Vol 1 Chapter 22 (2/2)

His howl shook the forest, and Homura’s body froze in shock.

“He’s gone into Were-Form2.”

At the same time, the melody that Kamikoma was playing became deeper and graver.

In fact, it acted as a pressure over the rampaging berserker by holding back his surging power.

“Don’t show any hostility. He’ll attack even allies in this state.”

“Hiii, what is this!?”

One of the wolves, having been agitated by fear, forgot its hunting instincts as part of the pack and jumped at Taga’s neck by itself.

—With a flash, his claws seized the wolf’s body from the side and then hurled it far over the treetops.

Howling together, the rest of the wolves then jumped at him one after another like a dam had burst.

The berserker knocked down the wolves one by one as he tore off the stone paving and ripped them apart along with nearby tree trunks.

However, the wolves, attacking craftily by each aiming for Taga’s blind spots while surrounding him, managed to steadily deal wounds to him.

As she stood to protect Kamikoma behind her, Homura immediately emptied two canisters of tear gas to repel the wolves which came to approach them and pulled off the safety pin of her spare canister while she was at it.

“*Cough, cough*.”

She coughed and her eyes watered at the intense stimulation of the bits of spray that drifted towards her on the wind.

Even so, the tear gas worked well at its purpose, making several wolves lose the will to fight the moment it hit their nostrils.

The ten-odd wolves present had their numbers halved in a short time.

“*Cough*, we can do this, Koma-senpai.”

“……”

Kamikoma nodded as she concentrated on playing her lute, seeming to control Taga with her fingers on the strings.

However—

“…Ah… Taichi!”

Taga suddenly looked up from glaring at the wolves.

A silhouette jumped down from the trees and aimed to lop off his head, but Taga managed to cover his upper body with his gauntlets at that very instant.

As Taga grunted fiercely, the silhouette was thrusted away, but managed to quickly stand up from rolling on the ground, revealing itself to be a familiar boy.

“Touya… kun…!?”

“…d.a.m.n it… Stop, Taichi! It’s Touya!”

Taga stopped for an instant when he heard Kamikoma’s restraining shout, but his opponent didn’t leave him any time to rest.

It was definitely Touya.

Wielding a long sword and a short sword in his hands, he wordlessly attacked Taga.

Taga had no choice to fight back with a growl.

“Tch!”

Clicking her tongue, Kamikoma changed melodies.

It was a melody of indiscriminate healing that enveloped the entire surrounding area. Naturally, that meant that it healed the enemy wolves as well, but it was the only desperate measure she could choose right now.

“Do something, Homura!”

“What’s wrong with you, Touya-kun!? That’s Taga-senpai! Stop!”

Ignoring Homura’s voice, Touya stoutly devoted himself to attacking, his vigor so great that it even overpowered Taga’s huge body.

“It can’t be helped. Homura!”

“Sorry!”

Guessing Kamikoma’s plan, Homura aimed a spray can at Touya, but then he immediately glared at Homura and bent over before starting to run towards her.

Homura faltered, unable to say anything.

Kamikoma promptly tackled Homura out of the way.

The spray can fell out of Homura’s hand and flew through the air while spewing red smoke from its side.

“A-Are you for real, Touya-kun?”

Homura was shocked and became teary-eyed at the sight of Touya’s complete change.

After the two girls had fallen to the ground, Touya approached them to finish them off, but Taga pinned him from behind his back and lifted him up.

Touya resisted, but Taga barely managed to maintain and tighten his grip.

Touya’s swords fell from his arms to the ground.

The restraint marks left on his wrists and legs were painfully visible.

“All right, don’t let him go! Keep going until he faints!”

Though she was shocked from seeing Touya try to stab her and now struggle desperately to escape, Homura stared straight at him in focus.

“Is he being controlled by the witch……?”

“Homura, activate the emergency withdrawal! Hurry!”

Kamikoma pulled Homura to her feet.

“Kamikoma-senpai, that girl said to give up on him. We have to undo the spell on him.”

“We can do that after returning to Earth.”

“That will probably be too late.”

Homura picked up the short sword Touya had dropped.

It was an unfamiliar sword. He had probably received it from the witch.

As the wolves surrounded them from a distance, Homura came to a decision and started to run off towards him.

“Homura! Come back, idiot! Wait, uwah!”

Kamikoma hastily picked up her lute as Taga’s foot was about to trample it.

Red-faced from being constricted, Touya had managed to escape from Taga’s hands and began attacking him again.

Homura ran intently until she reached the point where the familiar roof of the castle was in view.

The witch was sitting calmly at a table placed in the courtyard in front of the castle.

However, the wolf girl, who Homura had expected to be there, was nowhere in sight.

After catching her breath with her hands on her knees, Homura appealed to the witch.

“Please give Touya-kun back.”

The witch spoke dispa.s.sionately while glancing over Homura.

“Hoh… The one who hath used Mathematica—”

At first glance, the witch looked as if she was just spending a peaceful afternoon outside. However, her smile was cold and tinged with a dangerous aura.

“I believeth I already gaveth him back.”

“What did you do to him?”

“What, thou ask… I greeted him as a guest…”

The witch narrowed her eyes as she recalled what had happened.

“Though I hadst to shut that noisy mouth of his a bit.”

“In that case, please return him to normal. You can do that, right?”

The witch quietly stood up from the table.

“It seems thou hadst no intention of acting as a guest from the start… If thou impudently trespa.s.s on these castle grounds, thou must obey the master of this place… The wolves art also greatly perplexed.”

Homura froze in shock.

The wolves that had chased after Homura arrived to surround the witch.

