Chapter 399: Battle (Patreon)

Makina Irisu finished washing her hands, settled into Jhin's lap to enjoy a specially mixed drink, and lectured Takina Inoue: "That's lesson one. Once you've confirmed someone's an enemy, don't waste time talking—do whatever it takes to take them down."

"No way. Takina, how did you actually lose?"

Takina Inoue recounted the fight, clearly annoyed.

Makina Irisu had walked out saying "nice to meet you," and Takina, thrown off guard, had instinctively bowed back in greeting—only to have a handful of dirt thrown in her face, flung by Makina at just that moment. Blinded, she'd been no match for Makina, who'd been trained personally by Jhin, and she'd gone down.

"Jhin-nii, isn't that basically cheating?"

Chisato was still indignant on her partner's behalf, though she had no idea her own upcoming training would be several times harder than Takina's.

Because of the "no killing" principle, Jhin's first demand of her was that she stop relying on her eyes to dodge attacks. Through observation, he'd already confirmed that Chisato leaned heavily on her sharp observation skills and quick reflexes to predict an opponent's moves, using that to dodge and counter.

That approach worked fine against most opponents, but the moment her vision was disrupted, her combat ability would take a massive hit. So the first thing she needed to learn was to judge position by sound alone, without over-relying on sight.

Synapse Technology, testing zone.

In the vast space lined with silvery-white stone pillars, Chisato stood in her red Lycoris uniform. According to her, the outfit had some degree of bulletproofing and impact resistance, so Jhin had let her wear it for training.

A strip of opaque black cloth covered her eyes as she stood in a wary stance.

"Ready?" Jhin's voice came from the side, and Chisato instantly lashed out with a vicious kick.

Damn it!

The attack missed. Before she could reset her stance, she heard the whistle of air behind her lower back. Her heart lurched, but there was nothing she could do—she just gritted her teeth and braced to eat the hit.

Thud!

A sharp, piercing pain hit alongside tremendous force, sending her flying. She rolled across the ground several times, shielding her head to absorb the impact, then stood up wincing, rubbing her lower back. She had no idea how Jhin managed it—the pain was intense only for an instant, then immediately turned into a gentle warm current that lingered at the point of impact.

Not only did it not hurt her afterward—if anything, the more she got hit, the more energized she felt.

Am I going soft in the head from all these hits from Jhin-nii?

She let her attention slip for just a moment, and Chisato was hit again. She managed to catch the direction from the whistle of the strike, blocked with her arm, then twisted at the waist and used the momentum to launch a spinning kick.

Kurumi stood behind the glass window of the testing zone, watching Chisato—the object of her crush—get kicked around like a ball by Jhin. Yet a satisfied smile spread across her face, and she hugged her own arms with a shiver of unease: "This girl... she's not some kind of masochist, is she?"

At another outdoor test site, Makina Irisu laughed as she waged all-out war against Takina Inoue with two pistols. The bullets had been specially modified—besides delivering a bit of a sting, they also left colorful paint splatters on whoever they hit.

Bang bang bang bang.

Gunfire rained down in a dense volley. Makina Irisu, having emptied both her pistols, tossed them aside and leapt toward another piece of cover.

Where she'd just been standing, two bursts of purple paint exploded.

"Heh, not bad for a rookie!" She pulled a weapon from the supply stash behind the cover—her specialty, an anti-materiel sniper rifle. "Since Sister Kazuki said this wouldn't be lethal, I guess it's fine if I bust this out too."

Makina Irisu reached under her skirt and pulled out a smoke grenade, yanked the pin, and threw it. The pale pink mist that billowed out instantly robbed Takina Inoue of her sight.

"Tch, what an annoying opponent." Over the course of this fight, Takina had witnessed the sheer range of weapons and techniques Makina commanded—ambushes, chance encounters, sniping, frontal assaults—there wasn't a single scenario she couldn't handle. She was even better than Takina herself, someone trained at Lycoris headquarters proper.

How on earth did the Store Manager train her?

Sensing she was likely to lose this match, Takina Inoue grew anxious. She couldn't quite accept the idea of losing to someone who was toying with her.

Kazami Kazuki watched both test sites through the projected screen, then turned her attention to Makina Irisu and asked Nymph, puzzled: "When did this kid's physical stats get so good?"

Nymph waved up a data set and analyzed it calmly: "This is a comparison of Makina Irisu's physical stats, before and now. There's a very clear rise."

"What did she do?"

"To be precise—it's what Master did to her."

"Ohh~" Kazuki caught on instantly, licking her lips with the tip of her pink tongue. "Sounds like I need to have a good talk with my little brother."

Growing impatient, Takina Inoue failed to notice the pit trap hidden under a pile of fallen leaves. It was only when her foot sank through and she heard the crack of snapping branches beneath her that she realized she'd made a fatal mistake.

!

Red paint burst across her forehead, splashing over her whole face like real blood. The impact knocked her out cold, and she collapsed backward into the mud with a thud.

A giant "GAME OVER!" flashed across the sky. Makina Irisu came bounding out of the distant trees, cheering, twigs and leaves from her camouflage sticking out of her hair, covered head to toe in dirt like a mud monkey.

"Wahaha, you'll need another ten years before you can beat me!" She dropped the sniper rifle and skipped toward the exit. Jhin had promised her five sessions for every win—never mind the other rewards, even for that alone she'd do whatever it took to win every fight.

An hour later, Takina Inoue, pressing a hand to her still-throbbing forehead, met up with Chisato in the break room.

"Takina, why do you look so grim? Was training really that rough?"

"It's nothing like that."

"Then why the sour face?"

"It's a personal matter." Takina Inoue didn't want to talk about whatever was bothering her, so she brushed it off with a few vague words, then found an excuse to rest and sat facing the wall in the corner, brooding.

"Whoa, she looks super not in the mood."

Kurumi walked in with a teasing grin. "And what about you—Miss Chisato, the masochist who gets happier the more she's kicked?"

"I'm not a masochist! It's just that Jhin-nii makes me feel pain and then relief right after, so I can't quite control my face!"

If Kurumi hadn't known the two of them had actually been sparring in there, she'd have sworn that line sounded like something straight out of a dirty scene.

"My little brother's got some things to take care of. You two can head back to the café first, or wait for him here."

Chisato greeted the two women as they walked in. "Big Sister, Nymph, if we're waiting for Jhin-nii, about how long will it take?"

Kazami Kazuki closed the photo Makina Irisu had sent titled "Milk Bath," did a rough estimate, and said, "Give it another three hours."

"That long, huh...? Guess I'll just head back with Takina and wait for him there."