When Natsumi, who had transformed into Origami, returned to her original form, Shido was surprised, but at the same time, relieved.
Because if they had found him, they could stop Origami.
"What, you got a problem with that? Are you upset I came here~?"
Natsumi asked Shido, who was staring blankly at her from where he was tied to a chair.
Some kind of defense mechanism was still running.
"No, it’s not that... Then why are you guys here...?"
Shido wondered why they had come here.
Origami had definitely kidnapped him and locked him up here, but given her personality, she would have acted carefully so as not to be noticed.
Shido thought it would be hard to find him unless they had deliberately chased after him from the start.
"Well, I was showing Natsumi around town with Rio. Then we saw Origami and Shido together..."
"With Rio? Where’s Rio!?"
"Papa!"
"There you are."
The last one to arrive, Rio, called out to Shido and hugged him.
"Pa, papa?"
"Oh, I guess Natsumi doesn’t know. Rio is mine and Rinne’s daughter."
"...What!? T-Then the two of you did that kind of thing...?"
"No, that’s not it!"
Still tied to the chair and being hugged by Rio, Shido quickly explained a little about Rio.
"So, basically, Rio is a being formed from the spiritual power of Rinne sealed inside you and the scattered residual spiritual power, right?"
"That’s right."
"And Hii was the one who saved Rinne and Rio?"
"Yeah."
"...Wow, I really went around messing with someone like that?"
"...Ahaha. By the way, could you undo these handcuffs and ropes?"
Shido moved around a little and asked the somewhat uneasy Natsumi for help.
Natsumi held out her palm at his request and said,
"Okay. Leave it to me."
"What are you going to do?"
"Rio, could you step away for a second? It might be dangerous."
"Okay!"
Rio moved away from Shido, and Natsumi clutched her head as if trying to remember something so she could free him.
"Ugh... Kgh...!"
"N-Natsumi?"
Shido called her name at her incomprehensible behavior, but Natsumi kept trying to remember something.
"Shut up, you bastards!"
At last, once Natsumi had fully finished thinking, she shouted that, and the ropes and handcuffs binding Shido turned into smoke and vanished.
"Haaah..."
"Natsumi, how did you do that?"
Shido rubbed his wrists and asked the exhausted Natsumi, who had used her power while sealed.
Normally, while sealed, it was impossible to use abilities unless one performed a limited manifestation, so Shido’s question was only natural.
"I realized that if I think about things in my head that make me feel awful, I get a little bit of my power back."
She had realized that this morning when she went to wake Hii up.
"Things that make you feel awful...?"
"Yeah. At lunch at school, since I didn’t have any friends, I was eating my bento alone in a toilet stall, and then I imagined forgetting to lock the door and ending up face-to-face with a classmate who opened it..."
Shido and Yoshino’s expressions stiffened at the surprisingly detailed and realistic imagination.
"Th-That would be kind of embarrassing..."
"Then when I went back to class after that, for some reason everyone was looking at me and snickering..."
"O-Okay, that’s enough! Let’s get out of here!"
Shido stopped Natsumi before her imagination could deepen any further and send her back into self-loathing, then left the ruins.
The first thing Shido did after getting outside the ruins was call Fraxinus, or more precisely, Kotori.
"Damn it. I can’t get through to [Fraxinus]."
The call connected, but all he got was the ringing tone. No one answered at all.
"What the hell is going on...?"
Shido’s questions about the situation only grew deeper.
******
The battle between Origami and Hieta’s group continued.
Even as Hieta and the spirits attacked, Origami kept enduring, clinging on to the very end, stubbornly getting back up again and again, to the point that Hieta was reminded of a zombie.
Origami was delighted to finally have the power to kill a spirit, and she kept getting back up, driven by the thought of revenge and sheer obsession.
But her opponent was just too bad for her.
"Hah!"
"Like hell you will!"
Whenever she tried to attack the other spirits, Hieta would interfere by firing lightning arrows through the gaps.
The intervals were so short that it was more than annoying; it was infuriating.
On top of that, Sachi was beside him, throwing crystal spears to interfere with Origami as well.
And if she tried to attack them, she kept failing thanks to the destructive combination of Rinne and Mayuri’s bullets of light and beams.
