Tokyo bombing incident Nth time

Two of these seven people are people who make up 29%, which is nearly six times the normal percentage.

Yuri found a secluded spot to appear, approached them, and asked for a flyer.

Upon closer inspection, these seven people were quite diverse, ranging from young men to middle-aged and elderly women, from overweight to thin. Apart from their uniform attire, they didn't share much in common.

Before they could discover Yuri's unusual behavior, Yuri evaded their mission and left.

Looking at the flyer, sure enough, just like they said before, it was an organization called something like the Tokyo Guardian Cult...

I've never heard of this religion before. Just by looking at the name, I know it's definitely not something that will be recorded in history. Tokyo isn't the center of the universe either. What's the point of protecting Tokyo? Is it really necessary to protect a place like this?

To summarize, their propaganda is very standard, even overly standard, namely, "The end of the world is coming soon, Tokyo will be destroyed, and then the great God will choose who can be reborn. Joining the church now will allow you to survive in the new world," such as the apocalyptic threat.

Regardless of the vast difference between the apocalypse and the destruction of Tokyo, similar statements are made countless times by various cults.

Yuri saw no signs of the world ending, and as for the destruction of Tokyo... it wasn't that he couldn't imagine it, but none of the things he could imagine were decided by God.

After realizing that spirits like himself are everywhere, and having recently encountered a mysterious (deceased) vampire, Yuri cannot rule out the possibility that gods or godlike entities truly exist in this world. But what reason would they have to specifically target Tokyo and cause trouble?

In conclusion, this is yet another ordinary cult, Yuri concluded.

Seeing that it was getting late, Yuri returned home satisfied, carrying his conclusions and some of the supplemented spiritual essence.

Chapter 50 Tokyo's Dark World: Cults

Akemi and Yuri arrived home one after the other. Judging from Akemi's appearance, her school day didn't seem to have been very pleasant for her.

Yuri observed carefully and confirmed that the spiritual energy had indeed dissipated...

"Mingmei, what happened?" If it wasn't due to spiritual energy, then what could it be?

"The teacher was very happy to see me at school today." Mingmei sat heavily on the sofa.

"...Do you have a grudge against the teacher?" Otherwise, why would the teacher be happy while you're upset?

“The reason for my happiness is this,” Akemi took a deep breath and then imitated the teacher’s voice at the time, “Great! Now only two students are missing!”

...Does your school have so many disasters and misfortunes?

"How long have these two people been missing?"

“One day and three days, they are different from me. Their families are all nearby. When the first person went missing, his family thought he might have gone to a friend's house, and then they found out he was missing. The second one, the one who is closer to now, left a note saying that he was going to join the great church with his friends. They also stole a lot of money from the family when they left.” Mingmei spread her hands. “In short, they must have fallen for a cult.”

Cults, what a coincidence, Yuri saw a cult on the street today. Although I have a feeling it's not the same one, it should be a good topic.

Yuri gave a general account of the cults he had encountered on the street that day, hoping to ease Mingmei's mind, but he was greatly disappointed.

Upon hearing about the cult, Mingmei's face darkened, as if she had seen something unclean.

“Cults, there are so many cults in Tokyo, all because the law allows new religions to be established at will,” Akemi commented. “Many cults recruit followers under the guise of normal religions, and by the time they break out, it’s too late. They initially promise a lot of good things, like curing diseases, changing luck, and developing potential—but in the end, it all comes down to one thing: money.”

"Money..." Yuri knew a little about money; it was an essential thing for survival in human society, and having more of it would make many things more convenient.

Of course, Yuri himself didn't pay any money; he didn't have a single penny.

"It's fine if they just want money. No matter what kind of cult it is, they will interfere with personal freedom to some extent. The leaders not only want to fill their own pockets, but also want to satisfy their lust for power and experience the pleasure of being superior. They are the ones who 'try' to control others, but they want to claim that the believers are 'voluntary'."

That sounded really bad. Yuri understood why Akemi's tone was so disgusted, but Akemi wasn't done talking.

"This isn't the worst kind of cult. The worst kind is one where even the leader himself believes in it."

"If he doesn't even believe it himself, how can he become the leader of the cult?" How can something you don't believe in be convincing?

