"Uh... whatever top disciple or whatever it is you think you became has nothing to do with me. Anyway, if there's nothing else, I'm leaving."
Miko just found Yuria exhausting to deal with and had no interest in getting tangled up with her.
After tossing out that perfunctory response, she turned to leave.
But Yuria, who had just convinced herself she'd secured the position of top disciple, had no intention of letting Miko walk away that easily.
"Don't look down on me. Let's have a spiritual battle using all these things around us! I know you can see them too!"
Pointing at the harmless cursed spirits nearby, Yuria confidently issued her challenge.
After all, she now had the prayer beads the Godmother had given her. There was no way she wouldn't win easily!
"..."
"What a dumb kid."
Miko fell silent. Takumi, meanwhile, was finding it hard not to laugh.
He knew exactly what Yuria's mindset was.
Because of her Yin-Yang Eyes, she'd been ostracized since childhood. But at the same time, being able to see spirits gave her a sense of superiority over ordinary people.
What she was displaying now, when you got right down to it, was just a child's stubborn pride.
And after announcing the conditions for this match, Yuria ran off toward the street corner on her own and started waving both hands around in the air.
"Mmmmmm~~ the power of the prayer beads!"
She muttered to herself like a kid deep in the throes of chunni syndrome.
Nearby pedestrians who saw that scene quietly gave the weird little girl a wide berth.
Tohru, meanwhile, had developed a bit of curiosity too.
Not curiosity toward Yuria—she couldn't care less about that lower, stupid human.
What interested Tohru were the cursed spirits drifting around nearby.
"I've been able to see these things ever since we got here. I thought they were just some variant of humans—low-level, stupid little beings. But now it looks like most low-level humans can't even see them. Only a few rare low-level humans can."
As Tohru said that, Miko immediately felt her head buzzing.
Why did it suddenly feel like she'd just been insulted?
What the hell was "rare low-level human"? Didn't I tell her my name earlier!?
Noticing Miko's look, Tohru promptly put on a fake apologetic expression.
"Ah, sorry. I didn't mean to target you specifically, Miss Miko."
"...Mm."
Seeing Tohru suddenly act so polite, all the annoyance inside Miko had nowhere to go, so it just turned into a muttered response.
Watching that, Takumi raised a brow, looking a little surprised.
"Tohru, you actually apologized?"
"Apologized? What's that? I just noticed that if you answer low-level humans like that, their attitude gets better."
"..."
Hearing Tohru answer so naturally and smoothly, Takumi had nothing to say.
To be fair, even if she still didn't really understand human relationships, her high intelligence had already let her figure out what kind of words worked on what kind of people.
That ability to talk to people one way and ghosts another... honestly seemed like it might already surpass his own.
Just as Takumi fell silent, Yuria suddenly let out an excited squeal.
"It worked!!"
From her point of view, those terrifying cursed spirits were twisting and collapsing, as though some invisible force were crushing and tearing them apart.
And obviously, in her mind, that was all her doing.
"You saw that, right? You saw it, right!? That's my power!"
Yuria shouted excitedly, turning around to show off to Miko and the others.
What she didn't see was the Grade 1 cursed spirit standing behind those low-level cursed spirits—a grotesque thing with a maw-like face and multiple tentacles erupting all over its body.
One tentacle after another stretched out, wrapping around the low-level cursed spirits and stuffing them into its mouth to chew and swallow.
The scene Yuria thought was her power exorcising low-level cursed spirits was actually just that Grade 1 cursed spirit feeding.
The moment it heard Yuria speak, its face twisted into something even more horrifying.
"You saw me! You saw me! You saw me!!"
The Grade 1 cursed spirit roared and shrieked, repeatedly confirming that fact.
Over at the fortune-telling stall, Granny Takeda noticed what was happening too.
Naturally, she couldn't actually see the Grade 1 cursed spirit, but she could faintly sense some black "mist" over there.
"Kid, run!!!"
Almost at the exact instant Granny Takeda shouted, the Grade 1 cursed spirit's tentacles lashed out toward Yuria.
Bzzzz!!!
The prayer beads she had only just put on her wrist immediately let out a strained, overloaded hum.
Then, with a sharp crack, the beads exploded into fragments all at once.
"This old woman may be a fraud when it comes to fortune-telling, but she actually does have a bit of skill when it comes to exorcism. At least these worked on low-level cursed spirits."
Takumi gave them a glance, then strode forward, grabbed Yuria by the hand, and yanked her to his side.
Swish swish swish!
One cursed-energy tentacle after another shot forward, all of them blocked by his Stopping Force.
Still rattled out of her mind, Yuria looked up at the man shielding her.
"Huh!? Where did you come from!?"
From beginning to end, Yuria had never been able to pierce the cognitive barrier wrapped around Takumi and perceive his existence.
Only now that he had voluntarily revealed himself did she finally notice him.
The instant her eyes met his, a current like electricity shot through her entire body, leaving her knees weak.
Pressed tightly into Takumi's arms, Yuria didn't even have time to get embarrassed before she noticed the Grade 1 cursed spirit she hadn't been able to see before.
That massive body and twisted face were unlike anything she had ever seen in all her life.
"Eek!! What kind of monster is that!?"
Yuria, who had only ever seen harmless cursed spirits up to now, almost pissed herself on the spot from seeing something like that.
Takumi lowered his eyes and glanced at her, then said coolly, "This is what the real world looks like. Your eyes are too low-grade, so all you can see are harmless little things. You're actually incredibly lucky that you never made a habit of bragging about being able to see them. Because higher-level cursed spirits generally use being 'seen' as the trigger to kill."
That explanation shook Yuria to her core.
That sense of reliability, that calm, practiced knowledge...
"Y-you... are you an even greater spirit master than Godmother Granny!?"
"Something like that, I guess."
Takumi gave a perfunctory nod, but that cold master attitude only made little stars light up in Yuria's eyes.
So this is what a true master looks like!? And he's so young—and so handsome too~~
Just as Yuria was getting excited out of her mind, Tohru made her move.
A hint of her dragon features surfaced on her face as she opened her mouth and spat out a ball of dragon-breath fire.
Whoosh!!!
The blazing flames surged forward, instantly burning that ugly, twisted Grade 1 cursed spirit to nothing.
Even the low-level cursed spirits nearby were swept away by the residual power of the dragon breath, shattering into nothing and vanishing into the world.
Even the cursed energy spread throughout this land vein was suppressed by Tohru's magic power.
It would take at least a hundred years before cursed spirits might gather here again.
This single, casual blast of dragon breath from Tohru had completely crushed this place on an entirely different dimension.
...
For every 50 Power Stones → +1 extra chapter.