“A-Ahahaha, he can’t hit us, he can’t hit us at all…”
When the girl saw that, her smile twitched.
She might have had the foster’s barrier to rely on, but that was really nothing more than a thin sheet in the face of such onslaught. A pistol wouldn’t be able to penetrate the foster’s barrier, but photon bullets depended purely on photon energy. In the face of those bullets of light powered by the exoskeleton, the barrier was an armor that was at most ‘better than nothing’. Hence, it was only natural for her to start thinking about her last moments when such destruction was shown to her.
Especially since the distance between them and the white armor was decreasing due to having to flee to the sides. Before her was a mad foe that would kill her without any hesitation. Asking her not to be scared in this situation was simply asking too much.
“…I think ghosts are scarier, though.”
But for Shinichi who had a wealth of experience when it came to abnormal situations, he just found her reaction odd.
“W-What are you saying!? Ghosts are plenty understanding so long as you talk to them, and besides, you can just exorcise them in the worst case! And in the first place, ghosts that can actually harm people are rare! Compared to those, that thing has clearly gone wild and won’t listen to anything! And for the record, I’m not scared or anything, okay!?”
Shinichi’s simple question was met with such a vigorous response.
Although she was just putting on a brave act, that was still plenty remarkable given their situation.
Even if her face had gone pale and was twitching, Shinichi still thought she was amazing.
After all, being afraid was probably the normal response of an unarmored human when facing an exoskeleton.
“If you can yell that much, then I guess you’re still alright.”
“W-What are you acting so arrogant for!? Right, in the first place, I don’t have any reason to be afraid of Ryou! I never made him cry when we were young, you know!”
‘That wasn’t exactly something to boast about, though,’ Shinichi wanted to say, but before he could, the girl took out her charms and threw them, drawing the attention of the white armor to the charms.
The many charms she threw just ended up falling prey to the barrage of light bullets, but her goal was just to distract the white armor.
“Come, Kamunagi!”
She folded her hands and called out the name of her sword. In the next moment, the air shook, a pattern that resembled two magatamas combined appeared, and her katana was summoned.
It floated into her hand as though it had a will of its own.
“Short-range teleportation? No, this feels more like a summoning, huh. Either way, a katana that comes to you when you call it, that’s just like the mangas!”
“Shut it! Anyway, with this, ugh…”
She tried to release her spirit blade, but her face suddenly twisted in pain.
For some reason, her countenance had suddenly turned for the worse, and her lips even became pale and started shaking.
Because of the brave act she was putting on, Shinichi was a little slow to notice her situation.
“Hey, what’s wrong!?”
“W-Why is my spiritual power suddenly… Ugh…”
Shinichi didn’t have much knowledge in this field, so he had no idea what was causing her situation.
All he knew was that he could see the power of her soul rapidly withering, and that she couldn’t use her power.
Even the time that the charms had bought them had been used up, and now, the white armor has already taken out its next weapon.
Gun barrels big enough to accommodate a whole person pointed at them.
They were all Independent Floating Type Guidance Weapons, and were known as Photon Buster Cannons. There were 15 of them all in all.
“I won’t lose, I won’t lose to someone like you!”
“Y-You’ve got to be kidding! If we take something like that head on, we’re done for!”
From the way those gun barrels were filled with photons, it was likely they were already about to fire.
The way they lined up like that looked just like a wall of guns.
If they were to fire simultaneously, the resulting attack would literally be a wall of energy.
Because these guns were independent floating type guidance weapons, the angle of their attack could be changed even while firing.
Hence, it was hard to dodge them just by moving.
“No! Father! Mother!”
Her fate sealed, the girl shrank and cried out to her parents.
But Shinichi held her shoulders and hugged her to stop the shaking.
“Don’t worry. Everything will be alright.”
“Huh?”
“I’m borrowing this for a bit.”
Although scared, his words still left her confused. Shinichi didn’t bother to wait for her, though, and just grabbed the katana called Kamunagi.
Her legs hit the ground when he released them, but they weren’t in a situation where he could bother about that now.
“What? An amateur couldn’t possibly handle Kamunagi— Kyaa!”
Her words could be taken as a complaint or a warning, but she was cut off before saying everything she wanted to say.
The strong brilliance of the photons made her scream. The photons were so aggressive they could fill one’s vision. But that was only a given, after all this was was a lump of intense energy coming from fifteen high caliber guns shooting simultaneously.
Had just one or two fired, then they would have still had some room to dodge, but with all of them firing simultaneously, the resulting attack was basically a wall of photons.
No matter where they tried to flee, the whole area was bound to be dyed in its golden hue.
“Hmph, you’re just a weapon and yet you want to choose your master?”
But in the face of death approaching, the only words that came out of Shinichi were those words of contempt for the stubborn sword in his hand.
As it turns out, Kamunagi was indeed not a sword that could be handled by an amateur, and a torrent of spirit power came pouring out of it to reject him, but Shinichi ignored that and forcefully swung it.
“Shut up and do as I say!!”
He used his own mana and spirit power to forcefully suppress the spirit power pouring out of the sword, then after suppressing it, clad it with his own mana and spirit power and then swung it against the approaching wall of photons.
With a single stroke, the golden brilliance of photons were cut down by a katana dyed in
“…No way.”
The surrounding earth was scraped and the surrounding nature was blown away without a trace, the only area that still resembled its original form was the area behind them.
The girl couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
Fear had seized her too much to close her eyes, so she saw the whole thing from start to finish.
But in the end, what was it exactly that she found so hard to believe?
