Chapter 151: Lust Shades…

[VICTIMS CAPTURED: 4]

[CORRUPTION LEVEL: 51%]

Ayaka, standing near the entrance, saw the whole thing. Her eyes went wide with horror. She found Akira near the dessert station. “Kanzaki-kun. A word. Now.”

They stepped into a supply alcove.

Akira hissed, trying to keep his voice down. “It just took another student. This is out of control. We need to evacuate…”

Ayaka shook her head. “Evacuate? If we do that, the panic will spiral. People will trample each other. And the Gate… it’ll spread to wherever they run.” She steadied her breath. “We have to contain it here. That’s the only way.”

Akira’s eyes darted nervously. “But you can’t close a Gate from this side without going through it, and going through it is suicide!”

Ayaka leaned closer. “Then what do you suggest? Standing still while it devours everyone?”

Akira swallowed hard, forcing himself to think. “We fight. We hold the line. If we hesitate, we lose everything.”

Before Ayaka could respond, a scream tore through the main café floor.

They rushed back to find Kenji standing on top of a table, his face flushed and wild, his basketball jacket shed, his shirt half-unbuttoned.

“Attention everyone!” he shouted. “This café is bullshit! The real entertainment is right here!”

He grabbed a passing female customer and pulled her onto the table with him. The girl stumbled, confused, and Kenji wrapped his arms around her from behind, his hands moving to her boobs.

“This is what you all want to see, right?” Kenji laughed, his eyes completely glazed over. “Come on, don’t be shy! Everyone knows what this festival is really about!”

The girl tried to push him away. “Let go of me!”

But Kenji’s grip tightened, and his teammates were standing up now too, the mist thick around them, their inhibitions completely gone.

Akira was moving before he consciously decided to.

He vaulted onto the table in one smooth motion. His hand shot out, grabbed Kenji by the collar, and yanked him backward with enough force to break the grip on the girl.

“Get down,” Akira told the girl quietly. She scrambled off the table, terrified.

Kenji spun to face him, swinging wildly. “You! This is your fault! Everything was fine until you…”

Akira ducked under the punch, stepped into Kenji’s guard, and drove his palm into Kenji’s solar plexus with just enough force to knock the wind out of him.

Kenji doubled over, gasping.

Akira grabbed his arm, twisted it behind his back in a textbook joint lock, and forced Kenji to his knees on the table. “Security! Remove him!”

But Kenji’s teammates were charging now.

The first one Akira met with a simple sidestep, using the attacker’s momentum to send him crashing into an empty table.

The second came at him with more caution, trying to grapple. Akira caught his wrist, twisted, and executed a smooth judo throw that put the basketball player flat on his back.

The third actually managed to grab Akira’s jacket. For a moment, they struggled, and Akira could see in the player’s eyes that he wasn’t really there anymore… just a puppet dancing on the mist’s strings.

Akira drove his knee into the player’s stomach, broke the grip, and followed up with a precise strike to a pressure point that made the teenager’s whole arm go numb.

All three basketball players on the ground. Four seconds total.

The café had gone silent, everyone staring.

Akira stood on the table, breathing hard, his butler uniform slightly rumpled, one glove torn. He looked down at Kenji, still gasping on his knees.

“You’re done here,” Akira said quietly. Then louder, to the security volunteers: “Remove all four of them. They’re banned from the café.”

As the basketball players were being escorted out, Kenji shooting murderous glares back at Akira, Sakura pushed through the crowd.

“What is going on here?” she demanded, her Student Council President authority in full effect. “Kanzaki, explain. Now.”

“A group of customers became aggressive and inappropriate with staff and other customers,” Akira said, stepping down from the table. “I removed the threat.”

“By assaulting them?”

“By defending people who couldn’t defend themselves.”

Sakura opened her mouth to argue, but then she saw Mia. The nurse outfit was torn at the shoulder where the basketball player had grabbed her. Mia was trying not to cry.

Sakura’s expression softened slightly. “The basketball team?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll need statements from witnesses. And Kanzaki…” She studied him. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”

“Self-defense classes,” Akira lied smoothly.

Something flickered in Sakura’s eyes… guilt? Regret? But her professional mask stayed in place. “I see. Well. Carry on. But I’m stationing a teacher here to supervise. This situation is clearly escalating beyond student management.”

