Fret Raises the Magic Gun

CHUIIIIIIIIIII!!

The two drill arms Hidden Inheritor had deployed whirred menacingly...... and came at Emi, standing within their reach, with ferocious force!

“Rah!! Ah!! AAAAAAH!!”

Right drill, left drill, right drill...... they stabbed down at high speed like a seasoned giant's spear, and Emi knocked each one aside with her own fists, never in any danger.

At some point, the backs of her hands had been sheathed in pitch-black armor.

Emi was tough enough as it was, but wearing this armor made of magic power gave her an overwhelming defense that not even a steel colossus could scratch!

......Or so it should have been.

“Ra, ah!?”

But, alas!

After only a few exchanges, something went wrong with Emi's armor.

With a nasty bakiri, part of it shattered!

<This is......!? I'm detecting some kind of magic power interference from that drill!!>

Omake-sama's analysis, shouted in her head, was short on words, but after all their years together, Emi grasped its meaning at once.

In other words, those drills possessed not only physical attacking power, but also a mechanism designed to break through the opponent's magical defenses!

Come to think of it, when she was ejected from the hideout, 【Silverfish】 hadn't worked on the floor that had turned into a slide, leaving Emi to make a fool of herself.

These were glimpses of the magecraft engineering Gyashikinu had built into Hidden Inheritor!

“......As expected, geniuses are, amazing.”

Emi's respect for this great figure of the past deepened all over again.

“............”

At the same time, she felt ashamed of herself.

Her armor had been shattered.

That was because of the magic power interference...... and also.

Because Emi hadn't truly managed to handle Hidden Inheritor's attacks, their momentum, their impact.

Leaning on her body's toughness and her vast magic power, hadn't she been neglecting it lately?

The martial arts training her Master had passed down to her!

Had her Master ever worn armor that could never break?

Had he had a body of inhuman toughness?

No, he had not.

Even so...... Master was strong!

“......Come!!”

With the next drill strike, the pitch-black armor covering Emi's fists shattered completely.

The fragments flew through the air, turning into a visibly harmful pitch-black haze that vanished, blown away by the wind......

But, Emi did not waver!

“Rah......”

Holding her side-on stance, Emi laid the back of her right hand against the incoming left drill.

Then, moving her arm along with the drill's spin, she pushed, just a little, outward.

And the drill, knocked off course, plunged into the ground to Emi's right.

A tingling itch ran through the back of her hand for a moment.

Which meant she had taken a hit that could easily have blown an ordinary person's arm off.

Self-assessment, out of 100...... 30 points.

“Rah......”

Next.

This time she pressed the back of her left hand against the right drill and flicked it outward.

The itch was still there.

Just like before, 30 points.

“Rah, rah, rah, rah, rah......”

30 points, 35 points, 35 points, 30 points, 30 points......

Utterly absorbed, Emi got to work parrying the drills.

If the opponent were human...... for example, if a spear in their hand plunged into the ground, it could become an opening...... but the opponent was a machine.

Hidden Inheritor could immediately pull out the drill stuck in the ground and, without a moment's delay, thrust its left and right drills at Emi one after another.

It was built that way.

For Emi, Hidden Inheritor was the perfect sparring partner.

Earlier, her 【Black Arm】 blow had gone astray, but it had still landed, and she'd never have guessed she would come to regret that.

Starting from that damage, Hidden Inheritor's armor was beginning to peel away with every fierce drill attack it made.

Surely this machine wouldn't last much longer.

It would soon fall apart on its own.

So, as quickly as she could...... she wanted to get, to at least 60 points!

“Rah, rah, rah, rah, rah......”

Emi continued to move her arms calmly, yet with a burning fighting spirit lit in her eyes.

◇ ◇ ◇

Now, Emi had gone fully into training mode, but the way she looked was.

Purely on the defensive.

That's how it looked from the outside.

After all, she was only knocking attacks away, never landing a blow herself.

What's more, the one watching was Fret, a non-combatant, so that misunderstanding was all the less likely to be corrected.

“Gu, uugh......!!”

Overwhelmed by the sheer force of the fight, Fret trembled and groaned.

