Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
A flintlock musket in her right hand, a flintlock pistol in her left,the two firearms in Tokisaki Kurumi's hands, which by all rights should be considered 19th-century antiques, fired at an impossibly high speed that completely defied their appearance. It was like a terrifying combination of a machine gun and a shotgun. In the blink of an eye, a dense storm of bullets completely enveloped the space in front of Yutsuki.
Yutsuki lightly tapped the tip of her longbow against the ground. Drawn by her magnetic field, an endless stream of iron sand surged up from the earth, forming a flowing, liquid-tal shield that blocked every single bullet.
Pong! Pong! The mont the bullets buried themselves in the iron sand, they were shredded, yet they still set off a fierce shower of sparks. Yutsuki could feel it: the kinetic impact of every single bullet in that barrage was powerful enough to pierce straight through an armored tank.
If her opponent had been an ordinary human, they would have been turned into a beehive ages ago.
However...
"If this is all you've got, it's not nearly enough!"
In this desolate wasteland, the soil contained an extrely high concentration of iron sand. For Yutsuki, who used electromagnetic force to manipulate iron sand as her primary offense, this place was undeniably a natural, infinite armory.
The iron sand on the ground rapidly condensed into massive, churning whips. Ferocious as crashing waves and venomous as striking pythons, the iron sand surged from all directions. Sealing off every possible escape route, the tallic tendrils snapped its jaws toward Tokisaki Kurumi.
Yet, facing this inescapable, dead-end situation, the smile on Kurumi's face didn't falter in the slightest. Her lips parted slightly as she chanted in a deep, bewitching tone, akin to a magic spell:
"Zafkiel — Aleph (First Bullet)."
Shadows oozed out from the "I" nural on the massive clock face behind Kurumi, channeling directly into the barrel of her flintlock pistol.
To Yutsuki's absolute astonishnt, Kurumi pointed the muzzle of the gun directly at her own temple and ruthlessly pulled the trigger.
Before Yutsuki even had ti to wonder if the other girl had lost her mind, Kurumi—who had just been completely surrounded by the whips of iron sand—suddenly materialized right in front of her, as if she had condensed out of thin air. Kurumi aid her guns straight at the space between Yutsuki's eyebrows.
Her pupils shrinking violently, Yutsuki frantically raised Ratziel horizontally. The dark blue limbs of the bow collided with the barrels of the musket and pistol, forcing their muzzles upward.
Bang! Bang! Two deafening gunshots echoed as the bullets grazed past, firing harmlessly into the sky above her.
A look of grave seriousness washed over Yutsuki's face. According to the electromagnetic radar feedback from Ratziel, Kurumi had just demonstrated a speed of movent that completely defied common sense. In the split second before the iron sand whips could fully enclose her, she had flawlessly slipped through the microscopic gaps between the thrashing tendrils and arrived right in front of Yutsuki.
Even the Yamai sisters, renowned for manipulating the wind, would likely find it impossible to execute such delicate, precise evasive maneuvers at such high speeds.
Naturally, Yutsuki wasn't foolish enough to believe Kurumi had pulled this off using pure physical prowess. It was undoubtedly the effect of the bullet fired from the Angel hovering behind her.
"Ah~ hahahaha~!! How truly fascinating! How truly incredible! To think there was soone capable of utilizing their Angel's abilities to such a profound degree. Among all Spirits, I fear only Yutsuki-san could accomplish such a feat."
Are you seriously mocking while aggressively suppressing ?! You bastard!
Kurumi pressed her advantage, launching a fierce barrage of attacks. She wielded the musket and pistol like dual swords, continuously attacking and slashing against the limbs of Ratziel.
While both firearms and bows were technically long-range weapons, from any practical standpoint, guns held an overwhelming advantage in a close-quarters clash like this.
Take preparation ti, for instance. Even though Angels didn't require physical ammunition or arrows to be reloaded, the ti it took to draw a bowstring was at least five tis longer than the ti it took to pull a trigger.
Furthermore, pistols could, to so extent, be used as restraining weapons in lee combat. But a bow? Once an enemy got into zero-distance range, it was less useful than a wooden stick.
Clang! Clash! Feeling the jarring impacts and hearing the constant gunshots going off right next to her ears, Yutsuki could only sigh in helpless resignation.
In this lifeti, I am destined to be completely useless at lee combat!
A solid wall of iron sand suddenly erupted from the ground, forcing Kurumi away from Yutsuki. Seizing the opportunity, Yutsuki used her magnetic field to send massive whips of iron sand dancing madly through the air, whipping toward Kurumi at breakneck speeds.