She gestured, and the faculty advisor who’d been affected by the mist stumbled over, his eyes still glazed. “Takeda-sensei will…”

She stopped, really looking at the teacher for the first time. His shirt was untucked, his tie loosened, his breathing heavy. He was staring at the female students with open hunger.

“Takeda-sensei?” Sakura said sharply. “Are you alright?”

“Fine,” he mumbled. “Just hot in here. So hot…”

Sakura’s eyes narrowed. Something was very wrong. She’d been so focused on managing the festival chaos that she hadn’t noticed the wrongness permeating everything.

The air was thick. Everyone seemed flushed, breathing heavy. And that painting…

She looked at it properly for the first time since the café opened.

The trees were swaying now, despite the still air. The shadows were moving, pooling, forming shapes. And in the background, between the gnarled trunks, were those… faces?

[CORRUPTION LEVEL: 63%]

“Everyone,” Sakura said, her voice cutting through the noise. “I’m calling an emergency…”

She didn’t get to finish her statement when the painting exploded with movement.

Dozens of shadow tendrils shot out from the canvas like grasping hands. They wrapped around chairs, tables, and people… anything they could reach.

Screams filled the air as people scrambled away, but the tendrils were fast, impossibly fast.

One tendril wrapped around a girl at table four. She shrieked as it pulled her toward the stage.

“HELP ME! SOMEONE…”

The tendril yanked her onto the stage and dragged her face-first into the canvas. She sank into it like it was quicksand, her screams cutting off abruptly as the painting swallowed her whole.

Another tendril grabbed a male customer near the entrance. He fought desperately, clawing at the ground, but it was useless. The painting pulled him in.

[VICTIMS CAPTURED: 6]

[CORRUPTION LEVEL: 71%]

“EVACUATE!” Sakura screamed. “EVERYONE OUT! NOW!”

But the tendrils were blocking the exits, creating a web of shadow that trapped people inside. The customers who tried to run found themselves tangled, restrained, pulled toward the hungry canvas.

And then, rising from the painting like smoke, came the Lust Shades.

Shadow creatures, vaguely humanoid but wrong in all the ways that mattered. They had no faces, no features, just masses of oily darkness that moved with one purpose.

To normal eyes, they were barely visible… just distortions in the air, like heat shimmer. But four people in the café could see them clearly:

Akira. Rina. Ayaka. And Satomi-sensei, whose succubus nature gave her supernatural sight.

The Shades poured out of the painting, dozens of them, and immediately began attaching themselves to the nearest people.

Akira watched in horror as a Shade latched onto a middle-aged man at table five. The creature wrapped itself around the man like a parasite, its shadow-hands reaching into his trouser to grope and fondle his balls while its form pulsed with stolen energy.

The man’s eyes rolled back, his breathing became ragged, his hands clutched the table as if experiencing something intensely pleasurable.

Another Shade attached to a woman near the dessert station. She gasped, her face flushing bright red, her knees buckling as the creature fed on her essence.

More and more Shades flooded the café, invisible to most, feeding on everyone they touched.

The corruption level skyrocketed.

[CORRUPTION LEVEL: 84%]

[LUST SHADE COUNT: 23 AND RISING]

[WARNING: CIVILIAN EXPOSURE IMMINENT]

[GATE ENTERING FINAL ACTIVATION PHASE]

Rina grabbed Akira’s arm, her eyes wide with terror and hunger. “Akira, I can see them. The shadow things. They’re everywhere and I want to… I need to…”

“Hold it together,” Akira said firmly. “I know you want to feed, but not yet. I need you coherent.”

Ayaka abandoned all pretense. Her crimson eyes were fully active, tracking the Shades as they multiplied. She turned to look at Akira and mouthed one word: Now.

But Akira hesitated. There were still too many witnesses: Sakura was here, other students, teachers… If he revealed himself now, if he used his powers openly…

Then the gym doors burst open.

Ayame Shinomiya strode in, her school uniform somehow pristine despite the chaos. But it wasn’t her clothes that drew every supernatural eye in the room; it was the silver cross hanging around her neck, blazing with holy light visible only to those with the Sight.

And the blessed silver dagger in her right hand.

The exorcist had arrived.

—

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep