"While we were upstairs just now, I kept watching how those Ethereals moved. They'd already broken through the building's restrictions once before, so it made me wonder whether the building itself could be destroyed too."
Tsukishiro Yanagi pinched her chin, tilting it up in a graceful line as she laid out the situation for Geno and the others.
"At the start, those Ethereals did take swipes at the walls now and then, but none of it left a mark."
Which made no sense at all. If the security doors could be punched through, the walls should have worked the same way.
But since the enemy couldn't touch the structure itself, its control privileges had to be limited.
And if that was the case, better to turn its own scheme against it: let the other side grab those privileges, use them to bring the building down, and sweep every last Ethereal away with it.
"Oh, so that's why you took us upstairs first."
Geno finally understood. Tsukishiro Yanagi had known perfectly well that going up was a dead end, and she had led them up anyway. She'd seen this far ahead from the very beginning.
"Exactly. Our opponent won't stop pushing forward, so we wait for the moment it builds the opening for us, and then we hit back with everything we have."
"Ooh! That's Sis Yanagi for you!"
Little Soukaku clapped like an eager audience. She hadn't followed much of it, but knowing Sis Yanagi was incredible was plenty.
"Indeed. When it comes to brains, I, Geno, am willing to name you the second strongest!"
The Little Bangboo Geno stuck out a stubby arm to say, you're doing great.
"Oh? And who holds first place, then?" Asaba Harumasa asked from the side, curiosity getting the better of him.
"My Twiggy, obviously!"
Geno planted his stubby limbs on his tiny waist and preened. As far as he was concerned, Twiggy had the sharpest mind of anyone alive.
"Ugh, love really is blind, isn't it."
Harumasa tugged at the collar over his chest with theatrical anguish. He was a single man with nobody to love him, and getting a faceful of somebody else's devotion was frankly more than he could stomach.
Geno was fully prepared to lecture this "young man" on the many joys of having a wife, but before he could get the sermon started, a faint wrongness caught his ear.
"Look out!"
Twang!
An arrow sang, and Asaba Harumasa's hearing went dead in one ear.
A streak of lightning flashed across his vision. If Geno hadn't shoved him aside, that arrow would already have punched through his skull.
"Harumasa! Are you hurt?"
Soukaku swept her blade-flag around and moved up to cover their flanks, and Tsukishiro Yanagi and Hoshimi Miyabi closed in a heartbeat later.
Before either of them could set their feet, two more arrows came whistling in.
They each knocked one away with a blade. Then Hoshimi Miyabi's ear gave the faintest twitch, and she raised her head and found the one responsible.
The enemy stood two meters tall, twin horns growing from its head, its face the leering mask of a hannya demon. An apron was tied at its waist, a band bound its brow, its fingers rested on a bowstring, and a katana with the cold gleam of a crescent moon hung at its hip. Every inch of it looked like a demon out of an old ghost story.
"Now die!"
Seeing that three arrows had failed, the demon stowed its bow and shafts, drew the katana, and charged the group.
Hoshimi Miyabi met it head-on without a moment's hesitation, and cold light blazed along Tailless in her hand.
The two long blades slammed together, grinding out a thin shriek of steel.
Miyabi shifted her weight to force the thing back, but before she could move, a chill sheen bloomed along her opponent's blade as well, biting frostflame licking up the steel.
And then, while disbelief spread across her face, the demon executed a technique she knew better than anyone alive.
"Flying Snow!"
The demon's outline blurred past her in a single stroke, and the two of them crossed. An instant later a huge gash opened across Hoshimi Miyabi's abdomen.
If this had not been a data world, she would have been lying in a spreading pool of her own blood.
As it was, she only sank to one knee, strength draining out of her, one hand propping herself on her sword, the other clamped over the wound.
"How could this be..."
It had happened too fast. The whole exchange had lasted a handful of seconds, and only as the others came out of their shock did the demon speak in a human voice.
"Heh heh heh, ha ha ha! Well? Not much fun, is it, getting cut down by your own technique?"
"That voice - Thousand Faces!"
Tsukishiro Yanagi's pupils shrank. The shape had changed completely, but that distinctive voice gave it away, and she picked it out at once.
Hearing her cry out, Thousand Faces lost all interest in taunting Hoshimi Miyabi. It turned its head toward Tsukishiro Yanagi, the katana in its hand leveling straight at her face.
"I let you off once. I never imagined you'd have the nerve to crawl back here and die. Convenient, really - saves me a great deal of trouble."
Thousand Faces had judged Tsukishiro Yanagi far too rational and far too clever. Leaving her inside the system would only have caused it endless headaches, so it had kicked her out of the game, meaning to deal with her once it returned to the real world.
It had never expected her to find a way back in, much less to link up with Hoshimi Miyabi and the rest.
"I don't know how you managed to return, and I don't care, because I already hold every last system privilege. In this world, I am God!!!"
Thousand Faces spread its arms wide, savoring the moment. It had only just beaten Hoshimi Miyabi because it had cranked its own stats to the maximum. A copied technique alone could never have brought down a Void Hunter.
"Is that so? Then why are you still standing here chatting with us? Haven't you heard that the villain always dies from talking too much?"
Harumasa was back on his feet, a blade in each hand. The muscles in his face were still twitching, but the edge on his tongue hadn't dulled in the slightest.
"Hmph. Sharp-mouthed little brat. In that case, allow me to give you a proper taste of what I can do."
With that, Thousand Faces repeated its earlier routine: it sheathed the katana, produced its bow and arrow, and drew a bead on Harumasa right where it stood.
This happened to be the one thing Asaba Harumasa did better than anybody.
"Ha. You've really got the guts to try that."
Watching Thousand Faces pull out a bow, Harumasa fired off another jab. Drawing a bow in his face meant treating him as a dead man - or his teammates as dead men.
As the saying goes, an archer who won't fight up close is no archer at all. The gap between them was barely fifty meters, and fifty meters was more than enough for Harumasa to cover with both blades out before the other side ever loosed a shot.
Flying Bowstring: Chain Slash!
The twin blades crossed. At that instant, Thousand Faces had only just laid its hand on the string.
I've won.
The thought rang through Harumasa's mind, and reality answered it with a backhand.
Clang!
Twin Blades: Dormant Blossom, Dark Tide - both weapons snapped clean through. The broken edges made a cruel contrast with the triumph still sitting on Harumasa's face.
Before he could grasp what had gone wrong, the arrow was already reflected in his eyes.
"Listen closely to the sound of the Singing Bowstring!"
Lightning tore across the space between them, punched through Harumasa's chest, and pinned him to the floor.
____
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