Satori’s Perspective

I and the human known as Reimu continued our battle in the Great Hall. She shot wave after wave of red and gray amulets, occasionally sprinkling in a few yin-yang orbs that went in random directions. When these orbs hit a wall, they bounced off it with an unreadable trajectory. I could dodge the waves of amulets because I could see where she was intending to fire them in her thoughts. The orbs proved to be much more difficult to dodge as I could not accurately predict where they would go after bouncing off the walls in the room.

At the very least, I could prepare myself for when she would use the yin-yang bullets because I could read her thoughts, but it didn’t really help me dodge them too much. I started getting hit a few times purely because of these fast-moving orbs, yet I continued my barrage on her as well. I kept summoning in waves of jagged bullets, occasionally changing where the two sides of bullets coincided to throw off her dodging. Despite this, she still managed to easily fly through the gaps I left in my danmaku pattern. I saw that her facial expression hadn’t changed since the beginning of the match, probably thinking that this was too easy for her. What arrogance… I guess I should go a bit more serious then.

I started to use my mind-reading ability to see where she would dodge and then unleash a wave of bullets toward that location. The strategy semi-worked, I started landing a few hits on her, but she was still dodging the bullets with quite a bit of ease. To make matters worse, the damage I was taking to her bullets that she continued to shoot while dodging was starting to stack up, and I felt the energy stored in my first nonspell start to decrease.

‘*Sigh* It doesn’t look like my first nonspell will do much against her anymore. She has already seen through the pattern and even when I read her mind and shoot toward where she is planning to dodge, she easily changes where she dodges which makes my strategy obsolete. The energy in my nonspell is starting to run out as well. Oh well, I guess I should just use up all the energy in one last attack.’ I thought to myself.

While Reimu was shooting out her orbs, I made the energy contained in my nonspell formation basically implode on itself. This would use up all the energy by creating a massive number of bullets, causing my nonspell to stop, but in return, making the pattern much harder to dodge. Once I did so, 10 times the usual amount of bullets spawned which made the gaps to dodge the pattern much smaller and much tighter. It looked like I had summoned a solid wall of bullets that moved toward the enemy. Despite its seemingly undodgeable appearance, I made sure to leave small gaps to make the pattern dodgeable in accordance with Spell Card Rules. The trick to this desperation pattern was that you needed to move closer to me to dodge it.

When the formation was closer to me, small gaps appeared in the wall of bullets, allowing one to slip through them to safety. When the bullets moved away from me, however, the gaps started to close and there was no way to dodge them.

Reimu did not notice this trick and moved backward to analyze the formation and find ways to dodge it. When she realized that she had lost the opportunity to dodge, she shot one last wave of her amulets and yin-yang orbs toward me. I simply sidestepped out of the way of the amulets before using my full concentration to dodge the bouncing yin-yang orbs. This time, I managed to dodge all of them by simply dropping down to the ground and waiting for them to disappear.

Once I had reached the ground, I looked toward Reimu, and I saw her getting hit by several bullets that made up the wall. I could see that the energy in her nonspell was heavily depleted as it started to flicker; however, it still had enough energy to continue.

“Recollection [Terrible Souvenir]!” I activated my spell card as the energy of my nonspell was completely drained.

Upon my declaration, thin red beams of light started to orbit around me. The light did not deal any damage but served to be a tracking system. They continued to circle around me until they pointed directly at Reimu. If she stood still, the beams of light would stop on her location until she started moving again. She was confused by what these beams did so she stood still for a few moments trying to analyze the gimmick of my spell card. This caused many of the beams of light to point directly at her. Then the beams started to glow with more intensity. In response to this, Reimu quickly moved out of the way of the beams. After a few seconds, these beams of light turned into lasers, which could deal damage. She managed to dodge the lasers because she had moved away from the beams of light seconds before they became lasers.

While she was dodging the laser, she once again shot at me with several yin-yang orbs that I destroyed by aiming the lasers at them before the lasers had disappeared. I suddenly remembered that physical objects that were summoned by danmaku, could be destroyed with an adequate number of projectiles. Spirit-based bullets, the ones most commonly used and physical-based bullets could interact with each other, canceling each other, and physical-based bullets could interact with other physical-based bullets, but spirit-based bullets cannot interact with other spirit-based bullets.

