Episode 12

**The Sacred Place** (神殿 *Shinden* lit. "Temple") is the twelfth episode of the *Dead Mount Death Play* anime, and the final episode of the first cour of season 1.

## Official Blurb

As a string of criminals, cops, and assassins converge on his building, the Corpse God finally decides to take action. How far will the necromancer go to defend his new home? And what new attention will his actions draw in a world without magic?

## Synopsis

In a building's stairwell, Fire-breathing Bug decries the Bastard Children of Sabaramond as deplorables for using a child, i.e. Polka Shinoyama. Corpse God asks if Sabaramond is on Earth and whether Bug has ties to the Byandy Empire or the Kingdom of Nyanild.

The Raincoat Bug participating in the call wonders if "Polka" is playing dumb but decides he is not. Stairwell Bug asks her whether "Polka" is different from "them" (the Bastards), and when she replies that Polka is the same as them—an enemy—Stairwell Bug asks Corpse God what he is.

Instead of replying, Corpse God scans his purlieu to find the callers, i.e., those who may have scorched the message into the wall. He senses Sayo Shinoyama on the floor below, a few people nearby, and, to his surprise, two people on the Abandoned Building's roof.

Although Tena Sorimura appears to be keeping cool while dodging Xiaoyu Lei's attacks, his heart pounds, and his brain is baffled as to who Xiaoyu is. Xiaoyu pauses to ask why Solitaire is here—perhaps for Miyabi Hosorogi?—and Solitaire seizes the bluffing opportunity to answer, *Yes*. However, he supposes he will have to "repay" Hosorogi later.

Xiaoyu questions what a fugitive could owe a police Internal Affairs inspector before speculating that the dirigible stunt was a one-man staged show. Solitaire's heart speeds up, suggesting to Xiaoyu that he guessed right, but Solitaire improvizes that he came to check if anything happened to Hosorogi.

Left more confused, Xiaoyu shifts into a 'capture-and-interrogate-Solitaire' stance. Solitaire declares that this time, Xiaoyu will be the one in for a fright—and as if on cue, Lemmings drops between them from a higher rooftop. Xiaoyu distances himself from Lemmings immediately and demands to know whether Lemmings and Solitaire are working together; Solitaire heavily implies that they are without explicitly claiming the affirmative since the rumors of Lemmings' dangerousness make him nervous.

Indeed, Lemmings, after a minute of Solitaire exciting his berserker behavior, turns his bandaged gaze on the magician. Solitaire freezes with the feeling that his life has reached its curtain call. Xiaoyu flings kunai at Lemmings' back.

Bao asks Takeru Shinoyama if Rozan Shinoyama's bodyguard knows about Lemmings. Takeru replies that he has not disclosed much about his Agency to his family, but assures Bao that he has instructed Lemmings to avoid harming Xiaoyu no matter the harm Xiaoyu may inflict on him.

The three kunai bury themselves in Lemmings' back. Lemmings flexes his shoulders to dislodge the blades, which clatter to the ground, and merely glances back at Χiaoyu before advancing toward Solitaire. He only advances a few steps before Xiaoyu wraps him with cutting cords, indignant over being ignored, then sends electric currents coursing through the wires when the cords fail to cut him.

Lemmings takes another struggling step forward, breaks the bonds, and swings a punch that Solitaire evades. Solitaire chides Lemmings for ignoring stage cues even as he climbs onto the guardrail in a last-ditch retreat, making Xiaoyu doubt whether the two are really in cahoots. Fed up, he blows Lemmings and Solitaire both "sky-high."

Ranmaru Yatsu and Danjō Tozawa introduce themselves to Raincoat Bug as members of the Shinjuku Community Safety Division and ask why a minor is wearing a raincoat in pleasant weather on the streets at 3 AM. Bug ends their call with "Polka."

Corpse God considers how fragments of his world have filtered and are filtering through to this world and feels conflicted. He believes that he cannot return to a world from which he fled as its enemy but wishes for the homeworld of himself and his loved ones not to be defiled. Since there is a reasonable chance that the caller(s) are either among the people on the rooftop or among the people below, Corpse God decides to secure the building's purlieu with necromancy.

Other World
As Izliz Swordflail stares out at the ruins of the imperial capital and the sea lapping at its cliffs, Romelka Rimelka asks her what is on her mind. Izliz replies that she has been sentimental about the empire and, when Romelka teasingly says that Izliz is actually thinking about Corpse God, remarks that raising "that dimwitted pupil" was her only true contribution to the Byandy Empire.

Romelka tuts at such modesty and gushes about Izliz and Corpse God's unique mentor-pupil relationship until Izliz shushes her and quips that magical longevity has not shed Romelka of her immaturity. Ruefully, she adds, "Perhaps my fool of an apprentice remained a boy until the bitter end."

