Editing Internet Shrine Maiden Tsugumi-chan:Volume1 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 12===

As the night breeze dragged the incense smoke along, some outlines came into view.

It flickered in and out in time with the halogen lights.

What stood in the center of the brand-new drawbridge appeared to be a young woman. She had short red hair and wore a short-sleeve blouse, black slacks, and a cardigan to protect her from the sun. Her lowered head created a shadow blocking her face from view. But something else drew the eye more than the face. Her hands were both more than meter across and directly gripped the ground. She had another giant hand at the back of her hips, making her look something like a twisted version of a nine-tailed fox.

This was the Ghastly Crusher, the Malign Spirit haunting the Mincemeat Drawbridge. If nothing was done about her, she would cause more and more tragedy here. She crushed and killed people who crossed this bridge.

And even if she didn’t know exactly how it worked, someone was risking her one and only life here.

Betsuzaki Rainy.

“Oh, god. Oh, god. Oh, god. I can see it. Wh-wh-wh-what, it’s there, what am I supposed to do…?”

She was scared. Terrified.

This wasn’t a figure of speech or intangible bad luck. It was here. It was definitely right here! A ghost. Ordinarily, she would have bolted.

But she didn’t.

Get it together, me.

There’s an expert here and a chance like this won’t come again. Don’t miss this tailwind. This professional has clashed with these things countless time and lived to tell the tale, so you can defeat this ghost. That alone is enough to say you’re really damn lucky here.

“Hey, get lost, you occult ghost! You don’t get to just appear and disappear and mess with people’s lives whenever you want! So go back to hell where you- '''dbfhhhh'''!!?”

Rainy was launched to the side by a kick from the online shrine maiden. A merciless one.

The Ghastly Crusher made her move a moment later. One of her giant hands dropped down as if swatting a fly.



''Kathoooom!!!



The bridge sank down.

It truly lowered by more than 5 centimeters. Not only did the metal cry out in protest, but it audibly snapped in places. Nuts thick enough to fit one’s thumb through broke and tore through the air like bullets.

One hit from that was all it would take. It would mean instant death. They would be crushed beyond recognition.

Forgetting all about the pain of being kicked or having the breath knocked out of her, the gyaru sister trembled down on the ground.

Her mind was blank.

“You’re…kidding.”

“Generally speaking, you can’t afford to take even a single attack from a Malign Spirit. Not even from a fingertip or a single hair. Do not even consider grabbing at one of those monsters!”

“Then!? How are we supposed to fight-”

With a “fwoosh!!”, bright sparks swept away the shadows.

The shrine maiden had lit a bottle rocket with her oil lighter. She appeared to have a lot hidden both up her sleeves and in the triangular cut-outs in the sides of her hakama. She operated multiple fireworks with one hand, fanning them out.

They sliced through the air.

Several lights rapidly pierced the flickering figure in the incense smoke and then exploded inside her.

There was a scream.

The mysterious ghost reeled back. Large pieces had been painfully torn from her.

Rainy’s legs were still shaky, but she managed to roll further away as she shouted.

“It’s working. Oh, is that why you gave me a firework before!?”

Without taking her eyes off the Malign Spirit, Tsumugi tossed something over to Rainy: a bundle of incense sticks. Rainy somehow managed to catch them in one hand and then realized they were burning with an orange flame.

“Whoa!? Hey!!”

“The fireworks aren’t special. They will only damage Malign Spirits when lit by the pure flame of this oil lighter – the Imperial Exorcism Igniter!”

So even if she couldn’t hand over the lighter itself, its power could be shared using incense sticks and candles? Then these were crucial items. The gyaru sister hurriedly adjusted her grip on the incense sticks. She didn’t want to carelessly extinguish them.

“O-okay. But ghosts are dead, so what even counts as defeating them?”

“''By utterly destroying their twisted and broken soul''.”

“Destroy- wait? You mean helping them fulfill some hidden feelings or regrets so they can pass on to heaven or whatever!?”

“Going to heaven is not a part of Shinto.”

