Orin’s Perspective
After I parted with Ayaka, I headed into the kitchen to clean the plate that she ate off of. I’m glad that she seemed to enjoy it.
‘I knew that she missed her absent parents, but I wasn’t aware that it was to that extent. I certainly wasn’t expecting her to start crying because she noticed my cooking tasted like her mom’s. I also wasn’t expecting the sorrow of her mom’s disappearance to resurface in me like that. I didn’t know that those feelings were still greatly affecting me. Well, at least that conversation made us grow closer. She seemed to be less reserved when she talked to me and she opened up to me, to the point that she felt comfortable enough to rely on me to console her.’ I reflected on the talk with Ayaka.
As I finished my reflection, I put the finishing touches on cleaning the plate by rinsing off the soap on the plate. After finishing that, I decided to head back to my room in the royal chambers. On the way there, I met Miss Koishi in the Great Foyer.
“Ah! Orin, where’s lil sis?” She asked me while showing me a wide smile.
“She’s in the library, but I still think it's best for you not to disturb her right now,” I answered.
“Okay! I’ll go play somewhere else then!” She energetically replied before disappearing before my eyes with her ability.
‘Miss Koishi always seems to have unlimited energy, it’s too bad that she can’t make friends anymore because her ability causes anyone to forget her after they take their eyes off her. When she was younger, she was very keen to befriend some of the other youkai in the Underworld, but it always failed no matter what type of youkai she met. For some reason, every youkai that she talked to hated her both implicitly and explicitly all because she was a satori, as in some showed blatant hate through their words, while others through their words, as Miss Koishi has told me. They think that it’s a choice for satori to read other’s minds, but that’s not the case, satoris don’t get to turn off their ability. They are forced to even if they don’t want to. Because of this, Miss Koishi had to experience many unpleasant thoughts when she was young. Miss Satori was also affected by this, but to a lesser degree as she had gotten used to the hate since she had her mother there to help her when she heard negative thoughts. Unfortunately, their mother disappeared when Miss Koishi was very young. While Miss Satori tried to help Miss Koishi deal with this issue, she was less experienced than their mom was, and could not help Miss Koishi fully cope with the negativity.’ I reminisced.
‘I remember one incident that particularly affected her, it was when we visited what we now call the Former Capital of Hell for some important business. Back then, it was full of residents of all kinds of races, but now it is inhabited by only oni and vengeful spirits. In the streets, we saw a dying man who was lying on the floor. Miss Koishi ran up to him to try to see if she could help him. Before she got to him, the man turned his head slowly and stared at Miss Koishi before opening his mouth. I could not hear what he said, but I knew he said something because I saw his mouth moving. While the man was still talking, I moved towards Miss Koishi. When I reached her, the man had already died and Miss Koishi had an indescribable expression on her face. It was full of sadness, guilt, and grief. She later told me that what the man had said was “It’s…your…fault” in a voice laced with poison. She also told me that his mind was thinking ‘It’s all the fault of those satoris. They must have given me this illness because they thought it would be funny! Those despicable satoris, they must be the cause of all that is bad in the world! They must be the devil’s spawn.’ Unacceptable, truly unacceptable. Even just remembering it now fills my body with rage. Why did the satori have to be hated to this extent just because they had the ability to read minds?!’ My body started trembling in anger as I remembered that incident.
‘For days after that incident, Miss Koishi was depressed and felt completely destroyed. Although she tried to hide it by smiling whenever she talked to us, Miss Satori and I could easily tell that she was hiding her true feelings. I remember multiple times when I could hear a crying sound from her room when I was walking down the royal chambers hallway. Miss Satori and I tried our best to comfort and console her, but it wasn’t enough in the end. One day, she decided to try destroying the mind-reading power that had caused her so much pain by closing her third eye. Doing that did disable her mind-reading ability, but it also had unintended side effects. She lost the ability to form conscious thoughts and motives, but in return, she gained the ability to manipulate the unconscious. Luckily, she retained the ability to form emotions as I have seen her facial expressions shift. She once again put up a happy facade, but I knew she was still feeling lonely as the only people she could talk to were the three of us in the mansion. However, that facade ended when Ayaka arrived. Since she’s been here, Miss Koishi has been much more cheerful and energetic than before. Obviously, I am thankful for that, but I still want Miss Koishi to meet other people who aren’t affected by her ability.’ I sighed as I thought of the nearly 0% likelihood of that happening. ‘Well, that probability was based on the past, hopefully, it will be higher now.’ I concluded my recollection of the past. As I finished, I noticed that I had arrived at the royal chambers hallway.