When the lasers had completely disappeared, I summoned another set of orbiting beams of light. However, this time I decided to add a few more bullets on top of the beams of light. While beams continued to rotate, I shot out waves of yellow small bullets that formed spirals centered around me before moving outward toward my opponent. After the waves of yellow small bullets, I shot several blue bubble bullets in a spiral pattern starting from directly in front of me before spiraling behind me. Just as the first bubble bullet reached Reimu, the beams of light became lasers again.

Reimu couldn’t handle the amount of bullets I shot out on top of the beams of light and started taking a lot of damage. The energy in her nonspell finally ran out and the danmaku pattern that emerged from it completely disappeared.

‘Not bad. Guess it’s time for my first spell card’ I heard her mind say.

Before she even declared the spell card, I saw an image of how the spell card pattern looked. I saw two squares around her and many amulets strewn all across the image. The amulets in the first square moved outwards from her like normal, but the amulets in the second square moved inwards towards her. Outside of these two squares, the amulets appeared to move normally. I was looking forward to seeing this pattern because of how interesting just the image looked in her head.

“Dream Sign [Duplex Barrier]!” She called out in a deep voice.

While she was declaring her spell card, I shot at her with another repetition of the pattern of my spell card. Many of the beams of light stopped on her location because she had stood still when she was declaring her spell card. I then summoned the waves of yellow small bullets, causing Reimu to immediately snap back into action.

She started flying in all kinds of directions again, dodging the yellow bullets that I had shot out. When the waves of yellow bullets ended, I once again summoned bubble bullets to head toward her location. Reimu moved slightly to the side each time a bubble bullet appeared to dodge each of them. When the first bubble bullet started nearing her, she started flying at a speed that surprised me in order to dodge the beams of light that were just about to turn into lasers. Because of her quick movement, she was able to dodge all the lasers and bullets.

After she had dodged the lasers, she stopped right in her tracks and made some kind of motion with her hands. After she had finished her motions, two concentric squares appeared and waves of gray and red amulets spiraled around her, moving downwards as they continued to spiral. In the inner square, the bullets traveled normally downwards, but once they reached the boundary between the inner and outer square, the amulets disappeared for a fraction of a second before reappearing on the inner boundary of the outer square directly across from where they had first disappeared. Like the image in her head, these amulets that were now in the outer square moved toward her. Once the amulets reached the outer part of the boundary between the two squares, the amulets once again disappeared before reappearing on the outer edge of the boundary of the outer square a fraction of a second later. The amulets that reappeared once again started moving directly straight.

I stood outside both squares, observing how the spell card worked and how to dodge it. While watching the amulets approach me, I discovered something. The gray amulets lagged slightly behind the red amulets, creating a gap to dodge through. I used this knowledge to my advantage by moving through the gaps in the wave of red amulets before quickly sidestepping the gray amulets.

While dodging, I summoned another set of beams that had started rotating around me. All of them stopped on Reimu because she had not moved since starting her spell card. I then fired the waves of yellow bullets in a large spiral to throw off any dodging attempts. To my surprise, Reimu just stood still. As a result, I saw several bullets hit her and create a bit of smoke from the impact. Within milliseconds, the smoke cleared and when it did, I saw that she had some sort of barrier surrounding her. What was more interesting was that I discovered that I could no longer read her mind after she started her spell card, likely due to the barrier. Despite knowing the barrier was there, I continued my spell card pattern and shot out several bubble bullets, and that went straight toward where Reimu was. All the bubbles hit her and I saw a crack appear on her barrier, indicating that the barrier was not indestructible.

Then all the beams that were all focused on her turned to lasers, causing even more damage to her barrier and eventually, a shrill crack sound rang through the room. The crack in her barrier started to widen before completely encasing the entire barrier and before long, the barrier faded away. I saw the shock on Reimu’s face for a brief second before she started to shoot out a line of gray amulets straight toward me on top of the regularly spawning red and gray amulets. This line of amulets went through the same distortions as the other amulets did, but when they appeared from the outer part of the boundary of the outer square, they went towards where I was when they appeared out of the boundary. Combined with the regular amulets, her spell card became much harder to dodge, and I started taking a few hits.

