Editing Internet Shrine Maiden Tsugumi-chan:Volume1 Chapter3 (section)

===Part 3===

Their phone lights and flashlights weren’t going to work anymore. They couldn’t rely on those LED light sources.

Tsumugi lit a bundle of incense sticks with the old oil lighter.

If the Malign Spirit wasn’t visible, she only had to improve the conditions for visibility. Like light spilling in through the gap in a curtain transformed into a single beam by the dust in the room.

It was near one of the bonbori-shaped construction lights that flickered like the beating of a heart.

An unnatural shadow hovered there.

The pool’s surface rippled. The enormous shadow floating there suddenly rose up.

The gyaru sister immediately tried to push down the straitlaced sister and the online shrine maiden kicked Yuhi to send both sisters tumbling. And just as they fell…



''Vwoosh!!!



A shape larger than a van burst from the water and flew in a large arch through open air. After failing to devour its target, the thing crossed the poolside to crash headfirst into more water.

“A sha-” Rainy shouted from the hard poolside where she lay holding her trembling sister. “A shark!? What was that!? It looked like a huge-ass shark!?”

“That distinctive white and black pattern and the neat rows of teeth… No, that was a killer whale, Onee-chan!!”

“Don’t bother trying to identify it. This is something else taking that form.”

The Ghastly Crusher had had hands meters across, but she hadn’t had a body like that in life. This was just a more extreme version of that.

Had it left the range of the incense smoke, or could it swim below the bottom of the pool once it was in the water? It had to be bigger than the pool’s depth in places, yet it managed to hide below the surface of the water. With something like that hiding invisibly in the pool, it would be surprising if people weren’t dying.

Wasn’t its tentative name the Watery Gnawer? That seemed apt.

The 8m long killer whale was the most powerful mammal. But this wasn’t actually one, nor was it it an abandoned pet that’s resentment for its owner turned it into a ghost.

Outside of some highly unusual exceptions, Malign Spirits were generally the human dead transformed.

There was no real requirement for the Malign Spirit to actually part the water’s surface as it swam around. The Watery Gnawer was fixated on showing off its size. That sense of feeling big when wielding a powerful weapon was unmistakably human.

The online shrine maiden pushed the lit bundle of incense sticks into the gyaru sister’s hands.

“Split the fire between the two of you! You chose some fireworks back at the office, right? Fighting and winning is the only path to survival here!!”

“Hey, wait. That’s a killer whale, right? The thing swims, so wouldn’t it be a good idea to keep away from the pool? Let’s make a party full of snipers who can chip away at its HP! I’m saying we should keep a safe distance and start shooting fireworks like craz-”

A black shape climbed up from the edge of the pool.

That was no killer whale. It was a hideous monster with countless thick octopus or squid tentacles attached to the back of a ferocious killer whale’s arrowhead-shaped head. Had it unraveled? Maybe it was something like an enormous, violent tadpole with many, many tails.  Each of the tentacles’ suckers waslarger than the girls’ heads.

“Does that look like a simple sea creature to you?”

“!!!?”

The terrified gyaru sister frantically searched her skirt pocket and found a fish sausage. It felt like a waste, but it would serve as a valuable decoy. She tore the thin wrapper off with her mouth and tossed it to the water to their side like fish bait.

The monster didn’t even glance that way.

It was coming for them. Using its many tentacles to lumber along the poolside.

“No way, whyyy!?”

Seeing the gyaru sister tearful and frozen in fear, the online shrine maiden sighed and pulled several bottle rockets from her large sleeve. She lit them and sent them toward the Watery Gnawer. She drew its attention toward herself.

That turned its back to the gyaru sister.

Rainy immediately aimed a single huge firework tube toward it.

“N-now’s my chance!!”

The many tentacles parted and something else emerged.

A new shark head. But the snout narrowed down unusually, becoming something like a long, long horn.

Was it a sawshark? It almost looked like a fencing saber.

Rainy did not want to be run through by that thing.

And that wasn’t the only new head. Like a giant flower, a total of five heads were spread out in different directions. There was no front and back to it now. The gyaru sister’s eyes widened.

“What the hell!? That one’s an astropecten starfish! Or is it a feather star!?”

“You know some unusual things, Onee-chan.”

“For all the good it does us here! So can it turn into any sea creature!? Whoa, here it comes!!”

The Watery Gnawer’s saber-like protrusion thrust sharply forward.

The air was compressed.

But Rainy’s body was not rent apart.

Just as Yuhi used her incense sticks to light the fuse, lots of colorful smoke obscured their view.

She created a smokescreen.

A thick octopus or squid tentacle swept out horizontally to slash through the air.

At its tip was a giant spiny shell resembling a turban shell. A giant clam’s shell could weigh more than 200kg and this rivaled that. It acted like a giant morning star or a crane’s wrecking ball.

But the straitlaced sister’s magnesium flash diverted its aim.

When the blunt weapon loudly crashed down, all the poolside’s tiles were torn up.

It wasn’t very powerful, but Yuhi’s firework had managed to divert the enemy attack and protect her loved one.

One’s choice of firework reflected who they were. This was different from the online shrine maiden’s focus on lethality with bottle rockets and firecrackers and also different from the gyaru sister’s love of flashy things.

“Oh, right. Rainy…”

The online shrine maiden looked around to see Rainy was running sharply out from the smokescreen. In fact, she continued on and jumped straight over the 2-3m wide pool. Like a competitive skateboarder or climber, she actively used the obstacles to her advantage. But while they had managed to turn aside the Malign Spirit, they would be in trouble if it figured out their pattern. Because Malign Spirits were originally human.

Targeting it with fireworks from multiple directions gave them an advantage, but it also increased the risk.

(I need to support both sisters soon! I can’t let the Watery Gnawer remain in control!!)

Tsumugi clenched her teeth. Even at a distance, she had to stay sharp.

The drum-sized shell resembling a turban shell or a Venus comb was cut away from the swinging squid tentacle and thrown. That spiky blunt weapon could tear flesh and bone.

Unlike a round ball, it bounced to the sides, making it hard to dodge.

When Tsumugi attempted to avoid it, something grabbed her right leg.

No. At some point barnacles had grown up, linking her sandal to the poolside tile.

“Tch!!”

She dropped a firecracker to blast the barnacles, but that meant wasting two seconds.

Letting it touch her was a problem in and of itself, but she would have to worry about that later. At more than 200kg, the blunt weapon was as heavy as a large motorcycle. She ducked low to just barely avoid the giant bouncing spiral shell.

She heard the chain link fence behind her bending and tearing. That would have been her had it hit her.

“Damn you!!”

The gyaru sister ran in and launched a series of twenty bottle rockets like a machinegun. The thing used its tentacles to side step out of the way, but the band of light pursued and finally hit. The Malign Spirit tried to escape into the pool, but it seemed to have swollen too large to move well. The killer whale head cut off the other four heads and leaped quickly toward the water with the sucker-covered tentacles trailing behind. It flew in a large arc.

Rainy staggered to a stop and clicked her tongue.

“It’s too fast!! And blasting it with all that wasn’t enough to take it down!!”

“Then we just have to hold it in place and hit it with everything we have. Yuhi-san.”

“Eh? Me?”

“Only you can do this.”