Chapter 99
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 99
Chapter Title: Magical Ikusa Battle (2)
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"Ah, right! That's dangerous!"
Sudden warning from Rez.
I didn't ask what was dangerous.
I'd figure it out right away anyway.
"Ah."
The sensation in my fingers gripping the edge of the shield vanished in an instant.
All that was left was a dull ache, a sticky feeling, and an empty void where something should have been.
Yeah. My fingers had been severed.
The four fingers that had been touching the shield's edge.
I turned my head to look, and there they were in my vision, plopping down along with the shield.
Tiny blades had sprouted along the shield's edge at some point, spinning like a saw, and they'd sliced right through my fingers.
"Sorry! I forgot to tell you!"
Rez apologized from afar, but I didn't say anything about it.
Well, things were urgent, so it couldn't be helped.
Anyway, now that I knew, that was that.
I'd concentrated my magic into my fingers to hold on tighter, but to think they'd be cut off so easily.
The output was stronger than expected. I'd have to be even more careful not to touch the edges at all.
And honestly, I didn't even have the luxury to complain.
Because the moment the eclipse ended, the glans—having crouched down—charged straight at me.
"Let's see if you can still pull that shit up close."
A vicious grin, and the remaining shields along with it.
She'd noticed the steel pipe wasn't in good shape and was trying to force close-quarters combat.
As if to prove it, the glans had left her standard-issue magic wand at her waist.
She was pretty sharp. She'd assessed my condition even in the midst of all that.
In that case, I'd have to respond appropriately too.
A sharp straight punch thrust out.
I deflected it with my elbow and followed up with a strike to her throat.
"Urk!"
Two probing punches, then an upper roundhouse kick.
She dove to the ground to dodge, and as she sprang up, I kneed her in the jaw.
"Take this!"
A shield slamming down vertically from overhead.
Four steps back, then kicked toward her.
"Die!"
A knee rising from behind the shield straight to the groin.
I kicked her joints to topple her, then two hits to the gut with my leg.
"Ah, you fuck—!"
A shield flying toward my thigh from the side.
Half step back, then knocked it away with my knee.
"You've been scurrying around like a rat this whole time!"
Feinting a belly shot, her leg extended with the steel pipe.
I slipped it aside and drove a palm strike into her jaw.
- Thud!
In that instant, the glans grabbed my arm. Her eerie smile gleamed ferociously.
"Finally caught—!"
"If you're gonna grab something, go hold your mom's hand."
I swung my bleeding, fingerless hand, splashing blood right into the glans's eyes.
"If not, don't."
Foreign matter invading her eyeball made her reflexively clutch at her face.
"You motherless bastard, playing dirty like that!"
"Thanks. Even when I was topping the charts, my teammates never praised me like that."
Thanks to that, the glans was wide open.
Now was the time to lay the groundwork.
I backed away to create distance and drew the moon.
"Blue Moon."
A blue moon traced across the glans's body. Clearly visible from her right side to her left nape.
- Thwack.
In that moment, a shield from my blind spot struck my wrist with its edge.
Luckily, I yanked my hand back on reflex the instant it hit, so my wrist didn't get severed, but instead, the steel pipe flew out of my grip.
Toward the back of the glans, who had just wiped the blood from her eyes.
- Clang, clatter.
With a fairly loud noise, the steel pipe landed in the glans's long-stretched shadow.
"You... know what that is?"
In that instant, the glans's chilling voice rang out.
I shot her a sideways glare without a word, and she continued with a smirk.
"Magical deficits can be healed, but without the missing part, recovery takes quite a while."
She probably thought she had the upper hand right now.
And physically speaking, she kind of did.
"It varies by person, but if the magic doesn't take well, it can take months."
The win condition for this fight was destroying the opponent's weapon.
Conveniently, my weapon was lying in her shadow.
Even if I rushed over, she'd reach the steel pipe faster. Worst case, she could just smash it with a shield without even approaching.
"For a magical girl, it's this bad—what do you think it'd be like for a regular person?"
So that's why she was acting so smug.
"In that case, then."
In that moment, the glans picked up my severed fingers and dangled them teasingly.
"How long do you think you'd need to heal if these fingers were gone for good?"
She sneered, then opened her mouth wide and brought my severed fingers toward it.
As if she might actually eat them.
"Hey, you shouldn't eat that."
"Why, scared?"
"Even stray dogs won't touch it, why would you?"
"Too late, dumbass."
And then the glans actually swallowed my finger.
The surrounding magical girls openly showed their disgust.
"Ugh, so fucking gross."
"Goddamn, that psycho bitch."
"From today, that crazy slut's Magical Girl Mint Turd, fuck."
Ignoring them, the glans kept swallowing my fingers one by one.
One at a time.
Three times.
"Ha, too nasty to eat more."
The last one was tossed casually behind her.
Perfectly into the shadow next to the steel pipe.
Not bad.
The glans let out a small burp and flashed another sneer.