“I have obtained the ultimate power! Now it's time to fulfill the request of the two who gave me this power!” I heard Okuu say from behind the door to her room. Then Okuu walked out of her room and into the hallway.
I was shocked by her appearance because of how much it had changed since the last time I saw her. She now had a large elliptical red gem with a black vertical line at the center of the gem. The entire gem resembled a sort of slitted eye. She wore a white cape over her shoulders that was lifted by her wings, revealing the underside of the cape. The underside had an image of space and looked like a galaxy. Two atomic models orbited around her left leg, while her right leg was covered with a stone-like thing that reached from her foot to just above her ankle. On her right hand was a large orange rod that sparked with some kind of energy on the end of the rod.
“Ah, Orin!” I hear Okuu call out to me. “I’m going down to the fusion reactor below the Hell of Blazing Fires to gather some energy for me to take over the surface!” I was shocked to hear her plans.
“Take over the surface!? Why?!” I asked in a panicked voice.
“To accomplish the task given to me by the two people who gave me this power!” She responded while puffing out her chest, seemingly feeling proud of her answer.
“Who were these people?!” I frantically asked her.
“I don’t know!” She responded in a carefree tone.
“Aren’t we Miss Satori’s pets?! Why would you listen to the orders of someone that isn’t her?!” I asked, still panicking.
“To repay them for giving me this power!” She answered. “Anyways, I’m heading down! See you when I’m done!” She quickly ran off before I had any time to respond.
I had known Okuu for a while. We were friends before we both became Miss Satori’s pets. I had always known about Okuu’s naivety and carefree personality, but I didn’t think she would be tricked into doing something like this. I need to stop her before she does something she regrets, but how. I could confront her directly, but this will likely cause a battle to erupt between us and possibly even damage our friendship. I don’t want either because Okuu was part of my family here in the Palace of Earth Spirits, and I don’t want this to cause a disconnection between us. I’m also not too confident that I could beat her after she obtained that new form. The energy that was leaking out of her was intense, if she was just leaking that much energy, how much of it did she have stored in her body? I decided to command some spirits to move to the surface through the skylight hidden above the Untamed Courtyard that was starting to open due to Okuu to start causing trouble, in hopes that a strong youkai would come and hopefully defeat Okuu.
After I commanded the spirits, I just waited, occasionally checking in on Ayaka in the Grand Library. Each time I checked, she was sitting at one of the tables reading books. Even when it was super late, she was still reading books. Youkai don’t need sleep, but some sleep anyway just to pass the time, so it didn’t surprise me that she was still awake. She didn’t even seem to notice when I opened the door to check in on her because of how focused she was on her books. Hours passed before I heard a crashing sound from the front of the mansion with my cat ears that had enhanced hearing capabilities.
I transformed into my black cat form and ran towards the entrance hall to intercept the intruders and test their skills. To my surprise, the two people who made it here were both humans. One of them had black-brown hair that reached below her shoulders. She wore a red sleeveless shirt over a white semi-sleeved shirt, A red skirt that ended in white, and a red ribbon in her hair. She held a stick ending in three paper tails, I think it was called a gohei.
The other human wore a witch hat with a white ribbon tied above the brim. She wore a black and white apron-like dress. She flew on a broom, while the red human just floated naturally.
Both of them started flying towards the door to the Great Foyer. I stood just before the door, floating in my cat form. Both of them saw me and took a battle stance.
“Just a cat huh?” The red and white human said.
“Yep, let’s just do what we do best and beat it up!” The black and white human responded.
They both started to shoot at me, the witch-looking human shot incandescent lasers towards me while the red and white human shot glowing needles at me. I started to move around in motions that looked like jumps as if there was some invisible foothold in the air. With each jump, I spawned in three circles of red small bullets that quickly moved outwards. The human dodged each wave of bullets and continued firing bullets at me. I tried to dodge a few of them before intentionally getting hit by one to test their firepower. It was a sufficient amount of firepower, so I decided to retreat, satisfied with how powerful they seemed. I ran through the doors to the Great Foyer before I decided to wait for the humans to appear again. Although they had shown an adequate amount of firepower, I wanted to test their dodging skills.
