Chapter 77 (2/2)
“Nishishii!” The stuffed animal laughed, mocking the demon as blade suddenly grew several times larger.
“W-What!?” The demon’s eyes widened in shock and panic as the enlarged knife cleaved its arm right off, but soon calmed down and even laughed in relief as it realized that its assailant’s blade lacked the Heart Flame Ghost Blade’s ability. “Hah… hahaha… Whew. It doesn’t look like it’s the same as the sword from earlier. I can regenerate immediately if all it does is cut me.”
But his respite was brief.
“You do know I told it to eat, right?” Shuria smiled as if entertained.
The demon didn’t get the chance to finish processing her words before the stuffed cat executed its orders.
“Nishishishii!” Again, it laughed as it stuck its fork into the demon’s disembodied arm and cut a piece of it off with the knife, which had returned to its regular size. And with the most natural motion, it raised its fork to its face and consumed the demon’s flesh.
“Huh…?” The unholy spirit stared, dumbfounded. Its mental facilities lacked the ability to allow it to react before the stuffed cat consumed the rest of its arm. “Oi, you’re kidding, right…? That thing just ate… my arm!?”
“Kyahahaha! Is something wrong? You’ve got a really funny look on your face.” Shuria mocked.
As of resonating with its matter’s sadistic urges, the cat turned towards the demon and brandished its fork and knife against one another twice instead of answering its question. The sound that came from it was the usual “Nishishi.”
“Fuck!! Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck! What the hell!? You have to be fucking kidding me! First, a sword that can cut something made entirely out of mana, and now a stuffed animal that can consume me!? This is just plain unfair! What the fuck!?” The demon complained, ridiculing the situation it was stuck in.
“Pffft.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “Did a demon really just complain about something being unfair?” I’d originally been intending on totally staying out of this, but the demon’s words were so silly that I couldn’t resist making a remark.
“I’m a demon goddamit! Unlike you fools, I’m a higher form of life! This shouldn’t be happening to me! No! No no no no no no no no!” The demon screamed as it fought back against the stuffed animal, but it failed to provide any significant resistance. It was completely outmatched.
The demon lacked proficiency in close quarters combat. It could no longer rely on its ability to regenerate either, and so, it panicked. It lacked the composure it needed to cast any complicated spells, so it ended up randomly throwing out weaker ones. But again, to no avail. All its attacks were either dodged or intercepted by the stuffed animal’s fork.
Though the demon was immune to pain, it did still feel fear. For that reason, it simply sat there as it was eaten, paralyzed by its own lack of mental fortitude.
Its body was consumed from the extremities, and soon, all that was left of the demon was its head.
“How… How could I, a demon, get done in by that sort of inferior life form? It’s not even sure whether it’s a human or elf!” Knowing its eventual demise, the demon moaned resentfully. There was so little of its mana left that it was already beyond repair. It wouldn’t have been able to heal itself even it took in all the mana around it. Its fate was sealed; it was going to die.
“How boring…” Shuria sighed. “Why did you have to lose so easily? I wanted you to struggle more and hold on a bit longer so using my new powers for the first time would have felt more special and exciting.”
“Well, Yumis is next, so you can just think of this whole event as a something along the lines of a prologue that ended up dragging on for too long.” I shrugged.
“I guess you’re right… In that cause, I’ll should probably end it now.” Shuria squat herself down right in front of the demon and kindly smiled as she issued her stuffed cat one last order. “I’ll watch every last moment of the demon’s demise. So dig in, Mr. Cat.”
“Fuuuuuck yooooooouuuuuuuuuuuu!” The demon cursed at the girl that proclaimed she would enjoy its death, its voice filled with hatred and rage.
“Kyahahahahahaha!”
“Nishishi!”
Though faced with the demon’s bare hostility, both she and her puppet only laughed in response.
The stuffed animal stabbed its knife into one of the demon’s eyes and its fork into the other, consuming both before chucking the evil spirit’s head into the air and skillfully catching it in its mouth.
After swallowing, Mr. Cat huffed, as if satisfied before once again tapping the two utensils together. The demon episode had finally reached its conclusion—or so I thought.
The moment the situation calmed, something happened, both to the cat, and to Shuria herself. The stuffed animal, which, at first, had mostly been pure white, was the first to change. Swirling black patterns suddenly coined themselves all over the cat’s body and turned it into a black and white tabby.
Likewise, change also began taking place in the puppet’s master.
“Hm…? My body suddenly feels really warm. It’s like I’m burning up.” Shuria blinked curiously as she examined herself. The change in her temperature was a cause for concern, but I was much less worried about it than I was worried about the pitch black magical energy that’d suddenly started swirling around her body.
