Editing Internet Shrine Maiden Tsugumi-chan:Volume1 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 9===

Betsuzaki Rainy was trembling behind cover.

Something was happening.

In this bizarre situation, she could hear living human beings being cooked like fried chicken.

That Hibashi-sama(?) woman enveloped in fire was strange. And not just compared to living humans. There was something different about her compared to the Malign Spirits that Rainy had seen.

In that hell of fire, heat, and death, the gyaru sister asked the online shrine maiden a question.

“Wh-wh-wh-wh-what do we do? C’mon, Mugikko, pull out your lighter and-”

She trailed off.

After taking a powerful step forward, the online shrine maiden staggered backwards.

No.

The Malign Spirit was melting the asphalt by her mere presence. The many embers erupting from her body rode the wind down to the seawater canal, where they instantly boiled the water’s surface, causing it to erupt.

Tsumugi went limp and stopped moving.

A tremendous wall of noise rattled the sisters’ eardrums.

“A steam explosion!?” shouted the straitlaced sister.

Had Tsumugi protected the sisters from the shockwave, knocking herself out in the process?

This wasn’t good.

They were helpless without their expert.

“Anyway!! Yuhi, we need to get out! Let’s take Mugikko with us and escape!!”

“O-okay, Onee-chan!”

They wanted to leave, but they couldn’t take a straight line.

If Hibashi-sama saw them and they drew her attention, their fate was sealed.

The parking lot was surrounded by tall fences and thick soundproofing sheets. A few young yakuza members tried climb over the fences, but the embers landed on them as they did. They immediately screamed. Those should only have been embers, but as soon as they touched their skin, they burst into flames like they had doused themselves in gasoline and lit a match.

It only took one. Misread how the wind would carry a single red speck and there was no avoiding it. And the density of embers was far too high.

They must have known today was a work day. Apparently their type didn’t always carry around homemade crossbows, electromagnetic guns, and other projectiles. They had turned violence into a business, but approaching this thing with only a knife or baton would be suicide.

“Are you serious? A single ember touching you is enough?”

“Onee-chan, it’s coming this way. We’re done for if she catches us!!”

Even with all the trucks and junk, this was still a parking lot. They couldn’t stay hidden for long.

It was time to make a decision.

They made their way toward the chain-link door while paying attention to the wind and the embers. First, they slid from behind the windowless work van to behind the prefab hut. The two sisters each grabbed one of the fainted online shrine maiden’s arms and dragged her with them. There was a fence blocking the way here too, but there was a gap they hadn’t noticed on their way in.

They ran into someone there.

He wore a sports brand track suit and a gold necklace around his exceptionally thick neck.

He had to be one of the yakuza members dumping the metal drum body.

The gyaru sister was wearing her school uniform, even if it was heavily modified. Being seen by him would normally be very bad indeed, but she had bigger concerns at the moment.

Before he could say a word, Rainy shouted over him.

“We can discuss this later! If you want to get out of here alive, you can’t let any of the embers touch you! This is crazy bad, but pay attention to the wind as you run and you can escape!! Probably!!”

“H-hold on, what the hell are you doing in-”

He was cut off by a series of explosive booms.

The unnaturally polished luxury cars in the filthy parking lot were detonating and launching themselves straight up. Probably along with someone turning the key in the ignition in the hopes of escaping. All that thick metal – yes, those were probably bulletproof cars – weren’t enough to shield you. Under the Groan’s effects, they were no more than metal coffins. Whether they ran on gasoline or lithium, they were now explosives. The twisted wreckage crashed down to the ground, spreading the flames further.

“Run for it!!” shouted the gyaru sister. “If you don’t want to die here, then run to the exit while keeping an eye on the wind!!”

Pushed on by her words, the young man nodded a few times and made a mad dash toward one edge of the parking lot.

The sisters didn’t have time to see if he made it.

They supported limp Tsumugi from either side and ran in a different direction to get out the way they had come in.

“Yuhi, what are we going to do about that fence!?”

“Oh, right. We built a crate staircase on the other side…”

If they were heading back the way they had come, they would run into that fence crossing the full width of the parking lot. They had pushed and stacked wooden crates to create stairs to get in, but it was still a flat wall on this side.

With that burning Hibashi-sama woman wandering around, they couldn’t afford to take their time pushing and stacking crates. Doing anything so conspicuous could easily draw her deadly attention.

They heard another explosion.

From a car. You couldn’t escape on foot or by car. It would be a miracle if the engine started at all during this disaster, but had the Groan caused it to malfunction, followed by a focused attack from Hibashi-sama?

But that blast caught the soundproofing sheets and knocked over an entire section of the fence.

Just as Hibashi-sama turned from the burning wreckage and directed her gaze this way, Rainy and Yuhi ran over the toppled fence. While dragging Tsumugi between them.

It was a mess.

Hearing a bloodcurdling scream, they thoughtlessly looked back. The woman in burial garb reached her arms around a man with a crew cut, causing him to instantly carbonize while a few men who seemed to be guards, frozen in fear, were hit by the storm of embers and burst into flames.

The sisters had no choice but to flee with all this going on.

When the gyaru sister spotted a man running aimlessly, she gestured to direct him upwind. When she ran across a large man fallen to the ground and too terrified to get back up, she pushed him behind a thick roadside tree to hopefully hide him. If avoiding direct contact from the embers was enough, then the leaves of a tree would be one way of staying safe.

Or so she hoped.

“Pant. Onee-chan, the exit, pant…is over there…”

“!!”

