CH 63

Each Speculation

Translated by LyraDhani

Edited by LyraDhani

Bell muttered as she watched Tsugumi run around with his clothes fluttering in the wind from afar.

“…It seems you are moving with great confidence, but is it really okay?”

Bell was not doubting Tsugumi’s ability. He probably would deny it, but Tsugumi in his current state should be able to push the strength of his threads to the limit and even slice up Demonic Beasts in the mud. However, he would be in bed for half a day as a reaction to all the power he had just pulled out of his system.

There were some disadvantages, but even without going to the trouble of devising a clever strategy, there was still a good chance of winning. However, Tsugumi dared to strategize and challenge the Demonic Beast. The subtleties of the situation were hard for Bell to comprehend.

–It was only because Bell was [the one who owned].

A noble God-like Bell, who once boasted of her prosperity, couldn’t understand the human Tsugumi in the essential sense of the word.

Nowadays, Tsugumi had established himself as “Hagakure Sakura”, but the original Tsugumi was someone who [did not own] anything and hid in the shadows of his talented older sister and eccentric classmates.

The person called Nanase Tsugumi understood more than anyone else that he was mediocre. He never expected too much of himself, never became conceited, and only did what he could safely do. Unless pushed to the limit, he was no different from the average high school student.

But from Bell’s point of view, Tsugumi was a special human being, chosen by the noble and great God herself. Bell thought it was a great honor, and that he should be more proud of being her contractor.

But even now that he had power, he still refused to break out of this ordinary frame of mind. For Bell, this was unacceptable.

-Those with power are allowed to behave in a manner commensurate with their power. Bell sincerely thought so.

To be recognized, respected, and believed in by the world. At first, Bell wanted to use “Hagakure Sakura” to ridicule the foolishness of humans and other Gods. The dying Gods, living in poverty with their pseudo-religious beliefs, with their flamboyantly-dressed Magical Girls as their representative, were in a pathetic state.

At the time, Bell couldn’t understand how they could be so devoted to humans.

–Now that she had made a contract with Tsugumi, she painfully understood their feelings.

While she wanted Tsugumi to shine brilliantly, she couldn’t deny his will to not stand out more than necessary.

Besides, Bell had previously declared to Tsugumi that she would “leave all combat-related matters to him”. Bell couldn’t interfere with Tsugumi’s tactics now.

“…It’s an extraordinary thing.”

Muttering this, Bell rested her back against the rubble. It didn’t feel good to see Tsugumi trying to keep it small, but she had to at least acknowledge the efforts. Bell was a very generous god.

“Try your best. –Sometimes, even the shallow wisdom of people is not to be trifled with.”

◆◆◆

Tentacles with suckers, large and small, entangled the building and dragged it to the ground. As the building disappeared into the mud, the liquefied ground was gradually expanding its area. …If this continued, he might run out of footholds to move around.

“A type of Demonic Beast that changes the field to suit itself. B-classes are on an entirely different level..”

Tsugumi muttered to himself as he dexterously ran between the sinking buildings.

The main body of the Demonic Beast–Kraken–did not emerge from the ground, and all that could be seen were its tentacles, writhing like a whip. Although the liquefied ground would not melt hands or threads even if touched directly, it would be quite difficult to manipulate the threads in the mud.

In spite of this, the Demonic Beast seemed to swim smoothly, which might be one of the characteristics of this Demonic Beast. From what he observed, it seemed to move much faster in the mud than on the ground.

Several times he stretched out his string into the mud to lightly attack it, but it easily evaded his attempts.

Curiously, he examined the tentacles closely and found that some of the suckers on the tentacles looked like large eyes. …With so many eyes, it would be easy to avoid the visible threads.

The Demonic Beast tried to catch Tsugumi, who was flying around using Transportation, with its free tentacles, but Tsugumi ducked the tentacles with brilliant moves.

-This was about as fast as a fly compared to the tail of Radon. However, simply avoiding the attack at this point was not enough to defeat the enemy.

He could attack it by stringing it up in the mud, but if that Demonic Beast had the characteristics of a squid or an octopus, it would be difficult to do so. A mollusk like a squid had no hard bones, so as long as there was even a small gap, it could easily pass through. A poor attack would be easily evaded.

And even if he set traps, he couldn’t set in a large numbers. If he wanted to create traps so strong that they couldn’t be escaped, the amount of divine power put into them would increase proportionally. If he wanted the traps to be perfectly accurate, the minimum he could install were one or two at most.

“But there isn’t enough support to fish that huge body. …It feels like I am fishing. Well, it won’t make that much difference since I’ll eat it in the end.”

He muttered with a laugh, but there wasn’t much time left. The size of the swamp continued to grow. At this rate, even the footholds necessary to move would disappear.

If it made a move to escape from his attacking reach, there was nothing more that Tsugumi could do. Since a Magical Girl’s power wasn’t infinite, the end was obvious if he was forced to fight an endurance battle.

–But there was a solution.

The best way that “Hagakure Sakura” could do now was to take advantage of this muddy swamp’s characteristics, and overthrow the side of the Kraken who thought that it couldn’t be attacked in the mud.

“…Okay.”

With a small voice of determination, Tsugumi stared straight ahead at the view in front of him. Then he glanced at Bell, smiled, and promptly went into action.

–The threads were wrapped around the building where the Demonic Beast was submerged, and he slip the threads into the swamp to make sure the opponent did not notice it. With his current strength, Tsugumi couldn’t produce enough threads to stretch all over the swamp. But this time, there was no need to go that far.

“The total length of the Kraken is about a hundred meters. The error can be adjusted by cutting off a limb. In the end, all that matters is if I can capture the body that contains the magic stone.”