The Dongozugozu Society's squad had been all but wiped out, and no more stray bullets were coming from behind.

Fret now had the luxury of simply watching Emi's battle.

He had regained a modicum of composure.

Gagin!!

Again, Emi's armor chipped with a nasty sound, and the fragments turned into haze.

Emi took a step back, and continued her defense.

A step back.

In other words, the enemy had moved a little closer to Fret.

That this meant the same thing as danger to his own life drawing closer...... only now, at last, did Fret realize.

And also that the way he had gotten in Emi's way earlier...... was, if keeping himself alive came first, actually the worst thing he could have done.

“I!! I'm...... not to blame......!!”

But Fret didn't want to admit it.

Because if Emi destroyed Hidden Inheritor.

Surely the magic power operating that machine would run wild and explode.

Most of the research results hidden in Gyashikinu's hideout would likely vanish.

Fret would lose, forever, his chance to get his hands on a great genius's wisdom...... his way back to the top.

Gagin!!

Once again the armor chipped, and Emi took a step back.

Death drew one step closer.

“Why!! ......Why, every time!! Does it go wrong right when it counts!?”

His tears, his snot, wouldn't stop.

Born as the heir to the trading company.

Fret had always put in the effort.

His studies, his social life...... where no one could see, he had sweated blood to better himself!

And yet his little brother Success had always hopped right over Fret and gone on ahead.

Grinning all the while!

“Don't screw with me!!”

No matter how much effort he put in, Fret couldn't beat Success.

Even when he stained his hands with filth, in the end, he was no match.

His father had given up on him.

And now, he was on the verge of being killed by the very legacy of Gyashikinu that he had tried to obtain for his one-shot comeback.

What is this.

What the hell is my life.

“J, just living miserably, as my little brother's kamase!! And then, it's over......!!”

TL Note: A kamase (short for kamase-inu) is a stock character who talks big and exists only to lose to the hero, making the hero look good.

His face flushed bright red with rage, his body shaking, tears streaming, Fret glared at Hidden Inheritor.

And right then, it happened.

Gagon!!

With such a loud sound...... a large piece of Hidden Inheritor's hard armor peeled away.

Probably the damage from Emi's earlier blow had spread with the shocks of all the fighting since.

And what lay exposed inside was a large-capacity magic power reservoir, glowing yellow.

Even to Fret's eyes, blurry without his glasses, it was obvious that an enormous amount of magic energy was stored there.

An energy source not protected by armor.

That was clearly the weak point of this secret weapon.

“Ah......!!”

Fret let out a dopey sound despite himself and looked at Emi.

“Rah, rah, rah, rah, rah......”

Emi didn't react to that weak point, laid bare as it was.

As always, she continued to parry the drills.

She was so desperate to defend that she hadn't noticed.

Or, even if she had noticed, she was too busy defending to react, Fret thought.

“............!!”

Fret groped inside his jacket with trembling hands and pulled out his magic gun.

It was the custom-made magic gun, for self-defense, he had taken up to kill Success.

Before he knew it, Fret had pointed its sights...... toward Hidden Inheritor's magic power reservoir.

But he had only ‘pointed’ it.

He could not ‘aim’.

Because Fret had lost his glasses.

Everything was blurred, and he couldn't see well.

“......Ha, haha!!”

Fret, trembling, laughed.

Like this, he would never hit it.

So firing was pointless.

He could do nothing.

His own powerlessness, which he had never wanted to admit, he had no choice but to admit now, at the last moment.

He laughed at himself.

But in the next instant.

Fret's vision suddenly...... became clear.

The frame was bent, the lenses were cracked, and they were filthy with mud and skin oil, but.

Someone had picked up the glasses that had fallen on the ground, and hooked them over Fret's ears.

Who had done that?

With his thoughts still sluggish, Fret looked back.

There stood the mage Darakerus, dressed like a vagrant, breathing heavily.

【Black Arms】

Emi's main armament.

Originally, she learned it while trying to reproduce 【Invisible Hand】, a special ability Giovanno used in Arc 12.

It can be shaped fairly freely, into a greatsword, wings, armor, and lately she can even reproduce a cloth-like texture, so Emi makes her clothes almost entirely with this special ability (magecraft).