Toyokawa Shoko doesn't want to become a witch

Page 474

"Think about it, think carefully. You've received professional training," Xiangzi whispered in her ear. "I'm here to protect you. Don't worry, I'm always here for you."

Medine glanced uncomfortably at the people watching her, her cheek muscles twitching slightly. She was currently in a state of extreme emotional conflict, unsure of whom or what she should believe.

However, Xiangzi simply looked at her, waiting for her answer.

"Aren't you a real person...?"

I don't know why Medine would say that.

However, Xiangzi quickly realized what was happening and continued what Medien had said.

“Yes, I am also part of your subconscious, your ‘bodyguard’,” Xiangzi replied flexibly.

As soon as those words were spoken, everything returned to normal. The diners and staff who had stopped to watch them went back to their own business, and the noisy sounds returned to the restaurant.

Xiangzi breathed a slight sigh of relief.

They managed to fool Medine's subconscious.

But that's not enough. The real guards are under Alina's control, and they were definitely discovered just now.

"Someone is trying to threaten your safety in your dream." Xiangzi suddenly stood up, looking uneasily at the restaurant stage, where several women performing still had their eyes fixed on them.

Xiangzi had no idea when these women, dressed like Japanese geishas, ​​appeared.

"It's not safe here, we have to leave quickly."

"Can...can you protect me?"

“I was born for this.” Xiangzi turned his head again, leaned close to Mu’s ear, and lowered his voice, “Mu, could you please send a few away? Wait for my notification later.”

She tossed a pair of (nine) zero pomegranates to Mu, then finished playing chess and walked the talkie.

“Speaking words aloud is unreliable; this is reproduced using my own magic.”

"Okay." Mu took the walkie-talkie. "Should we go find Miaomeng and meet up?"

"You go first, I'll take Medine to a safe place."

"it is good."

“Well then, Miss Medien.”

No need for honorifics.

"Medion, are you ready to run away with me?" Xiangzi asked, taking her hand with a confident and charming smile.

The Tale of Reincarnation: The Path of Fall, the Road of No Return: Chapter 626 The Force Grants Me Power (Not Really)

As Xiangzi led Median away from the lobby, he glanced back at her.

Sure enough, the geishas who were putting on an act immediately left their original positions and walked towards them.

It's already highly illogical for a geisha to appear in such a place; her white face covered in white powder appearing in a hotel lobby with a loft-style decor creates a strong sense of incongruity.

However, after leading Medien into the hotel corridor, Xiangzi noticed that the corridor's decor seemed to have changed. It had transformed from a standard hotel corridor into one with a more futuristic, Japanese-style feel, resembling a hotel set in a near-future world. The elevator lobby had also been significantly lengthened, making it completely different from when she arrived.

Xiangzi frowned.

She held Medine's hand and walked down the corridor for a long time, turning several corners as they had come in, but still couldn't find the right way.

be lost?

It's not that simple.

"Mu, can you hear me?" Xiangzi picked up the walkie-talkie.

"Hello, this is Amoris~" came the voice of Meow Dream from the other end of the walkie-talkie, "We've met up, what brings you here?"

"I'm trapped here. The witch's control over the barrier has increased significantly, and many scenes have been replaced," Xiangzi said. "Be careful."

"Should I come find you? You don't know the way, do you?"

"No need, I can manage it myself. If it really doesn't work out, there are other options."

"No, I'd rather come to you."

"Wait! You'd better not break up your place!"

"Nyanko has come to find you." The voice on the other end of the walkie-talkie changed to Hailing. "Muto and I will go downstairs to plant the bomb first."

"...and disobedient again." Xiangzi muttered to himself.

“Although now is not the time to say these things, she is also worried about you.” Hai Ling was halfway through her sentence when it seemed like something came from the other end of the walkie-talkie.

A kind of unpleasant friction sound, like a dull saw rubbing against sheet metal.

"Let's not talk now, the enemy is coming our way."

After that, the walkie-talkie was left with only a buzzing white noise.

Xiangzi put down the walkie-talkie and found that the strange friction sound he had heard on the walkie-talkie earlier did not seem to have disappeared.

come yet.

She pulled Medion close to the wall, her free hand drawing the gunblade from the Soul Gem.

The sound of friction grew closer, mixed with the sound of gears turning.

"What...what is that sound?" Medine hid behind Xiangzi in fear. "Is it one of those bad guys you mentioned?"

She now completely trusts Xiangzi and mistakes the guards Alina sent to obstruct Xiangzi's safety for dream thieves who are after her.

Just as she was speaking, the source of the voice finally emerged from behind the corner.

Those geisha who just chased after us.

They are actually the same kind of thing that Xiangzi saw outside the sedan chair, the small white dots that covered the entire space.

Now, apart from their kimonos, they are completely unrecognizable as human. They walk on all fours, some clinging vertically to the walls, others crawling along the ceiling.

The corridor was only about two meters wide, not very spacious, and several puppets completely blocked Xiangzi's intended path forward.

The distance is getting closer.

Xiangzi raised his hand and shielded Medine behind him.

“Back off,” she said.

The words fell.

Whoosh-!

A ceramic arm, its structure unfolding, suddenly stretched out towards Xiangzi. The ceramic-textured knuckles grazed Xiangzi's nose and left a scratch on the wall.

The battle commenced completely in that instant.

Xiangzi raised his hand and severed the puppet's outstretched arm, while another security guard emerged from under his companion's armpit. Its leg bones, with their joints bent backward, folded and sprang out like a praying mantis, arriving in front of Xiangzi in the blink of an eye.

Their heads appeared capable of rotating 360 degrees, exceeding the limits of human joints. All their joints, too, moved stiffly, each movement pushing beyond human limits. Just as they were about to reach Xiangzi, the inhuman joints suddenly gripped the wall, halting their forward momentum, and opened their mouths towards Xiangzi.

