Chapter 17

1.

Ruby was flying around in every direction, swinging a sword made of flames.

Literally, she was “flying” by blasting flames from the soles of her feet.

“Life Bestowal, Wood Bird!”

Peridot had created a wooden dragon, and from atop it, she made dozens of wooden birds and sent them flying.

It was like a bombing run of wooden birds. Whether the birds themselves or the wood they were made of was unusual, they bravely charged the monsters and blew themselves up.

I floated nearby, drifting along inside a bubble as I watched.

I watched Ruby fight, hurling spears at any monsters below that tried to cross a certain line and smashing them to pieces.

“H-hi-yah!”

Ruby blasted a massive amount of flame from her feet and launched herself into the monsters like a rocket.

As she flew, the sword in her hand split into two, one in each hand.

“Fireworks!”

She spun around and around, like a top. The monsters in her wake began to get “cut to pieces.”

Maybe they weren’t cut apart so much as burned? But the monsters were definitely being “sliced” apart.

Had she imbued the flames with an attribute, like I did?

Her blazing twin swords turned into flames in midair, then changed shape again into a massive greatsword. It was much bigger than before.

Earlier, it had been a “believable” size of about a meter and a half, but now it was an “oversized” greatsword more than five meters long.

She spread her legs wide and lowered her stance, with the greatsword slung over her back. She looked like something straight out of a manga.

“Flaming Pinwheel!”

Then she swung the greatsword like a windmill, sweeping away every monster within a five-meter radius. No, the sword grew longer with every rotation.

Before long, it had reached ten meters. The flames stopped spinning and disappeared, leaving a huge blaze behind.

“Phew…!”

The flames scattered through the air devoured the monsters.

That was pretty impressive. The flames moved on their own, almost as if they were alive, and devoured the monsters.

That was amazing. It was as if Ruby were testing both my “Attribute Imbuement” and Peridot’s “Life Bestowal.”

Ruby blasted flames from her feet and flew up onto Peridot’s Wood Dragon.

Her hair fluttered, damp with sweat, as she plopped down on the Wood Dragon.

“Haa, seriously, this just isn’t for me. I can make it work, but it doesn’t feel right. Like wearing a bra that’s a few sizes too small.”

“So it’s really uncomfortable, then.”

If Ruby could make something work even though it didn’t suit her, maybe I could use Life Bestowal to turn water into a dragon, like Peridot did?

I should try it sometime.

“Making a sword out of fire is at least a little easier, but… Life Bestowal is just impossible for me.”

Kwoooar! The Wood Dragon roared, and a beam swept away the remaining monsters. Even though it was made of wood, did it still have some of a dragon’s powers?

It seemed more accurate to call it Peridot’s familiar, even if it was made entirely of wood.

“Peridot, you’re amazing, too.”

It looked like at least a lesser dragon. I mean, it looked like the kind of familiar people called an Earth Dragon.

The advantage was that she didn’t have to make a contract with each one individually,

but the downside was that she had to summon it and use Life Bestowal every time, which consumed a lot of mana.

Depending on how Peridot used it, her abilities seemed monstrous enough to easily overpower most familiars.

And Peridot hadn’t been standing around doing nothing all this time. Normally, it would be difficult for her to use her plant abilities on land far away from her,

but while riding the Wood Dragon, she could make trees grow around it whenever she wanted.

“Seeing Peridot makes all my abilities look so plain.”

“But Lapis’s attack power is incredible. Even the Wood Dragon can’t match it.”

When it came to sheer attack power, my “Blade Vortex” did seem stronger.

Still, Peridot’s strengths seemed to be adaptability and sheer numbers, rather than simple attack power.

“Anyway, I guess Iris did think she’d have a hard time dealing with us once there were two A-ranks.”

At Ruby’s words, I nodded. It was now the third day of the three of us teaming up to take monster-hunting requests.

If we were only considering how quickly we could earn money or how efficient we were, it would actually be better for us to work separately than together.

Peridot and I were A-ranks, strong enough to take on most large “nests” by ourselves.

Ruby was still a B-rank, but considering that she could fly by blasting flames from her feet and make weapons out of fire, she was probably near the top of the B-ranks.

Even so, there was only one reason we were sticking together.

A-rank witch Iris. She was just too strong. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d already overcome my fear of her.

I might be able to walk around and act normally now, but the moment I saw Iris, I might freeze up.

