Acquired! 【Magic Sensing Threads】!

What Emi had wanted after the Night Trite's attack.

It was a safe base, and some way of keeping herself safe even in her sleep.

The former was something she could find by walking around, but the latter was a problem.

Emi acted alone.

She had no companions to take turns on the midnight watch.

Because the one who lived in her mind shared Emi's consciousness, when Emi slept, so did she. At times like this, she was no help.

......If only Master were here. If only Kamasse were here.

Thoughts like that did come to her, but they were only faint-hearted fantasies that could never come true.

She shook her head to brush them away.

While Emi fretted, the voice in her mind spoke up with an idea.

Namely, <Couldn't you use 【Magic Slash Thread】 as a barrier, like that baldy did?>

“That baldy” was the Founder of the cult that had once stood against Emi and her Master, and the original user of 【Magic Slash Thread】.

True, that baldy had wielded 【Magic Slash Thread】 at will, and for a moment he had even shown the kind of use the voice in her mind was describing.

In other words, if she could keep that 【Magic Slash Thread】 barrier up the whole time, even while she slept, no enemy could get near Emi.

Then she could sleep a good deal more safely than she did now.

But with Emi's skill at magic power manipulation, there was no way to pull off that proposal as it stood.

Emi's total magic power had grown considerably by now, and her skill at manipulating 【Magic Slash Thread】 had improved a great deal too.

Once she had only been able to make magic threads as thick as rope, but thanks to the training she had steadily kept up every day, she had now managed to thin them down to about the thickness of kite string, which had also greatly cut the magic power needed to deploy 【Magic Slash Thread】; she was starting to be able to use it efficiently.

But if she had to keep it deployed all night long, that was a different story.

There was no way her magic power would last.

What should she do?

Even after she had stolen the Neck Slasher Owl's nest and gotten herself a relatively safe base, Emi kept thinking it over.

When she wasn't hunting, she thought of nothing else, constantly activating 【Magic Slash Thread】 and trying one thing after another to find an efficient way to use it.

◇ ◇ ◇

Then, one day, it happened.

Morning sunlight slipped into the tree hollow where she was holed up, and Emi woke.

And, still a little groggy, she poked her head out of the hollow.

And then, something faintly sticky and unpleasant on her forehead.

A spiderweb.

The web's owner was a perfectly ordinary little black spider, nothing more.

It seemed that while Emi had been sleeping last night, it had been diligently weaving this web.

Shaking her head to brush away the thread, Emi spotted the spider hurriedly escaping above her.

It had apparently felt the vibration of its web being wrecked and chosen to flee.

Emi had been watching it bleary-eyed, but then something clicked, and she was suddenly wide awake.

Then, she activated 【Magic Slash Thread】.

Right away, she began experimenting over and over to see whether her idea would work.

Why could she not deploy 【Magic Slash Thread】 all night long?

As noted above, because Emi as she was now didn't have enough magic power.

Then, why was the magic power cost of 【Magic Slash Thread】 so high?

It was because she was using “slashing” magic power.

A spear-hand strike with nothing but ordinary 【Body Strengthening】, and 【Mantis】, a spear-hand strike wrapped in “slashing” magic power on top of that.

Which one cost more magic power? 【Mantis】, of course.

Emi didn't know why, but she felt this “slashing” magic power cost more to use than, say, the “sticking” kind she used for 【Adhesion】.

Then, what was 【Magic Slash Thread】?

As Emi understood it, it was a technique of drawing “slashing” magic power out long, like a thread, and manipulating it.

“Slashing” magic power was costly.

If so, what would happen if she removed the “slashing” magic power from this 【Magic Slash Thread】?

Wouldn't the magic power cost go down?

That, at least, was Emi's thinking.

So she tried it, and 【Magic Slash Thread】 vanished.

Of course it did.

After all, 【Magic Slash Thread】 was “slashing” magic power made into a thread.

So, Emi changed her way of thinking.

Couldn't she make a thread out of some magic power other than the “slashing” kind?

The first idea she came up with was to make a thread out of “sticking” magic power.

The image she had in mind: spider silk.

A sticky thread that binds and captures prey.

If she could pull it off, it would be a hugely useful technique, not just for defending her base but for hunting too.

But, to put it bluntly, it was extremely hard to pull off.

This “sticking” magic power was very difficult to stretch into a thread.

It was sort of gloopy, and it just wouldn't stretch.

That, at least, was how the magic power felt to Emi.

So that idea, too, went on hold for the time being.

