Amamiya Rin gritted his teeth against the stabbing pain pulsing from the wound on his thigh and stole a glance at it. The ugly gash was slowly closing — at this rate, it would be fully healed in ten minutes or so.
But Amamiya Rin didn't wait that long. He swept a quick look in the direction the Slit-Mouthed Woman had disappeared.
On the ground, a broken trail of dark red droplets was clearly visible even in the dim light.
Amamiya Rin shoved his cane and sword bag up against the wall and immediately set off after her, following the blood trail.
Find her lair first. Then team up with Kawakami Tomie and put the Slit-Mouthed Woman down for good.
That was the first thought that had crossed his mind the moment he watched her flee.
She bleeds. Which means she can be killed. And a monster that can be killed is a monster worth chasing.
Amamiya Rin moved with the bone blade for a walking stick, making as little noise as possible, picking his way carefully along the line of the blood trail.
The trail itself told its own story. It wasn't a straight line — it staggered and veered, pooling in smears here, dragging into long streaks there, a clear map of every lurching, unsteady step she'd taken.
He was careful not to close the distance too far. He kept himself at a range that was far enough for safety, close enough to track direction, and used the shadows lining the alley walls to swallow his silhouette.
"Found you! You ugly hag!"
Kawakami Tomie, however, had no interest in being careful. Using Amamiya Rin's position reports to lock onto the Slit-Mouthed Woman's location and cut her off, she materialized at the far end of the alley ahead — brazenly, without a shred of concealment.
She simply stood there in the middle of the path, arms crossed, chin tilted upward at a slight angle, her flawless face arranged into an expression of cold, effortless contempt. That look — the one she leveled at absolutely everyone — was arguably her only flaw.
"I have zero interest in playing hero," she said, "but what can I do when my partner just loves to stick his nose into other people's business? If you want to blame someone…"
"I don't need that many survivors… Die."
The words died on her lips. A low, wet mutter carrying a weight of pure hatred rasped right beside Kawakami Tomie's ear — and the Slit-Mouthed Woman, who had barely been able to walk a moment ago from the wound to her vital point, blazed with a sudden surge of red light in those venom-soaked eyes.
Her figure dissolved into blur.
That was not speed any human being could achieve. It didn't even register within Kawakami Tomie's dynamic visual range.
Like several frames had been cut from a film reel.
One moment, the Slit-Mouthed Woman was shuffling along with her thighs pressed together from the pain. The next, all that remained in the air was a tearing afterimage and the sharp crack of a sonic boom.
Tomie hadn't even processed what was happening when she felt a sudden coolness at her neck.
In the next instant, the world spun.
She found herself looking at her own beautiful body, still standing with its arms folded, perfectly composed.
Only — there was nothing above the neck. Just blood, erupting upward like a fountain.
The headless body locked rigid for a fraction of a second, then crumpled softly to the ground.
The Slit-Mouthed Woman's figure, already a dozen meters back in the alley, coalesced from blur back into solid form. Warm blood dripped steadily from the huge blade of her scissors, tapping against the concrete below.
"…Huh?"
Tomie's severed head hit the ground, rolled twice, and came to rest face-up. Her lips moved, producing a single baffled syllable. Those beautiful eyes were wide and full of pure, disbelieving shock.
The Slit-Mouthed Woman — the very one who had nearly been driven to her knees by Amamiya Rin moments ago — had somehow found the ability to one-shot her? How?
But even as Tomie struggled to make sense of it, the Slit-Mouthed Woman was already suffering the consequences of that violent burst of movement. The exertion had wrenched her wound open, and the agony seized her entire body in convulsions, leaving her locked in place once more.
"!!!"
Watching all of it unfold through Kawakami Tomie's eyes in the span of a lightning flash, Amamiya Rin felt his heart clench hard.
(That fast!)
Too fast. The Slit-Mouthed Woman's speed had to have exceeded twenty meters per second — far, far beyond anything human.
