Kazuko raised her hands as her palms started glowing a bloody red. Numerous black dimensional cracks appeared in midair and opened up into ovals. Demons wielding various weapons emerged from the dimensional cracks and headed in all directions.
Kaho's insects and Kazuko's demons were the first line of defense against the enemy. Although these units were individually weak, they were incredibly numerous.
The insects and demons were soon attacked, not long after arriving at their posts.
The attackers were pitch-black spiritual warriors that wore red masks of various types!
All of the spiritual warriors wielded strangely shaped weapons that were able to shoot out high-speed Mana Bullets. Some of their masks were shaped like demons, while others were shaped like animals, plants, insects, or abnormally strange shapes… This gave the enemy an ominous appearance.
These enemy spiritual warriors poured in from the four cardinal directions through four toriis. The enemy attacked and immediately started shooting at the insects and demons while attempting to enter the temple!
The insects and demons teamed up to fight back against the spiritual warriors.
After receiving serious injuries, the pitch-black spiritual warriors' masks started glowing a bloody red. Not only that—their bodies swiftly started evolving. All the spiritual warriors suddenly evolved from humanoids to become strangely shaped monsters! Their masks also transformed to become part of each monster itself.
After the spiritual warriors transformed into monsters, their individual abilities all rose greatly. They also seemed to be more berserk and lost all semblance of order.
Most of these spiritual monsters were blocked by the insects and demons and defeated yet again, transforming into mist, which then vanished.
However, there were a few strong monsters that managed to break through the first line of defense.
It was now time for everyone else to begin attacking.
*Shing!* Kagura unsheathed her sword with a flash and cut a monkey monster in half as it jumped through the air.
The spiritual monster's corpse transformed into mist as it hit the ground. The blue-clad Spirit-branded Retainer girl casually sheathed her sword with a calm expression.
Kaede, who saw this from nearby, clapped her hands upon witnessing this scene.
"Snow Girl" Kagura and "Galewing" Kaede were guarding the eastern entrance to the temple.
*Boom!* A ball of light exploded against a sticky mud monster, sending out countless bolts of electricity that covered its entire body, instantly reducing it to dust.
*Bam!* A spirit eagle viciously smashed into a giant bull monster's body, tearing it into two halves and causing it to vanish in midair, turning it into mist.
"Nice! Hoshi-kun." Hisashi offered his compliments.
"Same to you, Hisashi-san," Hoshi responded with a smile.
"Thunderfist" Hisashi and "Eagle Controller" Hoshi were guarding the western entrance of the temple.
*Smack!* Hitaka kicked down a bird monster that was flying in the air, and sliced it with her sword as it fell to the ground, easily slaying the monster.
Rana, who was sitting down on the ground not far away, yawned as if she was completely bored.
"Inugami" Hitaka and "Cat Demon" Rana were guarding the northern entrance of the temple.
*Whizz!* Yukari let out a large amount of sticky spiderweb which tangled up two monsters resembling a turtle and a porcupine, respectively.
Mika then used her spiritual clothes to shoot out numerous black blades that pierced these two monsters' bodies, killing them.
At the same time, Mayuzumi had her summoned spirit Idelia defeat a monster with a strange shape resembling a giant fruit sundae.
"Spiderweb" Yukari, "Spirit Clothes" Mika, and "Doll Controller" Mayuzumi were guarding the southern entrance of the temple.
Seiji and Natsuya, the two Yin Yang Masters, remained in the center of the temple, prepared to aid any of the four groups that needed support at a moment's notice.
After many minutes, not a single side had requested reinforcements. This meant that their defense was quite solid.
However, everyone had a premonition that things wouldn't end so simply.
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The organization's ghost warriors were unable to conquer the target location.
Heikai Takagi, the leader of the organization's assault force, wasn't surprised by this one bit. The organization had explained quite clearly to him that these ghost warriors had limited power and that it would be impossible to complete the mission with them alone.
