Villain: Your Heroines Were Delicious-Chapter 222 - 10

The air around the Otsuka Sanatorium had shifted since their last visit.

As the sun dipped below the jagged horizon, the building didn’t just cast a shadow; it seemed to exhale a thick, frigid miasma that clung to the skin like oil.

The silence of the industrial outskirts was absolute, broken only by the rhythmic, metallic ticking of the cooling car engine behind them.

"We’re back here again," Seijirou sighed, his voice low and heavy.

He stared up at the scorched concrete of the hospital. In the fading light, the building looked less like a ruin and more like a gargantuan, charred ribcage resting on the earth.

"Let’s go," Rindou said, her voice tight with a professional resolve that didn’t quite hide the tremor in her fingers.

She led the way through the rusted gates, with Seijirou and a nearly catatonic Tamaki following closely behind.

Unlike last time, now they felt like the interior was a tomb. The flashlights on their phones cut through the darkness, illuminating dust motes that moved with a strange, deliberate sluggishness.

The smell of old smoke had been replaced by something sharper—the scent of stagnant water and copper.

"Let’s start with the exorcism. We need to make sure she passes on before the boundary between worlds thins any further," Rindou said once they reached the center of the vaulted lobby.

She moved with a mechanical precision born from the grueling training she undergone with her grandfather.

She took out a piece of ritual chalk and several thick, beeswax candles, then with fluid motions, she began to draw a complex, interlocking geometric circle on the grime-covered floor, her movements creating a scraping sound that seemed to echo far longer than it should have.

She placed the candles at specific cardinal points, the flames flickering a sickly, pale blue the moment she lit them.

Once fone, she sat down in the center of the circle, her legs crossed and her eyes fluttering shut as she began to pray, her voice a rhythmic, melodic hum that seemed to vibrate the very air.

Almost immediately, the entire hospital began to shake.

It wasn’t a seismic tremor; it was as if the building itself were shivering in a cold fever.

The walls groaned, and the sound of hundreds of phantom feet scurrying in the vents above filled the room.

Tamaki let out a stifled whimper, clutching Seijirou’s sleeve so hard her knuckles turned white, her body pressed against his side as she tried to disappear into his shadow.

Then, the floor began to bleed.

Not blood, but a shadow so thick it was liquid.

From the cracks in the tiles, dozens upon dozens of faceless female ghosts began to crawl out.

Their movements were jerky, like stop-motion film, their long, matted hair obscuring where their features should have been.

The atmosphere became impossibly eerie, the light from the candles struggling against an encroaching, unnatural gloom.

The moment they appeared, Seijirou’s nose wrinkled in visceral disgust as that scent—the disgusting, cloying stench of rotten meat—engulfed the lobby, thick enough to taste.

The ghosts didn’t attack, they simply rose to their full, spindly heights, their gray, translucent forms swaying in an invisible wind.

They hovered just outside the chalk line, their heads tilted at impossible angles, watching the trio with a silent, starving intensity.

They were like moths drawn to the heat of Rindou’s prayers, yet they didn’t dare cross the boundary of the glowing circle.

Just then, the floor at the very center of the lobby—near the reception desk—began to heave.

A figure emerged, more solid than the rest, and Tamaki’s breath hitched, and she pointed a trembling finger. "That’s her! Her! Koyuzu Mira!"

The moment Mira appeared, the other ghosts became violently restless as the air grew heavy with a low-frequency hum that made Seijirou’s teeth ache.

Their forms shifted; their pale skin turned a bruised, oily black, and the faceless voids of their heads erupted into countless lidless eyes and sharp, needle-toothed mouths that appeared all over their limbs. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

They roared—a sound like grinding metal—and rushed the circle.

BANG.

They slammed into an invisible wall, the golden barrier of the ward flaring bright with every impact.

The creatures groaned and hissed, their elongated fingers scratching at the air, their black tongues lashing out.

They began to bang their heads against the barrier with suicidal force, black ichor spraying across the invisible shield.

Tamaki’s legs finally gave out as she collapsed to the floor inside the circle, hyperventilating, her eyes fixed on the monsters that were only inches away from her face.

Rindou’s eyes snapped open. Her voice rose into a crescendo, uttering prayers in a guttural, ancient language that felt like it was carving itself into the walls.

