Editing The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village:Volume2 Chapter 4 (section)

===Part 16 (Jinnai Shinobu)===

My uncle drove the electric truck down the narrow farm road with rice paddies on either side. The twintailed girl in the passenger seat followed the path of the parachute with binoculars.

“Oh, dear. …She’s being blown away! She’s going to end up on the mountain at this rate, detective!!”

“That’s better than landing on a private farm. If she gets caught on one of the high voltage nets to keep out intruders, it’s all over.”

It was all I could manage to hunker down enough so as not to be thrown out of the truck as it bounced around.

Hishigami Mai seemed perfectly calm next to me. She hummed while pulling a handgun with a suppressor out from the chest of her yukata.

“Hey, can we really handle this entire witch’s group at once like this?”

“Leave it to me. If I am right, they will almost certainly fall for this trap. They are an annoying force to handle head on, but as long as…you do not…face them…head…on…”

“?”

I frowned as I started having difficulty hearing her.

I then smelled a sweet aroma.

And just as the light truck turned onto the mountain road to pursue the parachute…

I suddenly lost all feeling from my surroundings.

The next thing I knew, I was wrapped in some kind of fog. I looked around while standing. And then something else occurred to me. Why was I standing? I had been hunkered down in the back of the truck to make sure I was not thrown out.

Where was I?

Had I been dragged out of that truck racing along well above the speed limit?

Who had managed that without harming me at all?

“It is a simple magic circle. It is not even worth calling a barrier,” said a female voice. “Now, if you were able to predict I would head toward an even better target if one appeared, why did you not realize ''I would change my target again if one even more important than Hyakki Yakou’s leader showed up?''

''Eh?

''You can’t mean…

“This was all to attack me!?”

I was not given enough time to take action based on the caution welling up in my chest.

Something moved with tremendous speed, ripped apart the thick fog, and ''forcefully grabbed my collar.

Yes. This “something” had a hand and five fingers with which to grab at me.

“Gah…ghhh…!?”

I was lifted up. My legs dangled down in midair. It may have just been the excessive thickness of the fog, but that motion was all it took for the ground to disappear from view below me.

However, the sight that lay before me was so strange that I did not particularly care about being lifted up.

What had grabbed me was a giant tree.

However, it had countless arms stretching out in place of branches, hands blooming in place of flowers, long, narrow legs wriggling along the ground in place of roots, and smooth woman’s skin in place of bark.

Someone was leaning up against the creepy trunk that curved like a woman’s waist.

This person was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman wearing a simple shirt, a miniskirt, and a raincoat despite the weather. The look in her eyes was hidden by the wide brim of her hat. The various individual items could be bought anywhere, but the silhouette they all created together reminded me of an existence I had seen in picture books.

Namely, a witch.

“Horrible, isn’t it? I’m sure you understand the general situation, but unlike European witches, we live in an environment that makes using traditional demons difficult. I had no choice but to take the methods used to turn old gods into evil gods and use them to turn a Japanese Youkai into a demon. That was enough to force some magic out of it.”

“This is…a Youkai…?”

I could feel my face stiffening as I looked at the grotesque tree before me. I had lived in this Intellectual Village for a long time, but I had never seen a monster like this. Nor had I ever heard of one from my grandparents.

But the blonde-haired, blue-eyed witch smoothly said, “Yes. Haven’t you heard of a Furutsubaki?”

“That’s a Japanese camellia tree that has built up great power over the years. They can transform into a girl, but they don’t turn into something this messed up!!”

“No, they don’t. Japanese Packages simply borrow the skills of Youkai, but Western witches ''distort the physical body of their object of worship into something else entirely.'' We give them a form much easier for a human to use.”

“You’re…kidding…”

“About what? What is needed to efficiently control an existence that exceeds humanity is not flexible negotiation skills or plentiful offerings. ''You need to remake their hardware into a form that must do what a human tells it to.''”

An unpleasant feeling ran down my spine.

I had subconsciously decided Packages that assisted in crimes were horrible, but this went well beyond that. This was the same as deciding to give someone 20 eyeballs in order to more efficiently extract tears from them. Just how much suffering and humiliation did one endure while having one’s face and form twisted in order to wring out every last drop of power?

This was the symbol of a culture.

This was overwriting and covering up a paranormal existence.

Was this why witches had been shunned throughout history?

Even as that lifelike arm grabbed at my collar so tightly I had trouble breathing, I forced out a few words.

“Why are you…targeting me…?”

“''I said I prepared this because I had no other choice, remember?'' It all comes down to that. I do not care about the economic damage the Australian government is so concerned about. I want to make a contract with a powerful being and borrow its power. I was originally planning to turn an old god into a demon and borrow that, but I found something much more interesting in this Intellectual Village. Something even more interesting than a manual on turning gods into demons or the leader of Hyakki Yakou.”

“You…don’t mean…”

I immediately thought of the secret base in the attic.

This witch was actually after…

“A Succubus. She is a traditional European demon. Compared to a forcibly distorted local god, she is much more certain and holds much less danger of causing any problems with my rituals. Would you choose the genuine item or an emulation? That is what this comes down to.”

“Then why didn’t you directly target our house? As soon as Hishigami Mai left, you could have easily abducted the Succubus!!”

“No, that wouldn’t work. Remember when that Succubus arrived? She used a delivery service, right?”

“How do you know that?”

“I have some of my people in the highest levels of Hyakki Yakou.”

I was not sure that totally explained it, but it was possible Hyakki Yakou really did know everything that had happened.

“The package label functioned as a sort of contract. The package was sent to Jinnai Shinobu, so the Succubus inside became your possession. But you could say that was the same as her taking you hostage. If anyone wants to damage or abduct the Succubus, they must first kill you. She predicted that Hyakki Yakou’s leader would be unable to eliminate ''the normal person who she owed a debt to thanks to the coup d’etat'', so she used that condition as a shield.”

“…”

''That goddamn demon!! I’m seriously going to punch her after this is over!!

“Anyway, you are in the way of any new contract with that Succubus, so I need you to die. I will retrieve the Succubus afterwards. And of course, I will slaughter anyone who gets in my way.”

''Not good.

''Not good, not good!!

I had been worried ever since someone like this entered the Intellectual Village, but now she was targeting my house.

But what could I do? That creepy “branch” was still holding me up in the air by my collar. Was there anything a normal high school boy armed with only his wits could hope to do against a witch who Hishigami Mai had said she would be evenly matched against?

Her eyes were covered by the wide brim of her hat, but the witch’s lips twisted into a smile.

“Oh, and do not think Hishigami Mai will come to save you. The magic circle isolates this space. I mixed in the oil of the Furutsubaki to pour demonic power into a ceremony that defines the scope of a temple using incense, but it should be enough. At the very least, no one will be able to break in for 12 hours and it has been made so no one will even notice anyway.”

“Wait…a second…”

“I didn’t really need to go this far to kill a single amateur, but I want to keep this information away from Hishigami Mai until I have secured the Succubus. I am not going to take my time and kill you over 12 hours, so do not worry.”

“''That’s not what I meant,''” I muttered. “''If this is really so secure, then who is that behind you?''”

“?”

The witch looked confused and turned around.

And she found…