"Are we not going after them?" Rocky asked, pawing his chin and glancing in the direction the other two had left.

"There's no catching up to Sachi's haste, you know that," Kari said with a sigh.

Not to mention, if Sachi used the Shroud skill, no one was going to find her unless she wanted them to.

More importantly, why did Flare look like that? The image of something like Jaws… or maybe just monstrous showed up for the briefest second when Kari was looking at her. And speaking of which, that damn monster was still somewhere out there. They were quite the ways away from Minato City, but given how fast it could move, there was no telling where it might show up.

"We're just going to have to trust Sachi won't get herself killed and regroup with Jade in Osaka to—"

Flying monsters began to fall in droves. Many splattered on the ground and crashed into the side of buildings. One fell at her feet, dying without so much as a yelp or shriek.

A massive earthquake followed next. The floor fissured and cracked until it gave way. Kari took to the air as the entirety of Nijo Castle crumbled into the gaping chasm, the very one that three magical girls had thrown themselves into earlier.

Looking in from above didn't seem like much, so Kari decided to take a closer look.

"Oh, my beating heart… Do you really want to go down there after what happened to those magical girls?!" Rocky hesitated to follow after.

Curiosity got the better of Kari. She flew into the abyss to investigate until the dirt and stone interior of the hole became indistinguishable from the hospital's fleshy walls. Any deeper and thousands of serrated teeth were primed to tear her apart like the inside of a wood chipper.

Rocky had worked up the courage to descend and couldn't stop shaking.

"What is this?" Kari asked, shielding her nose from the foul smell of rot emanating from further down.

"All of it… it's a monster. I remember there being one just like it in Cape Town. I think it's dead though," the anthem replied, although sounding not too sure of himself.

Meaty tendrils and tissues were retracting from the gaps in the wall, as if shrinking in on itself. Some peeled off the side and disintegrated. It was dying.

"Monsters were throwing people into this, and when they ran out, the magical girls jumped in themselves to awaken the seraph. No wonder Hurricane wanted Messiah to split," she wondered aloud, then resurfaced with Rocky to consider what to do next.

Bhairava was tied to the creature below, that much was clear.

"Can you interface with the Apocalypse System and check if killing the seraph stopped the incursion in this city?" Kari asked.

"Checking!" Rocky straightened his back. "Sending you information… now."

[No incursion detected in Kyoto, Japan. Seraph-Bhairava has been slain.]

"Well, seeing is believing. Killing the seraph ended the incursion in the city. How about the others? Can we check the status of seraphs in other places?" Kari waited while the system gathered details to answer her request.

[Bringing up incursion statuses in Japan…

Kyoto — None

Shimane — Active

Osaka — Active

Okinawa — Active

Hokkaido — Active

Fukuoka — Unable to draw information. Abnormality Detected.]

Only one seraph had been dealt with so far. But what was the abnormality in Fukuoka?

"Rocky, what else can you pull up?'

"I'm trying, but it's like I'm hitting a wall," he said.

A small group of injured soldiers hobbled up to the eastern gate and met Kari's gaze as she rose into the sky.

"Hey! What happened?" one of them called to her.

"Oh, God." Another stared in disbelief at the missing palace. "They're all gone… everything, everyone's gone…"

Ignoring them, Kari and Rocky flew towards the bank where the JSDF had left a large number of people behind in the protection of city police. The barricade had been broken and blood poured down the steps like water flowing down a creek. All that was left inside were partially eaten human remains.

A broken lady giggled and danced upon the crimson carpet until Kari went inside to kill it.

[+50,000 Apocalypse Points]

She spat on the monster's body. "Try laughing now."

On her way out, she came across someone's phone by the door that must have fallen during the commotion. The device still worked, but it would run out of power soon. Kari searched Fukuoka on the web, hoping to learn what might be happening there.

No monsters. The city looked comparably unscathed. Then why was there an abnormality? Next on the list was Osaka, but few news were being reported and nothing came out of the local stations. Distant images being taken from a distance were far too distorted to make anything out. Though the large blur in the sky above the city was clearly the hundun.

As Kari was about to check what was going on in Okinawa, the phone powered off.

"Damn it." Kari threw the phone away.

"I'm sure Makina will be fine," Rocky assured her.

She pursed her lips. Flare had mentioned insurance, but what did that really mean?

Kari put her worries on pause, and the two made headway for Osaka which proved to be a much shorter journey than going from Tokyo to Kyoto. As they got closer to the port city, goosebumps formed on her skin. She came to an abrupt stop after passing through what felt like a thin film of mist.

