While Araka continued her training at Shimana Shrine, another Matake user was already at work several hundred kilometres to the south.

Deep in the mountains surrounding Junsae (裙山), southern Tzehae, four figures followed a narrow trail beneath the summer canopy.

At the front walked Peni Hakasa (北依 夏雨) — Twenty-two years old, dark-skinned, with short dark-blue hair. She carried something that looked almost absurdly large against her frame—a wide, rough-edged sword secured across her back.

Beside her was Kai (凱), a slim thirty-four-year-old man whose dyed silver hair stood out sharply against the green mountainside.

Two local police officers, a man and a woman, followed several steps behind.

“So…” Kai said, pushing aside a branch. “Guess we’re seeing this more often in the north now.”

One of the officers looked toward him.

“Seeing what?”

“Animals infected by Shard (碎月石) fragments,” Hakasa said.

The male officer frowned. “But we’re talking about a tiger,” he said while stepping carefully over an exposed root: “If food becomes scarce enough, wouldn’t a tiger attack people anyway?”

Hakasa glanced back at the young female officer: “Did the eyewitness say its coat is white?”

“Yes… That’s actually why the attacks surprised us,” the female officer said: “The white-coated ones around here almost never attack people. Some villages here even raise trained ones as guard animals.”

“…Well.” Hakasa adjusted her grip on the sword upon passing a narrow passage between two trees, “That confirms it, doesn’t it?”

The male officer looked puzzled. “Confirms what?”

“The crystal I mentioned earlier,” Hakasa continued along the trail. “If the tiger accidentally swallowed a Shard fragment, digestion could’ve broken it into smaller pieces, and once those fragments entered its body“…you’d start seeing erratic behaviour.”

The two officers exchanged uneasy looks.

Kai sighed: “Which means we’re probably not dealing with a hungry tiger.”

Hakasa nodded.

—

The sound of running water gradually became louder as the trail descended toward a narrow creek winding between the rocks.

After walking past another corner, Hakasa suddenly raised her hand.

“Stop,” Everyone froze.

Kai immediately looked toward her: “You found something, Hakasa?”

Hakasa didn’t answer at first.

Her eyes remained fixed on the slope ahead: “let me check first.”

Kai nodded and drew his PAK-23 pistol and held it low beside him.

The officers followed his example, but Hakasa lifted a hand again.

“Don’t shoot unless I tell you to,” she said.

“But what if it —” the female officer said. 

Hakasa reached behind her shoulder, with her hand closed around the grip of the enormous sword.

“That’s why I’m going first,” Hakasa said while descending slowly down the slope.

The creek came into Hakasa’s view between the trees, then —

There it was, Hakasa said to herself. 

A white tiger stood beside the water — or  at least, it had once been white: mud covered much of its coat; dark patches of dried blood stained the fur around its legs and chest; and for its face, it was worse — blood covered its mouth, and eyes dull. 

Hakasa studied it from a distance: the blood around its mouth was messy… too messy — there were stains across the side of its muzzle, even beneath its nose, as though it had repeatedly thrown itself at something without understanding how to finish the attack.

So, a female white tiger that wasn’t even used to biting, huh? Hakasa narrowed her eyes and said. 

Upon extending her Matake field, Hakasa figured out something was definitely wrong with the tiger — heat was intensely concentrated inside the abdomen, while the remaining body was relatively cool. 

Guess that’s where the Shard is located, Hakasa said as she drew her wide sword from the holder and pointed her sword toward the ground.  

“Okay…” she muttered, “let me get the crystal out of you, my girl.”

Then, before Hakasa moved, the tiger moved first: before, it stood beside the creek with its body lowered; yet seconds later, it charged toward Hakasa. In its eyes, Hakasa caught a glimpse of its iris — dull, unfocused, and emotionless. 

So the Shard’s already digested, Hakasa noted to herself. 

She waited until the last possible moment, and then she threw herself sideways while drawing her sword out. Then, she turned with the momentum and swung, hands tight on the grip. 

The enormous blade cut across the tiger’s back, creating a visible dent on the white coat. While the animal twisted away before Hakasa could land the strike completely, a line of blood immediately appeared through its dirty white fur.

Hakasa didn’t stop. Instead, she adjusted her stance again and prepared for another fight. As the tiger turned back and moved toward her, this time, Hakasa moved first — she rushed around its side, closing the distance before the animal could fully reposition itself.

Then, her sword came down — this time, the rough edge of the blade moved across its upper back, leaving a deep vertical wound beneath the coat. 

The tiger staggered, then immediately turned on her again.

“Huh!” Hakasa shouted out while narrowly avoiding its paw — they passed close enough that she felt the air move across her hair.

Hakasa immediately stepped back, and the tiger lunged again. Hakasa dodged again by rolling sideways. 

So this means … The tiger has enough nutrients to support these Shard-influenced movements, Hakasa thought while looking at the tiger’s blood cheek from the side. That’s actually worse than I thought, she whispered. 

“Kai!” Hakasa shouted. 

“What?”

“Use your gunshot,” Hakasa said.

“On the tiger?”

Hakasa shook her head: “No — anywhere near her if you can avoid hitting her.” After dodging another attack, she then channeled the remaining message from her Matake field: make her focus on you.

Kai raised his PAK-23 and nodded: “Copy that.”

He then took aim.

Bang!

A bullet struck the rocks beside the creek.

Bang!

The second landed right around a bamboo stalk. 

Bang!

