Chapter 229 – 229. The Great East Japan Earthquake (4)
While the Tachibana family was speechless at the shocking news flash, Takuya looked at the water-soaked interior of the reactor and asked Nyotengu,
“Can you cool it all down with just this?”
She shook her head at his question.
It seemed seawater alone wouldn’t be enough.
More precisely, there wasn’t enough time for her to pour enough seawater to solve the nuclear problem.
‘The experts said they needed to pour water for about a day.’
Of course, that didn’t mean her actions were useless.
From the start, he didn’t expect that water alone would cool down the massive reactor.
Pouring water was just the foundation for using Nyotengu’s power.
Takuya shuddered as he thought about her other ‘authority.’
‘Just seeing the memories from before the seal makes me tremble. What a terrifying power.’
Thinking that to himself, Takuya watched Nyotengu order the dragons to stop spraying water and merge.
“Are you going to start soon?”
[I suppose I should. Before there are too many eyes on us.]
Looking around at Nyotengu’s words, he saw citizens who had come to watch after evacuating.
Frowning at the sight, Takuya contacted the old man, and soon, staff members, or people the old man had hired, began pulling people away.
Takuya sighed deeply and muttered,
“Even in Japan, where disasters happen so often, how can they be so oblivious to safety?”
If it were me, I would run away immediately if someone was pouring water on a nuclear reactor nearby.
Anyway, the people on the ground were all cleared away.
The problem was in the air.
‘I want to shoot them all down, but I can’t, can I?’
Specifically, it was the guys from the broadcasting stations.
Somehow, they heard about the suspicious water dragons here and frantically sent up helicopters.
He wanted to shoot them down, but since he was going to reveal it to the world anyway, he just let them do as they pleased.
Why did he let it be revealed?
There were two reasons.
First, the biggest reason was that he didn’t have the power to stop it.
More precisely, he didn’t have the power to control all the information.
The power he had was only enough to work in Mayagi Prefecture, not enough to overturn the whole of Japan.
So, he discarded the option of blocking the information.
The second reason was that he wanted to see how far the Tachibana family’s power reached.
They were said to be a powerful exorcist family that once ruled Japan before Nyotengu awakened, so he thought they might be able to stop this much.
Because of these reasons, one might ask if it was right to reveal the yokai to the world.
‘Of course not. I would have stopped it if I could.’
But since it was impossible, it was better to go out with a bang.
There was also one thing he had overlooked.
The dragons spraying water didn’t exactly look like yokai.
In Japan, there are cases where yokai are worshiped like gods, but most people think of them negatively.
But these dragons, if you had to categorize them, were closer to the form of a god than a yokai.
Yes. The identity of the yokai was not revealed.
There was only a dragon with mysterious power that normalized the reactor.
Why was he saying this?
What else? It was because he planned to use it as part of his plan.
‘To be precise, it’s a side benefit.’
He would explain the other preparations later, but anyway, the conclusion was that he was thinking of starting a small religion.
Of course, it would be a cult.
You might criticize him for starting a cult.
But it couldn’t be helped. Because even if he didn’t become a cult leader, cults would still appear.
No. Isn’t that right?
There was such a huge catch that was being introduced on the news, it would be strange if cults didn’t latch onto it.
So, he decided to monopolize it in advance.
And also, to crush anything he was secretly planning to use.
He would feel a little uneasy if the general public was harmed by this incident.
From the start, he was planning to run a cult that gave definite rewards, not a crazy cult like Aum Shinrikyo.
‘Those who seek true faith should be rewarded.’
You might say that would just be a religion, but if the state doesn’t allow it, it’s still a cult.
Anyway, it was also to prevent such victims, but he also planned to use the cult for other purposes.
As a stepping stone to political power.
It would take a long time to explain, but the most important point was this:
[To make sure the powerful can’t disobey my words.]
That was the major premise.
Preparing for this, he realized once again.
The powerful were terribly picky and were a bunch of bastards.
So, creating this kind of religion was the easiest way to make them listen to him.
The religious and political worlds were close, and also,
‘Religion is the easiest way to create faith.’
Anyway, to cut a long story short, what he wanted to say was this.
Cults, or rather, religions, had many uses, so he was going to use them.