At this distance, Xiangzi could see their faces clearly.

The face covered in white powder revealed its true appearance under the movement; the skin was actually made of porcelain, and the exposed part was even paler than the part covered by makeup.

The puppet opened its mouth, revealing neat, black-painted teeth. A slit opened between its jaw and cheek, revealing honeycomb-like tubes in its wide-open mouth.

boom----!

Flames erupted just inches from Xiangzi, slamming into the wall and burning the wallpaper black.

However, it wasn't the flame from the gun barrel that the puppet was talking about, but rather the gun blade in Xiangzi's hand.

The gunblade pierced through the puppet's head the instant it opened its mouth, then the trigger was pulled, leaving a charred mark on the hotel wall from the flames.

Then she took a half-step to the puppet with its severed hand, and using the recoil from the bullet, she struck its temple with the hilt of her sword.

The sound of shattering ceramic rang out, and the puppet's face, after cracking several times, broke into pieces, revealing the gears meshing and turning mechanism inside. A pair of mechanical eyes exposed to the air stared straight at Xiangzi.

The next instant, a threaded gun pierced the puppet's brain, spinning violently, sparks flying from the friction between the gears, and mechanical gears flying everywhere.

Xiangzi glanced around and roughly counted the number of enemies.

Four, five, six, seven... there are eight left.

But they were all crammed into the corridor, where the space was too small to surround themselves.

Is there a way to catch them all at once? It's too time-consuming to do it one by one.

Just then, Xiangzi noticed that as the security guards moved, their joints exposed to the air seemed to be gleaming with some kind of light.

That was an electric spark.

They are electrically powered.

Xiangzi's eyes lit up immediately. He used his shoulder to push aside a puppet less than 20 centimeters away from him, and a grenade-like object reappeared in his empty left hand.

With one hand pulling the pin, Xiangzi threw the grenade.

Jingle, jingle.

The grenade bounced twice on the ground and came to rest between the security guards. The guards stopped what they were doing and looked at the black object that had suddenly fallen between them.

Zzzzz!

Blue arcs of electricity spread outwards, and the eyes of the security guards, which had been flashing red indicator lights, suddenly dimmed, collapsing limply to the ground. Several security guards, already bearing the damage caused by Xiangzi, exploded into fragments with flashes of electricity at the damaged locations.

Amidst the flying sparks and mechanical parts, Xiangzi glimpsed a stray body that had escaped the EMP grenade's blast radius. It crawled across the ceiling, attempting to make its way towards Medien's direction.

"Ah—!" Medine clutched her head. "Help me!"

Wait, they really have feelings for Medine?!

The gunmen sniping from the shadows on the upper level—did they really want to kill Medien?!

Why shouldn't Alina's job be to protect Medine? Could it be that... killing Medine and letting her fall into Limbo would actually be the best way to protect Alina?

Because then Xiangzi's plan would have to stop, and it might actually be true!

Xiangzi was terrified and hurriedly pulled the screw gun out of the head of the puppet lying in front of him and threw it at the fish that had escaped the net on the ceiling.

The threaded gun whistled through the air, embedding itself halfway into the transmission mechanism between the puppet's nape and body, fixing it in place. The creature withdrew, its head tilting back, unable to take another step towards Medien.

Xiangzi jumped onto the ceiling and grabbed the handle of the threaded gun.

As the threads of the gun head were pulled out, a bunch of black machine oil came out with it. Since the connection between the neck and the body had long been destroyed by the threaded gun, the ceramic head had no support and fell to the ground under the enormous force, disintegrating into gears and ceramic fragments.

“You, behind you—!” Medine pointed behind Xiangzi.

"I know! Don't make a fuss!" Xiangzi yelled at Medine, then turned around abruptly.

Then, she was stunned.

The number of pursuing geishas is limited. EMP should have taken out several wounded ones, and the remaining ones were briefly down, but there shouldn't be many left. That's right, she didn't see any more pursuers, and only one security guard recovered from the downtime.

There is only one enemy.

Is it really just "one"?

The number of doll corpses lying on the ground has decreased.

Rather than saying they've decreased, it's more accurate to say they've been picked up. Several plain white ceramic arms are cleaning up the parts on the ground, as if they were scavenging for trash.

These arms all came from the same security guard, but strictly speaking, it cannot be called "one," because Xiangzi could see several identical heads on it just by glancing at it.

The few still intact puppets huddled together, their intertwined roots forming a twisted body. They picked up parts from the ground and attached them to their damaged bodies, making the connection between the huddled bodies even stronger.

The newly formed security guards' heads were big enough to touch the ceiling of the corridor. It was impossible for someone of that size to fight in such a narrow space. However, after the lights around them flickered a few times, Xiangzi noticed that the width of the corridor had increased several times.

That's enough.

Xiangzi gave a bitter twitch at the corner of his mouth as he watched the other person raise his three right arms, his palms cracking open and spewing out high-pressure, scorching air.

Immediately afterwards, crimson light emerged from the distorted air.

hum-

The puppet's three arms on its right side transformed into three lightsabers resembling those from Star Wars, while its left arm held a Japanese umbrella that looked like those used by geishas.

But that wasn't an umbrella; it was a laser umbrella, also made of crimson laser light.

The buzzing sound created a gust of wind as the lightsaber swung towards him. Xiangzi instinctively tried to block it with the blade of his gun, but the lightsaber melted right through the solid blade and continued its slash toward Xiangzi's head.

Xiangzi quickly dodged to the side, narrowly avoiding the crimson laser sword.

The longsword swept across a few strands of hair and embedded itself in the wall, leaving dark red melting marks on the wall where the lightsaber had struck.