They pushed themselves through the gap between the fences to finally make it outside.

But that didn’t mean they could rest.

A nearby fence covered with soundproofing sheet seemed to distort before it glowed orange and melted.

“Sh-she’s not bound by the haunted canal? She can follow us!!”

“Run, Yuhi!!”

They had suspected this.

Hibashi-sama probably had nothing to do with the Vanishing Canal. She was a worse Malign Spirit.

That they had clung to some faint hope in the backs of heir minds showed just how close the sisters were to their limit. This was like arriving at the goal of an endurance race only to be told it was time for Lap 2. Nevertheless, they gritted their teeth and kept on running, dragging the online shrine maiden with them. Because the only alternative was death.

“How’s Mugikko!?”

“Pant, still unconscious. Pant.”

Look to the bright side. At least she wasn’t burned too badly to move and required immediate treatment.

Something.

Somewhere.

Just running wasn’t enough. Wasn’t there some kind of trump card that could defeat Hibashi-sama!?

“Yuhi, there!!”

“What, Onee-chan? Phew, is there something there!?”

Rainy was out of breath. She didn’t have time to answer the question.

The two of them dragged the online shrine maiden between them as they crossed a narrow bridge. The concrete bridge was narrow enough two kei trucks would have trouble passing each other on it.

A sign for an electric scooter charging/parking station was visible on the curb across the bridge, but that wasn’t their goal. They had already seen cars malfunctioning or exploding. Besides, those electronic vehicles weren’t going to function with a real Malign Spirit after them.

And this was the worst of the worst: a Quintuple Dread Star.

Hibashi-sama, the burning woman in burial clothes, smiled within the flames.

Her long, unnaturally long, head slowly swayed side to side.

She was clearly in pursuit. Her original target must have been the yakuza group, so could she change targets on a whim? Or did no one else remain below the elevated railroad anymore?

“Onee-chan!!”

“We can still make it! We just have to get that ghost woman to cross a narrow pathway with no escape!!”

The gyaru sister pushed past her lack of oxygen to shout out her words.

Once across the bridge, she turned around, searched through the online shrine maiden’s large sleeves, and pulled out the old oil lighter.

She lit something. It was the size of a relay baton.

The Vanishing Canal…had actually been a yakuza body dumping site and she had found this item in that strange parking lot.

It was a construction explosive.

She tossed it like a long throw in baseball.

Toward Hibashi-sama who was approaching them from the center the bridge.



''Boom!!!



It erupted.

The thick metal railings and guardrails were blasted outwards and the small concrete bridge itself bent.

“Pant…gasp…”

Rainy fell onto her rear and gasped for breath.

She had used the online shrine maiden’s oil lighter – the Imperial Exorcism Igniter. And this time she had lit a high power construction explosive rather than fireworks. The basic power had to be far greater. In fact, the gyaru sister who had thrown the tube had been bowled over by the blast.

It had definitely hit its target.

With the narrow bridge, the amateur gyaru sister had created a situation where even she was guaranteed to hit.

She had done everything right. This should have eliminated the Malign Spirit.

''And yet…



::Hee

:::::<span style="font-size:125%">Hee</span>    <span style="font-size:75%">hee</span>



She heard laughter.

The woman known as Hibashi-sama twisted in amusement while still enveloped in flames.

The gyaru sister’s eyes widened.

“No way. A blast like that didn’t even scratch her!?”

“But wait, Onee-chan. There’s something about her,” said Yuhi.

Hibashi-sama was certainly unscathed, but she remained on the opposite bank. She did not cross the damaged bridge or teleport directly behind them.

She and the sisters stood on opposite sides of the damaged bridge.

However, it didn’t feel like an invisible boundary divided them.

She could cross at any time, but she was entertaining herself by staying on that side.

It was unclear why that was, but the Malign Spirit showed no signs of frustration.

Her unnaturally long head turned away just once. Briefly. As if she had just remembered an appointment she was late for.

She was clearly enjoying this. Putting off her feast.

…Rainy still felt conflicted about what happened at the Rending Pool. About the coldhearted way the online shrine maiden had executed the small child’s spirit without asking anyone’s advice. That was true. But if it was a question of right or wrong, Yahirodono Tsumugi was right. Overwhelmingly so. The gyaru sister thought so. As an unpleasant sweat dripped down her face.

Malign Spirits were part death, so trying to converse with them or send them to heaven was suicide.

Any optimistic and convenient thoughts by living humans to that end were meaningless.

Hibashi-sama extended a slender fiery hand to point the sisters’ way with fire tongs over a meter long.

No, she was pointing at limp Tsumugi’s face.



:L   e   t   ’   s

::p   l   a   y

:::s   o   o   n



Something exploded.

The flames and heat were dozens of times greater than the ones the gyaru sister had produced. They blasted up toward heaven like a fiery tornado. The girls hadn’t been directly hit, but they were sent tumbling backwards. If they had remained on the other bank, not even their bones would have remained. In all seriousness, the asphalt and concrete pavement melted red and flew up into the air.

The bridge fell.

This went beyond the fates of individuals. The scenery itself changed to display her rule.

<span style="font-size:75%">Cackle</span> cackle <span style="font-size:125%">cackle cackle</span> cackle cackle <span style="font-size:75%">cackle cackle</span> cackle <span style="font-size:125%">cackle cackle cackle</span> cackle!!!

Leaving only hideous laughter behind, it all vanished.

To an unnatural degree.