Kurumi dodged mid-air, making several sharp, angular evasive leaps. But as the iron sand whips coordinated their pincer attack, just as she was about to be trapped once more, the golden clock face materialized behind her again. She clearly intended to repeat her previous trick.
"Ratziel — Cannon Mode."
The grip section of the bow retracted into the main body, locking around Yutsuki's right arm. The lightning-bolt-shaped, dark blue bow limbs snapped forward, aligning parallel to each other. From a distance, it looked less like a cannon barrel and more like a massive pair of pincers.
"Zafkiel — Aleph."
Once again, the Kurumi who was completely surrounded by iron sand vanished like dissipating mist, suddenly materializing in the air directly above Yutsuki.
However, to Tokisaki Kurumi's absolute disbelief, it was as if Ryougi Yutsuki had perfectly predicted where she would appear. Almost at the exact sa instant Kurumi materialized, Yutsuki raised Ratziel and aid the cannon's muzzle squarely at Kurumi's abdon.
"Railgun!"
The block of iron sand condensed at the muzzle was instantaneously transmuted into a blinding, orange-yellow beam of searing heat, blasting a massive, gaping hole straight through Kurumi's stomach.
"Why...?"
Facing Kurumi's dying question, Yutsuki didn't answer. Because before she could even utter a word, the life had already completely faded from Kurumi's eyes.
Why? It wasn't actually that hard to understand. Yutsuki had simply intentionally left a few slightly wider "gaps" in her iron sand encirclent, ensuring that those specific gaps ford the fastest, most direct route to her own position.
It was exactly like human psychology: when presented with several pre-cut slices of cake, people will naturally gravitate toward picking the largest slice.
Although Yutsuki hadn't fully figured out the exact chanics of Kurumi's Angel, based on the radar feedback from Ratziel, Kurumi wasn't using direct spatial teleportation. She was utilizing so form of hyper accelerated movent to physically evade her way to Yutsuki's location.
Once she deduced that, the rest was easy. Leveraging the super computational power of Ratziel, Yutsuki had designed a few seemingly safe and highly convenient escape routes as bait within an incredibly short tifra. And Tokisaki Kurumi had very cooperatively walked right into the trap.
Yutsuki's true, terrifying strength did not lie in her god-tier hacking abilities that could breach DEM Headquarters' firewall. Nor was it the power she could summon to pierce the Yamai Spirits, or the Railguns she used to destroy the world's strongest Wizard's ch. Her true strength was her formidable tactical layout—her ability to always deploy her powers exactly where they were most needed, ticulously orchestrating the battlefield step by step until her enemies unknowingly stepped right into her traps.
The sa trick won't work twice on a Saint... er, Spirit.
Looking at Kurumi's corpse, which was already growing cold, Yutsuki felt the nauseating sickness that ca with killing soone for the first ti. But more than that, she felt a profound sense of sorrow.
Despite being the most evil Spirit, she was also a young girl in the pri of her youth.
Spirits possessed overwhelming power, but the price was being viewed as calamities, treated as anomalies, and completely ostracized from human society.
Unable to be normal, unable to experience ordinary daily life, the only thing left for them was an abyss of bottomless loneliness that continuously tortured their hearts until it drove them to madness.
Perhaps, one day, she too would be unable to bear this suffering and stray down the wrong path.
"Leaving her exposed out here in the wilderness isn't right. I should bury her."
"Ara~ Yutsuki-san is truly a kind hearted person."
A voice that absolutely shouldn't have existed rang out from behind her. Kurumi appeared behind Yutsuki, completely unscathed, pressing the muzzle of her flintlock musket directly against the back of Yutsuki's head.
But what Kurumi hadn't expected was that the very second her gun touched Yutsuki's head, the iron sand on the ground morphed into a razor-sharp blade and cleanly severed Kurumi's right arm.
Kurumi didn't scream. Instead, she hastily retreated high into the sky. She now realized that on a terrain this rich in iron sand, the entire earth was essentially Yutsuki's absolute domain.
"Zafkiel — Dalet (Fourth Bullet)."
Kurumi shot herself with the bullet ford at the "IV" nural on her Angel. In an instant, the right arm that Yutsuki had cleanly severed with iron sand was perfectly reattached to Kurumi's shoulder, completely restored as if it had never been cut off.
"I see... The ability to manipulate ti..."
Watching a recovery process that looked exactly like rewinding a videotape, combined with the logic defying, hyper accelerated evasive maneuvers from earlier, and an Angel literally shaped like a giant clock dial... Putting these clues together, Yutsuki instantly figured out her opponent's true ability.
"Did you know I wasn't dead from the start and were just putting on an act?"
