Drip... drip...
As a few drops of molten metal fell from the air, Tohru proudly flashed a smile.
"Takumi, look, I stopped an enemy from getting close!"
"That wasn't an enemy... and this car..."
Looking at the big hole burned clean through the car he'd just hand-crafted, Takumi was at a loss for words.
Still, considering he could whip up another car whenever he wanted, and seeing Tohru standing there with that eager please praise me look on her face, all he could do was nod and pat her on the head.
After that, Takumi looked up. Through the pitch-black night, he spotted a faceless woman standing by the roadside.
A steel beam in hand, she seemed to have noticed him too. The next second, she leapt down from several meters up in the air.
Boom!
With a heavy crash, the woman landed safely and stood stiffly in front of Takumi.
Her huge, sinful tits bounced violently, the deep cleavage between them looking ready to rip apart the front of that dress.
That body was first-rate, absolutely no worse than Tohru's.
And the moment he saw her curves, Takumi recognized them. They were identical to Karin Nanase's.
"Wait, what? Steel Lady Nanase???"
A shocked look crossed Takumi's face. He hadn't expected this thing to show up.
Pulling out his phone and doing a quick search, he immediately found several posts spreading the urban legend of Steel Lady Nanase.
According to them, after Karin Nanase died, her resentment became so strong that she turned into a vengeful spirit and started attacking people on the highway.
"Karin is still alive and well in my apartment!"
Takumi couldn't help blurting that out. Then he frowned and looked at the Steel Lady Nanase in front of him as she prepared to attack.
The two-meter steel beam looked light as a feather in her hand.
She swung it down without mercy, the roaring wind behind the strike making it obvious just how brutally heavy it was.
Seeing that, Takumi's expression shifted. He hurriedly called out, "Tohru, wait—"
Before he could finish, Tohru casually spat out a small mouthful of dragon breath.
Whoosh!
The blazing fireball instantly swallowed Steel Lady Nanase whole and burned her into nothing.
"Takumi, what's wrong?"
Only after doing that did Tohru turn her head and look at him in confusion.
Takumi went silent. Steel Lady Nanase might have looked scary, but in terms of actual strength, she was only around upper-class demon level.
To him and Tohru, she was less than an ant. She barely counted as anything at all.
He had originally wanted to study Steel Lady Nanase a little, but obviously that wasn't happening now.
Noticing the change in his expression, Tohru finally realized something.
She carefully asked, "Takumi... did I do something wrong?"
Truthfully, Tohru didn't understand what she'd done wrong. In her eyes, she had only killed an ant that was trying to hurt Takumi.
Takumi shook his head. "It's fine. I just thought of something."
He didn't dwell on it. The lead on Steel Lady Nanase wasn't actually cut off.
Steel Lady Nanase existed more like an urban legend.
"The people posting those urban legend threads are the real source. A hypothetical curse born from an urban legend should be able to revive even if it gets destroyed. And Karin Nanase herself isn't dead either. Her ability is probably tied to all of this."
Sorting through the information he had, Takumi quickly pieced the situation together.
But at this point, it was already late. Better to go home and sleep first.
Looking at the scorched wreckage at the scene, Takumi chose to ignore it.
Tohru cared even less. The only thing she cared about was going home with Takumi.
Not long after they left, strands of pitch-black cursed energy started gathering there again.
The outline of Steel Lady Nanase flickered in and out, already on the verge of reviving.
Meanwhile, in a hospital room far away, a pale, sickly-beautiful Rikka Sakuragawa was typing away at a keyboard in her patient gown.
One post after another about the urban legend of Steel Lady Nanase was being spread by her own hands.
Narrowing her snake-like eyes, she unhesitatingly drove a sharp fountain pen into her own throat.
As bright red blood flowed out, death came for her.
But in the very next moment, the wound healed, and she returned from the brink of death as though nothing had happened.
Her eyes immediately turned sharp and focused again, and she resumed typing like someone who had finally found the road ahead.
She was the product of the mad experiments of her family and grandmother—the only one who survived after consuming the flesh of a kudan and a mermaid.
The kudan granted the power to foresee the future. The mermaid granted immortality.
From then on, she was constantly cut apart and murdered by her grandmother, to the point that she had almost lost all sense of pain.
Only after her grandmother died did Rikka begin wandering through life according to her own will.
That was, until she met that boy more than ten years ago—the one who finally gave her a true sense of self.
Unfortunately, the overwhelming intensity of her "love" back then had scared him away.
She had searched for him afterward, but all of it ended in failure.
In the end, Rikka stopped chasing him and began researching a way to turn herself back into a human.
She believed it was because she was a creature that was neither fully human nor fully monster that Takumi hadn't accepted her.
If she could become human again, then he would definitely accept her!
In order to find that method, she repeatedly died to look into the future and eventually found the answer in urban legends.
Urban legends used fabricated lies to create hypothetical curses that could still become real.
If that method could be applied to herself, then maybe she could reverse her own nature.
She had already tested the idea once by creating a version of Slit-Mouthed Woman through an urban legend.
Even though that legend already existed, altering it had still allowed her to create a new Slit-Mouthed Woman.
Although that Slit-Mouthed Woman had later vanished for some unknown reason, Rikka Sakuragawa didn't care. She had already found the method she needed.
Now, using that same approach, she had created Steel Lady Nanase, modeled after the recently famous Karin Nanase.
If this urban legend succeeded, then her next step would be to use herself as the model and start creating an urban legend of her own.
"Just wait for me, Takumi-kun~~ I'll be back for you very soon~~~"
"Achoo!"
Back home, Takumi suddenly felt a chill run down his spine.
"Who's talking about me?"
Puzzled, Takumi extended his senses and instantly found Rikka, still tapping away at her keyboard.
"..."
Looking at the completely fixated Rikka, Takumi fell silent for a long while.
It wasn't until Tohru called out to him that he snapped back to reality.
"Takumi, what's wrong? You seem distracted."
"N-no, it's nothing. Let's go inside."
Takumi took out his key and unlocked the door, letting out a long sigh in his heart.
Rikka had really left a deep impression on him.
And sure enough, Steel Lady Nanase was her doing.
"She wants to turn herself into a human... what a damn waste."
He let out another soft sigh.
"I'll go see her tomorrow and make everything clear. Better that than letting this spiral any further."
Taking a deep breath, Takumi temporarily pushed down the complicated feelings in his chest.
Rikka's abilities were still limited. For now, everything she was doing remained within his control, so he wasn't overly worried.
...
For every 50 Power Stones → +1 extra chapter.