Anime Multiverse: Building a Pantheon from Scratch

Pfft—!

Though much softer than the sound of a gunshot, the suppressed shot that rang out from the hallway was still loud enough to catch attention.

Thud.

A heavy object collapsed with a dull sound.

Luo Shu stepped out from the shadows of the hallway, a silenced SIG pistol in his hand.

Thanks to the suppressor, the gunshot wasn't much louder than a firecracker, and since it had gone off indoors, it shouldn't have attracted too much attention.

Still, Luo Shu wasn't entirely satisfied.

"I thought silencers would make the shot completely silent," he muttered.

[That only happens in novels,] came the lazy voice of Kurumi through his earpiece. [Suppressors can only reduce the noise, not eliminate it.]

"In novels only? I feel like I could actually manage it if I just fiddled around a bit… Anyway, never mind that. How's Takina's side of things?" he asked, walking over to the figure that his instincts had already pegged as a corpse.

Earlier, using wind-elemental perception from a distance, Luo Shu had immediately located the target hiding inside a detached residential house.

To be cautious, Luo Shu and Inoue Takina had split up—he would infiltrate and execute the target quietly, while she waited outside for support or to snipe the target if they attempted to escape.

Of course, since Luo Shu was the one taking action, he had never intended to give the target a chance to flee. Sure enough, the target had been killed the moment he broke in. Everything had gone unusually smoothly.

But still… what was that lingering unease?

As he pondered that, Kurumi checked surveillance feeds in response to his question, observing Takina positioned atop a nearby residential rooftop with her sniper rifle. She glanced at the surroundings, then raised an eyebrow.

[Everything looks clear on this end. What about you?]

"It's done. I used my ability to check—no additional threats or traps present."

Of course, the "ability" he referred to wasn't wind-elemental detection, but he knew Kurumi would assume that anyway.

That was something he wasn't about to explain.

His gaze drifted to the corpse on the floor, which had caught his attention.

The creature had reddish-brown skin all over its body, no reproductive organs, stood roughly 80 centimeters tall, and had unnaturally sharp claws and fangs. Its eyes were bulbous and fish-like—a truly grotesque being.

"So this is what they call an lesser demon?" Luo Shu murmured, frowning.

[The official term is a small demon-type lifeform. But yeah, calling it a "lesser demon" is fine… though its real appearance is way nastier than the name implies. I've only ever seen internal photos.]

[By the way, I heard that these things fetch a pretty high price if recovered. I think it's around $50,000 per body—converted, that's roughly 5 million yen, right?]

Luo Shu's eyes twitched slightly at that. "If it's less than that, I'm putting a bullet in Director Tachibana's sports car."

[Ehh~~ Hearing that makes me want to hide a few corpses myself and only give them back after you do it.]

As Kurumi casually alerted the post-op team to handle cleanup, she asked:

[So, anything unexpected on-site?]

"Not really… Other than the thing's eyes making me feel a little uneasy when they stared at me—and the awful smell—nothing weird… Though, I deliberately split the work with Takina so I could investigate the site myself…"

As he thought this, Luo Shu summoned the Astronomy Club's internal forum with a mental nudge.

Inside the forum, Kasumigaoka Utaha's icon was flashing faintly.

Clicking it, Luo Shu saw a crudely drawn hand-sketched map. While silently mocking Utaha's terrible drawing skills, his eyes locked onto the location marked as the core target.

This map, naturally, was leaked by Ken Yakushiji. As for the method used—it was a hypnotic trigger Utaha had embedded into his psyche.

It functioned by making Ken believe he had poor memory, prompting him to habitually jot down important information as diary entries in a fake email inbox purchased using system credits, usually in a quiet environment.

Utaha would then extract the info from that inbox, compile it at the Astronomy Club's base, and send it to Luo Shu via the internal forum.

The beauty of this system was that no one had ever contacted Ken Yakushiji directly, nor had anyone contacted Luo Shu. Yet, the intelligence still made its way to him cleanly.

To design this plan, Luo Shu and Utaha had spent quite a bit of time discussing during their off-road ride to Chiba. It wasn't flawless, but it was solid enough that no critical leaks would occur.

After all, Luo Shu hadn't encountered any abyssal tools capable of breaching internal system architecture.

In such conditions, an intel delivery method orchestrated entirely through system functions was inherently secure.

Still… this map points to one of Chiba's high-end residential areas…

So how exactly do I explain why I "just happened" to know Katsuhiko Yakushiji is hiding there...?

Ah—got it...

Luo Shu narrowed his eyes and asked casually, "Hey Kurumi, that nasty stench from the lesser demons—it's pretty distinct, right? Could we maybe use it to track where other ones are hiding?"

[Let me check… Hmm, found it. The scent they emit disperses quickly, and once it mixes into the air, even specialized equipment can barely detect it. Wait… Luo Shu, don't tell me you can—]

"I can pick up faint traces," he replied, half-truthfully.

The stench these demons gave off was indeed a volatile compound, and once released into the atmosphere, Luo Shu could detect it using his wind-elemental abilities.

So yes—he could sense the presence of lesser demons. But the lie lay in this:

"I remember that while passing by the wealthy district of Chiba earlier, I caught a particularly strong version of this scent. I just didn't realize at the time it belonged to a lesser demon."

In truth, Luo Shu hadn't sensed any particularly strong odor at all. He'd passed through the area, sure, and had maybe noticed a trace amount of the smell—but without his instincts reminding him of it, he wouldn't even have remembered.

But who was going to call him out on that?

[Are you certain it was that strong?] Kurumi suddenly sounded serious, her usual playfulness gone.

Luo Shu lied with a straight face. "Absolutely. I only recognized it because I've now encountered one of them up close."

[So, wind-element detection is that powerful, huh? No wonder Director Tachibana is so eager to poach you…]

Kurumi muttered under her breath, then added:

[I've already reported it. There's a good chance Hilda will prioritize locking down that rich neighborhood. And if the target really is hiding there, Luo Shu, you might be looking at a massive achievement~]

[If Mika ends up getting promoted because of your lead, you'd better negotiate a salary bump for me too~]

The implication was clear—Kurumi saw Luo Shu as her future boss and was already pre-emptively sweet-talking him.

"That all depends on whether we can catch him or not," Luo Shu replied with a meaningful smile.

So then—Mr. Yakushiji… how exactly do you plan to deal with this unexpected ambush?