Exactly as he did with dark lords, Yashiro ordered the girls not to make a single move, Aki above all.
What he did not know was that Yukina had encountered these monsters before. They were called Nephilim, and she had met them when she was much younger.
While Yashiro was still contemplating his next course of action, Yukina attacked without warning, which forced him and Aki to move in and reinforce her. She managed to incapacitate the thing on her own; it was only thanks to the other two that it stopped being a threat at all.
Yashiro tried to stop her and could not, once he had seen how enraged she was, which left Aki arguing that the rest of them could not let Yukina fight alone. He handled his own Nephilim with ease. Yukina's irrationality got her caught out of position, and Aki and Sarah tossed aside.
When she was about to be eliminated for good, Yashiro came to the rescue — and was in turn saved by Sarah, though he took a severe injury in the process.
Watching the girls struggle to find any plan that would get them out alive, Yashiro got all three of them to listen to him for once, because their crummy teamwork needed adjusting immediately.
He had already seen the pattern. Yukina went in as the vanguard, Aki followed her up, and Sarah dealt the final blow. It was not optimal in any way, and he assumed it existed because the academy wanted Arthur's daughter kept in the safest position available. With that understood, Yashiro became aware that his life now depended on giving these three effective commands.
After giving it some thought, he ordered Aki to take the lead by targeting the Nephilim's knees. Sarah was tasked with going for the back, to deny the enemy any chance to fight back — and he made it clear that if she failed at that, all of them would be cut to pieces. Yukina was to back up her comrades.
Seeing that Yukina was determined not to let him down this time, Yashiro felt something close to relief, which made him announce publicly that this would count as a live exercise for the three of them.
The Nephilim attacked first. Aki made the first move against it. Yashiro was well aware that she was only awful at fighting for as long as she was not fighting a human.
Her first strike landed. Yukina followed it and took the Nephilim's arm off, and Sarah delivered the death blow.
With things going as well as they were, Yashiro's only concern became his own injury, which had him contemplating sacrificing his left arm, since the wound in his right leg was preventing him from moving at all. It would be painful, but he thought he still had time on his side.
What he did not expect was Aki coming in to shield him from a strike. It injured her and broke her shield, and it gave Yashiro the opportunity to finish off the Nephilim without taking another wound himself.
He was dismayed and infuriated at her. Not because she had abandoned her position on her own initiative — but because she stood for every ideal that Yashiro himself had stood for many years ago.
Across the hall, the Warped Garden was impressed by how well the girls were fighting. Silver String wondered whether the Warped Garden was the mastermind behind this entire scene, only to be told that it was more likely a rare effort by Storm to entertain her guests.
Hearing that, Silver String concluded that they were all thoroughly finished, and excused himself, after putting an end to the mournful sisters.
The fighting still raged on, with Aki still choosing to keep fighting for her beliefs instead of running away. In the background, Yashiro was thinking about injecting himself with two more doses of E3, which would heal his damaged limbs instantly — despite the horrendous side effects that came with it for sixty per cent of the people who tried it.
Before he could, a figure came in and blew a whistle, and the monsters withdrew.
The figure was Levi, and Ido was with her. Seeing that Yashiro was still eager to fight despite his injuries, Levi was just as eager to give him the battle.
Ido was less keen. He sent her away and took Yashiro himself.
After making it clear to all three girls that he would let them leave the scene unharmed if they chose not to fight him, Yashiro understood that Ido was being careful in his approach — that he hoped to see Yukina and Sarah knocked out first, so that Yashiro and Aki could be surrounded. Yashiro considered injecting himself with another dose, and decided instead to buy himself some time.
So the two of them talked about Ishino. Ido confirmed that Yashiro knew perfectly well who he was, and then called Ishino a real piece of work who had eliminated three of his men and taken his arm off before he was done. Frustrating as that had been, Ido remained perfectly willing to keep fighting, because that was what gave life its ecstasy.
According to Yashiro, who was by then about to attack him.
Ido dismissed the whole idea — the dead, he said, do not care about revenge. Yashiro believed that was not true at all, because he had heard Ishino's last will, and Ishino had made a point of recording everything that had happened to him beforehand.
While Yukina and Sarah fought the Nephilim tooth and nail, Aki began walking towards Ido to fight him, and not even Yashiro's orders to back away could stop her.
She was in no way a match for him, and she annoyed Yashiro thoroughly with her sheer incompetence, and she also bought him enough time to calm down and heal — and then, on his instruction, to read his mind.
As she did, Aki suddenly darted forward.
That was part of Yashiro's plan, which was built on the realisation that Ido was not used to his oversized arm yet, and which had allowed Aki to keep him on the back foot this entire time.
Getting fed up with her shenanigans, Ido kicked her away. Just as he moved to finish her off, Yashiro — healed enough at last — threw a dagger at him, and then came in to deliver the final blow in person.
With Ido and the Nephilim dealt with, Yashiro could not help mocking Ishino, wherever he was, for having lost to someone as stupid as that.
With Ido no longer of this world, Yashiro and Sarah eliminated one last incoming Nephilim and concluded the day. Aki thought it best to press on and pursue Levi and whatever companions she still had, but she was, like Yashiro and the others, in no shape whatsoever to do it, and ended up being put on the ground to lie down.
Worse yet, no amount of E3 could regenerate Aki's lost eye.
Or so Yashiro thought — because the moment he went to inspect the injury more closely, her eye regenerated in front of him.
Since that day, Storm disappeared. As for Levi, people believed she had been eliminated as well. Yashiro was certain she had simply hidden herself somewhere.