“What legitimate con artist ever cons themselves?” Mingmei said matter-of-factly.

Yuri felt that this made a lot of sense, so he asked Akemi to explain in detail.

“Some cult leaders, under long-term praise and self-hypnosis, actually regard themselves as the god they have created—they want to have a real and effective influence on the world, or they want to truly grasp the power they have imagined.”

Mingmei paused, "Then they went mad. They would stop at nothing to achieve their grand ambitions, disregarding death and injury, and treating others as less than human—and even those ambitions themselves might not be right. Even the right ambitions won't yield good results when carried out by madmen, let alone the fact that they are often fundamentally wrong."

Perhaps feeling the argument wasn't strong enough, Mingmei added, "Most cults, in order to persuade people to join, advocate divine salvation or some kind of apocalyptic prophecy. After going insane, those claiming divine salvation often begin to believe they truly are God, with the right to decide the life and death of others without judgment—people who believe they can do anything without consequence often do anything. As for those claiming apocalyptic prophecies, their prophecies have never come true, so they are forced to constantly revise their own prophecies, eventually embarking on the path of fulfilling them themselves—"

"Did they achieve it? Oh, never mind."

Yuri realized his mistake halfway through his sentence—if it were to actually happen, would they still be standing here discussing it?

If Tokyo were constantly being bombed into the sky, Akemi certainly wouldn't be able to stand here.

“There were several attempts to achieve this, such as the intention to release poison gas in Tokyo, the intention to blow up the Tokyo factory, the intention to release biological weapons…” Akemi casually gave a few examples, “Of course, none of them succeeded. After all, cultists are usually not very skilled and not professional enough. They can’t even destroy Tokyo, let alone destroy the whole world—although we can’t rule out the possibility that they think Tokyo is the whole world.”

...Yuri then remembered a new problem.

Could these cults possess some kind of supernatural power?

This time, Akemi thought about it before giving her answer.

"It's possible, in every sense of the word. Although it might be different from what you understand..."

"Different from what I understand? I understand them as gaining the power to change reality through their beliefs." Yuri didn't quite believe that Minmei could guess what he actually understood.

“Yes, it’s the same understanding I had when I was six years old—I’m not saying you’re naive, I’m saying most people think of supernatural powers in cults as related to faith.” Mingmei clarified that she didn’t mean to be sarcastic. “In fact, as far as I know, most cults with supernatural powers do not rely on faith and belief as their source of power.”

Hmm... what is that from?

“It’s more about establishing some kind of connection with supernatural beings, whether it’s being driven, cooperating, or serving—or maybe being deceived.” Mingmei spread her hands. “These cults usually don’t cause any major trouble.”

"Nothing serious is going to happen?" Yuri looked at Akemi, waiting for her further explanation.

"Because they often get themselves killed in their interactions with supernatural beings—without sufficient power, forcibly getting involved in supernatural affairs rarely ends well. Moreover, for some reason, supernatural beings usually don't tend to cause major trouble in human society, though I don't know the specific reasons."

Yuri didn't understand either, but it's a good thing, isn't it?

"In short, to sum it all up—cults have all sorts of problems, and I see absolutely no benefit in them. So why doesn't the Japanese government just take strong measures to regulate all these messy religions?"

Yuri saw absolutely no benefit in letting these cults run rampant.

“I don’t know, but generally speaking, my grandfather believed that the reason was that cults have infiltrated every aspect of Japanese society—not just the same cult—and many high-ranking people have very strange religious backgrounds.”

Well, there's nothing we can do about it then. It's a classic case of the upper beam being crooked, so the lower beam will be crooked too. Yuri understands now.

"Then the distinction between cults and normal religions is also a problem. As I said before, by the time a problem is actually discovered, there are already victims. Detectives, police officers, and investigators are unlikely to be able to foresee the future and solve problems before they even begin."

Right.

"Finally, it's not that there's no management—at least there is some management in Shintoism. For example, the Shinto course I'm planning to take is one of the legal ways to become a religious person."

Mingmei spread her hands. "Although it's actually legal as long as you register, this course is considered officially certified—but that doesn't mean it won't eventually become a cult. In other words, if I really pass the exam and graduate, I can be several times more covert than a regular cult leader when I start a cult."