This time I decided to use my ability and commanded several spirits to surround me and explode into bullets after a short period of time. While commanding the spirits, I summoned waves of red jagged bullets in circular patterns. The circles closest to me were completely enclosed with bullets, while the ones furthest to me had many gaps in the circles, allowing that pattern to be dodged. After a short delay, all the circles released the bullets that comprised them outward. When the wave was about to end, the spirits I commanded exploded into blue small bullets that moved outward in a fan shape.
The humans easily dodged and fired back at me. I tried dodging, but they had already gotten used to how I dodged, so they managed to predict where I would move to and started to land hit after hit on me. Seeing that I was at the limit of what I could do in cat form, I decided to once again retreat, but not before leading them toward the Great Hall. Once we were in front of the door to the Great Hall, I commanded the spirits to form a sort of smokescreen, which they obeyed. The spirits each exploded into a bunch of smoke, allowing me to jump down the stairs and leave through the door to the Courtyard.
‘Let’s have them face Miss Satori, if they manage to beat her, then they might be able to defeat Okuu. Well just in case they are able to, let’s move to the Hell of Blazing Fires to prepare one last encounter and test.’ With that thought in mind, I moved through the Courtyard to the secondary foyer before entering the servant’s quarters and heading towards the Untamed Courtyard. When I reached it, I immediately jumped into the hole in the center of the room without hesitation. As I was falling I had one thought ‘These humans certainly have potential.’
Satori’s Perspective
I was in my office reading reports sent to me by the youkai who were closer to the surface. Three particular reports intrigued me. They came from the tsuchigumo Yamame Kurodani, the hashihime Parsee Mizuhashi, and the oni Yuugi Hoshiguma. They all had one common detail: two humans from the surface had invaded the Underworld and were heading toward here.
‘Sigh, I was looking forward to spending more time with my sisters, but I guess I have to deal with this first. Speaking of them, I wonder where both of them are. Well, I should probably move to the Great Hall and prepare to confront them.’ I thought to myself.
I moved to the Great Hall and started preparing myself for an inevitable encounter with them. Minutes later, I heard loud sounds coming from the Great Foyer, so I knew that the humans had arrived. The doors then opened and two humans flew inside. Noticing them, I started to talk.
“It’s unusually loud here. How long has it been since we last had visitors from the surface in this palace?” I asked.
Hearing my voice, the two humans finally noticed me and turned towards me. They were thinking of many thoughts, but the most common thought was ‘Who is this person?’
“It's a bit rude of you to ask for someone’s identity before introducing yourself, don’t you think?” I asked them in response to their thoughts. Both of the humans had confused expressions on their faces wondering how I knew what they wanted to ask.
“Oh well, I am Satori, the mistress of the Palace of Earth Spirits.” I saw both of them take a step back, metaphorically I mean as they were both still in the air. “You are being awfully cautious of me, especially considering that you are the visitor here,” I told them, seeing their action.
‘We should introduce ourselves now, we have been pretty impolite.’ They both thought in unison.
“Indeed you should,” I responded. They again had a shocked expression on their faces. They quickly regained their composure and started introducing themselves.
“I’m Reimu, the shrine maiden of the Hakurei Shrine.” The girl wearing red and white said.
“The name’s Marisa, the ordinary magician!” The girl wearing a witch hat shouted.
“Could you introduce your two companions now?” I asked, noticing another two sources of thoughts other than the two humans.
““Eh?”” Both the new people said at the same time.
“A-ah, I’m Alice, the rainbow puppeteer of the Forest of Magic.” The source of the extra thoughts next to Marisa introduced herself.
“I’m Aya, the greatest and fastest reporter in Gensokyo!” The girl who was supposedly Reimu’s companion proudly yelled.
I turned my attention to Reimu’s and Marisa’s thoughts again. “I see, so that’s what you are hoping to accomplish. Nothing can be hidden from me. What you are thinking speaks more truthfully than what you can say with your mouth. Regardless, I will not allow you to get past me.” I said before reading their thoughts once again.
