
"So fast, so fast! Can't even see it~"
The gap in power was obvious.
What wasn't obvious was the absence of fear. Mahito showed none.
He's confident he can react to every slash?
No. That wasn't it either.
Himmel's grip on the sword tightened.
Before he could pin down what was wrong, Mahito turned to look at him and shouted in a bright, breezy voice.
"Then come and get your gift!.Himmel!"
The entire roof of the subway car peeled open like a gift box lid.
Pitter-patter pitter-patter pitter-patter pitter-patter pitter-patter pitter-patter pitter-patter pitter-patter......
The sealed carriage became an open one. Its contents poured out toward Himmel in a panicked cascade.
"AAAAAAHH!"
"WHAT IS THIS?!"
People.
At least several dozen of them.
Unprepared passengers tumbled out of control, crashing into each other, grabbing and pushing. Overturned handrails and seats scattered through the air and dropped into the darkness below.
A transit disaster this severe should have killed everyone on board. Mahito had almost certainly used his own cursed technique to keep them alive, just to deliver them here, to Himmel.
Hostages.
Himmel didn't hesitate. His expression didn't flicker.
He moved forward.
His long arm shot out, fingers closing around the collar of the person falling at the lowest point. He swung them in, secured them, and hauled them onto his back in one motion.
His toes hooked the waist of another sliding passenger. He kicked upward with a sharp burst of force, the angle precise, the leverage clean, the person launched skyward.
SLAP! SLAP! SLAP!
Blue light swept between the falling debris, catching onto the train body one hold at a time.
CLANK!
Mage.
Mode switched. He pulled the falling passengers back up to the subway above in rapid succession.
"Stay still."
He said it, though he didn't expect anyone to actually calm down. So he followed the words with a swift knife-hand strike, delivering it down the line.
Slap.
The people he'd caught went limp. He tucked them into a corner that was as close to stable as anything here got.
Fragments of rock floated up, drawn by the magic, and braced the subway car, nearly vertical now, easing it upright, preventing a second drop. The surrounding rock layers compressed inward, buying just enough stability to keep the whole thing from caving in.
But,
"Oooh, impressive~ Himmel! Several dozen people!~ And you can save all of them?"
The voice landed cold and close, right against his ear.
Turbid cursed energy churned upward. Long hair whipped out against the air in all directions.
Mahito held the pose for a single instant, coiled, loaded, then his back arched and the straight punch came out.
CRACK!,,!——
Himmel reversed his grip, blocking lengthwise with the blade. The hurried guard met Mahito's fully loaded punch dead-on. The impact rocked him backward by a fraction.
He corrected immediately.
His foot found the ground. He shifted, stepped, and as Mahito moved to press the advantage, the follow-up backhand took him apart in four pieces.
"Wah! Scary~ You can recover that fast even here?"
The shredded Mahito smiled, a trace of something mocking in it.
"Such a shame~ If you'd been in Monk instead of Mage just now, maybe that one would've actually counted~"
"All that work to save a bunch of humans. You've really earned it, Lord Hero!"
Mahito swelled outward like a sea urchin. Countless needles erupted from his body in every direction.
Himmel could easily cut down whatever came at him. But the civilians were all around. To keep any one of those needles from finding a person, he had to cut all of them.
WUMM!.
Done.
White light curved and swept, and Mahito's needles were gone, exorcised cleanly by the blade.
And then.
CLANK!
Less than a tenth of a second. Another state switch.
Mage, Monk.
(This guy! He's getting faster!)
Mahito's mouth pulled wide, more frenzied than before.
"Himmel!"
Shouting didn't stop Himmel. The sound didn't even reach him.
.!
The Hero, with flawless decisiveness, moved before Mahito finished the first syllable.
In Monk state, he severed the opponent's waist.
And yet,
(Still wrong.)
(The feedback is wrong.)
The Monk slash.......
Did not kill Mahito.
The blade completed its arc. Himmel's expression went still.
FWOOOOSH!.
(This guy... could it be...—, )
"Ah-oom~"
Mahito's grin held as the severed upper half hung in the air. Then, at the crown of his head, it started.
His skull swelled. Flesh and skin pulled lengthwise, layer after layer ballooning outward. The grotesquely bloated cranium lurched forward, savage, purposeful. His mouth split wide, tearing all the way back to the roots of his ears.
The shadow of everything that was wrong with humanity fell over Himmel's head.
➤ Next: The Chop-Chop Fruit! It's the Chop-Chop Fruit Alright!