Toyokawa Shoko doesn't want to become a witch

Page 512

The fully covered demon mask has eyes like a tiger's eyes, round and fierce. It stares at Hailing, holding a large sword in both hands, just like the demon god in legends who has killed countless people. Under its hands, there may have been mountains of lives, whether human or witch.

A cloud obscured the moonlight.

The earth was plunged into darkness.

The eyes of the demon mask flickered like will-o'-the-wisps in the night.

Looking into those eyes, Hailing suddenly understood Timoris.

In that instant, she understood her future self.

No longer needing a home, no longer needing the trust of others, it feeds on slaughter and finds its home in battle; it is itself the world.

Hailing took a deep breath and plunged the tip of her knife into the ground.

The tip of the knife, embedded in the ground, was trembling slightly; it was the hand gripping the hilt that was shaking.

She was facing herself, who had fallen into the form of a war demon.

Everyone feels fear when facing an opponent who is stronger and more ferocious than themselves. Ordinary people can easily be overwhelmed by this fear, freeze on the spot, forget what they are supposed to do, and ultimately face death indifferently.

But Hailing swallowed her fear; she conquered it.

Blood rushed to her brain, and her thoughts became unusually clear. She licked her lips and swallowed the sweet, metallic taste of blood.

Faced with Hailing's stance, Timoris adopted a different approach.

It changed the way it gripped the handle, using two fingers to hold the handle, letting the blade extend along the direction of its arm, and placing it in front of its chest, crossing it into an X shape.

Then, the woman behind her used her other hands to clamp the tip of the blade.

"That's... holding the blade between your fingers, gathering power before striking, and then springing the blade out like a spring the moment you strike?" Meow Dream understood Timoris's stance. "It has four arms, so it can use two swords to strike this position..."

She then turned her gaze to Hailing, watching Hailing plunge the tip of the knife into the ground, blade forward, and grip the hilt with her backhand.

"So, Hai Zi is planning to use the ground to help him build up his power?" Miao Meng swallowed hard. "They plan to... decide the outcome in one move."

She suddenly realized that she might be watching an unprecedented duel.

Victory or defeat, life or death, will be decided in a single move.

"......"

"......"

As Miaomeng peered through the darkness, the two sides remained locked in a standoff. The moonlight was obscured by dark clouds, and the wind on the plain suddenly picked up, causing the leaves around the temple to flutter down like snow.

The fallen leaves landed on Hailing's head and Timoris's shoulder.

"A dark and windy night" is the most apt description.

At this moment, Hailing could no longer see the ghostly Timoris, nor could she see herself. Hailing closed her eyes, banishing the thought of "wanting to win" from her mind.

Under extreme pressure, she entered a state of selflessness.

The blade tip, piercing the ground, was positioned at a suitable angle for exerting force. The muscles were slightly tense, but not taut; instead, they maintained the most explosive form.

About ten meters away from Timoris, fallen leaves rustled by, their soft rustling sound only making the night seem even quieter.

One's heart, like these still leaves amidst movement, is quiet, poised to burst forth.

My body is like the wind, light and swift, covering a thousand miles in an instant.

You are the universe, and the universe is you.

Heaven and earth, life and death.

They overlap at this moment.

Dark clouds drifted across the sky, and the moon peeked out from behind them for the first time.

The moon rises, and so does the sword.

Ten meters, gone in the blink of an eye.

Timoris loosened his grip on the blades, freeing them from their restraint. Like a spring, the blades burst forth, unleashing an X-shaped double kasaya slash that theoretically sealed off all escape routes.

Three blades sliced ​​through the moonlight.

Hailing's body was split in an X-shaped crack in the middle, cut into four parts—or so it seemed.

it's not true.

The instant Timoris drew his sword, Hailin completely lost her balance and fell to the ground, passing under the double kesa slash. The blade, having been charged to its limit in the ground, shot upwards like a bullet, its silver light flashing across the center of the demon mask.

Timoris gripped the blade between his fingers, gathering his strength. He abandoned the horizontal swing, which was the fastest and most powerful, and instead used the double kesa slash, which had a wider range of blocking attacks from both sides. Because the double kesa slash was generated in conflicting directions, the power of his waist could not be fully utilized, and he only used the power of his four arms. Although his physical attributes were terrifying enough that even using only the power of his arms, he could kill with one blow.