‘This is such a pain, I better beat her quickly so I can get to the rumored hot springs in the Underworld.’ Reimu thought.
“She’s a satori, a youkai that was exiled from the surface. She possesses an incredibly powerful mind-reading ability, be careful Marisa!” I heard Alice tell Marisa.
“All the rumors of hot springs are untrue, there is not a single one down here. The closest thing to them is the baths in this Palace.”
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“Eeek” Reimu made a cry out of surprise.
“How does she know what I am thinking? Mind reading ability? Sounds like a lie.” I voiced out what both of them were thinking.
Both of them were surprised that I had said their thoughts with 100% accuracy.
“Now, how am I going to beat her?” I voiced what Reimu was thinking. “Anyway, everything will be fine if I beat her, right? I see.” I said in response to Marisa’s thoughts. “What a pain, let’s just fight.” I read Marisa’s thoughts and said them aloud. “How belligerent, I’ll let you know that it is hard to beat me in a battle of danmaku. Every spell card in your arsenal that you thought of using in this battle has been read by me and I already know how to dodge them. I can respond to your attacks with equally powerful and perhaps familiar danmaku patterns.” I informed them.
I saw the two humans start whispering to each other, but it was futile since I could read my mind and figure out exactly what they were planning.
“I see, so you are planning to have one of you fight me while the other goes deeper into the Palace, a decent idea, but I won’t let you do that!” I said.
The humans then started shooting bullets toward me. Reimu shot red yin-yang orbs coupled with fast-moving red talismans in circular patterns and slower-moving gray talismans also in circular patterns. Marisa shot prismatic lasers that covered a wide area. In response, I used my first nonspell, the same one that I had shown Ayaka before. Red and blue bubble bullets and red and blue jagged blue bullets spawned all around me moving outward before converging in the center of the room. Both of the humans dodged the first wave of my attacks before retaliating again with their own. Reimu continued the same pattern as she used the first time. I easily dodged it because I saw where she was planning to aim it in her thoughts, while Marisa placed a hexagonal object filled with glowing lights inside the sweeping part of her broom.
After I dodged Reimu’s attack, I launched another wave of my nonspell, this time slightly changing the trajectory of each bullet to make it harder to read and dodge. At the time, I didn’t have a chance to read Marisa’s mind because I was too concentrated in the fight with Reimu. When I had a chance to, I looked towards Marisa and saw that a blue aura seemed to emerge from her broom. Before I could figure out what it was, she suddenly launched herself towards me at an incredibly high speed, forcing me to quickly dodge out of the way. Marisa did not stop to look back and I realized her intent.
‘I see, that attack wasn’t aimed at hurting me, but just to get away from me and continue on. Nothing I can do about that now, so I should focus on battling Reimu.’
Once again, Reimu and I clashed danmaku as we each tried to struggle for the upper hand and cause the other to activate their first spell card first.
> A/N: The full fight will be next chapter, this chapter will be more focused on Marisa’s battle with Ayaka.
Marisa’s Perspective
“That Satori was certainly something, wasn’t she? I didn’t expect her to actually be able to read minds.” I said to Alice while I was calmly flying through the rooms of this palace.
“I told you that she could, yet you still didn’t believe me,” Alice responded from a small earpiece given to me by my kappa friend Nitori.
“Well, it is hard to believe that anyone has an ability as powerful as mind-reading. Anyways, luckily Reimu was there or else we would have had to take a long time gradually wearing her out before we could defeat her. I still can’t believe that she offered to stall Satori while I continued forward.” I told Alice.
“It was the best idea, Reimu, while powerful, lacks the bursts of speed needed to completely escape a satori,” Alice explained. “A satori is an extremely difficult enemy to deal with because they will be able to see through all your danmaku patterns and the ways to dodge them.”
“Yeah, I certainly agree with that. By the way, where did that cat go? I thought it went into the room where we found Satori, but she wasn’t there.” I wondered.
“It probably used the smoke we saw before entering that room to make an escape into one of the other doors. I remember seeing a total of 6 doors in that room. She could have left out any of them.” Alice suggested.