Amamiya Rin stopped dead in his tracks and immediately abandoned any thought of pursuit.
He'd completely underestimated her. She was one of the most famous urban legends for a reason. The brute strength she'd displayed during their fight wasn't even her real specialty — it was simply the baseline explosive output of a body capable of moving at that kind of speed.
If she hadn't looked down on him — if instead of meeting him head-on she'd used that speed to attack from the side — he'd have ended up exactly like Tomie. He never would have gotten close enough to read her openings, let alone drive a crippling blow into her vital point.
"Baka! Baka! You hideous witch! You actually cut off my head! I will never forgive you for this! That's it — I've decided! I'm going to chop your body into mincemeat and feed it to the dogs!"
The head rolling around on the ground had caught up with events. Tomie's severed head lay face-up, glaring at the Slit-Mouthed Woman with pure, poisonous fury, shrieking curses at the top of her lungs.
The Slit-Mouthed Woman went rigid. She turned back, and saw, with unmistakable clarity, that the head she had personally scissored off was staring straight at her — mouth opening and closing, voice fully intact, cursing her out without pause.
"…A monster."
What monster?
Why, tonight of all nights, did she keep running into things like this?
The Slit-Mouthed Woman couldn't help but think back to the skinless woman she'd encountered earlier — that lunatic obsessed with the beauty of musculature, the freak who had tried to preach at her. That had been unsettling enough. And now here was another one — a creature who could still talk with its head cut clean off.
"Rin! Rin! Get over here and help me! Help me kill her! I want her dead — don't let her get away!"
Tomie screamed at the top of her lungs, calling out to Amamiya Rin in the distance to come avenge her.
Another monster?
The Slit-Mouthed Woman was starting to panic. The searing agony was too much to linger through any longer.
She shot one last look at the headless body on the ground and the still-living head beside it, swallowed her revulsion, and dragged herself forward — unsteady on her feet but moving with unnatural speed — vanishing once again into the depths of the alley's shadows, leaving nothing behind but another broken trail of blood.
Amamiya Rin held his breath, pressed back against the wall at the corner, and waited until he was absolutely certain the Slit-Mouthed Woman's presence had completely faded. Only then did he step out.
He scanned his surroundings first, wary and deliberate, before walking quickly over to Tomie's side.
"Took you long enough! You move like a snail! What were you doing out there? Why were you hiding?"
Tomie glared up at him furiously, firing her questions in rapid succession.
"Do you really need to ask? Because I couldn't win, obviously. If I could've won, wouldn't I have come out sooner?"
Amamiya Rin rolled his eyes and stated it as the most reasonable thing in the world.
"What do you mean you 'couldn't win so you didn't come out'?! How can you say something so embarrassing out loud?!"
Tomie's eyes went even wider, her voice pitching even higher, radiating profound indignation.
"Going out when I can't win would just be throwing my life away. I'm not like you — I don't have some incredible immortal body where losing my head is just an inconvenience."
Amamiya Rin set the bone blade against the wall, bent down, and picked up Tomie's head.
Tomie had thrown herself into the meat grinder as the canary in the coal mine and still gotten one-shotted. If he'd blundered out there after her without knowing any better, then what was the whole point of the three divine artifacts of [Friend]?
"When other people are in danger, did you stop to calculate whether you could win or not then?!"
Tomie, incensed by his reasoning, bared her teeth at him with the clear and violent intention of sinking them into his arm — and promptly acted on that intention.
She opened her mouth wide, showing off a perfectly even row of teeth, and snapped at his forearm — but she was just out of reach, and no matter how hard she strained and lunged, she couldn't quite close the gap.
____
👻🔥Whant more?: Walnut-chan🔥👻
🔥 New history: Danmachi: Summoning Ruri Gokou, And other Chuunibyou Brats
Let's reach these milestones together:
🎯 100 Powerstones = +1 free chapter for all readers