Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 7 Chapter 2 Part 4

Chapter 2 Part 4

“Brrr… So cold. The draft makes it three times colder… I wish I could turn into a cicada nymph and live the rest of my years underground, where there’s no wind…”
The sub-executive Randou was shivering on the mansion’s second floor. The interior was in ruins. The explosion had caused parts of the wall to peel off, and the ceiling lights had collapsed into pieces. Various decorations had fallen from the shelves and shattered across the floor, which was now a vibrant sea of blue plates, moss-green books, and orange paintings. To make matters worse, the decorations mingled with the enemies’ corpses, and their red blood somehow tied it all together like an abstract work of art.
“Rough day, huh, Randou? Here, I got you some wood for the fireplace.”
“Mn… Thank you, Dazai. I’m so glad this mansion has a fireplace. I would have probably jumped into the fire to warm myself up otherwise.”
Randou, wrapped in a blanket, took the scrap of wood Dazai handed him and tossed it into the fireplace. The flames powerfully roared like an incinerator.

“Yo, bandages, where’d you find that wood?”
“It was one of the building’s studs,” Dazai answered nonchalantly.
He and Chuuya were talking to Randou in what was left of the living room. Randou, a relatively senior Mafia member, had been working there since the prior boss was in power, but he didn’t get promoted to a sub- executive until Mori took over. He was treated rather poorly during the prior boss’s reign, so it seemed clear that he was either pro-Mori or at the very least supported the current system.
“I have a good idea why you were attacked, Randou,” Dazai said as he picked a random book up off the floor and threw it into the fireplace. “It was to get people talking—spread more rumors. If a Mori supporter like you died in the explosion, people would start taking the previous boss’s rage even more seriously. I checked the GSS captain’s vehicle on our way here and actually found instructions for how to stage a black explosion.”
“A ‘black explosion’…?” Randou asked, shivering.
“I don’t really get how it works myself. We’ll need a specialist to look into it later for us. But the GSS men were apparently going to use the chemicals in sodium lamps to create a flame reaction that makes fire look black,” Dazai explained while looking at the manual he’d found. “Regardless, it was a really cheap attempt. Not only did they fail to kill you, the entire group got annihilated.”
“Lemme get this straight.” Chuuya leaned to his right and placed a hand on his hip. “These GSS guys tried attacking this man here, pretending to be Arahabaki in order to get the Mafia to turn on itself, but failed?”
“That’s it.”
“Then the GSS leader is behind all this?” “It’s highly possible.”
“Mn… Brrr… The current leader of the GSS is a cold, calculating skill user… They say he also has close ties to the Guild, a top secret North American organization… It’s safe to assume getting rid of him would be no easy task,” Randou said before adding, “Dazai, some more fuel for the fireplace, please…”
“Here you go.” Dazai handed him an expensive-looking painting. “We don’t need to dispose of him, though. Our mission is to prove that the previous boss hasn’t actually been resurrected…which is why I have some questions for you.”

“Brrr… Go ahead. I couldn’t possibly refuse someone with a Silver Oracle. And regardless, I wouldn’t be where I am today without Mori’s help. I owe him everything.”
“Glad to have you on board. Now do you think you could tell me what you know about Arahabaki? I want to know in detail what you saw in Suribachi. It’s our only lead to finding out who’s behind all this.”
“Oh yes… I remember it vividly.” Randou tucked his chin under the blanket, then said softly, “I could never forget that day.”
“Randou?”
Dazai looked at him, for Randou’s hands were trembling, and he could immediately tell it wasn’t from the cold.
“I survived…but all my men…were reduced to ash in the fire—in those black flames. Dazai, your strategy is sound. You only want to expose the conspiracy, not kill the person behind it… That’s exactly what you must do. Because that truly was the work of a god. It doesn’t matter how many people get together to fight it. It cannot be defeated.”
Randou’s frigid eyes burned with undeniable fear. No one, let alone Dazai, had ever seen him this frightened before. Randou was an impressive figure; seeing hundreds of corpses in a battle didn’t make him so much as flinch.
“Tell me everything you know, Randou,” Dazai said with a gentle smile. “This is getting interesting.”
Randou cleared his throat, looked gloomily back and forth at the two boys, and told his story.