I instinctively felt that the timer before all the energy in my spell card naturally dissipated was nearing 0, so I knew I had to fire off as many attacks as I could before the timer ran out. While dodging her new spell card pattern, I summoned a greater quantity of beams. Like before, the beams all stopped on Reimu’s location in the air. I then summoned a single wave of yellow bullets because I used most of the energy in creating more beams. Once that wave of bullets ended, I summoned less than half of the bubble bullets as I did before. A few of these yellow bullets and bubble bullets hit Reimu but they did not do too much damage to her. After the bubble bullets hit, the beams of light once again turned to lasers. I spent most of the energy in the spell card on keeping the lasers active.

While the lasers continued to deal damage to her, Reimu kept summoning amulets according to her usual danmaku pattern; however, this time, she shot more of the lines of gray amulets to throw me off. It worked quite well and I sustained a lot of damage. My spell card pattern flickered a bit, but it returned to normal, allowing me to continue dealing massive damage to her with the lasers.

I heard a countdown in my head, indicating that my spell card was just about to end. I continued using the energy to keep the lasers on until this countdown reached 0. When it did, I felt the remaining energy in my first spell card completely drain and the lasers disappeared. I looked toward Reimu to see how much energy she had left, but I saw that her danmaku pattern was also starting to disappear in a flash of light. Both of our first spell cards had ended at the same time.

‘Hmmm, this human is very impressive, but how will they deal with their own trauma?’ I wondered in my head. I then noticed that I could read her mind again now that her spell card had ended. ‘Let’s see how they deal with the patterns that have caused them trauma.’ I decided to use my ability to bring traumatic memories to the surface of her mind so that I could read and copy the patterns they are traumatized by.

I activated my ability and copied the first spell card that came to her mind; however, I saw that Reimu was planning to make a declaration to me, so I decided to make my own declaration in turn.

“Impressive, but let’s see how you will deal with this spell card!” Reimu yelled while preparing to declare her second spell card.

“Here’s where it truly begins. Now, sleep with this trauma that will leave you sleepless!” I yelled in response while also preparing the spell card I had seen in her mind.

“Recollection [Wind God’s Leaf-Veiling]!” “Spirit Sign [Fantasy Seal -Spread-]!” We both yelled at the same time with the usual deep voice and explosion sound.

Reimu’s Perspective

Upon our spell card declaration, a danmaku pattern appeared from both of us. I shot out waves of gray and red amulets and red medium bullets. All of them appeared from me in a circle-like formation. The gray amulets spread out quickly with a predetermined amount of space between them, while the red amulets and red medium bullets that I spawned appeared randomly in the circle.

From Satori, I saw waves upon waves of green and lime jagged bullets appear from her moving outwards before stopping and forming a circle around her. After a second, the circle of bullets curved back inwards towards her before they stopped, forming a secondary circle closer to her. The pattern that was formed by the two circles and the bullets that moved between the circles looked like a sort of dreamcatcher. After a while of forming the dreamcatcher, the bullets began slowly moving outwards in long sloped lines of bullets. The lines were not perfectly straight as several bullets in the line were slightly off. Once the lines of bullets approached me, the line started to drift apart and the bullets began to spread out.

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Now thinking about it, the spell card reminded me of one that I saw before.

“No way!” I heard Aya say in my earpiece that was given to me by Nitori.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

“That spell card, it’s mine!” She told me. After she said that, I noticed why it seemed so familiar to me. It was one of the spell cards I had struggled with when I had fought Aya. It’s weird how Satori can use it…

“Wait, how can she use it then!?” I yelled, knowing that no two people can use the same spell card.

“I don’t know! We don’t have time to discuss this though, those bullets are getting closer!” She informed me. I then started to dodge the bullets that Satori had summoned while shooting out more waves of my spell card pattern. I saw her take a few steps to dodge the bullets that I summoned, but for some reason, she didn’t move too much from her spot, causing many bullets to hit her that she otherwise could have dodged given the dodging capability she has shown earlier in this fight.