Cult leader Akemi Kakizaki? Yuri thought for a moment and almost laughed out loud. This cult is probably an athletic organization.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

The discussion about cults started, and the topic quickly shifted to the vampire (who had died) they had encountered a couple of days earlier, and then to supernatural creatures.

It's quite obvious that there are supernatural beings in Tokyo—ghosts, spirits, vampires—so no one should be able to convince themselves that supernatural beings don't exist.

Besides, Yuri himself is a supernatural being.

However, ordinary citizens in Tokyo are unaware of supernatural beings, who hide themselves well and stay out of the sight of ordinary people.

"What are they afraid of?" Yuri wondered.

Although Yuri wasn't such an ambitious person, possessing supernatural powers can easily inflate one's ego. On this basis, many people probably think they should use these powers to make a name for themselves and achieve great things.

Take Takemura, for example. He was like that; although he always felt he lacked power, he died before gaining sufficient strength. The cult leader I mentioned earlier seems to be a very suitable development path for supernatural beings.

“I have a plausible explanation, but it may not work for every supernatural being.” Mingmei was not sure. “First of all, supernatural beings are not invincible—no one or nothing is invincible forever—supernatural beings have their weaknesses, and exposing them to the public eye will attract research, which will increase the probability of them dying suddenly.”

Yuri felt this explanation sounded familiar, but it did make sense.

"For example... you, as a spirit, are very ineffective against ordinary physical attacks, right?"

“Yes.” Yuri waited for Akemi to say what she was going to say next.

"What if you were physically in the same form and were hit at full speed by a 50-ton truck?"

"..." Yuri didn't know. He had never thought about such a question. But when he recalled the scene of being hit by a car, Yuri suspected that he would be half-crippled if he didn't die... In fact, if he hadn't been hit to reduce the impact, he would most likely have died on the spot.

“Of course, you can avoid physical attacks by becoming a spirit, but once exposed, you might have your source found and then be hit by it, right?” Mingmei added, “Indeed, finding the source of a spirit is very difficult and requires luck and effort—but if you don’t expose it to the outside world at all, such an attempt is even more difficult to succeed.”

"The same applies to vampires or other supernatural beings, such as werewolves or substitutes. It's not that they are incapable of fighting back, but prolonged defense inevitably leads to defeat—and jumping out means starting a long-term defense."

"You're absolutely right—what is a substitute?"

"...I'm not really that familiar with the Replacement Children. In short, they're those former humans who were kidnapped by fairies when they were children and then returned with strange abilities."

"What are their weaknesses? I've heard werewolves are afraid of silver, but I know nothing about that. I've heard about vampires, though; they're afraid of garlic, crosses, fire, flowing water, dogs, sunlight, silver, the Bible, the full moon, and—"

"Stop, stop, who told you vampires are afraid of so many things?"

"I read it in Takemura's book," Yuri said innocently. Although Takemura's book wasn't exactly reliable information, and the focus wasn't on that at all, with no details and only legends—it was still better than having no information at all.

"Remember that vampires are only afraid of fire and sunlight, not even moonlight or flashlights, let alone crosses, flowing water or anything like that."

"Got it. What about the werewolf?"

"...Actually, I'm not very familiar with werewolves. It should be Silver, I guess." Mingmei said somewhat guiltily. "As for Replacement, it's said that Replacement is afraid of Cold Iron—don't ask me what Cold Iron is, I don't know either, but I guess it's a kind of iron, and ordinary iron should have some effect as well."

"I see—moonlight really doesn't work? Isn't moonlight just reflected sunlight?"

"Moonlight is indeed no good. As for why sunlight doesn't work after being reflected, you'll have to ask the sun and the moon. I really don't know."

The conversation stalled for a moment, but then Akemi picked it up again.

"In short, all supernatural beings have their own weaknesses—Takemura is also a supernatural being, but he probably doesn't have any specific weaknesses because, like other humans, he has weaknesses all over his body. If he shows his face, it's easy for someone to find a weakness and kill him. And even if no weakness is found, he might still be killed by sheer force. That's why supernatural beings can pose a huge threat to human society if they get serious, but they don't, at least not on the surface."