However, Hailin gave up the chance to adjust her posture with her remaining strength and used a desperate attack, employing the power of her entire body and even the earth. At the moment of swinging the sword, she gripped the end of the hilt, forcibly extending the distance by ten centimeters, so that the tip of the blade could touch Timoris, who was much larger than her.

The demon mask was split in two by the blade, and Hailin's katana flew out of her hand, into the sky, crashed to the ground, and slid behind Timoris.

If that strike had been even a centimeter off, it would have been Hailing who died.

If it were a duel between people, it would have ended at this moment.

However, Timoris has another side.

The woman gripped the hilt of her sword, and a silver light flashed as she slashed downwards at Hailing.

when--!

The drawn sword struck the wakizashi.

Hailing positioned the scabbard in advance so that it could be drawn as quickly as possible, gripped the hilt with her backhand, and blocked the attack from the female Noh mask.

At the same time, all the wounds on her body that had been sealed by magic burst open, and the gushing blood gathered behind Hailing into a pair of hands and feet that slammed into the ground, propelling her backward.

Her body spun in the air, her hands gripping the wakizashi to block the counterattack after the Onna Nomen's Zanshin. Behind her, her hands, made of blood, gripped the falling katana, and before the Onna Nomen could unleash another Zanshin, she pierced the tip of the katana into the mask's brow.

The female Noh mask's movements also froze.

Hailing and Timoris, as if they had been paused, remained in the same position.

After a while.

Timoris's body crashed to the ground.

Hai Ling was covered in blood and barely breathing.

"I won."

The Tale of Reincarnation: Bonds - Chapter 678: Hope Beyond Reincarnation

When Xiangzi arrived, he saw Hailing standing on Timoris's corpse.

The dark clouds dispersed, and moonlight shone on Hailin, a white mist swirling around her. Hailin was covered in blood, one hand clutching the wakizashi that had saved her life, her blood-soaked arm slowly pulling the katana from Timoris's brow.

She looked extremely disheveled, her messy hair soaked with blood and sweat, her temples clinging to her cheeks, and sweat pouring down her body like a waterfall. The strip of cloth wrapped around her chest had turned a bloody pink from the sweat, rising and falling with the expansion and contraction of her lungs.

"Hai Ling......"

Xiangzi glanced at Timoris lying under Hailing, then looked at Hailing again.

"You, you took down Timoris all by yourself?"

Hearing the sound, Hailing turned her head, her gaze sweeping across the temple grounds, which had been ravaged by the battle and were now almost entirely devoid of intact land, and fixed on Xiangzi.

She slowly nodded, struggled to raise her arm, and gave a thumbs-up in Xiangzi's direction.

He's probably saying that he accomplished it.

As always, it had an inexplicably greasy feel, but Xiangzi didn't find it bad; this was the Hailing they knew.

Xiangzi breathed a sigh of relief and was about to say something when he saw Hailing, still holding the thumbs-up gesture, fall straight to the side.

After a fierce battle, even this simple action exhausted all her strength. After smiling at Xiangzi, Hailing's vision went black and she lost consciousness.

Miaomeng ran out from the shadows under the temple and helped Hailing.

"Oh my!" Miao Meng grinned exaggeratedly. "Hai Zi, please don't die!"

“She should be fine, but if you keep holding her without doing anything, things might change.” Xiangzi walked over, took out a Seed of Lamentation, and stuck it on Hailing’s almost entirely black Soul Gem to purify the filth inside.

Then she looked up and gave Miaomeng a reproachful look.

"What were you doing just now?"

"Hai Zi told me not to get involved." Miao Meng helplessly spread her hands. "If I forcefully intervene, it will only make things worse. I'll definitely be fine, but Hai Zi might not be, and Timoris might even run away."

"That makes a lot of sense, but it didn't mention what would happen if Hailing lost." Xiangzi poked Miaomeng's chest with his finger.

"Hai Zi asked me if I believed she could win," Miao Meng said. "What could I do?"