The third tore into the earth several metres to its side.

The tiger, as expected, moved away from Hakasa despite being right in front of her. Then, its head snapped toward the sound and turned toward Kai.

Now it’s the time, Hakasa said to herself.

She immediately made her next move: with her Matake field already focused on the source of heat inside the animal, she swung her heavy sword against the centre of the tiger’s body. 

“Hah!”

It was a precise hit — the massive blade drove deep through the animal’s body, toward the abdomen where Hakasa had sensed the concentrated heat.

The tiger collapsed. Its legs still struggled against the ground for a few seconds, and eventually succumbed under the weight of Hakasa’s heavy sword.  

Hakasa kept both hands firmly around the grip.

The tiger struggled again. Blood spread slowly through the shallow water of the creek.

Its movements weakened.

And finally— it stopped.

For several seconds, silence lingered, and the only sound remaining was the sound of the running water. 

Then, the male police officer cautiously approached. He glanced at the now motionless tiger and then looked at Hakasa, now panting. 

“So … why didn’t you aim for its head?”

Hakasa slowly released the sword: “Because the head isn’t what was keeping it going.”

The officer frowned. “What do you mean?”

“With a Shard-infected animal, simply damaging the brain doesn’t reliably stop the influence,” Hakasa said while pointing toward the tiger’s abdomen. “Unless you completely sever the important arteries and end circulation immediately, you may still have an animal capable of moving.”

The female officer, who also arrived, frowned. 

Hakasa wiped sweat from her forehead and continued: “But if I can stop the circulation around the area first infected by the shard, this will always work.”

Kai, previously checking the parameter, also approached from behind. He looked down at the tiger.

“Still,” he drew his pistol again and aimed at the head of the tiger, “Confirmation shot.”

Hakasa nodded. 

Then, the sound of gunshot echoed across the shallow bamboo valley. 

As the sound gave away to the silence, Hakasa looked at the tiger again — at exactly where her sword landed. It was not her first Shard containment mission, instead she had done it several times before across the northeastern Kenzan Peninsula (琴山半島). Yet, this time, she felt her stomach tightened — something unsettling started to appear in her mind.

She was a mother, a local white tiger, Hakasa thought, someone who would never attack people unless her children were threatened. But… what if she just ate …

Hakasa paused her thoughts before going further. She then started to think something deeper: what exactly is a Shard piece?

Her field could tell her where the Shard was; her instructor Yon had taught her how to contain it; yet no one, not even the SAIR or the Otanaku Shrine elders had given her clear answers to what a Shard exactly is.

Is it a gemstone? Then how could it go through the arteries and enter the brain? Is it a fossil? Then why was it active once digested or grounded into powders? 

Guess one day I will be able to answer that, Hakasa said to herself as the reinforcement from the local police came to the place. 

—

Later that afternoon, a yellow Dazen RTM-300 sports car cut steadily through the traffic on the expressway leading back toward Ninju (寧州), with its rotary engine humming beneath the summer heat. In the trunk, the Shard fragment extracted from the tiger was sealed inside a reinforced containment case. 

Hakasa sat in the passenger seat, looking out through the window. She let out a small sigh. 

“…I still feel bad for that tiger.”

Kai glanced briefly toward her, and didn’t say much. 

“She was probably a mother.”

Her voice became softer.

“And I still had to be the one to put her down.”

Kai remained silent for a moment before answering. Then, his lips lifted. 

“It looked like she’d swallowed that fragment quite a while ago,” Kai said, “ the tag showed she belonged to the protected population in the natural reserve further down the hill.”

“Which would explain why it took us so long to locate her,” Hakasa continued, “I still couldn’t help thinking if she had …”

Before either of them could continue, Hakasa’s black-cased phone began to ring. She glanced at the screen.

“…Captain Yon?”

She immediately answered.

“Hello?”

A familiar voice came through the speaker.

Hakasa listened quietly. “…Okay,” she said while her expression changed slightly: “So Araka already had her field examined by Master Kinekama?”

Another pause.

Hakasa suddenly sat straighter. “Wait — Kinekama agreed to help Araka herself?”

Kai glanced toward her again, now clearly curious.

Hakasa continued listening.

“…Alright.”

She nodded.

“We’ll make a detour to Shimana Shrine before dinner.”

Hakasa lowered the phone as the call ended.

Kai raised an eyebrow. “So it’s about that Araka, right?”

“Captain Yon asked me to help with something at the shrine.”

Kai smiled faintly. “Guess that Otanaku reassignment really made him enthusiastic about shrine work all of a sudden.”

Hakasa gave him a deadpan look: “Hey Kai, did you forget he’s already a shrine-certified Matake sorcerer?”

Kai shrugged.

Hakasa leaned back into the seat. “If it were under the old system, someone like him probably wouldn’t even have been allowed to conduct certification until at least forty-five.”

Kai laughed. “Guess that does make thirty-something look pretty young.”

Hakasa smiled.

Yet her thoughts had already gone somewhere else. 

Araka.

It had been some time since their last proper partnership. Back then, during the Milo crisis in Saonshu, Araka had still been adapting to what she could do. It’s only been a year, and now Yon was preparing her for shrine certification, and even Master Kinekama was personally evaluating her field.

Hakasa looked out toward the mountains passing beyond the expressway barrier.

So you’re really doing it, Araka, Hakasa said to herself with a smile on her face. It’s good to see you again, and I couldn’t wait to see how much you’ve grown since the last time we fought together.