But Emi did not give up.

She loved this kind of trial and error.

Even back in her previous life she hadn't minded mulling over this and that on her own (or rather, with no one to talk to, mulling things over was all she ever did), and solving this puzzle promised to make her stronger.

She threw herself into this problem.

What Emi tried next was going back to basics.

What were the basics of magic power manipulation for Emi?

That was 【Body Strengthening】.

This 【Body Strengthening】, which she had learned in desperation to protect her life from her own father's violence, didn't need magic power changed into all that “slashing” and “sticking.”

It simply let the raw magic power welling up from her soul soak, just as it was, into her skin, her muscles, her bones, her organs, and strengthened them.

Now then, this “raw” magic power.

Pristine magic power, with no needless changes made to it.

This, she would bring into being outside her body in the shape of a thread.

That was what Emi tried next, and it was the right move, one that could be the first step toward her goal.

Making threads out of “raw” magic power turned out to be far easier than her usual 【Magic Slash Thread】 and the like.

It was so easy that it was galling, if anything. Why hadn't she thought of this before?

The threads could be stretched out smoothly and relatively easily, and she could move them much more freely than with 【Magic Slash Thread】.

And the magic power cost stayed remarkably low as well.

With this, she could keep the threads out all night long and still greet the morning with magic power to spare.

On the other hand, these threads had no strength to speak of.

When she tried stretching one out taut in midair and tossing a thin twig at it, the thread put up no resistance at all and broke with a putsuri.

But still, Emi was satisfied with this result.

What caught her attention was the “putsuri” feeling when the thread broke.

If she strung these threads all around her, then the moment something came near and broke one, she would know it was there.

In other words, she had realized these threads could serve as an alarm.

And so, at this point, Emi's original goal had been achieved.

The voice in her mind named these threads 【Magic Sensing Threads】, and Emi put them to use that very night.

At first, they had the drawback of reacting even to mice and other small animals that were nothing to worry about, but she solved that by getting clever about how she strung them.

Incidentally, the practical hurdle of keeping the threads out while asleep was no real problem for Emi, who had always kept 【Body Strengthening】 running in her sleep.

This happened just about 2 months after she entered the demon realm.

◇ ◇ ◇

And so, 1 more month went by after Emi acquired 【Magic Sensing Threads】, and that was when the fight with the Power Bear in question began.

Sensing the Power Bear's approach through her 【Magic Sensing Threads】, which she kept active even as she slept, Emi snapped awake at once and laid eyes on the enemy.

With 【Magic Slash Thread】, now longer and more precise thanks to her improved skill, she ambushed the Power Bear.

And with a surprise strike, she cut off the right foreleg of the careless Power Bear, who hadn't even bothered with proper 【Body Strengthening】.

That, to give away the trick behind the Power Bear fight, was what had really happened.

“............”

Now then.

Emi looked out over the area around her base, flattened into a bare clearing by the Power Bear's wild rampage.

The Kaise trees around it had been torn to shreds, a pitiful sight.

And to make matters worse, the giant Kaise tree that Emi had used as her roost.

The giant tree with the large hollow.

That giant tree had been snapped clean off from the root.

“............”

Emi let out a sigh.

With this, she would have to look for a new base once again.

Slapping her cheeks, pan pan, Emi turned her back on the snapped giant Kaise tree and began walking toward the depths of the forest.

She had already acquired the techniques to protect herself.

On top of that, the prey living nearby, the Sword Leles and the rest, were steadily dwindling in number.

It was about time, maybe, to move her base.

It had happened just as she was thinking that very thing.

That Power Bear had merely provided the catalyst.

Emi spared one glance for the Power Bear's remains, picked clean of flesh and blood until only bones and hide were left, and after that, she never looked back.

The sky began to brighten gradually.

The brilliance of the stars faded, swallowed by the purple morning sky.

The sun began to rise.

Gyun!

Gyun!

Gyun!

As casually as sparrows going chun chun, Bulletpeeps came gyun gyun charging toward Emi.

Emi didn't spare the little birds so much as a glance; she snatched them out of the air at blinding speed and crushed them as she made her way through the forest.

There was no telling how many lived here, but living in this area meant a Bulletpeep attack once a day.

By now, naturally, Emi had gotten used to dealing with these little birds.

In Emi's mind, the Bulletpeeps had now joined the venomous Yasago as officially certified, self-delivering snacks.

Learned a new technique (a plain one).

As for further applications of “threads,” that's for another time.