"Hmph." Xiangzi raised his chin. "I'm too lazy to argue with you. You and Hailing get out of the way. I want to see Timoris's corpse."

"Hi hi~"

Miaomeng picked up Hailing and stepped aside.

"But what do you want to do? Timoris's corpse will disappear in a little while. She's not a witch, so she won't leave anything behind—wait, what?"

Just as Miao was halfway through her sleep talking, she widened her eyes and watched as Xiangzi searched through Timoris's dissipating corpse, pulling out a small, pure black stone from Timoris's body.

“Isn’t this the Seed of Lamentation?!” Meow Dream’s face turned into yu? ?e ripples scattered wife (two) matters [4 Edvard Munch’s The Scream].

Previously, they confidently speculated that Timoris was merely a familiar of Nirvana, but now it seems that even if she was a familiar before, she has now grown into an independent witch?!

The remaining three, wouldn't they also—

"—Not yet. At least when it was killed by Hailing, it was still a familiar." Xiangzi held the pure black stone in his palm. "Look, it doesn't have the decorative patterns and metallic shell like the Seed of Lamentation."

Yes, that's right.

“However, it should only be the prototype of the Seed of Lamentation, and…” Xiangzi stared at the stone, on which some particles were faintly dissipating into the air. “You see, before it takes shape, it will dissipate into magic power along with the familiar itself.”

"No wonder no one has found this before. But Xiangzi, how do you know it exists?"

"It was just a lucky guess, a blind cat stumbling upon a dead mouse." Xiangzi took out his Soul Gem. "Because some things can only be done with the Seed of Lamentation."

The flower-shaped Soul Gem has a nearly continuous crack running through it, making it particularly eye-catching.

Xiangzi pressed the nascent seed of lamentation that was dissipating close to the crack on the Soul Gem. The dissipating particles seemed to be attracted by some kind of force, drifting towards the crack and eventually being completely absorbed into it.

In an instant, Miaomeng saw many complex lights flash in Xiangzi's eyes. Then, Xiangzi suddenly clutched his head in pain and knelt down.

"what--!"

Xiangzi clutched his head as if he wanted to crush it, and several times he tried to smash his head on the ground in pain.

"Are you alright?!" Miao Meng looked at her in horror, but she was still holding Hai Ling in her arms. She didn't know whether to put her down or not, so she jumped up and down anxiously.

"I—I'm fine—!" Xiangzi struggled to utter a few words, clenched his fists, and slammed them heavily on the ground. "I'll be fine in a little while!"

This situation lasted for about ten seconds before Xiangzi gradually calmed down.

"Tsk..." Xiangzi scrambled to his feet, his face pale, and clicked his tongue.

"What's wrong? What happened? What did you just do? Why do you look like that again?"

Miaomeng was still completely bewildered. She had no idea what Xiangzi had just been doing.

“The magic emanating from the Seed of Lamentation can be absorbed by my flowers.” Xiangzi sighed. “I originally intended to use this method to examine Timoris’s memories. I wanted to know the purpose of the Bremen Orchestra.”

She paused, then continued.

“They haven’t appeared in so many cycles, but suddenly they’ve reappeared…” Xiangzi said in a low voice. “They are crucial variables, perhaps they hold the hope of allowing us to transcend the cycle of reincarnation.”

"Did you see anything useful?"

“Timoris’s memories are too chaotic; it has no reason at all.” Xiangzi put his hands on his hips and shook his head helplessly. “All I see are images of Timoris constantly fighting, fighting, fighting, and fighting. All other memories are a mess, even the memories of when she was ‘Hachiman Kairin’.”

At this point, Xiangzi glanced again at Hailing, who was lying quietly in Miaomeng's arms.

“However, I can see what it was thinking when it fought Hailing,” Xiangzi said. “At least in the end it was satisfied, as a martial artist, being able to fight another martial artist to the death with a sword.”

The Tale of Reincarnation: Bonds - Chapter 679: I Don't Want to Remember the Past

Finally, Miaomeng and Xiangzi took Hailing back to her apartment and waited there until she woke up before leaving with peace of mind.

However, before leaving, Hailing called them back.

"Where are you going later?"

“I’m going to experience the nightlife,” Miaomeng said. “I want to have some fun.”