After reeling back from the bottle rocket, the Ghastly Crusher leaned forward again to correct her posture.

“You can’t expect anything so emotional from the shrine maiden of a shrine that conquers its enemies.”

A red and white wind roared.

This time, the shrine maiden rushed toward the Ghastly Crusher.

She kept low and moved sharply.

In response, the Malign Spirit swung a meter-long hand diagonally down.

But the shrine maiden’s large sleeves drew out a swirling circle as she twirled out of the way.

She ended up exactly back-to-back with the Ghastly Crusher which was partially swung around by the force of her own arm.

No, she did more than just evade.

As she moved past, she wrapped a very long bundle of firecrackers around the Ghastly Crusher’s neck.

A series of dry blasts rang out. There was no blood. But the lit firecrackers tore a large chunk from the side of the ghost woman’s neck. Enough for her entire head to be tilted at an angle. The gyaru sister shouted aloud without thinking.

“That’s doing real damage… Even though that thing may not even have physical shape or weight!!”

With a roar, the Ghastly Crusher tore the still-erupting firecrackers from her neck and approached once more.

The Malign Spirit swung her giant arm to the side and a guardrail thicker than the girl’s head burst like a balloon. A hit from that would likely obliterate the online shrine maiden’s body, but still it did not hit.

The attack found only air.

The black-haired girl leaned backwards until she performed a bridge and her left hand touched the ground. She let the attack pass overhead. Then the shrine maiden gathered strength in her left hand and left leg to send herself spinning sharply through the air. This avoided a second slap meant to attack lower, down at her feet. Before Tsumugi even landed, she ignited bottle rockets in midair to send another series of close-range attacks toward the Ghastly Crusher.

They stabbed into every part of the Malign Spirit’s body and detonated within to blow away more and more of her silhouette. The ghost screamed as she was filled with hole after fist-sized hole.

(Wow…)

Rainy was absorbed by the scene before her.

Not only by the online shrine maiden’s movements, but by how unfazed she was by these close calls with death. She was used to this. She even gave off a refined sort of beauty. She performed a deadly dance that wielded flames and explosives while moving along a series of circular paths.

However, the gyaru sister couldn’t assist her when she was moving so quickly. She had a firework, but with those two trading places so rapidly, she could end up burning the online shrine maiden’s back if she tried.

The air moved.

The range didn’t matter. The ghost launched a remote attack. The incense smoke was disturbed and a giant invisible hand of more than 5 meters dropped toward the online shrine maiden’s head like a suspended ceiling.

The asphalt sank down like clay and the drawbridge that had to weigh thousands of tons creaked.

But she was unharmed.

Yahirodono Tsumugi had stepped forward to escape toward the little finger side of the giant wrist.

As big as it was, a hand was still a hand. And even with a remote attack, the ghost apparently needed to move her own hand. So by moving to the little finger side, the ghost’s own lowered hand and wrist would get in the way of attacking with the other hand. Tsumugi fired more bottle rockets. The young woman Malign Spirit let out a discordant scream and staggered back. Tsumugi twirled out of the way of the retaliating hand and readied additional fireworks.

That was when a large mass swayed and its weight moving in the opposite direction of the online shrine maiden’s own movement slightly slowed the sharp reversal of her side step. That mass was her chest.

“…I can’t stand these things.”

Then she launched another series of attacks. At first glance, it looked like the professional, the online shrine maiden, was unilaterally winning.

But something wasn’t right.

As unilateral as it was, the fighting never seemed to end. ''She couldn’t actually defeat the ghost''.

Tsumugi had perfect accuracy but couldn’t deliver a finishing blow. The Ghastly Crusher had slower attacks, but a single hit would mean instant death. Even after all this, the Malign Spirit was still the one in control. The black-haired shrine maiden raised her voice.

“This isn’t my attacks being deflected. It’s more like they’re not reaching her at all? Her core may be elsewhere. If you don’t have anything better to do, then go search for something!!”

“C-can’t you give me anything better than ‘something’!?”

“The Ghastly Crusher!! ''Where on this bridge did she die''!?”