However, what surprised Takagi was that not only were there Sakura samurai demons fighting against the ghost warriors, there were even a dense amount of insects and some individuals that appeared to be human!
It was impossible to ascertain if those were real humans just from what the ghost warriors reported seeing. It was possible that the mission target had simply created spiritual creatures that resembled humans.
But, why would the mission target especially create spiritual creatures that looked like humans? Did that have any meaning for the mission target? Takagi didn't understand.
Those "humans" were evidently protecting the mission target, which meant that they were enemies of Takagi and the organization.
There were only two methods that the organization used against enemies: either kill or capture them.
If those "humans" were actually spiritual creatures, then capturing them would be meaningless.
If they were real humans, then capturing them might help in obtaining information from them.
However, trying to leave some alive would increase the difficulty of the battle. Takagi decided to ask for the opinions of his subordinates.
"Who cares? Just kill them all."
"I'm rather curious who they could be. I say we leave at least one alive."
"That blue-clothed girl is just my type. I call dibs on her!"
"I want her as well… the other girls are quite nice as well. I say we spare and capture all the females."
"Hmph. Men."
"We should decide after fighting with them first. We should capture them if we can, and kill them if we can't."
More were in favor of leaving the purported humans alive.
Takagi himself was also quite curious who these people could be. If they were actual humans rather than spiritual creatures, who could they be? Were they from Soul Society?
Takagi hadn't heard anything about Soul Society interfering with this mission… if Soul Society would have interfered, the organization would have given a relevant warning about this when issuing the mission. However, the organization hadn't warned about Soul Society's interference during this mission at all.
It was possible that the organization didn't have a full grasp on Soul Society's movements. It was also possible that these people weren't actually from Soul Society.
If Takagi wanted a concrete answer, the only possibility would be to capture one and interrogate him or her.
Takagi made up his mind to capture at least one person alive.
The question then was, which one should he target for capturing alive?
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A giant octopus-like monster reached its long tentacles out towards Kagura. Kagura swung her sword and sliced through the tentacle, and was about to counterattack when she suddenly sensed something that caused her to instantly turn around and dodge to the right.
*Boom!* A dark gray Mana Bullet exploded right where she had been standing. The explosion let out a great amount of sticky gray fluid.
At the same time, Kaede, who was currently flying in the air while fighting a bird monster, was also ambushed. A dense amount of Mana Bullets suddenly shot out of nowhere and hit her, causing her to fall from the air!
The barrage of dark gray bullets continued. Kagura dodged them all, and then counterattacked with a long-distance ice blade attack!
While attacking the direction that the bullets came from, Kagura also looked towards Kaede and confirmed that the latter was uninjured as Kaede was now counterattacking with a wind blade against the other ambusher.
"Master, two human enemies have ambushed us from the east!" Kagura used a communication spell to report this to Seiji.
"How many? Do you need support?" Seiji replied instantly.
"Two people. We don't need any support for the time being."
Kagura then shot out another two ice blades and used her Demon Blade to form a giant ice sword that then successfully sliced the octopus monster into two!
At almost the exact same time, Hisashi and Mika also reported that human enemies had ambushed them at their entrances. Two humans had attacked Hisashi, and three humans had attacked Mika.
Two in the east, two in the west, and three in the south… there were a total of seven human enemies so far.
Only the north was left alone and not ambushed by any human enemies.
Although nobody immediately requested reinforcements, Seiji felt that simply standing around would be a poor decision because it might be too late by the time that reinforcements were needed.
"Natsuya, you go to the southern entrance! Kaho and Kazuko, the two of you should send more insects and demons to the east and west." Seiji swiftly gave his commands.
In order to guard against a possible enemy ambush in the north, it would be unwise to take Hitaka and Rana away from the northern entrance.
And since Seiji was the strongest individual guarding this location, he also couldn't allow himself to move so easily.
Right now, he had to believe in his companions!