“…Now what?”
Shinichi folded his arms and became thoughtful as he looked at the mountain of fainted students, then he separated the students that have been relieved from the effects of the mind skill from those that have only fainted.
“At this rate, I’ll have no choice but to use my own magic.”
Shinichi’s sighed with a dark expression as he held his foster that was in Mobile Mode.
He was not sighing because of the mountain of students in front of him, but because the display on his foster had gone blank.
It wasn’t out of battery or anything, it just suddenly stopped working.
He was using it just a while ago in its gauntlet-form, but now, no matter what he did, it just wouldn’t budge.
It couldn’t even extract energy anymore. Odds were it was completely broken now.
“Hmm, did it finally break?”
Garesto-made equipment was more durable, so he had already forgotten about it, but equipment tended to break in his hands.
It wasn’t his fault, though, his power was just really hard to endure.
“Now that I think about it, this thing is supposed to be precise equipment, and yet I’ve been using it however I pleased all this time. I guess it finally couldn’t stand it.”
He didn’t actually know what made it break, though.
He could call someone who knew more about fosters, but he also relied on his foster to call people.
As such, all he could do now was to borrow a nearby student’s—
“!?”
—But before he knew it, he realized that he had suddenly jumped back.
Shocked, he turned to the place he was standing at just a moment ago, and…
“…Hmm?”
Two holes could be seen freshly dug out of the rocky terrain.
But what dug those two holes was a complete mystery. It couldn’t be seen at all. In fact, it didn’t even leave behind any trace of photons.
But what really baffled him was why he had to dodge in the first place.
He couldn’t understand why his body half-relexively dodged.
“Why would an attack of that level…”
This wasn’t his first time instinctively dodging an attack.
The issue was that based off the depth of the hole and the hardness of the rocky terrain, the power behind the attack didn’t seem to be something he had to be wary of.
It should’ve been enough just to repel it with his arms.
“Hey! If you can see me, don’t just stand there!!”
“!?!?”
Amidst his thoughts, an unhappy voice that seemed to be both angry and concerned called out to him, surprising him once again.
Not only could he not sense any presence nearby, he also couldn’t hear anything moving or sense any changes in the flow of the air, and yet despite that, when he turned to the direction of that voice, he saw a student there standing brazenly.
For some reason, though, he had to focus on her or he wouldn’t be able to notice her.
He could tell from the silhouette and the sound of the voice that it was a female student, but he was barely just able to keep track of her, so he couldn’t even spare any effort to make out her features.
“Is this… Recognition Interference?”
When he focused his attention on her and stared at her, he became suspicious of her stance.
She had her left arm extended, while her right hand was right next to her cheeks.
It was as if she was trying to pull the string of a bow, but she didn’t have anything on her hands.
While she was in that stance, she called out to him, and those ever familiar warning bells rang within his mind again.
“I’ll destroy everything— No! Dodge it!!”
“You’re kidding, right!?”
The moment Shinichi saw her ‘releasing’ something with her right hand, despite still being in disbelief, he jumped to his side as soon as his intuition told him that it was dangerous.
In the next moment, something exploded and another small hole was opened on the ground.
It was as if the female student had just fired an invisible arrow.
“Hey! What are you doing!?”
“Shut up! I’ll destroy everything! —No, I! My body is moving on its— I’ll make everyone acknowledge me, ku, it just won’t listen to me— UGU!”
Clearly, Shinichi was under attack, although by what exactly was a mystery. Shinichi tried asking her what was going on, but she just angrily yelled at him, and then started saying muttering some unrelated things that didn’t make sense.
When she started pulling on her bow again, she appeared to be desperately struggling to keep herself from doing so.
“…”
When that sight overlapped with a dream – a past – he often saw, Shinichi made a run for it.
He couldn’t see the bow, but by inferring from where she was aiming, he dodged its line of fire and quickly closed in on her.
But despite the girl noticing him a step too late, she still reacted.
“Huh?”
“KU!?”
It was hard to make out anything because of the mysterious Recognition Interference, but those alarm bells still rang within his mind, and he immediately forced himself to stop.