Kurumi glared at Yutsuki with intense wariness. In response, Yutsuki simply shrugged noncommittally. "In DEM's Spirit pursuit records, the number of 'Confird Kill' reports for Nightmare is so absurdly high it's almost comical. I originally set up that defense just in case, acting on pure paranoia. I didn't expect it to actually co in handy."
"I see. As expected of Yutsuki-san. What a brilliant mind you have. Well then, as a token of my gratitude, let show you sothing wonderful! Co forth, 'Us'!"
Striking a theatrical pose to express her admiration, Kurumi pinched the frilly edges of her skirt and perford an elegant lady's curtsy. From the shadows stretching behind her, girls identical to Kurumi began leaping out one after another. No! More accurately, they were Tokisaki Kurumi.
Shadow Clones... Okay, let's not go there. I know this world has absolutely nothing to do with Naruto. Yutsuki thought.
"How does it feel? These are my pasts, my history, my figures across various tilines. As long as I possess this ability, it is absolutely impossible for Miss Yutsuki to kill . So, what do you say? It would be much wiser to surrender early, Miss Yutsuki. After all, I truly have no intention of hurting you."
Grinning widely, the 'Kurumis' surrounded Yutsuki from all directions, aiming their flintlock guns at her while offering a seductively persuasive proposal.
"Unfortunately, I don't take kindly to being threatened."
Blades of iron sand continuously surged up from around Yutsuki, whipping fiercely toward the surrounding 'Kurumis.'
"Honestly, acting tough is not a wise choice, Yutsuki-san"
Sighing helplessly, the hands of the clock in Kurumi's left eye began to spin backward at high speed. The flintlock pistol was pointed at the "VII" nural, and a shadow coalesced into a black bullet, loading itself into the chamber.
"Zafkiel — Zayin (Seventh Bullet)."
As Kurumi pulled the trigger, the pitch-black bullet traced a sinister trajectory as it closed in on Yutsuki.
High-speed, deadly accurate, and fiercely aggressive. At such a short distance, not even a Spirit could dodge the bullet's attack. Yutsuki manipulated a blade of iron sand beside her to swat the bullet out of the air.
However, that action was entirely aningless. The mont the iron sand made contact with the bullet—
"Fufu, ahahahahahahaahahah!!"
As Kurumi's triumphant laughter echoed, Yutsuki's body suddenly stopped moving entirely.
It wasn't just her limbs. Even her trench coat, which had been fluttering violently in the wind pressure, her hair dancing in the air, and the iron sand and electricity swirling around her—all of it froze in place, suspended mid-motion. The iron sand that had been whipping outward, having lost its controlling force, scattered harmlessly to the ground.
"Fufufu. No matter how overwhelming the power, no matter how brilliant the strategy, in the face of stopped ti, it is all completely aningless."
The Kurumi who had fired the "Seventh Bullet" walked up to Yutsuki and fired a shot point-blank into each of her limbs, her abdon, and her chest.
"Let's cripple your limbs first, it will make things much more convenient... Wait, what?!"
Kurumi's smile was replaced by sheer astonishnt halfway through. She realized that the bullets she had just fired into Yutsuki's body hadn't drawn a single drop of blood. In fact, there weren't even any bullet wounds.
As the effect of the Seventh Bullet faded, the figure of Yutsuki slowly dissolved, leaving behind only a pile of scattered iron sand.
The 'Yutsuki' she had frozen and shot was rely a projection created through optical refraction.
"It truly is a sha. In the face of stopped ti, raw power might beco aningless, but strategy? Not necessarily."
Yutsuki's actual body appeared outside the encirclent of the Kurumis. The Angel in her hands had reverted to its longbow form. Violent, surging electricity erupted around Yutsuki, channeling wildly into the fingertips drawing the bowstring.
Slowly, an arrow that looked as if it had been carved from premium blue crystal materialized, nocked against the string of Ratziel.
A look of sheer terror, unadulterated fear....washed over Kurumi's face. She could clearly feel the apocalyptic level of raw, destructive lightning energy contained within that delicate, beautiful arrow.
"Don't worry, this isn't aiming at you." Yutsuki drew the bowstring to its limit, slowly aiming the arrowhead toward the sky, a faint smile gracing her lips.
If she simply wanted to shoot Kurumi, a regular Railgun would achieve the sa result and consu far less energy. This single arrow was draining at least half of Yutsuki's entire spiritual power reserves.
A blinding flash of light shot straight into the heavens. The next second, countless dark, rolling storm clouds blotted out the sun, completely covering the desolate wasteland.
Desolate, freezing, and pitch-black, it looked as if the end of the world had arrived.
"Destroy everything! Thunderbolt of Myriad Heavens!"
Like a divine judgnt handed down by the gods, the very next second, the world in Kurumi's eyes was entirely swallowed by an endless, roaring sea of lightning.
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