“That’s certainly possible. Oh well, let’s just continue forward until we find something interesting or find the culprit of that geyser spewing out vengeful spirits. Actually, now that I think about it, didn’t that cat have the ability to control spirits, is it possible that she is the culprit behind this incident?” I asked Alice.
“Perhaps, but we don’t really have too much information to go off on. We know that the cat can control spirits to some extent, but we have not confirmed whether or not it can control vengeful spirits or even cause that geyser. Also, compared to the other masterminds behind the other incidents that we have solved, that cat is comparatively much weaker than any of them.” Alice answered after compiling the information we had.
“Is it a requirement for the incident mastermind to be strong?” I posed a question to Alice.
“Not really, but I’d imagine they have to be decently powerful to cause an incident in the first place, and all the others that we’ve fought have been very powerful, so based on those, I’d imagine that incident masterminds have to be relatively powerful. However, we have also encountered more powerful youkai on our path here than we have on the path to the incident mastermind of any other occasion. So far, we have encountered a spider youkai with control over diseases, a hashihime with the power to manipulate jealousy and cause in-fighting in a group, a powerful oni that could crush even the largest boulder in a single punch, and a mind-reading satori.” Alice responded.
“True…” I said while flying through a long corridor filled with rooms with bunk beds, likely the servant’s quarters due to the quality of the rooms compared to the overall look of the palace. Soon, I made it out of the corridor and into an open room that had no roof above it, which allowed the brilliant moonlight to illuminate the abundant plants in the room. The calming feeling that the moon provided contrasted heavily with the untamed and primitive nature of the room, which I assumed to be a courtyard seeing a destroyed fountain and several bench-like objects that were in pieces. In the middle of the room, I saw a gaping hole. Drawing near the hole, I felt an intense heat coming out of it. My instincts told me to dive into the hole as I had a feeling that was where the incident master was, but before I could, I heard a voice coming from right above the hole.
“I-I c-can’t a-allow y-you t-to go a-any f-further!” A girl who I didn’t recognize said. She had silver hair that reached her waist, a pair of blue cat ears, black raven wings, a silver fox tail, and a third-eye above her chest, like Satori, but this girl’s was half open, unlike Satori’s fully opened third-eye.
‘Who is this girl? She looks pretty young, but then again youkai can have appearances that don’t match their age.’ I thought to myself.
“M-my n-name i-i-is A-Ayaka K-Komeiji, a-and I-I a-am 11.” The girl seemingly responded to my thoughts.
‘A bit younger than I thought then. Wait why did she include her age in her introduction? Given how much she’s stuttering, she must be very shy and has a hard time speaking to people she doesn’t know, so why did she add that part?’ I wondered.
“Y-you a-asked m-me, a-and I-I a-answered.” She replied again to my thoughts.
“Careful Marisa, she’s another satori. Look at her chest, that’s her third eye, a feature that only satoris have. She can likely read your mind as well, but I’m guessing to a lesser extent than Satori can due to her half-open eye.” Alice relayed to me the information she had analyzed.
Just to confirm, I decided to think to myself. ‘Can you read my mind?’
The girl, Ayaka, shook her head, which gave her away. ‘If you can’t hear my thoughts, then why did you shake your head?’ I asked in my thoughts.
A look of realization appeared on the girl’s face and she quickly blushed in embarrassment. I took this chance to introduce myself.
“Hello, I am Marisa, the ordinary magician who will be the one to solve this incident,” I told her out loud because it felt more natural to me. She tilted her head with her face still a bit red when I said the word ‘incident’, and I saw her slightly open her mouth as if to ask me what an incident was. However, I decided to interrupt her before she could ask anything because I wanted to solve this geyser incident. “How are you going to stop me?”
The girl had a shocked look on her face and stayed silent for a few moments before she meekly muttered, “L-l-like t-this.”
As soon as she finished saying that, a danmaku pattern emerged from her. I was slightly surprised that this girl could use danmaku, but I quickly regained my composure. A yellow bubble bullet appeared in the middle of me and her. Out of that yellow bubble bullet, arcs of small and medium bullets emerged. The arcs started out as a line of densely packed bullets before the line started the curve and the bullets began to disperse. As the arc continued to move, the bullets that appeared behind the front of the arc started to move outward forming a complex bullet pattern. After the arcs disappeared back into the central bubble bullet, I saw a line of small and medium bullets heading directly toward me. I dodged to the side, but I saw that the bullets that made up the line stopped at certain internals before continuing to spread out and move outward. I was once again surprised by the sophistication and complexity of her first nonspell. Once I regained full composure, I was not expecting the bullets to spread so quickly and I got hit before even starting my first nonspell, causing my mana to decrease before even casting anything.