With one final, piercing shout, a burst of blinding golden light erupted from her core.

It was like a spiritual supernova.

The monsters shrieked, their forms dissolving into gray ash and dissipating into the stagnant air.

The silence that followed was deafening.

The candles flickered out, leaving only the dim light of their phones.

Rindou slumped forward, her breathing heavy and ragged as Seijirou walked toward her, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay?"

Rindou looked up, a pale smile crossing her face. "Yeah. Don’t worry. It’s just, this is the first time I’ve had to cast something that large. I’m just... exhausted. My Ki is drained."

"Is it done?" Seijirou asked, his eyes scanning the now-empty lobby.

"Not yet," Rindou whispered, wiping sweat from her brow. "Bounded Spirits are anchored. They have something they are physically attached to in this world—a memento, or their remains. We need to find the anchor and give it a proper burial to bring that girl’s soul actual peace. If we don’t, she’ll just reform when the moon rises."

Seijirou stood up and scanned the room, his instincts were screaming at him, pointing toward the epicenter of the manifestation.

He walked toward the patch of floor where Mira had emerged, and immediately noticed that the concrete there was a different shade—slightly smoother, as if a patch had been poured long after the hospital had been abandoned.

Rindou followed his gaze, her eyes narrowing. "You think... that’s it?"

"Only one way to find out," Seijirou replied.

He planted his feet and channeled his Ki into his legs, his silver-gold aura flaring for a moment as he brought his heel down with the force of a falling star.

CRACK.

The concrete shattered.

With a grunt of effort, he reached into the fissure, his enhanced strength allowing him to peel back the thick slabs of stone as if they were wet cardboard.

In that instant, a stomach-wrenching, primordial stench erupted from the hole.

It was a concentrated wall of decay that felt like a physical blow.

Tamaki, who had been trying to stand up behind them, immediately doubled over and puked on the spot, her body convulsing with revulsion.

Rindou and Seijirou staggered back, their faces twisted. It was like a scent that spoke of years of hidden, stagnant rot.

"What... what is under there?" Seijirou wheezed, his eyes watering from that disgusting smell.

Rindou took her phone, her hand shaking, and pointed the flashlight into the dark cavity Seijirou had opened.

The beam cut through the dark, and for a second, she was frozen.

Then, she turned away and violently vomited onto the debris.

"Rindou!" Seijirou rushed to her side, rubbing her back as she heaved. "What happened?!"

"Corpses!" she gasped, her voice thick with horror. "There are corpses down there... there are dozens of them! Stacked like cordwood!"

Seijirou’s jaw tightened as he picked up the dropped phone and directed the light into the pit himself.

And just like Rindou, his stomach did a slow, sickening flip.

Below the floorboards was a mass grave.

White, decaying human bones intertwined with bodies in various stages of decomposition—some mere skeletons, others still wearing the tatters of school uniforms, their flesh a leathery, grey husk.

It was a sickening sight, something no human are allowed to see.

He saw some whose flesh were starting to turn into liquid, their skin and flesh being a breeding ground for worms and insects.

However, as the beam passed over the very top of the pile, Seijirou’s heart stopped.

There was one body that looked fresher than the rest.

The clothes were modern—the same Saint Shinomiya uniform they were currently wearing.

Although the skin was starting to marble and the face was a horrific, melting mask of decay, the hair was a unmistakable, vibrant orange.

Kusana Tamaki.

The realization hit him like a physical weight, turning his blood to ice. If Tamaki was down there... then who was standing behind them?

Just then, he felt a pair of thin, freezing-cold arms wrap around his waist from behind as a head rested on his shoulder, and a wet, soft voice whispered directly into his ear, sending a chill through his soul that no Ki could ever warm.

"Ah... you finally found me~"

Seijirou looked down. The hands hugging him were pale, translucent, and the fingernails were missing.

He turned his head slowly. The "Tamaki" standing behind him was no longer crying, instead, her face was perfectly still, her orange hair fluttering in a wind that didn’t exist, and her eyes—the eyes that had looked so terrified all day—were now two empty, black voids overflowing with a dark, oily liquid.

"It was so cold under the floor, Seijirou-kun," the thing whispered, its mouth widening into that ear-to-ear, jagged grin. "I’m so glad you came to play."