Game Cleared

With the crystal shattered, Momo, Okarun, Turbo Granny, and Unji sprint from the crumbling castle. Unji insists he beat the game, but Okarun corrects him: clearing it was never the goal. Turbo Granny lays out the truth, that Danmara is no tabletop diversion at all but a cursed wicker trunk built to imprison a wicked spirit through binding power. She adds that four seals once held it shut, and Momo realizes with horror that the four bosses on the card were those very seals, guardian deities disguised so that players would unwittingly free what they guarded.

As a sign congratulates the crowd for finishing, the freed yokai thanks his liberators. Turbo Granny orders everyone to shut their eyes, warning that this is the Fairy-Tale Card, capable of claiming anything that meets his gaze. He recognizes her changed voice and questions whether she now sides with humanity. He explains that he disguised the trunk as a game precisely because he could not break his own seal, needing others to do it. When Momo demands a way out, he tells her there is none, having released only the old man and one gang girl as bait to lure fresh victims with their stories. Momo says the candy-filled world bores her and wants to leave, but the yokai argues the delinquents secretly despise reality and crave chaos. Haunted by a painful memory, Unji's stand-in leader opens his eyes, falls under control, and strikes Unji, who looks up and is taken too.

Turbo Granny exposes the diorama as a cursed trunk caging an evil yokai that staged itself as a board game so people would free it. The Fairy-Tale Card reveals himself and his power to possess anyone who looks at him. He works to convince the delinquents that his fabricated world beats the one they left behind. Raiya succumbs to the mind control and hits Unji, and Unji is then possessed and begins to transform.

This chapter opens Volume 18 and marks the debut of the Fairy-Tale Card antagonist. It recontextualizes the entire Danmara game as a trap, transforming a contest the cast thought they had won into the start of a much larger crisis. The possession of Unji sets up the umbrella-fueled battle to follow.