Her eyes tinged with even deeper madness than before, the witch gazed at the wolves.

Her madness riled up the wolves, and they once more bared their fangs at Homura.

Her hands unconsciously tightened around the short sword she had picked up earlier. However, what on earth could Homura do with a weapon like that?

“You say master… so the only humans here are you and that girl?”

“Thou speaketh of Suzuran? She hath not shown herself around hither the past few days. How deplorable. Perhaps tis because thou has’t all been so loud and rambunctious? Dear me…”

She gently pulled up her sleeves.

“Shalt thou also becometh a puppet? Or—”

Lightning danced around the witch’s finger.

It was the re-enactment of the lightning attack she had fired at Homura and Touya at the graveyard.

Responding to the hostility in the air, the wolves growled at Homura with bared fangs.

“…”

Homura gulped. She really wanted to run away, but that would just be repeating what happened before.

Restraining her fear and holding her ground, Homura threw the short sword to the ground.

“Suzuran—that’s the name you gave that girl. You saved and raised her, right?”

Twitching in unease, the witch glared at Homura with suspicious eyes.

“……”

“My name is Hinooka Homura. I came here from j.a.pan on Earth. Are you the one that Suzuran called Hime…?”

“I am Subaru—Iotsumisumaru no Hime. However, I has’t no intention of letting thou calleth me that, nor of remembering thy name.”

“Subaru…san. I have a request. Please let Suzuran—”

“I hath said I has’t no intention of letting thou calleth me by name,” the witch said coldly, interrupting Homura’s supplication.

Her golden hair suddenly lifted up and spread out in the air.

The temporarily constrained lightning once more flashed and swirled along her fingertip as she raised her hand overhead.

“Spirit—Copper—”

“Subaru-san… Please listen. You must have a kind heart to have raised Suzuran. We didn’t come to steal anything from you or to fight!”

“Then thou must has’t cometh hither to die.”

—Flash.

The witch’s red lips p.r.o.nounced the final word of destruction.

Regretting her own naivety, Homura wasn’t able to even stir from where she stood.

“—!”

The magic blast, fired by the witch without bothering to speak any further, cut through the air and struck Homura.

When the retina-burning flash of light receded—Homura was crouching on her knees on the ground, and she raised her head to look at the witch again.

“……Kuh…”

The witch gritted her teeth at the unexpected situation she was confronted with.

“Another counter with Mathematica…? No…”

A thin veil of water had surrounded and protected Homura and was now dispersing into mist.

As an out-of-place burning smell reached her nose, Homura placed a hand to her chest, where the charm around her neck had been scorched and the spirit stone within it was quickly losing its glow.

“This girl… blocked the lightning with a wall of water… using a stone of power…”

The spirit stone, having completely lost its light, cracked and snapped in two on top of Homura’s palm.

“Senpai’s spirit stone…”

The witch approached Homura.

“Whither didst thou get that stone?”

“This was given to me by senpai—”

“No, no need to even bother asking! Thou got it from a graveyard belonging to the People of Sagacity somewhere. Thou pillaged their graves and stole it! Unforgivable.”

“No way… this… is…”

Not knowing the truth of the matter, Homura couldn’t deny the accusation.

Even so, she stood up and once more faced the witch.

“d.a.m.n thief, if thou dare imperil the sleep of mine ancestors—”

At that moment, a voice called out to the frenzied witch, taking her by surprise.

“Hime…!”

—Were-Form.

The joy and fear of truly appropriating one’s body and removing one’s shackles to wield power freely.

Even while giving in to his animal instincts and turning into something inhuman, a thread of reason persisted as if frozen in place in the depths of Taga’s heart.

In his pin-hole-sized narrow vision was a small swordsman.

No matter how much Taga swung his burly arms and sent the boy flying high in the air—

No matter how much he kicked the boy down against bare rock ground while violently dragging torn tree branches around in the aftermath of his attacks.

The boy, Touya, kept challenging him without paying any attention to his own pain.

He was the embodiment of another kind of madness, different from Taga’s.

Taga’s howls were strong enough to scatter the fog in the air and make the wolves bristle and falter for an instant, but Touya simply continued to charge at him with glazed eyes.

Their blades repeatedly crossed and slid apart numerous times in the s.p.a.ce of just a few seconds as they sought the right angle and balance to overwhelm each other.

When Taga tried to suddenly do a full-body rush with weight equivalent to several tons, Touya s.h.i.+fted the trunk of his body and sidestepped with etched footwork, and even in the midst of that he freely manipulated his blade and slashed like releasing a bow with all the power stored in it.

Not letting his guard down, he dodged the arm bind that immediately followed and jumped back to take some distance.

Readjusting his posture while sensing the heat and dripping life that was running down his chest in great amounts, Taga looked at Touya’s wavering eyes.

Reflected in Touya’s eyes was a figure that was both Taga and yet not Taga, the fear that slept at the depths of Touya’s heart—such an illusion was overlaid in his eyes.

Taga understood that instant impression he felt in those eyes that was hard to put into words. He understood that that illusion wouldn’t disappear and was tormenting Touya.

Even if Taga was defeated here, that illusion wouldn’t fade and would project onto Touya’s vision of Kamikoma behind him and even Homura, acting as a curse that endlessly spurred him to fight his perceived enemy—

Such a sorrowful end was the one thing that Taga would never allow to happen.

Chapter 22 END

TRANSLATOR’S NOTES

(1) Bear Claws/Gauntlet Claws: They’re claws like the kind Wolverine has, but attached to gauntlets/gloves you place over your hands.

(2) Were-Form: the kanji beneath this English word reads “Berserker transformation”.

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