I approached the box in the center. The box was wooden, with metal bits reinforcing the corners. They were rusted, as if they had been exposed to wind and rain for a long time. There was a mesh on the top of the box, but there was a board beneath it, so I couldn’t actually see inside. The side of the box bore a number of symbols drawn in chalk which looked like family seals. I moved around to the back side, and a board there had been removed, allowing me to see inside. There were four thin pots lying on their side, and traces of some liquid having been spilled over the surface. There was something super small, in the shape of a stick, lying there. In the middle of the fully dried stain, there were three V-shaped spaces that were clean.

/...Could this be?/

Just as a name came to me from my knowledge of netlore, Toriko tapped me on the shoulder silently.

I turned around, and a hoarse squeak escaped my throat.

At the root of one of the trees surrounding the plaza, I saw a face. It was a woman’s face. Her mouth was open wide from side to side, her top and bottom teeth bared. Toriko’s flashlight shone directly on her, but the eyes that stared back at me did not blink.

This must have been how the birds felt when they looked at one of those eyeball patterns meant to keep them away. In the middle of the two eyes, which were opened unnaturally wide, two round, pitch black pupils were staring in our direction. That expression, which displayed nothing but malice, was terrifying.

I heard gasps from the lieutenant and the soldiers, too. They had followed our gaze and seen her.

“It’s her,” the lieutenant said with a moan. “The one we saw, it was her...”

With her eyes still completely fixated on me, the woman’s face rose up alongside the trunk of the tree. It continued to rise after reaching a person’s height, then stopped at six meters high.

Toriko’s hand on my shoulder was trembling, too. Unable to look away, I could feel the panic bubbling and seething inside me. With a shout that was like a scream, I cried out, “To-Toriko—Shoot! Hurry!”

“Ro... Roger!”

Toriko seemed to snap back to her senses, pulling the trigger on her AK.

Almost simultaneously, the soldiers opened fire. The intense roar of assault rifles blew away the silence in the forest. The fire from their muzzles was blindingly bright to our eyes, which had adjusted to the darkness.

When the woman was shot, her jaw dropped. /Ching, ching! Ching, ching, ching!/ The sharp sound of bells rang from inside her gaping maw, and for an instant, I felt a prickling pain rush through my arms and legs.

Suddenly, hands appeared next to the woman’s face on the trunk. Three long-fingered left hands. On the neighboring trunk, fingers appeared. This time, it was three right hands. Using the left and right trees as supports, suddenly the form of a six-armed, naked woman rose up into the light. From the waist down, her body wasn’t human, but that of a snake covered in glistening scales.

In one corner of my paralyzed mind, I came to a conclusion.

/I thought so. I know who she is./

“Kankandara.”

There was an internet ghost story where three delinquent boys entered a forest that was off-limits, and encountered a monster that was half-person, half-snake. That monster’s name was Kankandara. The kanji used, 姦姦蛇螺, were likely chosen for their visual appearance, rather than their meaning, to represent a six-armed woman (女), with the lower body of a snake. Looking at her directly, her appearance, which was less like that of a ghost and more like the kind of monster that might appear in a movie or video game, was more than just overwhelming.

Her snake body, which was just thick enough you could barely wrap your arms around it, slithering along, bringing Kankandara out into the open space. Even her apparently human parts—the six arms, from their shoulder joints, down to their finger joints, writhed like they belonged to some legless insect.

When the lieutenant called out behind him, soldiers came running. They scattered around the area, both inside and outside the rope, and opened fire one after another. Exposed to the line of fire, Kankandara’s body shook and convulsed, and there was a loud sound, like hundreds of bells ringing in unison.

“Aghh!” Toriko let out a sharp cry. The soldiers and I called out in pain and staggered, too.

It hurt—both my arms and both my legs hurt! It was a prickling pain, like I had been burned, and it made me groan despite myself.

The Marines were all suffering from it, too. There were soldiers who fell down, like their limbs had gone rigid, and thrashed around on the ground, too, and the pain I felt was getting stronger. Not good!