If the world had been a little kinder to him, he wouldn’t have done something like this.
It was much dirtier, though.
Ah, by the way, if this cult thing didn’t go as well as he thought, he was planning to either disband it… or at least run it on a small scale.
Since it was a religion created out of necessity.
If it was no longer needed, he was planning to leave it as a healthy folk belief.
‘If it doesn’t work, I’ll have to forcibly disband it. Well.’
While Takuya was dreaming of such grand plans,
[Hmm, it’s going well.]
The dragons’ water streams stopped.
Instead, they began gathering massive energy in their mouths, as Nyotengu had commanded.
Even someone who didn’t know anything could feel the unusual power coming from the dragons’ mouths.
Because the mouths of the dragons holding that energy were slowly freezing.
Was it just his imagination that his hands were trembling even though he was just watching from afar?
Watching that, Takuya realized why dragons in fantasy were beings of fear.
Indeed, if such beings existed, even I would be scared.
[You seem frightened.]
“If you’re not scared of those things, you’re not human.”
Anyway, after a short while of the dragons gathering energy,
An enormous power that looked like it would explode if you touched it was now visible in the dragons’ mouths.
It wasn’t a power of heat or energy that ordinary people knew.
It was a massive yokai energy that would have horrified exorcists and yokai alike.
Nyotengu looked at the yokai energy she had gathered and muttered with a slightly disappointed face,
[It’s still small. I guess there wasn’t enough time to gather power.]
That was small…?
‘As expected of a great yokai.’
She lived in a different world than him.
Anyway, that wasn’t important.
What was important was what was about to happen.
Nyotengu emitted an aura he had never seen before and commanded the dragons,
[Freeze the world.]
Her words were the beginning.
The dragons began to unleash the power they had been holding in their mouths.
─Kwakakakakakakakak!!!
They began to spew it all onto the ground.
With the dragons’ breath, the reactors from Unit 1 to Unit 4 began to freeze.
No. More precisely, the ground where the breath touched all froze.
It meant that it had simply turned into transparent ice, but it seemed like something more fundamental had stopped.
‘It’s like I’m using time stop.’
The outer areas that weren’t directly affected by the dragons’ breath froze as we would expect.
But the places that were directly hit by the breath strangely didn’t change at all, unlike the outer areas.
It almost looked like the same scenery as before.
And that was a huge misconception.
There was no sense of vitality there.
Rather, it looked like a taxidermy display made by poachers to show off their achievements.
Yes. The appearance was frozen.
To be precise, it had frozen the time that flowed there.
[Absolute Zero]
That was the name given to the power Nyotengu used, filled with the awe of mortals.
***
It was a short while later that the breath that seemed to freeze the world came to an end.
The dragons had perfectly carried out the orders they were given.
Having completed their mission, the dragons slowly began to collapse, as if they had finished their work.
Takuya took in the whole scene.
To people who didn’t know the situation, it looked like the dragons were disappearing after saving people and doing their job, but to someone who knew, it just felt like a flashy exit scene.
Anyway, after watching the dragons collapse, he looked at the places where the dragons’ breath had touched.
The world had frozen.
That was the only way to describe those places.
Takuya looked at the place with a slightly bitter expression.
He couldn’t help but think that if he had done a little better, these things wouldn’t have happened.
If he had taken a little more risk and quickly infiltrated the mountain managed by the Tachibana family, could he have saved everyone?
For the first time in a long time, he had an uncharacteristic thought.
Thanks to that, he was lost in thought for a moment, but he quickly shook off the distractions.
He had made a choice, and this was just the result of that choice.
He was too busy living for tomorrow to look back and dwell on the past.
So, he had to accept it.
Even if there were mistakes in the process.
Of course, he would need to check for mistakes to avoid repeating them.
Thinking that to himself, Takuya tightly held Nyotengu’s unusually cold hand and moved back to the safe house together.
Japan was still fighting the aftershocks of the Great East Japan Earthquake, but this was all they could do.
He thought he had done his part by removing one of the man-made disasters that had struck Japan.
From the start, he didn’t have the strength to do anything more.
Ah, by the way, after that, he had to mix bodies with Nyotengu for a long time.
To stop the yin energy that was running wild due to the absolute zero.
It was the end of a long, long year.