“Shit! Are you alright!?” I fretted. We were bound by the Holy Sword of Vengeance’s contract. Minnalis and I would both be in some deep shit if Shuria died.
“I think I should be fine. It doesn’t feel like I’m in any danger. My body just feels like it’s burning hot,” Shuria answered. Though the situation was abnormal, she remained quite calm. It didn’t look like she was at risk of losing her life. In fact, the heat wasn’t even causing her any pain or suffering.
After a few moments passed, the magical vortex eventually began to slow; our warped surroundings were allowed to return to their prior state.
“Well, this is unexpected,” I commented.
“Did I just… transform?” Shuria questioned as she looked over her own body.
Her soft, porcelain white skin had strengthened itself and turned into a milk chocolate-like light brown, while her pretty blonde hair had lost all its colour and turned a shade of silver. The torn parts of her clothes revealed that her abdomen was now covered in dark, tattoo-like markings.
She lifted a bit of her hair to the flame, and found that it reflected the fire’s colour and shone with an orange hue.
The change that occured within her seemed to be a side effect of her intaking the demon’s mana.
“Whew, you didn’t end up becoming a demon.” I remarked. “It looks like you’ve become something along the lines of a dark elf instead.”
“Dark elf?” She asked.
“That’s what the people back in my world call elves with skin like yours.” I explained.
Elves weren’t too rare a race. In fact, there were quite a few in town. Many of the race’s members would take advantage of their inherent talent in magic and become adventurers. But I’d never actually seen any elves with dark skin, not even before everything was reset. I’d been convinced that they simply didn’t exist, but evidently, I was wrong.
I looked over Shuria’s stats and confirmed that she was no longer a human with elven traits, and that she’d obtained a brand new innate ability.
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Name: ShuriaAge: 14Gender: FemaleRace: Dark ElfHP: 292/332MP: 780/780 Transfering (525)Level: 33Strength: 133Vitality: 213Stamina: 154Agility: 288Magic Power: 679Magic Resistance: 582
Innate AbilitiesScarlet EyesPuppet’s Spiritual Possession
SkillsPresence Detection: Lv 1Presence Concealment: Lv 1Meditation: Lv 3Dismantling: Lv 3
Condition: Good
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Name: Shuria
Hidden StatsTechnique: EThinking and Reaction Speed: ERate of Physical Recovery: FCurrent Status: Healthy
Magical AffinitiesFire: 0Water: 0Wind: 0Earth: 0Light: 0Dark: 0Null: 21Non-Systematic: 154
TitlesOne With Re-emerged Elven RootsAccursed OneThe Avenger’s Subordinate
Possessed Puppet ManipulatorFallen Elf
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“It doesn’t look like you’re in any danger, so I’d say we’re in the green,” I concluded as I looked over her stat page.
“A dark elf, huh…? I like it. It makes me feel like I really was reborn,” Shuria smiled, accepting her new form.
With that out of the way, I informed Shuria it was time to go. “Alright, the demon’s dead, so let’s get the hell out of here. I may or may not have forced Yumis’ barrier a slight bit to get inside, so she’ll probably be back before long.”
I even moved towards the dungeon’s exit, but Shuria told me to wait before I reached it. “Please give me just a few moments. I want to free everyone.”
She gave a few orders to her now marbled cat plush and had it eliminate all the undead.
Undead creatures were technically immortal, but you could turn them to dust and return them to the earth if you damaged their bodies enough and whittled away at the magical energy they used to sustain themselves. She did exactly that for all the undead locked up in the prison.
“Alright, let’s hurry up and leave. We’ve got a lot of stuff to talk about, and a very finite amount of time to get it all covered,” seeing that she was done, I urged her to leave.
“Mkay.” Shuria turned back one last time as she reached the staircase. “I swear I’ll make her pay. I’ll make her suffer more than enough to make up for everything she made you go through.”
Her dark, passionate words were met with silence, for all the creatures within the dungeon had already ceased their groaning. With that said, Shuria ascended the stairs, her black and white stuffed cat following right behind her.
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Puppet’s Spiritual PossessionSkill Level: 2
Sacrifices a portion of the caster’s max MP in order to give an inanimate object false life and turn it into the caster’s servant. The servant’s abilities depend on the amount of mana sacrificed, the emotions embedded into it, and the caster’s environment.
The maximum amount of MP that can be sacrificed is equivalent to the caster’s max MP. The number of autonomous servants that can be created is equal to twice the skill’s level. The number of manually controlled servants the caster can deploy and use at once is based off of their own talents. If an autonomous servant consumes one of many specific types of organism, then the caster will absorb the organism’s magical energy. This can happen once per species. The caster’s species race can change if the newly absorbed individual had more mana than the caster.
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