It happened almost right in the center of Suribachi.
We Port Mafia were fighting the Sheep gang. The Mafia engaged them in hostilities that day; the Sheep had destroyed a passenger aircraft with our men on it two days earlier because a week prior we’d attacked one of their warehouses since the month before they’d—ahem… At any rate, nobody remembers how it all started, but that was the gist of things. Real life isn’t like a film noir; there is almost no clear distinction between the cause and effect of good and evil. But surely that goes without saying.
Brrr… So cold. Sorry, but could you do something about that draft?
There should be enough rubble to cover the crack. Yes, right there. That should do. Thank you.
At any rate, we were on our way to battle when we got caught in a black explosion. What happened to my mansion today is a mere trifle compared to what I saw. All the great men on my team were killed. I only managed to survive thanks to the subspace I created with my skill.
No words can describe the state of things that day. At the very least, it wasn’t something of this world. The black flames, the boiling earth—the houses instantly melted, the air burned, and the telephone poles turned into ash before even hitting the ground.
Simply put, it was hell itself. The carnage was like something out of an ancient scroll painting of the underworld.
And there it was, in the middle of it all.
At the center of the blast wasn’t the previous boss. It didn’t bear the slightest resemblance; it wasn’t even human.
A beast.
It was a pitch-black beast.
A quadrupedal beast made of flames: Its fur, its thick tail, and even its eyes were like the flames of purgatory. Its size and silhouette resembled a human crawling on all fours. But that was where the human similarities ended. More than anything, its very existence felt different. I suppose it seemed as if all disasters and genocides in history had been condensed into a physical form. Or maybe it was as if the energy that created the universe itself—the galaxies, the stars, this planet—had materialized into a single entity.
What I can say for sure, though, is that it bore neither malice nor anger. It had no emotions. It simply existed. I searched for a way to explain the phenomenon logically. I thought it could have been an enemy skill. But looking back, no single individual could have produced that much heat with a skill. And yet, there is no other explanation for what happened. There were no skill users nearby; I couldn’t find a thing. More precisely, there was literally nothing.
Everything in sight was shimmering in the intense heat. I couldn’t even tell what color the sky was. It was as if someone had dumped water all over a watercolor painting. The entire world had turned into a specter. I strangely remember that only the sea in the distance retained its calm, steely surface.

The beast had annihilated everything but the ocean. Then it looked my way. It felt as if my organs were filled with melted lead.
And at the next moment, something unbelievable happened. The subspace created by my skill…started to crack.
No gun or sword—no storm, ray of light, or acoustic pressure—nothing has ever been able to damage alter-planar space. It’s like how the protagonist in the novel in my right hand could never defeat the antagonist in the novel in my left hand; they’re from different dimensions.
And yet, that beast did the impossible. It defied the laws of physics… which made me wonder: “Is this a god or a demon?”
I immediately created more subspace, but that brief moment was more than enough time for the beast to hit me with something I couldn’t even see: a torrent of power—primitive energy before it transformed into something specific such as heat, light, or lightning. Perhaps the black flames are merely the aftermath of this primitive energy, like the rising smoke following an explosion. That was what hit me. It was beyond anything any skill user could ever do.
By the time I created the subspace, I’d already been sent flying. If I were even a second late, every cell in my body would have been destroyed. My body would have vanished from this world without a trace. It was probably sheer luck I got blasted back instead of trying to fight the beast.
One of the last things I remember before I lost consciousness was the beast’s roar. Its voice was utterly devoid of any emotion or purpose. It terrified me.
But that wasn’t its intention—it wasn’t trying to threaten me. That was simply how it was. I immediately understood: By merely existing, it was going to cause destruction like never seen before. That was far more frightening than any war.
I flew through the air before skidding across the ground. I have no recollection of what happened after that. I was extremely fortunate to have been rescued and live to tell the tale, for if that beast had even a slight desire to kill me, I would’ve died instantly.
If someone told me that was a god, I would believe them.
Floods harbor no malice. Volcanoes harbor no malice. Neither do typhoons, thunderstorms, nor tsunamis. Yet, every one of these things kills scores of people in the blink of an eye. That beast was no different. In this country, they call such existences kami—“gods.” And what else could you call that?

Randou fell silent, and neither Dazai nor Chuuya could utter a single word. “I apologize… I understand that you two want to prove the previous
boss wasn’t resurrected by Arahabaki but by an enemy skill user. But if you tell Mori what I just told you…he would probably believe the god Arahabaki exists. I daresay it would make your investigation all for naught.”
“No, it’s fine. That was all extremely interesting.” Dazai smirked. “I figured this whole thing out thanks to you.”
“What do you mean?” Chuuya asked. He looked at Dazai, who twirled around theatrically and grinned.
“I mean I figured out who the real criminal was as well as the trick behind the act. Mystery solved.”