In the next moment, steel flashed past him, taking with it some of of his bangs.
It was curious if it was because Shinichi had suddenly closed in on her or because she had lost control, but this time, she pulled out something that could be clearly seen in reality while looking shocked.
“…Y-You dumbass! What are you doing!? Just one more step and you would’ve been done for! I hate getting blood on me!”
“J-Japanese katana?”
Shinichi ignored her angry voice mixed with concern as he looked at the blade she pulled out.
If he didn’t keep his attention on her, he would likely lose sight of her, but there was no Japanese who would ever mistake what that blade was. That shape, that pattern, that round pommel…
There was no mistaking it, and with that fact came another fact.
“…What happened to the Swords and Firearms Control Law?”
“Are you reallying asking that to another student of the academy!? Not to mention, now of all times!?”
The sharpness of a real blade plus that length was clearly illegal.
Of course, they weren’t in Japan and were currently in Kutoria, so Japan’s laws didn’t really matter.
It was also a strange thing to ask the students of this academy given that they regularly carried weapons on them.
“Uu, I’ll prove it, that mother and father were… Ah, dodge it!!”
She held the katana with both hands, then with a step, slashed down without any hesitation.
Despite her warnings, she closed her eyes as though she didn’t think Shinichi could dodge it.
But that diagonal slash wasn’t really much to Shinichi.
Even with the Recognition Interference, he had already grasped the length of the sword from the previous attack.
A little crouch was all he would need for the tip of the sword to fail to even graze him.
“!?”
But the moment he tried to do just that, it felt like a cube of ice just slid down his back.
That was his intuition crying out, telling him that was a bad idea.
It was annoying since this intuition of his won’t even explain itself, but Shinichi wasn’t about to disobey it.
He forced himself to stop crouching, and then dodged the katana by a hair’s breadth.
The katana that missed cut deeply into the ground, splitting it with great impact.
“GU, what!?”
Of course, it was not the blade that did that, but the line it drew with that stroke.
It was as though something invisible was passing by, creating a fissure wherever it went.
Shinichi held his left hand and backed off.
“Ah, ahh… Did your arm get hit!?”
“It did connect, physically.”
The girl asked him fearfully, afraid that his arm had been cut, so Shinichi responded to her by waving his arm.
He dodged a little too late, so the extension of that sword stroke managed to reach his wrist.
Considering how he couldn’t feel it, the same impact that split the earth must’ve hit him as well.
The physical damage hasn’t surpassed his Resistance as someone who’s braced himself to fight, but something was essentially
“Kamunagi’s blade couldn’t cut you? —They… Weren’t wrong!!”
She was more surprised than relieved, but in the next moment, her body moved against her will, and she attacked once more.
She appeared to throw something, and several sheets of paper flew toward Shinichi.
Perhaps it was because those papers moved away from her body, but Shinichi could clearly see what they were.
A mysterious pattern was drawn on those rectangular sheets, and at the center could be seen the ‘爆’ character, which meant explosion.
“So you have charms for me this time!”
An invisible bow, a real Japanese katana, and charms.
He was laughing, but it was the bitter truth, so he was partly running away from reality by doing so.
He didn’t want to acknowledge the possibility that had just crossed his mind.
When he jumped back, and the charms hit the ground he was standing on, flames burst out of them.
“Tch, this isn’t even Falandia, just who are you!?”
But even in the light of that flame within this dark night, the girl’s figure remained hidden.
Shinichi looked toward the silhouette.
His foster was currently broken, and he didn’t have the leeway to hold up his status card.
As such, he had no choice but to change the function of his eyes and peer straight into her soul to try and get a rough understanding of her status, but…
“What?”
“I can do it! I’ll become strong enough for everyone to acknowledge me! Dad and the others weren’t wrong— No, get away from here! Far away!!”
When she drew her bow once more, Shinichi’s eyes were drawn by the power that flowed.
This time he could clearly see the insubstantial bow in her hands.
As well as the true form of the power that shaped it.
“A bow shaped from the power of the soul!?”
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