I figured that I would go a bit easier on her seeing that she was a child, but seeing her first nonspell, I decided to go a bit more serious. I started to channel my mana into my first nonspell and before long, I saw the danmaku pattern emerge. 5 magical circles appeared creating a pentagon shape with the magical circles as the vertex points. Out of each magic circle, colorful stars appeared, trailing behind the path of the magical circle that they came from. As a result, the stars formed an arc that resembled the tail of a comet before moving outward from where they appeared.
I saw a surprised look on Ayaka’s face in response to seeing my first nonspell. She started to have an unfocused look on her face, likely because she was too caught up in her thoughts or imagination. As a result of her lapse in focus on the battle, she started to get hit by some of the star bullets that I shot out. She quickly snapped out of her unfocused state after feeling herself get hit by a few bullets. She started to dodge the endless waves of stars approaching her and retaliated with another wave of her first nonspell, this time changing where the arcs appeared and the direction that they traveled. They originally appeared with two arcs closer to her with one arc closer to me that traveled right from where they appeared. This time, two arcs appeared near me and only one appeared closer to her and the arcs themselves moved to the left.
The line of bullets that was shot directly at me was also different this time. Instead of being shot toward me, it was shot in random directions. To make up for the lack of accuracy, however, more than one line was shot out. As a result of more being shot, the bullets that lingered also increased, making it harder to dodge when the bullets dispersed outward. I ended up getting hit quite a few times because I could not read the pattern and find where to go to best dodge the wave of bullets. I looked over at Ayaka when I had a chance to and saw that she had seen through the pattern and was perfectly dodging the endless waves of star bullets that I was sending. It seemed to me that she had not gotten hit since I caught her off guard the first time.
I changed up my danmaku pattern by starting to move around more frequently. That was one of the main advantages I had in this battle of nonspells. Hers would stay perfectly static and not change when she moved around, while mine would change pretty drastically if I moved around as the magic circles were centered around me. I mixed up the trajectory of the stars and started to move in ways that allowed stars to build up, creating denser formations that would be much harder to dodge. I started this new pattern while still dodging her nonspell. Luckily for me, the nonspell only alternated between two variations, and because I understood the basics of each variation, I could dodge decently easily.
My new variation of my nonspell caused Ayaka some trouble as she continually got hit by more and more star bullets. I saw her danmaku pattern start flickering so I knew that her first nonspell only had a bit more energy left in it. I started to grow a bit more confident, which turned out to be a mistake as that confidence caused me to get hit by a set of bullets that seemingly appeared out of nowhere. I was confused about where the bullets came from before I noticed that this time, the arcs had appeared behind me and arced toward the bubble bullet before exiting behind me again. It seemed that Ayaka had created a third variation of the bullet wave to catch me off-guard.
I continued to get hit because I was not accustomed to the new variation which undermined my strategy for dodging the first two variations. Even though I was taking quite a bit of damage, I continued to maintain my own nonspell for as long as I could. I saw that Ayaka was also getting hit quite a bit. Both of our danmaku patterns started to flicker a bit before returning back to normal. We both continued our danmaku patterns until I got hit by a stray bullet that caught me off guard because she returned back to the first variation of her nonspell. That one hit caused the stars and magic circles that appeared from my first nonspell to flicker before disappearing in a flash of light.
“Not bad! But that is still not enough to beat me! Let’s go, Magic Sign [Milky Way]!” I yelled out, my voice turning deeper when I said my spell card name. An explosion sound echoed through the room.
Ayaka’s Perspective
I felt proud that I had forced this person who seems like a seasoned danmaku battler to use a spell card before I did. This pride only lasted for a brief moment, disappearing the moment I saw the pattern created by Marisa’s spell card because I had to focus on the pattern to figure out how to dodge it.
