Interlude 2 – Amamiya’s Young Swordmaster
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Sendai City, Miyagi Prefecture.
Amamiya Satoha wore a white middy uniform, pretending to be a student, so as to stand out as little as possible. Using the Shinkansen, she had arrived in this northern region.
She walked through the city by herself, shouldering something that looked like a bamboo sword case, making those seeing her suspect that she might be practicing Kendo.
Her glossy black hair looked as if its underside had been dyed with golden-blue colors. She had big eyes and her skin was snow-white. Given the special nature of her mission, she had chosen to wear a school uniform befitting her age, planning to blend in with the crowd, but having such an extremely cute female student wander through the city drew the attention of the people around her, effectively having the opposite effect of what she had intended.
After she left the station premises, everyone was staring at her with their eyes wide open. No one dared to call out to her, who had an unworldly appearance, but many eyes followed her as she headed to the lodging she had prepared in advance.
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Because she had been ordered to do a 『Dungeon Seekers』 investigation by her older sister, the acting family head, Satoha had come to Sendai. She continued to survey the area for several days after her arrival.
She had received a big number of documents related to 『Dungeon Seekers』 in Sendai City, and she had thoroughly checked each and every single of those documents. And even by just reading them all, she had felt a strong discomfort.
Tohoku’s 『Dungeon Seekers』 had such a huge number of casualties that you could only call it abnormal, even when comparing the data with every other region or the average of the whole country. Casualties were a given and well within the range of assumption, but even the management couldn’t ignore this amount of deaths. Therefore, she had come here to eliminate the cause behind it.
If it meant that an extremely powerful vortex existed in this area, she planned to enter it by herself and cull the monsters inside. Satoha believed her sister had probably allowed her to use her armament for this reason.
In addition, she had received the instruction to get in contact with a player who obtained a magic sword which was considered to be an ultra-rare item. In short, she had a lot on her plate.
She, who had lined up all the tasks she had to finish inside her head and processed their details in order, was superb without a doubt. However, the longer her investigation continued, the stronger her doubts became.
“The cause of death is unclear, huh…? The app’s recording has stopped. The circuits should have been working, and yet…”
The document shown on her tablet PC was a list of the players who had reached a Game Over. Under normal circumstances, the app would record the cause of death if it was something like a player getting killed by a monster or falling into a trap. But, the number of players with unknown death causes was oddly high in this area.
Moreover, there were a lot of cases where new players would die after entering an E-Class or even D-Class dungeon which can be described as pretty hard for one’s first battle.
Suspecting that there might be a lot of powerful vortexes, she toured various areas of the city, but except for a big vortex, which had taken root in an old castle, a tourist attraction in Sendai, she couldn’t find any particularly brutal vortexes. And even if new players were to try entering that vortex, they should hesitate to do so as the game would warn them about this being an A-Class dungeon.
Bugs displaying a death as having an unknown cause happened frequently, but only Sendai City had many players who died with such a bug showing up or after entering dungeons that weren’t suited for their level.
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In the middle of the night, when the stars were twinkling in the sky, a lone girl was dashing through a brightly glittering, north-eastern city.
Her outfit had completely changed from what she wore during the daytime. A combat uniform that used plenty of expensive materials, weaving together Japanese and Western clothing styles. Covering the uniform and reflecting the moonlight was equipment which was decorated with golden designs that used indigo blue as its main color. A long coat reaching all the way to her thighs and her skirt fluttered in the nightly wind.
In her right hand she held a weapon which looked just like a bishop’s staff. Probably her exorcism device. Its sounds as she ran had a cool timbre.
Running atop multi-storey buildings, she jumped from roof to roof. With the crescent moon in her back, she soared through the sky.
Not a single soul was out on the streets. On the river bank. Or beneath the bridge.
Discovering a place where something had blown up concrete, leaving behind a big crater, she touched it and released her mana. It was old and faint, but those were the traces of someone’s mana. She guessed them to be one or two weeks old.
There were strong mana traces, incomparable to the ones at the river bank in the back alley of a shopping district. The place looked as devastated as if a tornado had passed through. Deep bloodstains stained the walls of the buildings, looking like visualizations of grudges.
“…”
She resumed moving. Now that has grasped the mana left behind on-site, it’d be easy for her, who was referred to as Occult Slayer, to find the mana source.
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Following the mana traces she arrived at a certain residential area. She sensed the mana of two people in this place which was only illuminated by the street lights.
No doubt. Someone is fighting in this area━━
She observed both parties from the roof of a private house, checking the situation first. The two were facing each other in the center of a public park with weapons in hand.
As she saw both holding smartphones in their hands, she guessed them to be 『Dungeon Seekers』 players. They weren’t Occult Slayers like her.
Even if she were to try intervene, the entire park’s surroundings were filled with lethal poison gas. And as she didn’t possess the appropriate equipment, she couldn’t get close. Of course, it wasn’t as though she couldn’t force it, if she wanted to, but wanting to get more information, she limited herself to silently watching.
The woman standing on the right from her point of view released her mana, deploying magic circles in the night sky. She readied her short sword and performed a feint by dropping her shoulder a bit. Seeing the woman charge at the men with a confident stride, Satoha thought, She’s very likely…one of the higher-ranked player in DS. Maybe the abnormality in Sendai City is caused by fellow players fighting each other…?
That woman is probably the one manipulating the poisonous gas, too. It’s a battle tactic characteristic of DS players. Only few Occult Slayers would use such a battle style that combines magic with swordsmanship and science.
Satoha was confident that she could easily crush this way of fighting, but the same might not apply to other Occult Slayers.
Opposing the woman who was using such multi-layered plan was the man on the left. He wore a thin T-Shirt and shorts. He was barefoot and only held a single sword. He seemed to be at an overwhelming disadvantage here, but spotting the katana in his hand, she became shocked.
No way…! That magic sword…is of legendary…no, fantastical class!?
Possessing a definite skill level as Occult Slayer, she could sense the power hidden in the katana at a glance. The weapon was releasing a majesty that made her wonder whether it shouldn’t be labeled as highest grade among special anti-occult devices such as magic swords.
An armament of fantastical class wasn’t anything you could obtain just because you wanted to. This sort of armament, which always came with a single conceptual ability, had to accept its wielder like a curse. The armament itself had to.
That’s the ultra-rare item that dropped in Sendai City…
In the next instant, she saw something unbelievable.
The barefooted boy sheathed the katana.
“━━『Hidden Blade』”
He muttered a fantasy name, something which made a magic sword a magic sword. The sword wave unleashed by his drawing technique was most certainly a hidden blade. It easily slew the woman who had used the triple-layered tactic of using poison gas, magic, and short sword.
Satoha didn’t have any confidence that she’d be able to avoid this blow, let alone block it.
After caring for the woman’s body, the boy destroyed a crystal on the ground and stood still in the park. The spectacle in front of her eyes had allowed her to to connect the dots about the abnormality in 『Dungeon Seekers』. That crystal, the dead woman, and above all else, him. She needed to further her investigation.
Satoha made up her mind and waited with bated breath until he left the park.
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