Chapter 97: Tokyo

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"I knew you were a nerd."

Edward snorted at Diana's teasing and replied, "Shibuya is an extremely interesting place, not only for it's architecture but also it's history…"

"Yeah, sure, go see your anime girls."

Edward laughed, "Come on, let's go to 109."

Diana raised an eyebrow and asked, "You want me to spy on competition?"

Since some time now Diana had stopped working at the museum and started as a fashion designer. Faced with her question, Edward asked instead, "How is going by the way?"

Diana showed a smile as she replied, happy he cared, "It's going well. Those two weeks away nearly blew everything off before it could begin, but I managed to save it. You investing in our company helped quite a bit."

Diana had started her own company to release the clothes she designed, and Edward had invested a few millions from the start to buy a few factories.

"I'm still not used to being the richest of us two." Edward made it sound like a joke, but he really wasn't. When they first met, she was the rich lady while he was only a young man who had just finished his studies and started working.

Even after that, she was the one providing for him for quite a while. However, with the creation of the Elephant Mice Serum, he was a few tens of millions of dollars richer every month, so his net worth had already gone way past Diana.

Of course, it didn't really matter, whoever was the richest between them, they shared whatever they had to support each other.

Although Diana said what she said, the two still went into the 109 tower, not really buying anything but looking around.

Then, they headed to Ginza, Asakusa and the Meiji Shrine. They had a lot of fun, and it was a quite date. Neither of them wanted to go to the Skytree though, they both had seen the world from up above enough times already.

Especially Edward, since he could fly. More than anything, Edward felt an urge to kick down the tower, only because he could.

Maybe this was Themyscira's curse taking revenge for him kicking down the trees, from now on he will feel the urge to kick every tower he sees…

While in Tokyo, Edward also did not restrain his Chi Sense in the slightest, and found it interesting how many Supers he had found. Tokyo was a big city, but he had already found 6 Supers in the span of a few hours, all of them dressed as civilians.

Overall, they had a fun day, it was Edward's second time in the city, and the first time had only been very brief as he only stayed for a few seconds to create a portal. He had visualized the place with a bunch of pictures.

But as fun as it was, they still had business to do.

Tokyo was a beautiful city, but like all cities, it had darker sides to it.

In the shadow of Tokyo's great towers, Edward and Diana stood in front of a massage salon.

"This place feels… foul." This was Diana's first comment before the establishment.

"The Beast's presence is strong here. I understand why Yao made that speech on mercy, the humans inside have been contaminated by it's aura, they are already his."

Diana frowned, "Are there any bystanders inside?"

"No, the evil aura inside can be felt by normal people too, it should be more of a feeling for them, but that is enough to keep them away. Everyone inside is tainted by big amounts of the Beast's aura."

"So no mercy?"

"No mercy. But there won't be a need for you to act yet."

Diana tilted her head at that, and Edward answered by acting.

First, he sent the surrounding area into the Mirror Dimension. This was a spell used by many magicians, mostly Sorcerers, to deal with their enemies without having to care about the civilians, be it to protect them, or the magicians' secrecy.

Now that he was sure no one would walk in on them, Edward extended both his arms as he closed his eyes. His Chi Sense covered the entire establishment, so he knew the position of every one of them.

Then, just like he did with Bolg and his orcs, he used his Earth Magic to his advantage. He stretched his arms forward, before clenching them both into fists, slowly bringing them together.

As he did so, they heard a few cries coming from the salon, which was quite big, and for a few seconds the cries intensified, before all disappearing into the dead of the night.

Behind him, Diana looked at him deep in thought. She was not really surprised by his power, nor was she disgusted by the cries of the dead, she was trained to kill after all.

But what surprised her, was the changes Edward had gone through. Had it been before her journey in Hell, Edward wouldn't have killed anyone, he never did, as far as she knew. Except that demon, but that wasn't a person.

Since he came to take her back though, he had grown much more vicious. He had torn off Hades' face, killed Deimos and Phobos, and just now killed a few tens of humans.

In her opinion, all those people were better off dead and she would have done the same, but still, it surprised her he went through so much change. She preferred it though, she once suffered from her mercy and would prefer for him not to go through the same thing.

The members of the Hand in the salon crushed to their death, Edward returned the structure to the way it was and erased all the blood and gory remaining before entering.