A spiral of large red and blue stars appeared above Marisa. The stars moved in the directions that they were spawning, moving toward me and forming long lines of large star bullets. There were still a few gaps between each large star, but they were pretty small. The locations that the stars appeared from moved counterclockwise causing each star to move at a trajectory slightly different from the others. While she was shooting these large star bullets, smaller yellow stars appeared from the left of me moving diagonally down-right, and smaller green stars appeared from the right of me moving diagonally down-left. The stars converged directly in front of her, creating a difficult pattern to read and dodge. Occasionally, the 5 magic circles that rotated clockwise fired 4 waves of 3 small star bullets that were pretty close together that went straight toward me.
At first, I was dodging decently well. I slipped through a few of the gaps between the larger star bullets while dodging the smaller light bullets that appeared beside me. During this time, I continued firing my first nonspell pattern, which Marisa dodged fairly well, only taking a few hits. However, one of the waves of small star bullets that was shot by the magic circles managed to barely hit me causing my nonspell to flicker and disappear. It was time to activate my spell card and get serious.
“Astro Sign [Solar Star System]!” I yelled in the deep tone that accompanied a spell card declaration, another explosion resounded in the Untamed Courtyard.
From in front of me, a black bubble bullet appeared covered with darkness from my Lesser Darkness Manipulation skill, and clusters of small and medium bullets began to orbit around this bubble bullet. I saw Marisa being pulled toward the center by a minuscule amount due to the wind I controlled due to my Miniscule Wind Manipulation skill. I saw Marisa start smirking as she quickly realized the general idea of my spell card. She started easily dodging it while shooting her own spell card at me. After one full orbit, I changed the orbital paths of each cluster by using the wind I could influence with my skill.
Marisa was not expecting this and got hit by a few of the clusters as they were changing their orbital path. However, this didn’t last long as Marisa quickly figured out how to dodge the changing paths of the clusters of bullets. It started to get hard for me to hit her because of her fast reaction speed and her impeccable maneuvering on her broom. Her control of her broom was not even the thing that impressed me the most. I was most impressed by her speed on that broom despite her excellent control. She managed to accelerate to extremely fast speeds in a matter of seconds. She could achieve a very high max speed, yet she also had no trouble stopping. She could come to a full stop after at most 2 seconds of slowing down.
Marisa then made her spell card harder by increasing the number of small stars that appeared beside me and increasing the rate at which the magic circles shot the waves of small stars. She began to get the upper hand over me as I got hit by more and more bullets. I started to see my spell card begin to flicker, so I knew it was almost over, as I hadn’t come up with a second nonspell nor did I have the energy necessary to start another danmaku pattern after this spell card.
“N-not y-yet!” I yelled in desperation, remembering the punishment of failing this quest. ‘I can’t go down yet!’ I thought to myself.
I pushed my Lesser Darkness Manipulation to its limits and increased the darkness on the bubble bullet while using my Miniscule Wind Manipulation to increase the speed of each cluster’s orbit even if it was only by a slight amount. I also began to use my Lesser Illusion skill to produce illusionary clusters that were meant to throw off Marisa and cause her to move into the path of the real clusters. My plan worked and I saw Marisa get hit by many of the clusters.
I saw a massive grin on Marisa’s face, seemingly because she was enjoying this battle. She continued trying to dodge the second variation of my spell card pattern while still launching stars toward me. We both got hit by many bullets and both of our spell cards began to flicker. After a few moments, they returned back to normal. Marisa started laughing, thoroughly enjoying herself before she once again increased the number of stars that she spawned. In return, I summoned more clusters of bullets. We traded hits, one of the clusters hit her at the same time as one of her large stars hit me. Both of our spell cards started to flicker again for a few seconds before disappearing.
I saw Marisa preparing to use her second nonspell, but before she could, I began to talk.
“I-I s-surrender,” I told her as I dropped to one knee. I was almost completely out of energy, but this time, I managed to retain my consciousness.
“Alright, that was a fun battle. You did much better than I was expecting you to!” Marisa said before jumping straight into the hole.
‘That battle was pretty fun like she said. I think I could also use her nonspell and spell card as inspiration for my own because we both seem to use attacks related to stars or space in general. Well, I guess that’s the result of this battle. I’m pretty happy with my first battle and result given that this was only the first confrontation.’