"Tch!"
Thinking she had finally obtained the power to kill a spirit, Origami only grew more and more impatient.
She was still only human, after all, so she had an activity limit. Within that limit, she had to kill all the spirits, or at the very least render them unable to act.
And yet, she hated the fact that all she was doing was barely holding her own against spirits in limited manifestation.
"Stop getting in my way!"
Origami screamed in a voice close to a shriek and fired a beam at Hieta.
It was similar to the one she had fired when they first met, only even more powerful.
Even as Rinne and Mayuri were flustered by an attack that would be hard to block with their angels, Hieta simply smiled and prepared something.
"You call that an attack?"
Hieta changed the shape of the catalyst in his hand.
The new form was a staff.
Before she knew it, a black ring and a white ring had also appeared on Hieta’s fingers.
Once he finished preparing, Hieta drew the staff back, then thrust it forward.
"Sorcery――[Soul Stream]!"
A massive beam of magical power burst from Hieta’s staff and began a firepower contest against the beam Origami had fired.
Origami was certain that, with her power increased, she would not be pushed back in a firepower contest.
But there was one thing she didn’t know: the ability of the white ring Hieta had equipped.
That ability further increases magical attack power, as well as the power of beam-type attacks.
Then what kind of power would [Soul Stream] unleash when combined with 99 Intelligence, the ring that boosts magical power, and the white ring?
"Ghaaaah...!"
[Soul Stream], far stronger than Origami’s, devoured even her beam as it attacked her along with the light.
Normally, Origami would have dodged immediately, but there was one problem: while fighting a firepower contest with Hieta, she had spent too much power, and her activity limit arrived much sooner than expected.
As a result, Origami was swept away by [Soul Stream], spat blood, and crashed straight to the ground.
"Activity limit... What do you mean, evenly matched...?"
After crashing to the ground, Origami reflected on her own thoughts.
She had thought they were at least somewhat evenly matched, but they weren’t even close.
Even aside from Hieta, she felt like she would never be able to overcome the huge wall that was Rinne and Mayuri.
"I only... chased after the power of spirits... at the cost of my own life..."
The power she used was originally not something she was allowed to have, something she had to use while burning away her own lifespan.
And even after borrowing that kind of power, she could only barely keep up with the power spirits possessed.
Origami, steeped in despair and revenge, recalled that time.
"And since then, I’ve sacrificed everything..."
Her vision grew chaotic and blurred, and she could no longer focus.
Was this what dying felt like?
Maybe it was because the realization that she was powerless and the thought that she was about to die had combined and made her emotional.
Origami reached out toward the sky, longing for salvation.
"I have nothing left now...!"
Then Origami’s vision suddenly began to brighten.
【Hey, you. Don’t you want power?】
And then came the voice.
It was a voice that skipped around and cut out in places, like it was full of noise.
"Who are you...?"
【Answer me. Don’t you want power?】
Even when Origami asked who it was, the voice was only trying to tempt her.
【Don’t you want absolute power that won’t lose to anyone?】
"I... need power..."
And that voice’s temptation was one Origami could not easily resist.
To take revenge on the spirits, she needed power stronger and more absolute than anyone else’s.
That was Origami’s salvation, and what she needed most right now.
"More than anything else... even if I have to sacrifice everything else! I need absolute power that can fulfill my wish... the strongest power no one can touch――!"
Origami was desperate.
At this rate, she would never be able to avenge her parents.
So, wanting it more than anyone else, she answered as if bewitched by the voice’s temptation.
"I need it!"
Did the sky answer Origami’s cry?
When her vision returned to normal, she saw a crystal floating above her.
【If you need power, reach out.】
As Origami stretched her hand toward the crystal, the voice said,
【I’ll give it to you.】
Then, the moment Origami’s fingertips touched the crystal, it was absorbed straight into her chest.
"That was..."
Origami wondered whether what she had seen had really not been an illusion, and then she felt a sudden pounding in her chest.
"Ghk...!"
Then came the pain.
Her body was seized by unbearable agony and lifted into the air.
"Aaaaaaagh――!!!"
And so, something else began to be born.
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