Chapter 196: A Familiar Figure
“Done!”
Mai Shinomiyai’s face, a little disheveled, flushed with a sickly red. She swallowed, suppressing the metallic, bloody taste, and forcibly activated the spiritual energy within her body. Her remaining few talismans floated to her right hand, beginning to construct a new summoning array.
Everything was within Mai Shinomiyai’s calculations. The moment they made contact, the girl had already ascertained that the person before her was an opponent she could not defeat.
While she didn’t know the true identity of the other party, his terrifying and eerie spiritual energy was probably the most powerful human the girl had witnessed in this life, assuming he was still human.
Even Mai Shinomiyai doubted if the advanced curse, “Hurricane Curse,” which condensed powerful wind element abilities, could inflict any significant damage on him. However, seeing Masashi Sakuraba’s predatory demeanor as he toyed with his prey, if she didn’t resist, the outcome would likely be an unstoppable attack.
Her “Substitute Doll” was also rendered unusable for a short period. The only thing she could do was to find a glimmer of hope in this dead end.
“Hoo— Unleashing such a large amount of wind element ability from within the body will affect anyone’s mobility, no matter how strong they are. Now I just need to dodge his attacks. With the swift beast’s mobility, I can last until reinforcements arrive. Even if I want to escape, I can still track them down!”
From within the blue array, a colossal beast the size of a horse, with whirlwinds at its feet, slowly emerged. Mai Shinomiyai stopped thinking further, reaching out to touch the beast’s back, intending to mount it.
The attack just now would be a pipe dream to kill the opponent, but as long as she could stall for a little time, with her high-mobility Shikigami, she could at least maneuver herself.
“Swish—” “Roar!!!”
A gust of wind with a foul smell swept past her eyes. Intense pain, coupled with the pained roar of the swift beast beside her, simultaneously transmitted into the girl’s mind. Before her brain’s inhibitory function could even activate, a tearing sound erupted from her throat.
“Ahhhh!”
The pain of her hand breaking was a level that Mai Shinomiyai, a girl who had been pampered almost her entire life, could not bear. If it weren’t for her survival instinct and the spiritual energy within her stimulating her, the girl would have fainted the moment her hand was bitten off by the snake’s head.
Her pale face was covered in large beads of sweat, and her entire body trembled uncontrollably. Disregarding the swift beast at her side, whose head had been pierced and had fallen to the ground, turning into a pile of elements, the girl tremblingly summoned the萤草 to stop the unending flow of blood from her wrist.
“I really underestimated you a little.”
A still enchanting and eerie voice came from the smoke. It seemed to possess some mysterious power. As the voice transmitted, the smoke that had been kicked up by the energy explosion slowly dissipated, revealing the long-haired man with heterochromatic eyes and a faint smile on his face, walking towards her.
And the arm severed from her forearm, revealing a limb covered in pale purple scales, proved the damage Masashi Sakuraba had sustained. However, what plunged Mai Shinomiyai into despair was that, apart from his damaged clothes, he seemed to have suffered no damage at all. Even his eerie spiritual energy aura was as potent and stable as before.
“The purpose of the ‘Hurricane Curse’ wasn’t to attack me, but to detonate the elemental energy of the Shikigami I swallowed. Forcing a change in the curse’s flow was to induce elemental resonance without exploding. Should I call you lucky, or a genius?”
Masashi Sakuraba leisurely walked up to the kneeling girl. He waved his right hand, and the 萤草 beneath Mai Shinomiyai’s feet became a disgusting pale purple as if corroded. The life energy it released had transformed into evil, corrosive energy, constantly eroding the life force of Mai Shinomiyai sitting upon it.
Masashi Sakuraba caressed his right hand as if it were a lover, his eyes shining with a strange light, looking at the girl on the ground who was hunched over due to the corrosive energy’s invasion.
However, Mai Shinomiyai had no opportunity to answer him at this moment. Her body was already in chaos from forcefully reversing the advanced curse. The intense pain transmitted to her mind from losing her hand, coupled with the 萤草’s mutation from foreign energy corrosion, inflicted pain on her that she had never experienced in her life. She didn’t even have the chance to think; only her body’s instinctual reactions to the severe pain remained.
“Regardless, you’re a somewhat surprising catch, little Shinomiyai. Much more capable than that kid Shoichi.”
Glancing at the time, it was close to the three minutes he had anticipated. The little one before him had given him a long-awaited surprise after his seclusion. Therefore, Masashi Sakuraba didn’t mind toying with her a bit longer.
Frowning, he took a step back, preventing the liquid on the ground from spreading onto his new shoes. Masashi Sakuraba somewhat disgustedly raised a pile of dust and threw it at the girl’s feet. After all, he wasn’t seeing incontinence due to severe pain for the first time. Such dirty things always affected the nature of his play.
Humans were indeed dirty things, in every sense of the word.
After discarding his plan to toy with her, Masashi Sakuraba gave the recumbent girl a look of disdain. Finally, he slowly raised his right hand, gathering a deep purple, snake-like energy. This malevolent energy was about to make contact with the head of the convulsing girl on the ground.
His mood soured, Masashi Sakuraba lost the desire to play. His interest was satisfied, and the heroes and police who had received the news were also arriving soon. While he wasn’t afraid of them, if some old monsters were to appear, he, not being at his full strength, might actually be in danger.
The purple snake head gently approached the girl’s head, as if the beautiful scene of her brain shattering and brains splattering could be seen the next moment.
However, a sudden arm blocked Masashi Sakuraba’s further action. A sturdy, bronze forearm blocked his right hand, and immense power deflected his arm. Immediately following was a barrage of powerful, relentless strikes.
Masashi Sakuraba’s rich combat experience told him that the person before him was likely a powerful individual skilled in close-quarters combat. He ignored the powerful, flesh-and-blood attacks, relying on his physical advantage, and finally unleashed several corrosive venomous liquids capable of melting refined iron.
This kind of attack also widened the distance between them. It was only then that Masashi Sakuraba could clearly see the true appearance of this attacker.
The initially playful expression was inevitably tinged with surprise and strangeness, because the figure before him was far too young and… familiar.
