Chapter 158
“He dodged...?”
That was right. The hooded man hadn’t blocked it with his hand—he’d dodged. The instant the magic bullet was about to pierce him, the hooded man, who should have been unable to move, suddenly vanished from the spot. Or rather, it looked as though he had.
“No way... When did that bastard get so strong...!”
Perhaps it had been unexpected. Merry lowered her magic gun, her expression stunned and her strength seemingly drained away.
Despite being in midair, the hooded man leaped. He kicked off empty space and shot toward the ground at a blinding speed, landing in the river with a splash.
“Shoot... Shoot, shoot, shoot!”
“He’s right in front of us! If we fire enough shots, one’s bound to hit!”
Seeing the hooded man approach them unharmed despite all the attacks they’d unleashed, the Resistance members panicked and fired magic bullets wildly. But they couldn’t hit him as he bounced between the air and the ground like a rubber ball. At last, he reached the Resistance members.
The Resistance members in the front line immediately tried to attack him with their weapons, but against his speed, it was all futile. He caught nearly every weapon with his bare hands as easily as if he were taking candy from a baby, then grabbed the attackers by their arms and flung them away.
Seeing the front-line fighters struck down without being able to do a thing, the rear support team and the remaining front-line fighters gradually lost their will to fight.
“...!”
Meanwhile, Alice and the others, who had held back from attacking because they suspected the man might be Kagami, watched him closely, trying to figure out who he was. But his hood was pulled so far over his head that they could only see the part of his face below the nose, leaving them unable to say for certain that it was Kagami.
The blue-white light wrapped around the hooded man’s hands might have been “Anti-Magic Will,” one of Kagami’s Skills—a fighting aura that reflected magic. However, as far as they knew, Kagami had no Skill or magic that would let him move freely through the air. And since he was traveling with a Beastfang girl, they couldn’t bring themselves to conclude that the hooded man was Kagami.
“Damn it... We’re done for!”
The instant the front-line fighters lost their nerve and stopped attacking, the hooded man moved at a blinding speed to the rear support team. He broke the magic guns in their hands with knife-hand strikes, then darted from one rear support member to the next, smashing their weapons one after another.
“He’s... only destroying our weapons?”
At that moment, Kururu felt as though the nagging sense that something was off ever since the hooded man appeared had finally clicked into place.
“He isn’t attacking us?”
With strength like his, he could have attacked them in any number of ways.
He’d missed when he first threw the fragment of the stone bridge; he’d deflected the magic bullets to either side instead of sending them back at the Resistance; and he’d merely thrown the charging front-line fighters aside without following up. All of it made it seem as though he’d never intended to kill them, and was only trying to make them lose the will to fight.
“...!”
And now, the hooded man approached Merry and did something that confirmed their suspicions. He swung a knife-hand strike to snap her magic gun in two, but Merry clutched it desperately to protect it—the keepsake from her parent—and shut her eyes as if bracing herself. The hooded man abruptly stopped his hand just short of striking her.
If he tried to break the magic gun while it was pressed against her body, Merry could be hurt. Perhaps that was what he’d considered, because the hooded man left her alone and moved on to the rear support team, breaking their weapons one after another.
There was no question that his goal wasn’t to defeat them.
“This is so roundabout...”
Just then, Tina, who had been in critical condition and had spent the battle recovering at the rear, came over to Kururu, her face drawn with pain from her lingering injuries.
“Tina! Are you sure you should be moving already?”
“Well... even if I wanted to lie down, when a ridiculously huge chunk of stone comes flying right over my head, I can at least figure out what’s going on, no matter how tired I am.”
Looking pale and annoyed, Tina said, “Sorry, but could you lend me your shoulder?” Kururu supported her.
“Anyway... that roundabout approach reminds me of Kagami-san. He was jumping around freely in midair and seemed to have powered up somehow, but I’m pretty sure that’s Kagami-san.”
“No, that’s definitely Master.”
Rex, who had somehow come up beside Kururu, crossed his arms and declared it with certainty. Seeing the three of them gathered, Takako, Alice, Parna, and Menou joined them to compare notes and see whether they were right to think the man was Kagami.
“There’s no one else who could make me feel like we have no chance of winning, no matter what we do. It can only be Master.”
“That’s a pretty broad way of thinking... What if he really is a Beastfang?”
Tina sighed in exasperation at Rex’s woefully inadequate explanation, delivered with such confidence. Apparently, he’d simply decided on instinct that the man was Kagami.
“Well... I can’t say I don’t see Rex’s point. That guy was using something like Kagami’s Skill that reflects magic, too... In fact, if that wasn’t Kagami, we’d be in a hopeless situation. Hey, Alice!”
As the possibility that the man was Kagami grew more likely, Alice became unable to sit still. She guessed where the hooded man would go next to destroy a weapon and hurried there, desperate not to miss her chance.
“...Kagami-san?”
Though she was out of breath, Alice managed to approach the hooded man as she’d intended. Trying to calm her pounding heart, she suppressed the flood of emotions welling up inside her and called his name in a trembling voice.
“......Ah, um... Meow... I... you all... kill.”
Frozen by the words that came in response, Alice stood stock-still, as if time itself had stopped.
A few seconds later, her face stricken with panic, Alice immediately turned toward the rear and saw Takako and the others, their expressions equally alarmed, opening their mouths to speak. Then, as if they had all understood, they nodded to one another.