Despite taking a considerable amount of damage, or at least I’d assume she has, she continued to summon wave after wave of bullets before launching them all at me. Even though this spell card had caused me some trouble in the future, I was more prepared for it this time because I had already seen it before, so I knew the pattern and ways to dodge it. However, I still took a few hits because of the difficulty of the spell card. It also didn’t help that some painful memories resurfaced when I saw this spell card.

‘Ah geez, I really want this to be over with, I’ll just make my spell card a bit more powerful and fast so that she will have more trouble dodging.’ I thought to myself. I saw Satori lift one of her eyebrows in response to this thought, but I disregarded it.

“I see, so you think you can just brute force your way through your traumas…Naive.” She responded.

I then shot another repetition of my spell card pattern, but this time I made all the projectiles move much faster than before. Because they moved so much faster, they would deal more damage and would be much harder to dodge. When I finished shooting that repetition, I had to quickly move to the side to dodge the sloped lines that Satori had shot. However, I was not able to fully dodge all of them. Several bullets grazed me causing a bit of damage, but to a lesser extent than getting hit by them.

When I looked back at Satori, I saw that the energy in her spell card was beginning to fade away because of the damage that my last attack caused. However, it still wasn’t enough as she was able to continue her spell card. She fired another wave of bullets that slowly approached me. Before they reached me, I shot another round of my danmaku at an even higher speed than before. I then was forced to start dodging because the bullets had reached me. Despite dodging to the best of my abilities, I was still hit by a few bullets and I felt the faith energy in my spell card considerably decrease.

However, looking at Satori after semi-successfully dodging her attack, I saw that her spell card had disappeared in a flash of light.

“So…you managed to overcome that trauma with pure force. This next spell card will be impossible for you to do the same exact thing for.” Satori said.

I sighed upon hearing her, knowing that another difficult spell card was coming.

“Recollection [Deep Mist Labyrinth]!” Satori declared.

Upon finishing her declaration, she turned into a clump of blue mist. Once again, this spell card gave me nostalgia, but I couldn’t figure out where I had seen it before. I tried shooting my spell card pattern again, putting even more faith energy into making each wave faster than before. When the bullets reached the mist that Satori had turned into, they simply passed through her without dealing a single bit of damage. From that sight, I remembered where I had seen this from.

‘This is Suika’s survival spell card!’ I realized.

The mist then started to spawn blue jagged bullets around where it was before slowly flying toward me. Even though I had dodged the mist, I didn’t stay still because I remembered that the mist would continually chase me until the energy naturally ran out.

‘This spell card is so annoying, there is no way for me to deal any damage to her and also the bullets that linger around are like a minefield.’ I thought to myself.

“Let’s see how you deal with a spell card that you can’t damage” Satori’s voice echoed from the direction the mist was.

She continued to move towards me, spawning blue jagged bullets that lingered for a while before disappearing in her wake. I had a bit of experience with dodging this once already, but I never figured out how to dodge it. I then started to move in random directions, hoping that my instincts would allow me to dodge this spell card. However, I still got hit many times by the bullets that Satori left behind because I did not realize that the bullets slowly moved after they appeared. Many times, I thought I was safe from the bullets, one would hit me because I was too close to bullets that moved toward me.

I had no idea how much time was left before Satori’s spell card lost all its energy, but before long, I felt my second spell card start to disappear because of the damage I had sustained. I did not activate another nonspell or spell card because there was no point to. I couldn’t deal damage to her if I tried. As time continued to pass, I grew angrier and angrier that I had no way to end the spell card. Stifling my frustration I continued to dodge, and soon I found out a way to dodge the bullets that she summoned.

I moved from one corner to another before moving toward the center of the room and waiting for the bullets in the corner to disappear. Using this strategy, I was about to dodge the spell card without taking any more damage, and after a short period of time, the spell card disappeared.