At Romelka's essential *so what*, Izliz clarifies that Corpse God is a nice boy who surpasses her in empathy only and lacks much personal will, so he "gives himself over entirely to those he feels close to" and loses all control when his home is defiled.

Lemmings, Solitaire, and Xiaoyu all tense at an unnatural chill sweeping over the roof. Red handprints spatter the windows and walls of the buildings on the block but go unmentioned or unnoticed by the two Comps-3 members and Raincoat Bug, though the latter, upon sensing the chill, apologetically bows to the former and explains that she and her dad are searching for their runaway dog Toyomaru, whom she has found. She claims she informed her father over the phone that he was coming.

She spots him on the street a moment later and waves him over. Stairwell Bug approaches the man with his closed umbrella and states that he and his daughter are searching for their dog. Ranmaru asks why this requires a raincoat, and the "daughter" answers that it keeps her clean while she checks dirty nooks and crannies.

Corpse God knows the girl is lying since there are no living dogs nearby, and he recognizes her soul—and that of the man squaring off against Lemmings—as the souls of the two fortunetelling clients who asked about the emblem. He elects to expand his Temple; street after street, people notice an unnatural chill in the air.

Flashback
Izliz gives Corpse God a lesson on constructing a Netherworld Overflow Temple.

Present
Yatsu notes the sudden chill while Tozawa, who agrees that something feels off, peers at the roof. Corpse God ascends the stairs and prepares to assist Xiaoyu—discreetly, he assures Polka Shinoyama—with Invisible Hands.

Of the three rooftop fighters, Lemmings is the most distracted by, or preoccupied with, the ominous feeling that has engulfed the area. Solitaire tosses a card at Lemmings as an opening move of his escape strategy. The card halts and crumples before it touches Lemmings, who, alongside Xiaoyu, indicates that he did not do that.

Invisible hands proceed to spin and trip Solitaire and attempt to hold Lemmings back as he advances. Corpse God prepares to up the action a notch and Solitaire his escape—something Solitaire has *actually* prepared unlike his sign-off catchphrase, which remains undecided. He sets off a smokescreen into the sky with a massive balloon inspired by the magazine he read on the dirigible.

The Solitaire sighting has Yatsu reaching for his cell phone to call Tsubaki Iwanome only for Tozawa to ask him *how much* he intends to include in his report. Yatsu looks at the billowing smoke, grins, and wonders out loud whether *that* is another of Solitaire's tricks.

Solitaire's babbling about the smokescreen's secret recipe ceases at the spectacle writhing through the smoke, one of which Takeru's man records video footage of that he sends to Takeru for immediate review. Takeru opens the video; his eyes widen.

Solitaire spots the two Bugs walking away from the scene and complains about their nerve for using him as misdirection. However, his fantastic mood is such that he magnanimously forgives them, made utterly ebullient over the supernatural previously-invisible massive hands chasing after him and Lemmings.

Lemmings evades all the hands' attempts to seize him mid-air and increasingly high over the Shinjuku cityscape, so Corpse God switches focus to Solitaire. Solitaire hops from balloon to balloon—and eventually his primary rope balloon—while exuberantly wondering whether the Shakuzawa skeletons and these hands have the exact origin.

Of all the hands chasing him, the one that comes closest belongs to Lemmings, lunging for him through the smoke; he grabs Solitaire's cape but is just out of proper reach, so he is left to fall, clutching a torn piece of it.

Solitaire is only too eager to investigate Corpse God further. He casts Lemmings a scornful look and says he wants nothing to do with the likes of him.

Corpse God wearily deconstructs the Temple and tells Polka that the two rooftop intruders escaped but not the girl in the raincoat, who has been caught by the spirit of the Shinoyama maid killed by Know.

Meanwhile, a confident man views tweets about the flock of hands and the Shakuzawa skeletons concurrently with incoming posts on the Bastards' anonymous message board. The Bastards seem generally convinced that this is otherworldly power (some suggest necromancy, others elementalism, others sacred arts) that is their right and duty to claim for themselves.

The man agrees that they must search for this power with every tool at their disposal, adding that they can "kill multiple birds with one stone" while sacrificing them as well. He remarks on the irony of the inheritors of Hosorogi's will gathering in the building where the Bastards disposed of Hosorogi.

Iwanome, in his apartment and pajamas, instructs Yatsu to secure the scene.

The blonde female bouncer returns to Youtoukorou and informs Lisa Kuraki that the police are on the move. Lisa supposes that Shinjuku is due for another commotion.

Misaki Sakimiya sits up in bed, briefly awoken, then falls back asleep.

In a living room, an abnormally tall young man checks his phone and tells his sister—the one sitting on the loveseat, not the one gazing out the window—that "things are getting interesting." The television switches on, displaying video footage of a distant flock of massive hands undulating in a city.

The sister's slow smile reveals a set of fangs.

## Adapted From

* Chapter 32
* Chapter 33
* Chapter 34