I wasn’t going to get a game-like status window with a message saying, “You have this kind of trauma.”

So… she scared me, but I wouldn’t know how badly until I faced her.

“We should call the recovery team soon, too.”

At Peridot’s suggestion, we descended to the ground. Maybe it was because of the “nest,” but even though we killed hundreds of monsters a day, their numbers didn’t seem to be going down at all.

Peridot casually waved her hand, and a tree rose up, big enough for us to lean against. We sat side by side against it.

“I’m so tired from being on edge…”

“Are you worried Iris might show up?”

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried.”

Though I was also worried I might still have trauma from what she’d done to me.

And now I knew about the sacrifice she’d made back then, something I hadn’t understood at the time.

The Collector was a villain. No one even knew how many magical girls had fallen under his control so far.

I did find a record saying that an esper with psychometry had investigated one of his former hideouts.

They’d found records of magical girls who had been “eaten alive” by the witches under his control.

Cannibalism was one of the worst crimes imaginable, but that wasn’t the only problem. His sense of ethics was broken.

He could probably control people with ease, so he didn’t seem to be conscious of even the most basic ethics one should have toward other human beings.

That seemed to be true of villains in general, but… to me, the Collector, who targeted magical girls in particular, seemed especially vile and vicious.

What mattered was that Iris had disobeyed someone with such a warped sense of ethics and hadn’t taken me away.

Hadn’t she called me “unyielding and heartbreaking”? Maybe seeing me like that had made her change her mind on a whim.

What worried me most was whatever the Collector had done to her as “punishment.”

I was afraid it would eat away at her mind and break her.

Maybe Iris’s A-rank status meant she was less affected by his control, but that was such a hopeful thought.

“Just a moment.”

Peridot said that and placed her hand on the ground.

Sharp thorns shot out of the earth, piercing the wing of the owl perched in the tree. Vines sprouted from the thorn that had pierced it, binding the owl in place.

It was an owl I recognized.

“A familiar…? Witch Opal?”

It looked exactly like the owl the witch who’d introduced herself as “Opal” had assigned to guide me. And looking closely, I could see a faint current of mana flowing through it.

And that mana was flowing toward the forest.

“I found the connection!”

“My turn, right!?”

I shouted and pointed to one side of the forest.

Ruby immediately pushed off the ground, blasted flames from her feet, and flew off like a plane.

I ran after Ruby, too.

“Kyaah!”

“Got you!”

Ruby charged straight into the white-haired witch, apparently dealing massive damage to her abdomen with a body blow.

Ruby tried to pin her down, but I saw a mana bullet flying toward her head at nearly the speed of sound.

Blub.

There was no way I was going to just let her get sniped when I’d seen it coming.

The bubble scattered the mana bullet in every direction, rendering it useless.

“Ruby, take care of that witch!”

“Don’t go too far, Lapis!”

I already knew the trajectory of the mana bullet. At some point, I’d become able to see traces of mana and follow its movement with my eyes.

I didn’t know what had caused that. I’d asked Ruby and Peridot in case everyone could do it, but they just tilted their heads in confusion.

“Bind her, Kraken!”

I decided to experiment with “Life Bestowal.” I gave the water the adhesive grip of an octopus’s suckers and shot out a stream as if the deep-sea monster Kraken were reaching out with a tentacle.

At the spot I’d pinpointed from the mana bullet’s trajectory, a witch with rose-colored hair was turning around to move, changing her sniper rifle back into mana.

But my Kraken’s tentacle was faster.

“Guh!”

The witch was dragged over as if she’d been caught by a tentacle.

At the same time, the tree where Peridot had been standing started to collapse with a crash.

Was that a diversion?

2.

“Guh…! Cough!”

Peridot kept gagging as she looked at the rock that had struck her in the stomach.

The moment she’d found the connection and Ruby and Lapis had rushed off, she was about to follow when a rock came flying at incredible speed and slammed into her abdomen.

“Iris…! You were aiming for Lapis, weren’t you?”

There weren’t many people who could do this much damage just by throwing a rock. Of their enemies, Iris was the most likely culprit.

“No, I was only going to keep an eye on you… but you attacked first, didn’t you?”

“I think surveillance is hostile enough…! Life Bestowal, Golem!”

With a crunch, two wooden giants erupted from the ground. Rooted firmly in the earth, they had massive upper bodies and arms.