However, that odd feeling soon vanished, replaced by the horror that awaited in the city of Osaka. It looked nothing like Kari remembered. Instead of skyscrapers, fleshy towers clawed at the storm above. Thick tendrils stretched across the once populous streets of the beautiful city.

"Osaka is much worse off than I thought. It reminds me of Cape Town where the seraph appeared," Rocky said.

Many people lie dead in the streets, their manner of death wasn't what Kari expected to look like in a monster-infested city. In fact, head hounds walked past bodies without much interest.

Floating still above it all was the seraph. A four-winged, six-legged, and faceless monster. Minato called it a hundun.

They were about to investigate further when something glistened from a distance. Kari narrowly dodged the javelin and immediately recognized who it belonged to.

"Judgment!" Jade's howl echoed through the city.

In seconds, hundreds— no, thousands of javelins manifested in the sky. They continued to multiply in number until the entire horizon was blotted out with an umbrella of shimmering projectiles.

"You're fucking kidding me, right?" Kari choked. Unable to outrun or hide from the volley, she shielded Rocky and uttered the only thing that could possibly save them in that moment. "Destruction Incarnate!"

[Health: 107/200 ⇒ 54/200]

In exchange to become empowered, her health was reduced by half and her remaining magic drained to zero.

They were showered by a hail of unending javelins but came out alive and unscathed. Rocky peeked out from her arms, brushing a bead of sweat from his forehead. Before either could breathe a sigh of relief, she tossed him aside and whirled around to receive a stab to the gut.

Despite being invulnerable to physical damage, Kari felt the weight behind the attack meant to kill. It would have skewered her had she not become empowered.

"Are you out of your mind?" Kari yelled, then saw the crazed expression on Jade's face which didn't hear a word.

"You're not fooling me this time," Jade snarled like a rabid dog. "You killed them all! I'm bringing you down if it's the last thing I do!"

"I don't even know what the hell you're talking about, but if it's a fight you want, then you're getting it!"

They fought head on. Each time their weapons clashed, shockwaves rippled through the space around them, buildings exploded just being near, and monsters died in droves getting caught in the crossfire.

Jade was incredibly powerful. What Flare had said about her being able to skewer someone without even looking their way was true. Javelins fired out of nowhere, most going for the head and chest. Kari would have been knocked out of magical girl form a hundred times over were it not for Destruction Incarnate.

The way she fought differed so much from when they battled the limbed-angel together. It was unrefined, barbaric even. No hint of sanity or thought put into each attack. This somehow made Jade even harder to fight against.

To make things worse, chipping through however much damn health and defenses Jade had was taking forever.

Although, there was one thing the sane Jade knew that this one didn't. Kari was about to turn her weapon over to [Ruin] when Gauntlet came in screaming.

"Don't do it! Jade isn't herself! She's being manipulated by the seraph!" Gauntlet cried.

"How am I supposed to get through to her then? Can't you take her out of form?" Kari shouted, her patience running thin.

"I-I can't! She's resisting me!" he stammered. "But we were fighting something that Jade said looked like you!"

Like me?

"Judge, Jury, and Executioner!" Jade launched her spear by hand, generating as much destruction as Sniper's climactic skill.

The explosion sent Kari crashing three cities over into Hirataka. She peeled herself off a semi-truck's container and clutched her head.

"It doesn't hurt, but… getting my head jostled around might knock me out…"

Jade flew into view with the scowl as she always wore. "What's the matter rookie? Pissed your pants and need a change of diapers?"

"Fuck you!" Kari rocketed off the ground and slammed into Jade. She stabbed the point of the hammer axe into her over and over again, then swung the hammer down hard on her head. The impact cratered her into the shallow, bloody waters of an artificial river.

Taken out of magical girl form at last, Tsubasa glared defiantly with bloodlust in her eyes. Kari landed on top and pressed a foot to her chest, then raised [Destruction and Ruin] for the killing blow. It all started that day in Akiba, and she could end it all today.

"Kari, no! Please!" Gauntlet begged.

His voice wasn't the only one in her head.

Kill her… Take her points and become stronger… History won't remember you as the hero… You're a hero to me… You're just like me.

Kari screamed at the top of her lungs and flung the soul-weapon away, then picked up Tsubasa to throw onto the riverbank.

"Kari, what's gotten into you?" Rocky tried to hold her face still as she started clawing at her own head. "Look at me, partner! Don't pay attention to anywhere else, okay? Just look at me!"