Seemingly worried that Yuri might use his curiosity to ask questions about areas where she had no knowledge, Akemi quickly moved on to the next step.

"Speaking of which—guess which threat is greater, cultists or supernatural beings?"

"...Supernatural beings? Cult members are still just humans—even by your standards as an abnormal human, you couldn't possibly dodge police bullets, could you?"

Although, given this kind of leading questioning, Akemi would obviously expect Yuri to mention a supernatural creature and then reverse the situation, since it wasn't a debate and there was no need to win, Yuri honestly answered according to his own opinion.

"The answer is that they are all very big—the threat of cults is that they are always highly contagious. Werewolves cannot turn the people they hurt into werewolves, vampires cannot convert new vampires indefinitely, not to mention ghosts and spirits, which are basically one-on-one acts for them, making it difficult to spread further—but cults, these human organizations, can spread very quickly, and it is even easier if they really have some supernatural power."

It turned out to be the case.

"In addition, there is another situation we must guard against: the possibility that a human cult is backed by a truly ruthless and unscrupulous supernatural being—in this case, the threat would be multiplied several times over. We don't need many, just one cult leader who can actually perform some kind of miracle is enough."

I see. Tokyo is a terrible place.

Chapter Fifty-One: Like Entering a Treasure Mountain

The next day happened to be a day off. Yuri adjusted his state and there was no one else around—Mingmei had gone out for a snack and was expected to return in two hours.

Everything was going perfectly, thanks to the complete spiritual essence obtained through the support of the repeater and Mingmei's stone lantern, the undisturbed environment that had always existed, and the thorough mental preparation gained through so much thought.

Okay, it's time to begin.

Yuri carefully reached into the corner of the paper tucked inside the notebook.

He came up with a good idea: to mitigate the negative effects of reading in stages. He asked Mingmei to take a single page from the notebook, put it back in the book, and then read only that page when she wanted to.

According to Mingmei, the notebook had thirty or forty pages in total, with the lowest density of runes at the beginning and end. Yuri had asked her to take down the last page.

The decision of whether it's the first page or the last page is made by a coin.

In short, now is the time to implement it.

Yu, the well-prepared volunteer, began his mission.

As Yuri read, the same illusion appeared before him, with the same strange, flying runes. However, this time Yuri deployed three layers of shields to fight them off.

In fact, Yuri intended to deploy a particularly strong defense, but after muttering to himself for a long time, trying to incorporate all known defensive capabilities, what he deployed was a strange shield with a multi-layered structure.

We can think about that later; let's deal with the current situation first.

The two focused on mobilizing energy and trading blows with the strange, flying runes. There's really not much to say about this process; neither side had any room to use any fancy tricks or techniques (the runes probably didn't have the brains for it, and Yuri clearly didn't have the skill). It was just a simple battle of attrition.

Before it all began, Yuri had considered improvising, making on-the-spot decisions, and seizing the runes' weaknesses to launch a counterattack—but once it actually started, all he had left was to grit his teeth and endure. The runes flying in the air had no minds, but any contact with them would deplete Yuri's defenses, and without Yuri's defenses, they would deplete Yuri's physical body. So their tactics—if they could be called tactics—were extremely simple and effective: charge straight at Yuri.

After his spiritual essence was largely depleted, Yuri witnessed the scene he had long awaited: the number of runes was rapidly declining. Their all-out attack had exhausted their last bit of energy, so once it stopped, it would truly stop completely.

Being prepared really helped! It's time to check the results.

Maintaining the shield, Yuri once again focused his attention on the paper.

Perhaps the shield had exhausted the runes' power, as no new attacks occurred. And perhaps because there was no direct contact this time, most of the runes retained their original form, remaining intact and easy to read.

Unlike the blood magic runes from last time, although the style was similar, the base of the text this time was not Japanese, but... Yuri didn't know what language it was, but fortunately he could understand it for some reason—it was probably some kind of supernatural language.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

At the very top of the paper was a complete description of the process of meditation and energy generation—and it was all done in a single line.

This information density is truly remarkable; it's clearly some kind of supernatural skill, which Yuri doesn't have time to practice yet.