The giants were more than ten meters tall, yet human-shaped, with such enormous upper bodies that their arms alone looked several meters thick.

Peridot had never intended for them to “walk” in the first place. Walking meant moving their lower bodies, and moving their lower bodies would make them unstable.

So rather than make them walk, Peridot rooted them firmly to the ground and made them even larger, increasing the amount of offensive power she could bring to bear.

“Phew… I’ve been sad lately because my master hasn’t been giving me any affection, so I’m going all out.”

“I’m an A-rank, too!”

“Why would I care about some stupid rank?”

Iris lowered her body and darted forward. It seemed she really meant it when she said she was going all out,

because she was already accelerating two, then three times with her footwork, charging at a speed that far surpassed anything Peridot had experienced before.

With a rumble, one of the wooden golems brought its fist down. It was incredibly fast for something that huge, but compared to Iris charging toward it, it was slow enough to make you yawn.

Just before reaching the golem, Iris pulled her arm far back. A moment later, her fist collided with the golem’s.

With a crashing sound, the golem that had collided with Iris began to crumble.

“You thought toys could stop me?”

Iris dusted off her hands, bounced in place a few times, and worked her footwork. Then she used the crumbling golem as a springboard, kicking off several times as she leaped toward the head of the other golem.

“Die!”

Her perfect roundhouse kick, powered by the force of her rotation, landed on the golem’s head, which burst apart on impact.

It was hard to believe such power could come from Iris’s small, delicate frame.

The headless golem’s arms drooped, and it could no longer move. Iris paid it no mind and dashed forward again.

She easily stomped down a wooden fence as it shot up from the ground, and when a wooden dragon burst out like a sandworm to swallow her, she pierced straight through the roof of its mouth.

Finally, she reached Peridot after dodging half the wooden birds charging at her like a swarm of bats and smashing the other half to pieces.

When Iris reached Peridot, she grinned.

“You’ve gotten pretty fun to hit, haven’t you?”

Iris grabbed Peridot by the neck and spun around. The wooden birds stopped in their tracks, unable to bring themselves to attack Peridot, who had given them life.

Boom, boom, boom! The wooden birds burst apart like time bombs.

The wooden splinters flying in every direction annoyed Iris, but she was holding Peridot, who was bigger than she was, so Peridot blocked all the splinters with her body.

Unable to even groan properly with Iris gripping her neck, Peridot’s back was shredded by the wooden splinters.

Once the storm of splinters ended, Iris roughly threw her to the ground.

She thought it was boring.

“Peridot!”

Ruby emerged from the forest first, carrying the white-haired witch over her shoulder.

While Iris had been thoroughly overpowering Peridot, Opal had apparently been completely subdued by Ruby.

“Phew. What a clumsy idiot.”

Iris cursed Opal, who’d let their surveillance be discovered by giving away the connection and been captured first.

In truth, even if she’d left Opal behind, the Collector wouldn’t punish Iris for it.

It had simply been ten days since she’d deliberately let Lapis go.

The Collector’s affections, which she’d gone without during that time, were still haunting her.

Opal might be pathetically captured like that now, but Iris knew the Collector cherished her quite a bit, even if she never said it aloud.

Unless Opal had a particular reason to go out, she was almost always by his side.

“Hello, Iris.”

Lapis appeared, floating around on her bubble with the rose-haired witch, unconscious, trapped inside it.

The bubble wasn’t opaque, so you could see her underwear beneath her skirt, but no one paid it any mind.

“You should call me Senior~”

“All right, Senior.”

Lapis deliberately didn’t say anything about remembering Iris’s kindness or the like.

She didn’t know what Iris had told the Collector to explain herself.

Strictly speaking, she had no intention of letting Iris capture her just to repay her kindness,

but she could at least be careful what she said so Iris wouldn’t get in trouble.

“Haa. You heroes aren’t going to gang up on me, are you? I’ll let you take turns fighting me, at least.”

“Ganging up on someone is a hero’s privilege, idiot.”

“You really never let me get the last word, do you?”

Iris sighed as she talked with Lapis. She rested her foot on Peridot’s backside as Peridot writhed in pain beneath her.

Blood seeped from several wooden splinters embedded in Peridot’s back, and drool ran from the corner of her mouth, probably because she’d been unable to breathe properly.

Peridot wasn’t in any condition to be called all right. If anything, she looked utterly battered.

“Let’s make a deal. I’ll let this one go. You let those two go, too.”