"You'll be fingerless and miserable for quite a while. How's it feel?"
Honestly, I was a bit flustered.
"Glans, I did warn you not to eat it."
I warned her, but she didn't listen.
What the hell was she thinking?
Well, no helping it now.
"Unbelievable. What the hell kind of magical bullshit have you been—"
"Exploding Moon."
Now she'd have to deal with the consequences herself.
──!!!!
Three simultaneous explosions from her stomach erupted into one massive boom.
From the stomach where she'd just swallowed my fingers.
Yeah.
I'd cast Exploding Moon with my severed fingers.
With the very fingers she'd just eaten.
Just like Snowball casting spells by infusing magic into bullets, I cast magic using the mana infused in each of my fingers.
It wasn't pure luck. I'd been planning to use them somewhat ever since they were cut off.
If I had no intention of using them, I'd have reattached them ages ago. In my current recovered state, I could manipulate that much mana easily.
I just had other plans for them, but I never expected the glans to set up the board so perfectly.
Even now, that bitch is a total moron.
Why'd she eat it when I told her not to?
"Uweeeeeeck!!!"
Meanwhile, the glans was doubled over, vomiting up stomach acid and bloody clumps nonstop. Sticky fluids dripped from her eyes and nose.
No matter how confident a magical girl was in her defenses, direct internal damage was unavoidable.
Watching her, I stepped one foot into the shadow draped ahead.
"Didn't your mom teach you not to eat stuff off the ground after three seconds?"
And I pulled my other foot in, planting it firmly in the shadow.
"Oh, right. You don't have a mom. Sorry."
"Fuck! Fuck! Fuuuuck!!!"
The glans pounded the ground with both hands for a moment, venting her rage, then whipped her head back.
Her gaze fixed on the steel pipe.
Lying across her long shadow.
A few seconds of stillness.
Then, with a sinister grin, she began backing away slowly toward the steel pipe.
As if planning to smash it quick and end this.
I needed to stall for time. There was a variable, but it wasn't easy to use right now.
Honestly, I didn't want to use it.
It came with a heavy burden.
I needed time to calculate, even just a little. At least a moment to focus.
Then, something occurred to me.
If what Sora said was true, the glans had taken leave for a Vocaloid concert, right?
Then this should work.
"Honestly, isn't it pathetic chasing after a concert of data scraps that don't even exist?"
"What's it to you what I do?"
The glans snapped back, clearly pissed. She didn't stop backing away, but this was good enough.
Only one thing I hadn't expected.
"Mortal, do you even know what Magical Vocaloid is before speaking? It's not good to talk nonsense without knowing, nya."
The octopus suddenly addressing me.
Was there a Vocaloid fan nearby? She seemed to be watching her words carefully.
But it was fine.
I knew what Vocaloid was.
"Of course I do. It's like a sub-species of VTubers. No wonder they look similar."
"No, fuck, mortal, what did you just say, nya?"
"Octopus, you didn't know? With knowledge that pathetic, how do you expect to write?"
The octopus might look polished on the outside, but she didn't know much.
Well, couldn't be helped.
Time to give her some strong advice.
"Octopus, go read Namuwiki cover to cover and study Vocaloid's 'roots' from the beginning. Got it—"
"Hey."
A heavy voice cut me off.
"What did you just say?"
I turned to look, and there was the glans, motion stopped, glaring at me like she wanted to kill me.
"Who the hell are you to talk about 'roots'?"
Killing intent dripped thickly from her bloodshot eyes.
"Oh."
I couldn't help but admire it.
Not because my words had worked, though.
For a slightly different reason.
The glans's pupils were changing.
Literally. They had been normal pupils before, but now they'd finished transforming into something else.
Pupils shaped like shields.
Something you occasionally saw in those tricky bastards from another world, but I never thought I'd see it here in this one.
It meant the glans had stepped into the ranks of the strong. I hated to admit it.
Meanwhile, the glans ground her teeth, fixing her shield-shaped pupils on me.
"Are you fucking insane? Do you even know what the 'roots' of Magical Vocaloid are?"
"Of course."
I shot back with a smile and continued.
"Vocaloid's roots are Rabbit Hole—"
"Die!!!"
The glans stomped hard, and a massive shield materialized, charging at me.
Leading with its huge face, from above downward.
To crush me.
Even without incantation, its size and speed were incomparable to before. Her changed eyes must have triggered it.
The glans grinned with ecstasy.
"Got you!!!!!!"
The shield hurtling at impossible speed to dodge looked different despite its shape.
As if death itself was reaching out with clawing hands to seize me.
An unavoidable death.
But it didn't matter.
What was I best at, anyway?
Yeah. Hide-and-seek with death.
So this time too. Though one thing bothered me right now...
"Who said you caught me?"
The idea that I was the one being caught.
How dare something like death try to catch the moon? That, I absolutely could not allow.
So.
"I'm the seeker."
Hide tight.
"Hidden Moon."
Don't even let a hair show.