Staring into Rocky's worried eyes brought Kari some relief. For a moment, she had almost lost control, as though Enrage activated despite not reaching the minimum health threshold. Her emotions were running wild, and at any point she dwelled too much on a single thought, they might overwhelm her.

"What happened, Rocky?"

"What do you mean what happened? You were about to kill Jade!" he exclaimed, pointing to where Tsubasa was lying still with Gauntlet by her side.

Kari waded over to them just as Tsubasa slowly came back to consciousness, but Gauntlet came between them.

"Relax, Gauntlet. Looks like Kari and I are both back to our senses," Tsubasa said.

"Want to fill me in on what's going on?" Kari asked with her arms outstretched. "You went after me like I wronged your ancestors or something."

"This is gonna sound crazy, but I saw you. I know it shouldn't be possible since you were in Kyoto. Whoever they were used your skills and soul-weapon," she explained.

How would that even be possible? Monsters at the level of angel and higher were always demonstrating some kind of power. Could replicating a magical girl be something the hundun's doing?

Tsubasa glanced around as if in search of someone. "If you're here alone, I'm guessing the seraph in Kyoto is dead and Sachi bit the dust?"

"Sachi got the kill on the seraph, then she went missing." Kari shook her head.

"Not great news, but at least you guys had better luck than me. You probably already saw it. When I got to Osaka, it looked like the sky dumped a layer of ground beef on everything and fried it. There were still a whole lot of people around, but they were killing each other," she said.

"K-Killing each other?" Rocky shuddered.

"It's true," Gauntlet continued in his magical girl's place. "Strangling, stabbing, running into people with cars… Using whatever they could get their hands on to hurt each other. I've never seen anything like it."

If the monsters' goal was to indiscriminately gobble up as many people as possible, then it wouldn't care about those already dead. That meant millions of people were just going around killing one another? Which was odd because that wouldn't serve to feed a seraph.

One thing did make sense.

"I'm starting to see some parallels. People in Osaka were turning against each other. Same thing happened to us. We lost control. I bet you that hundun has something to do with it, " Kari said.

Tsubasa crushed two sigils and transformed back into magical girl Jade. She cracked her neck and knuckles, ready to go back in.

"Hundun?" Jade repeated.

"A Chinese mythological creature of primordial chaos. Whatever that means. But chaos is right if it's messing with our heads and making you see another me," Kari offered with little other information on hand.

Wait a minute. There should have been magical girls guarding the hundun. Where did they go? Or were they caught up by the mind breaks and offed each other?

"Messiah should have sent magical girls here. Did you see anything?" Kari asked Jade and Gauntlet.

"No, but—" Jade swallowed her next words. "I think you just got your answer."

High-pitched giggling from every direction sent chills up their spines.

"Ahehehe…he-he-help… it hurts… ahehehaha!"

"Just… Heehhaaahh… K-Kill me, please… ahahahehehe!"

"Ahahahahahah! I can't stop laughing— Ahahaha!"

On the other side of the riverbank, three magical girls covered up to their faces with pulsating warts and pustules of monstrous flesh were staggering toward them. They didn't have the tethers like the people inside the hospital monsters, but appeared to move in the same stiff and rigid manner.

One of them raised a magical bow and let loose a volley of arrows. Kari and Jade split away to avoid getting hit.

Another magical girl, this one wielding iron knuckles, took a swing at Kari and landed a painless strike. The one who dealt the attack, however, screeched in agony as the sound of bones cracked from the punch. Tendrils of flesh grew outwards from the warts to envelop her entire arm.

"Save me… I'm begging you… I don't want to die like this," she whimpered.

"I can't help you." Kari grabbed the caucasian magical girl by the head and snapped her neck.

[+1,000,000 Apocalypse Points]

"Shit. We really can't save them?" Jade quietly asked.

As they resolved to put down the other two, a blur moved faster than they could track and killed both Messiah magical girls.

"She's— It's back…" Gauntlet wavered.

Kari was stunned. She couldn't believe her eyes. It was like looking into a mirror. Because standing before them was the striking resemblance of herself. Empowered magical girl form, black hair, and [Destruction and Ruin] in hand.

A piercing headache brought Kari to her knees.

"Kari? Kari!" Jade called out.

Wincing, Kari raised her head to see a distorted version of her other self. The image of a monster only in the shape of her flashed briefly. Its true form was a walking, mummified humanoid, wielding a meat-shaped hammer axe. She recognized the split in the head that was gnashing its fresh meal with glee.

"That's not me… It's Jaws," Kari said.

The creature devoured the two magical girls, and from its body grew magnificent wings. It had evolved.