Shiori was practically on Yimi's heels—less than five seconds behind—but she still lost her. The kid could turn into a kitten at will, after all.
This time, though, Yimi hadn't jabbed the teleporter at random. The default destination brought her straight back to Shiori's apartment.
Yimi's silhouette was nowhere to be seen. What Shiori found instead was an uninvited guest who had made herself quite at home—and whose welcome gift to the apartment's owner was the cold, black eye of a gun barrel.
DEM's strongest Wizard, Ellen Mathers.
One hand leveled the weapon; the other held a photograph of Shiori with the Spirits, which Ellen studied with casual interest. "Comfortable life you've got here, little girl. Looks like you take good care of every girl who follows you."
"Coming to block someone's door in person—DEM really has no class." Both hands raised, Shiori's mouth kept running as always.
"Let me count… one, two, three…" Ellen's eyes moved slowly across the photo. "You've already collected that many Spirits. If we include the 'Witch' you just picked up, that's seven—eight, if we count the Yamai sisters separately."
"So I'll keep this brief: hand over the 'Witch,' or would you rather watch every Spirit girl who follows you suffer the consequences? Even with a head full of mindless hot-bloodedness, little girl—" The gun snapped toward the kitchen. "Who's there?"
A rummaging sound had been coming from that direction. It went briefly silent at her question.
"Yimi…"
She'd forgotten. The strawberry pudding she'd kept in the fridge for Yimi—the kid had probably smelled it from across the apartment and gone straight for it.
When Ellen arrived she had swept every corner of the apartment; she'd detected no trace of anyone.
Pendragon manifested over Ellen's practical clothing. The same slashing force that had overpowered Tohka in direct combat tore clean through the wall—and was bent aside by a radiance too pure to be profaned.
Yimi had only been trying to raid the fridge. Getting attacked without a single word of warning scared the living daylights out of her.
But this was not a conscious activation of Love Train. She hadn't even processed the fact that someone had swung at her without warning.
The title of DEM's strongest Wizard was no empty boast. The raw power that had crushed Tohka head-on was no fabrication. Against any Spirit other than the First Spirit—even one in full, unsealed glory—Ellen would not lose.
The moment she saw that sacred, majestic white light, Ellen's expression shifted.
"The 'God'… why is she here?"
This was no reverent utterance. It was the First Spirit's identification code.
Nothing else she could think of would produce this feeling.
Before she could recalibrate around this unplanned complication, a scarlet lance hurtled from Yimi's hand—but what accompanied it was a gaunt, burlap-draped Stand.
Ellen brought her blade up to deflect. The attack was nowhere near as overwhelming as she'd expected—possibly not even half of Tohka's output.
What made even less sense was how the figure made one strike and immediately dissolved back around Yimi without follow-up.
Because Yimi had used it as a Kinsect.
The Insect Glaive technique known as Beacon—guiding the Kinsect to touch an enemy's attack point, mobility point, and defense point to feed information back to the hunter, lighting the three corresponding buffs: the red light, the white light, and the yellow light. Red was the most critical of the three. It didn't just enhance raw attack power; at its ceiling, it opened a further dimension of combat potential.
Yimi bared her teeth at Ellen in what she sincerely believed was a terrifying snarl.
Her Astral Dress replaced the boyish clothes she'd worn as a cat. She hadn't yet mastered silent manifestation, so the accompanying Spacequake erupted—though Yimi absorbed most of the shockwave herself.
The outfit was like something a magical girl would wear. The boost it provided was immense—not only compensating for the nutritional gap she hadn't quite closed yet, but elevating her power by more than one full tier.
Without deploying the most destructive long-range force among her ten Spirits—the Exterminating Angel—Yimi swept her weapon in a wide arc to drive Ellen back, then built off that momentum into the Insect Glaive's mightiest ground technique.
Flying Round Slash!
Shiori hit the floor and covered her head with both arms.
From outside, it looked like an invisible line simply passed through.
The Itsuka home was cut cleanly in two.
Ellen stared at the blood trickling across her palm, her eyes full of surprise.
Being wounded from the front—surprising in itself. But what genuinely astonished her was how she had been wounded, and the fact that it was only a light injury.
"Fighting in the open is hardly conduct befitting a Wizard." She lifted off the ground. "You've given me a very unsatisfying answer, Itsuka Shiori."
Ellen was gone.
"Hmm…" Yimi summoned her floating funnels and shot upward after her—and promptly discovered a gap in her own skill set.
She'd barely flown at all lately, mostly to conserve Spirit power.
Below, Shiori stared at the apartment split down the middle, tears threatening to spill.
"Yimi, stop flying around up there—it's the middle of the day!" The Spacequake alarm hadn't even sounded, which meant someone had definitely already seen this. That was probably the main reason Ellen hadn't wanted to linger.
Yimi nodded and dismissed her Astral Dress.
She seemed to have suddenly gotten very strong.
Leaving the Itsuka home behind, Yimi skipped and bounded toward Origami's apartment.
Her steps gradually slowed.
"Notification to Host: all previously visited worlds can be directly anchored and returned to. Time flow also varies between worlds. Travel is not a permanent farewell—there is no need to worry about never finding the friends you have left behind."
"Oh…"
"Good afternoon, my lady. You have suddenly grown as beautiful as one of Zaun's augmented fighters—I nearly failed to recognize you."
The Greed Demon clawed its way out of the earth at the contract's pull. Its rotund body executed a comically prim gentleman's bow, beady eyes squinting as it studied the little cat who had taken on a decidedly human shape.
"Newly awakened Celestial Spirit. I smell upon you an intent that makes even demons uneasy."
Yimi looked up at the demon, still considerably taller than herself. "Take me to the First Spirit."
The kitten had gotten very strong indeed.
"A Celestial Spirit seeking trouble with another Celestial Spirit—what a magnificent spectacle not to be missed." The demon pinched one of its whiskers, making absolutely no effort to hide the calculation in its eyes. "Regrettably, my lady, the demon must decline your wish on this occasion."
"Why?"
"Provoking this world's divine being—my head is not quite so brilliantly enlightened as one of Shimmer's so-called 'Sages,' and this is very much a matter of mortal peril. Merely escorting you there could cost me my life. Hardly worth it."
"Hmm?"
The demon grinned, baring its true intentions: "Should you be willing to contribute the pure-white crystal core concealed within you, perhaps some mad and reckless devil might be willing to take that risk."
A devil never feared death. It had first convinced the little cat that this was dangerous—thereby letting it raise the price through Famine's rules.
Prices were always set by the Greed Demon. It never made a losing deal.