For any other magician, large scaled magic would be quite hard because they needed to perceive what they were using magic on, but for Edward who could feel everything within a hundred meters radius thanks to his Chi Sense, it was as easy as manipulating the elements in front of him.

As they entered the salon, it almost looked haunted because of the Beast's aura and the lack of presence of any human.

Edward led Diana through the salon as if he knew the place like the back of his hand, which he did.

Quickly, they arrived at what seemed to be an impasse, but Edward knew better. Analysing the impasse for a moment, Edward muttered, "Not bad, but not enough."

Complex blue runes appeared in the air around Edward, and at the same time similar ones appeared on the wall. The runes in the air spun slowly like cogs as changes appeared in the door.

A few seconds later, a breaking sound came from the impasse, and the runes disappeared as a portal appeared in the impasse.

Diana praised, "Impressive."

Edward grinned and walked into the portal, quickly followed by her.

As they arrived on the other side, they found a much different Hell from Hades'. Here, the air itself had a tint of red as mountains of flesh and bones surrounded them.

They themselves were in a small town, alongside many other humans.

Edward wanted to use his magic to deal with the masses of enemies before they could even spot them, but he felt his magic was sealed. Looking around, he noticed runes in the surrounding mountains, prohibiting any magic in this sub space.

Diana, although not a magicians, knew a bit about magic, and how to neutralize it, so she said, "It wouldn't be fun anyway if you could simply blitz through anything."

Edward raised an eyebrow and said, "You underestimate me."

With a thought, his Royal Will covered the entire town, and the humans, who were corrupted into following their greed and consumed by the Beast, all fell down due to their poor will.

Diana, who was ready to fight, sighed as she said, "It's not fun fighting alongside a one man army."

Edward grinned, and focused on the two strongest presences in his Chi Sense, the only two that felt very different from the others.

They were both demons, one stronger than the other, one still alive while the other had been knocked unconscious. Conveniently, the two were near each other, not that the town was big enough for them to be really far from each other.

With a leap, Edward jumped past several houses, followed by Diana, and crashed through a wall like it was made of paper, arriving in a throne room.

Realizing his actions, Edward couldn't help but feel a little nostalgic. Had it been before, he would have to carefully thread through the streets, battle the ninjas of the Hand before finally arriving at the final boss…

But now, all he needed was one attack to take care of the mob, and one leap to reach the Beast. It felt like playing an RPG after completing all the side quests first…

The Beast was a disgusting demon, and the one still conscious. It was morbidly obese, had grey skin and grey eyes, as well as long claws in the place of hands. A piece of cloth was hanging of it's head, but did not cover anything, it was more of a cape than a real cloth.

Surrounding it were several torture tools, and the throne on which it sat was made of bones. Fallen members of the Hand were also surrounding it, and in front of it was the other demon.

However, seeing it, or rather him, Edward realized that he was in a similar condition to Merlin, meaning he wasn't a demon per se, but rather had demon blood in him. He looked Japanese, his long black hair was in disarray as he was dressed in rags.

His demon blood obviously did not give him the same gifts as Merlin, or he wouldn't have ended up in this position.

The demon on the throne, the Beast, with a voice akin to nails scratching on a blackboard, said, "What are…"

Before he could finish what he had to say, Aeglos pierced through his grinning face. The grin dropped as the Beast showed shock, and this expression was literally frozen into place by the icy blade of Aeglos.

The head of the Beast was frozen into solid ice, and as Edward took out his spear it exploded in bloody chunks of ice, brains and skull remains.

The Beast was a rather strong demon, but he was nowhere near as strong as Smaug or even the beasts he fought in Hell. Still, it was a demon, and was devious in nature, so he didn't want to take any risks and let perform any magic, so he killed it before it could do so.

On the side, Diana sighed, "That was disappointing."

Edward smirked and sent Yin Chi toward the man with demon blood in him, which he guessed was the smith he was searching for, Muramasa.

The Yin Chi, or Spiritual Energy, quickly woke up the man from his slumber.

Muramasa had been held hostage for some time now by the Hand, and was trapped in this hellish dimension. The beast had tried to make him submit, and force him to forge weapons for the members of the Hand.

The Beast was in the process of threatening him, which had become a daily occurrence now, when he felt a crushing pressure around him. Before he could understand what was happening, he was knocked out, and as he woke up, the first thing he saw was the headless body of his tormentor.