“So, you managed to overcome your trauma by using your frustration to suppress your innate fear of the spell card and figuring out a way to dodge the attack. Interesting…” Satori said. “Prepare to face your greatest trauma!”

Hearing her words, I finally realized the common link between the last 2 spell cards she used. Both were attacks that I did not like dealing with when I first faced them.

‘Judging from her words, this spell card must be one that I dislike or fear more than the other two. What is it then?’ I thought to myself.

“Correct, and you will find out now. Recollection [Border of Wave and Particle]!” Satori declared in response to my thoughts.

Waves of pink jagged bullets in a spiral pattern appeared. Bullets appeared starting from her before spreading outwards. The bullets had quite large gaps between each individual bullet, but it was hard to move through them due to how fast the bullets moved. The bullets were fairly spaced apart at first, but then they started to form long solid walls of pure bullets at times.

“This spell card!” I said with a trembling tone full of hate as well as fear. The last time I had to deal with this spell card, I had to use 3 of my spell cards to deal with just this one. I will not do the same now! I immediately started to prepare one of the most powerful spell cards in my arsenal. However, while I was preparing to declare it, I got hit by a few of the jagged bullets, causing a bit of damage to my actual faith energy reserve.

“Boundary [Duplex Danmaku Field]!” I declared my spell card.

A square appeared surrounding me while I felt my body being enveloped by a barrier stronger than the one I used before. I then began to shoot out arrowhead bullets toward the boundary of the square. Once they passed the boundary, they disappeared for a fraction of a second before appearing from the walls of the room and moving toward me. I shot two colors of arrowhead bullets, white and red. I made the source of the line of white arrow-head bullets rotate counterclockwise while I made the source of the line of red arrow-head bullets rotate clockwise, making the pattern more difficult to dodge.

When using this spell card, I could only make minimal movements so I could only dodge a few bullets that Satori had shot out. Since I declared my spell card, Satori had not stopped shooting the jagged bullets. The barrier mitigated all the damage that I would have taken, but I saw that the barrier was beginning to crack, meaning it wouldn’t be long until it broke. Despite that, I continued to shoot out arrowhead bullets toward the boundary. I saw that the pattern had confused Satori as she had a lot of trouble dodging it. As a result, she got hit many times by the bullets I had summoned.

After a short amount of time trading hits with each other, my barrier became covered with cracks and shattered while her spell card was starting to flicker. I saw Satori gathering her energy, likely to use all the remaining energy in a desperation attack like she did for her first nonspell. In response to this, I added a few more bullets to my pattern to try and drain the energy before she can use it up. I shot a fair amount of small bullets toward the boundary, which warped and eventually hit Satori along with several arrowhead bullets. Her spell card once again began to flicker, but it still returned to normal.

“Here is your final test.” I heard Satori say while she started to release all the energy stored in the spell card at once.

The amount of bullets massively increased and horizontal gaps between bullets could no longer be seen. The bullets still formed a kind of path that would allow me to dodge through, but I couldn’t get to the path because of how fast the bullets moved. It only took them a second to go from Satori to the walls of the room. It was too fast for me to react and I suffered a lot of damage. My spell card also started to flicker before eventually fading away.

As I was preparing to use a nonspell to allow a bit of my energy to recover after having used 3 spell cards in a row, I heard Satori’s voice again.

“Impressive, you have managed to overcome your traumas. I surrender then. Go ahead and ask me anything you want, and I’ll answer truthfully.” She said.

‘She surrendered? This is surprising given how aggressive she seemed at the beginning of this fight. What should I ask her?’ I thought to myself.

“Who wouldn’t be aggressive when two strangers waltzed into their house unannounced? However, as I read your mind in the span of that battle, I saw what your goal was, so a lot of my anger disappeared.” She answered.

“It seems you already know what I want to know, but I’ll ask anyway. Do you know anything about the vengeful spirits that have appeared above ground alongside a geyser?” I asked.

“Perhaps, maybe you are in the right place. It could have been one of my pets that did that. If you want to look into it, I’ll take you to the courtyard where you will find the entrance to the place she likely is.” She answered.

Nodding my head, I began to follow Satori as she led me through the rooms of the mansion.

