GalaxyTL
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Bonus 1
——
It’s a two-toned world.
One color is yellow.
It’s the color of the intense light from the setting sun.
The sky, the mountains, the city.
Everything is painted in that color.
The other color is black.
It’s the color of the deep shadows, where the sunset doesn’t reach.
‘Suzudou Butcher Shop’, in a corner of the shopping arcade, which is strangely deserted…
And the alleyway extending from its side…
It’s truly a world of shadows.
A jet-black darkness, where no one can see, spreads out.
And from that darkness…
“B-Woof… Woof… B-Woof…”
A dog, barking ‘poorly’, slithered out.
It’s an emaciated dog.
The color of darkness, jet-black.
However, if any human were to see this dog—
‘I wouldn’t care about its appearance’,
…They’d probably say that.
Because this dog is incredibly strange, to the point where its appearance doesn’t even matter.
It’s emitting an extraordinary presence, and moving in a strange way.
By ‘moving strangely’, I mean—
It’s restlessly spinning its head, looking around, all the way around… to an extent that would be impossible for a normal dog…
And it’s moving forward, unsteadily, its four legs moving erratically.
“Woof, woof… Wooo…”
The dog stopped its ‘poor’ walking and crouched down.
And then, a few seconds later.
Two heads sprouted from the trembling dog’s sides!
One on its right side, and one on its left!
The dog stopped rotating its head.
Because its vision expanded, with more heads.
“Wooo, wooo…”
Next, the dog increased the number of its legs, from two pairs to six pairs.
And taking a posture like it’s lying on its stomach, it started moving forward, like a pillbug, moving its twelve legs!
“Woofa!”
And then, the dog, biting an empty plastic bottle that was rolling on the ground, swallowed it whole.
“Woofa!”
And then—cigarette butts, pebbles, moss growing on the edge of the road… it swallowed anything it could find.
And then…
“Woofa!”
The dog looked up.
It sensed another prey.
Where the dog is looking…
On the stylish, brick-paved road of the shopping arcade…
…There is a human standing there.
A woman in her early twenties, wearing a black recruit suit.
“Woooooooo!”
The dog happily wagged its tail… or rather, it tried to, but not knowing how, it just swayed its rear end from side to side.
And then, it moved its six pairs of legs and started charging towards the woman!
Opening its mouth wide, scattering jet-black drool!
“…………”
The woman, on the other hand, is silent.
It wasn’t that she was frightened by the unknown monster and couldn’t speak…
It was that she was used to it.
Because her mission is to exterminate those… monsters… ‘Youma’.
“Haa!!”
The woman, letting out a sharp cry, her sunset-colored white hair billowing, swung the sword she was holding in her right hand.
Just a single swing.
And with just that…
The dog… no, the Youma, which had transformed into something that could no longer be called a dog, was…
“Woof…”
Before it could even let out a proper death cry, it was cut clean in half… and turned into a jet-black haze, dissolving into the world.
“Extermination, complete.”
Hikari, the white-haired, white-eyed woman… the apprentice goddess, exhaled softly, muttered that, and sheathed her sword.