As he said this, Tsugumi began to create something by manipulating the threads he had sent in. The image was a round jar of woven threads. The threads were carefully woven together until there were no gaps to slip out.

The threads moved slowly because of the sticky mud, but even so, it did not take much effort to gather the threads in one place.

While the Demonic Beast was sinking ten buildings, Tsugumi completed the trap for capturing it. The Demonic Beast had not yet noticed the trap.

–If this opponent had been as intelligent as the big boar he first fought, it would surely have been easy to drive it into the trap. However, that Demonic Beast was intelligent enough to create a favorable position and change its behavior when it saw his movements. A simple method would have allowed it to see through the trap and escape.

“The Demonic Beast is probably not that stupid. –But this time, its ability to learn will be a hindrance.”

Tsugumi poured the thread into the swamp, creating a simple zigzag maze of thread walls from the location of the Demonic Beast to the location of the trap. The thread itself was as soft as cotton and was only strong enough to easily teared apart if the Demonic Beast hit it with its body. –But it was enough.

After finishing his preparations, Tsugumi stopped at the top of the building, pointed at the Demonic Beast with a powerful snap, and announced in a loud voice. 

“Now the hunt begins.”

◆ ◆ ◆ ◆

The Kraken swam leisurely through the dimly lit mud. The Magical Girl, its natural enemy, could not follow to the place where the Demonic Beast was, and it was moving right and left on the ground.

Sometimes she attacked with a thread-like object, but to the Demonic Beast, which could swim freely in the mud, it was like a winged insect.

–If the Magical Girl kept diving down until she ran out of strength, it would be the Demonic Beast’s victory.

The encroaching muddy swamp would eventually take away the foothold and lead the Magical Girl into the mud. Then it would take its time preying on the fallen Magical Girl. The Demonic Beast thought so.

Then, as the Demonic Beast was moving around in circles inside the swamp, it noticed something in front of it, a bulky wall. Curious, it extended one of its tentacles toward the wall. After feeling a bump, the Demonic Beast looked out of the wall with the eyeballs on its tentacles and was astonished.

–There is no mud?

On the other side of the wall, the mud was gone, as if a space had been cut off. It was as if the place itself had disappeared.

“–There you are.”

Along with small murmur, a shock ran through the arm of the Demonic Beast. In an instant, the scenery connected to the tentacles turned black. -It was only after a while that it realized it had been cut off.

–That Magical Girl had the ability to cut off space. The Demonic Beast decided so. Then this blobby wall was the boundary of that ability. It would be dangerous to get too close.

The Demonic Beast started moving away from the wall, but it soon bumped into another wall. The wall traps were cleverly placed in various places, and the Demonic Beast was attacked several times.

However, that level of injury did not hinder its action. The tentacles would soon revive, so it didn’t think it was that much of a problem.

It would be the end of the story if the main body was accidentally taken out of the wall, but the Demonic Beast was not that stupid. If the tentacles, which could be torn to shreds, were going ahead of the main body, it wouldn’tt be needlessly injured.

And so, while dexterously avoiding the wall, the Demonic Beast was led to a certain place without even knowing it. Yes–to the trap set by Tsugumi.

–By the time the Demonic Beast realized this, it was already too late.

The moment the Demonic Beast felt the water flow, the mud around it came crushing down.

The Demonic Beast impatiently tried to move away, but the walls were so hard that it could not even find an opening for its tentacles. The Demonic Beast was completely trapped in a sphere made of threads.

◆◆◆

–The building that remained standing without collapsing was now a muddy swamp, and Tsugumi looked out over it.

Below him, a maze of muddy paths remained, but everything else was gone, as if it had been cut out.

‘Well, it’s not gone, it’s just partially made transparent.”

The strategy that Tsugumi came up with was quite simple.

The soft threads were arranged like a wall, and the other parts were made invisible by Transparency to create a visual ‘wall’. In reality, it was only transparent, so it was actually easy to move around.

However, the Demonic Beast had a preconceived notion that the outside of the wall was dangerous because the tentacles that came out of the wall were attacked. In reality, he was desperately moving the attacking threads along the wall, so he wasn’t confident that it could cut anything other than the tentacles – something as large as the main body.

But the Demonic Beast thought that the outside of the wall was dangerous, and it entered the trap itself, just as Tsugumi had intended. If it had been something as simple as a big boar, it would not have cared about the existence of the wall in the first place. Being halfway smart was also a problem.

Staring at the muddy swamp, Tsugumi deactivated the maze’s invisibility. Then, he reapplied his Invisibility skill only to the area where the Demonic Beast was trapped. Inside the swamp, which looked like a gaping hole, sat a sphere that looked like a lump of woolen yarn.

The yarn used to create the trap was specially strengthened and could not be easily destroyed. The Demonic Beast, blocking the exit and unable to move, was now in the palm of the Tsugumi’s hand.

“The contents… is not necessary to look at. It’s probably gross anyway.”

Tsugumi gently reached out with his right hand and muttered with a thin smile.

“The means of escape was not bad, but unfortunately–you got the wrong opponent.”

One by one, he slowly folded his fingers inward. The sphere floating in the mud was distorted as if it were being squeezed by a large human hand.

The moment Tsugumi finished clenching his fist, the Demonic Beast inside the sphere died with a high-pitched scream. …He felt a little bad.

And at the same time as the trap threads were released, the [Gluttony] skill was automatically activated and the Demonic Beast – the Kraken – was deliciously devoured. Gently turning away from the grotesque sight, Tsugumi waved his hand in Bell’s direction. –He wonder if Bell would praise him for this battle.

Thinking like that, Tsugumi ran toward Bell.