Was it the fact that someone who didn’t own Kamunagi used it? Or the fact that he was able to use spirit power too?
Perhaps it was the fact that Shinichi’s spirit power was all black unlike the faint light she emitted.
Or perhaps…
“C-Cutting a beam with a katana, you’re even more manga-like than I am!!”
Apparently, that’s what she was concerned about.
She was surprisingly cheeky the after the threat had left.
“…Well, I can’t deny that.”
A part of him did find it odd that of all things to be concerned with, she would be concerned about that, but he didn’t think she was wrong.
A returnee, a mage, a disguise tool, the authority of an evil god, and on top of that, spirit power.
“Seriously, not funny.”
He really was becoming less human by the day.
“But, anyway…”
It was a bit too late to be worrying about that now. He lifted up his katana and gazed at the white armor.
The gun barrel emitting a great amount of photon had already lost all of its power and fallen to the ground.
The white armor tried to bring out another weapon, but its movements were too slow.
It was full of openings.
“Down.”
A black flash unleashed, the spirit blade shot forth like an arrow and penetrated the white armor.
The armor developed by science failed to fulfill its duty and flew into the air from the impact, then sank into the ground, creating a human-sized hole dent on the ground. It was a mystery if it was because of the power behind the attack or the weight of the armor that caused that.
“Spiritual power is able to pass through objects, and with living things, it’s able to take away their strength temporarily. When solidified, spiritual power can also interfere with physical objects. Did I get that right?”
If his conjectures based on his experience so far were correct, then barriers and armor were meaningless.
When the spirit blade passes through one’s body, it will take with it one’s life force, causing one to lose one’s senses and become unable to move.
The only problem was that he didn’t see the spirit blade go through that white armor.
“Y-Yeah. Although training plays a part too, but you normally can’t block spiritual power unless you use spiritual power too– Oh, no! It’s Ryou you’re fighting, so just hitting him won’t be enough!”
“That seems to be the case.”
Shinichi didn’t know the theory behind it, but the white armor was able to stand up again despite being hit by the spirit blade in the chest.
It was moving slowly, but he didn’t know if that was because of the impact from falling or because of the spirit blade.
“That guy is a relative of mine, and we were born under the same kind of family. He never trained like I did, but the spiritual power he possesses has always been on a different level!”
When he ‘looked’ at that white armor, he could see the spiritual power flowing out of him.
By coincidence it had turned into a layer that just barely blocked the spirit blade.
“Sigh, this is why talented people are so annoying. He’s not even trying to use it, but his talent just has to make things needlessly troublesome.”
“How can you say that when you’re using spiritual power just off the knowledge you learned from some light novel!?”
“Unfortunately, all I can do is pull off some cheap imitation.”
“It’s really annoying,” Shinichi spat as he watched the white armor pick itself back up, but those words were really meant for himself.
After all, his body just happened to be capable of imitating the thing it’s experienced, a body that could copy someone’s hard work.
Yes, he was a cheat who couldn’t produce anything on his own, only imitate others.
“But in the end, even that’s just nothing more than self-satisfaction… I’ll be borrowing those too.”
None of that mattered right now, though, so he pushed aside his worries to a corner of his head, then he casually and carelessly
“Huh, wait, hey, where are you touching, ahh!”
“Don’t moan, it’ll make me feel like I’m doing something bad.”
“But you are! This damn perv— Hey, that’s!?”
Her face turned beet red from anger and shame, but when she separated from him, she noticed the five charms in his hand and immediately realized what he was up to.
In the next moment, black spiritual power permeated the charms, and the ‘縛’ bind character appeared at the center.
When she saw that impossible scene, her blue eyes opened wide.
“That’s impossible… Those are my original charms!”
“I told you, all I can do is copy.”
But if you looked at it another way, that meant that he could also copy anything he’s seen before.
Perhaps it was because the girl understood just how dangerous that power was that she forgot about his sexual harassment and found herself swallowing her breath.
His ability to copy was limited only to combat-related matters, so Shinichi didn’t think it was something to be happy about.
After all, he couldn’t even copy the ability to do simple chores or copy anything related to special skills.
“But that still won’t work! Charms are basically the same type of attack, so they still won’t work!”
“They’ll work since… They don’t have to hit!”
The katana descended once again, and a black spirit blade shot out toward the white armor.
The white armor dodged, but Shinichi had already predicted where it would go and had already thrown the charms its way.
“I won’t lose! I won’t lose! I won’t lose!”
Despite such obvious actions, Shinguuji’s head was filled with those thoughts and couldn’t make a rational judgment.
He was just like a puppet on strings as he dodged right into the direction the charms were thrown.
The charms then attached themselves to the white armor without interfering with the barrier.
“Oh, right! There’s still the exoskeleton!”
“With this he won’t be able to resist anymore.”
The spiritual power imbued into the charms became a rope and wrapped itself around the white armor several times.
Even if the charms can’t work directly on the person inside the exoskeleton, it doesn’t matter since the exoskeleton won’t be able to move anymore either way.
“That little bit of spiritual power leaking out won’t be enough to get you out of this. If you want to become stronger, then devote yourself more!!”
As Shinichi took a step and brought the white armor within the reach of his katana, he unleashed his black attack and carved it upon the white armor.
This time the layer of spiritual power that had covered the white armor wasn’t enough to endure the attack and was easily torn. In the next moment, Shinguuji cried out in pain and walked a few steps while tottering, then collapsed.
“Making me do all that work… Well, let’s hope you’re the last one tonight.”
As Shinichi grumbled, he raised his hand over the head of the boy and dispersed the photon ring with his mana.
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