As I resisted the terror and pain, I focused my consciousness into my right eye. Kankandara’s body faded, and I started to see another pattern. That terrifying face was gone, and even the six distinctive arms vanished.

What was there instead were six pieces of square timber moving together. I called them square timber, but they didn’t look like they were actually made of wood. They were whitish objects of some unknown substance. There were three V-shapes connected together, and they moved in this sort of spinning, tumbling way that was like how a snake moved, but also different. Just the points where the pieces of square timber touched were painted red, so, in a way, it looked somewhat like a match puzzle. There were bullet holes gouged out of the surface, but that didn’t seem to be making it any harder for the thing to move.

“T-Toriko. Head to the back,” I said, gritting my teeth against the pain which grew stronger with the sound of the bells. “A big gun. Get us something big! This isn’t working!”

“Got it! I’ll be right back!” Toriko slapped me on the back, then ran away on shaky legs. Her footsteps faded into the distance.

In my blurring vision, the white square timber and that damn scary woman’s face appeared as a double image. As I stared back into her eyes, unable to flee, I suddenly was struck with uncertainty about something.


/Why is she staring at me? She’s been glaring at me the whole time, like we’re having a staring contest or something... even though there are lots of other people./

/No... Could it be?/

/Is she trying to intimidate me? To make me look away? Our attacks won’t be able to hit her if we can’t recognize her, so to stop my right eye’s power from working, she’s staring me down with a super scary face...?/

The moment I thought that, I was so indignant I surprised myself.

/...You’re taking me lightly. What are you? Some delinquent from out in the boonies? Don’t think you can scare me into looking away. I’ll kill you instead... I’ll murder you with this eye!/

/...Not that I’ll be doing the dirty work myself, though!/

You would think after staring this long, I would have gotten used to it a little, but for some reason, I wasn’t able to adjust to the terror of her face at all. Still, as I stubbornly kept looking, my vision gradually started flickering, and my head started to hurt, too. Kankandara’s face warped and twisted, and it was hard to grasp how far away she was. It felt like she was getting further and further away.

/Wait, don’t run. Stay right there. Toriko’s bringing a big gun now. One shot from that, and you’re toast.../

That was when there was a horn sound, and it was loud enough to blow away the ringing of bells.

The pain withdrew for an instant, and my fading consciousness returned. At some point, one of my knees had touched the ground, and I had been hanging my head. As my head snapped up, with the roar of its engines, and the brilliant flash of its headlights, the Gorgon burst into the open space.

The previously folded arm was raised high, and pointing forward. The end of it carried a nine-bladed plow for ordnance disposal. The horn blared once more, and the soldiers scrambled out of the way. Spewing black exhaust, like the snorting of an enraged bull, the Gorgon charged.

Its massive body, over eight meters high, charged across the open space at an incredible speed. It grazed the offering box in the center, and before my eyes the bizarrely modified MRAP collided with Kankandara.

The nine plates on the front arm cut deep into the white timber. That didn’t kill its momentum, as it kept pushing Kankandara, slamming her into one of the thick trees that made up the rim of the open space.

The sounds of bells as Kankandara thrashed around were wiped out by the roar of the engine and the blaring of the horn. The arm dug in deeper, and the sound of bells rose like a death wail, and then, snap, there was an incredible noise as the white timber was broken.

Kankandara’s whole body stretched out into a straight line, then suddenly, as if her batteries had died, she ceased to move.

The sound of engines slowly softened, then stopped. The headlights faded out, too. The open space was suddenly dark, and quiet, and the soldiers who had been in agony now rose, groaning, to their feet.

“Sorawo! Are you okay?” Toriko rushed in from outside the open space, and because I had slumped to the ground, she helped me to my feet.

The driver and soldiers got out of the Gorgon. As they looked down at Kankandara’s corpse—the remains of that thing—they spoke excitedly amongst themselves in English.