The Mysterious Man

His bow finished, the pseudo-priest hurls Seiko into a pillar and chases it with an axe kick. She barely slips the follow-up and trades blows up close, quickly registering that his strikes carry brutal power and target her vital points, yet finding his patterns oddly predictable. When she spots an opening and commits to a finishing double punch, her fists pass straight through him, exposing a body made of smoke. He answers with an uppercut, two strikes to her ribs, and a move he names Setta that flings her into the wall.

Battered, Seiko names her foe an Enenra, a smoke-based yokai. He stomps her ribs and presses her to concede, insisting resistance is pointless. She mocks his warrior act as a sham and aims a retaliatory kick at his groin, which sails harmlessly through him and only provokes a counterkick.

On the level below, Momo hears the violence and fears for her grandmother, while Bamora, startled, mistakes the tiny Momo perched on her head for a fairy. Above, the Enenra stands over the downed Seiko and grinds her ribs, drawing screams. He marvels at her refusal to break and muses on the clash between survival instinct and the human will to defy death.

Curious whether ruining her body will finally crush her resolve, he bears down harder. Before he can continue, the Evil Eye smashes in carrying a beaten ninja, audibly annoyed at having been left waiting in the taxi.

This Volume 24 chapter, released July 22, 2025, belongs to the Shimane Arc in the Ultimate Yokai Saga and sits between Chapter 202 and Chapter 204. It contains the bulk of the Seiko Ayase versus Red Baron clash and confirms the enemy's smoke physiology, the central obstacle the heroes must solve in the following chapters.