‘Wait, what if this is a trap?’ I wondered in my head after a little bit. I became suspicious about her intentions.

“I can assure you this is not a trap, I am going to lead you to the courtyard.” She replied as she continued moving through the palace.

We soon reached a room full of overgrown plants and full of craters. The place looked like a battleground as there were signs of battle everywhere in the room.

“It seems like your friend has already been here,” Satori said and I nodded in response. “I think she already went down that hole there. That’s the entrance to the Hell of Blazing Fires, the place where you will find my pet.” She informed me.

I looked over toward the hole and saw a young girl laying beside it.

“Ayaka!” Satori yelled before running toward the girl. She shook the girl who was supposedly named Ayaka, trying to wake her up, but with no success. The girl then began to tremble and I saw a few tears run down her cheeks.

“She’s unconscious, I’ll take care of her, go ahead and head down that hole where you’ll find that cat you’ve been wondering about,” Satori told me before walking off while tenderly carrying the unconscious and uninjured Ayaka.

Ayaka’s Perspective

Minutes after I lost against Marisa and she headed down into the hole, I saw a transparent screen appear in front of me.

Lesser Darkness Manipulation has Leveled Up! Lv. 1 -> Lv.2

Allows a bit better control of darkness

Lesser Mind-reading has Leveled Up! Lv. 1 -> Lv.2

Active time increased from 10 seconds to 20 seconds

Miniscule Wind Manipulation has Leveled Up! Lv. 1 -> Lv.2

Allows a tiny bit better control of wind

Lesser Illusions has Leveled Up! Lv. 1 -> Lv.2

Active time increased from 10 seconds to 20 seconds

Then I heard Mio’s voice while another transparent window appeared.

Urgent Quest Failed

-Stop the Intruders

Assigning Punishment

-Unsealing of a traumatic memory

Mio announced with the transparent window showing exactly what she said.

After the announcement, I felt myself beginning to lose consciousness again for like the third time this week. I started to fall towards the floor but supported myself with my hands. However, before long, my hands started losing strength and I once again fell towards the grass face-first. Before I felt my head hit the ground, I lost consciousness.

I found myself in a white room, similar to the one I saw when I was evolving, but there was one difference: there was a sphere of darkness in the middle of the room.

“Ooooh, a tasty human has appeared!” I heard a voice coming from the sphere of darkness. The sphere then began to move closer to me, ever so slowly.

“W-w-w-who a-a-are y-y-you?” I asked in a voice that was trembling with fear because of what I had said. I started to back away from the sphere of darkness.

“Don’t run! Come here! It won’t hurt. It’s only a bite!” The sphere said before speeding up toward me.

“Kyaaah!” I screamed as I hurriedly tried to run from the approaching sphere. While I was running I remembered this scene. It was a scene I had seen many times in my nightmares. Remembering this, my knees buckled because of how heavily they were shaking, and I fell to the ground.

“D-d-d-don’t c-c-come c-c-c-closer!” I yelled in pure terror as I helplessly lay on the ground with my whole body trembling. It felt like all my bones had turned to butter. My heart was pounding, I was sweating profusely, and my blood ran cold.

The sphere of darkness ignored my begging and got closer, and closer, and closer, and closer until it was right above me. My heart seemed like it was about to leave my chest and I started to see flashes of the people I had met at Chireiden and how nice they treated me.

“Hurray! Dinner is here!” The sphere of darkness yelled before tackling me to the ground. It then began to chew on my arms and legs causing me sharp pangs of pain. I couldn’t bear to look down at the sphere of darkness that was biting my arms and legs in fear of what it looked like. I started to cry because of the pain that I felt. After what felt like hours, the pain stopped and I heard Mio’s voice again.

Punishment Complete

I was still trembling when I heard Mio’s voice and my heart would not stop beating. When I realized that the sphere of darkness disappeared, my tears stopped for a brief moment before they started dropping again in relief that it was over. After a while of crying, I heard Mio’s voice again, which contained a message that I did not want to hear at that time.

New Urgent Quest Available

- Overcome Trauma.