Volume 2 Chapter 7.3
Fugitive in the Blue Night, Hope is
Fleetingly Plucked Away Part 3
Translator : PolterGlast
Karen calmly watched
the old school building being destroyed by the proliferating crystals.
The fact that there
has been no declaration of victory by Jake yet probably means that Nina is
still running around in one piece.
Perhaps her enemy is
fleeing to the rooftop. She has likely decided that she can avoid being crushed
to death for the time being if she keeps climbing up using the crystals as a
foothold.
However, she must have
at least realized that she could not run around forever.
According to the rules
that Nina had set forth, defeat would automatically be decided as soon as they
were five meters away from the old school building.
If she keeps running
around using the crystals as a scaffold, this rule will eventually strangle
her. The victory will be decided when the scaffold, which is constantly
increasing in scale, reaches a position five meters higher than the old school
building.
Considering the
current rate of growth, the time limit is just slightly over three minutes.
"Come one, don't
make such a boring ending, will you?"
Her belief is to
thoroughly crush anyone who gets in the way. She has no desire to win by foul
play.
─Well, I'm sure she'll try to pull a move on me before
that happens.
Karen is not
overconfident in her psychic abilities. Rather, she evaluates it as a
difficult-to-use ability whose only merit is its destructive power.
That is why she has
honed the art of calmly discerning the enemy's aims and dexterously maneuvering
around them.
Naturally, he has also
read through the strategies that the other party would think of.
"...... Look,
here it comes."
A noise was heard from
somewhere behind her.
This is a corner room
on the east end of the first floor. Naturally, there is only a window behind
Karen.
So, she knew that the
enemy would attack from outside the building.
"Of course,
that's the only opening I have!"
If one can predict
that Karen's target is the total destruction of the building, one can easily
determine her initial position. A location that does not require constant
vigilance in all directions and where there is no risk of being caught in the
collapse of the building - this could only be the west or east corner room on
the first floor.
If one could foresee
that far, all one had to do was hide outside the window and look for an
opportunity for a surprise attack. The unnaturally loose rule of [one can be as
far as five meters from the old school building] was probably intended to make
this strategy work.
Just as per the image
she had prepared in advance, Karen sent a gush of pale, glowing crystals toward
the window.
The tip was sharpened
like a spear, a blow aimed to pierce the enemy.
If the attacker was
someone other than Nina, there would be no point in blowing them away by more
than five meters with the usual heavy attack.
However, the blow was
a dud.
There was no one
outside the window that Karen had attacked.
─The noise is just a diversion ......!
Karen finally realized
what the attacker was aiming for.
Rather, she wondered
why she had been unaware of it until now.
Was it due to the
thunderous sounds of the crystals destroying the building?
Was she distracted by
Nina, who kept running away?
The enemy was not
lurking outside the window.
There was only one
other place to hide that would not be crushed by the crystals.
"......Underground!"
One of the wooden
floors beneath Karen's feet came loose, revealing a young boy clutching a spray
can.
Perhaps in a valiant
effort to keep his true identity from being discovered, the boy was wearing a
mask resembling that of a clown. But Karen's eyes could not be fooled.
"I knew it was
you, Jin Kirihara!"
For some reason, this
mysterious Easterner was always standing next to Nina, smiling fearlessly.
He lunged toward her,
pointing the nozzle of his spray at her.
─Ah, I see. Your nullification ability was a bluff,
huh?
Karen laughed
inwardly, confirming her previous guess.
It was no big deal.
Jin Kirihara is simply exploiting a weakness in other people's psychic ability.
Of course, obtaining
such information and taking countermeasures is a feat that no ordinary person
could ever pull off.
"...... Fine, I
will accept your challenge."
With a strangely calm
heart, Karen accepted the scent of flower petals being sprayed on her.
In the compressed
time, she thought back to the days when she was at peace.
After a hard-fought
battle, Satya was always waiting for her when she returned to her room.
A hint of affection
behind her expressionless face. The many creative teas with experimental
blends.
When was it
that I became embarrassed to express my gratitude to her for taking care of me?
In front of Karen, a
boy walked slowly toward her, throwing the empty spray can behind him.
Is that black object
in his hand a Taser? Karen recalled that a weapons manufacturer run by the
Ashby family had a similar product.
In a world where
everything seemed to be slow, Karen's consciousness was clear as day.
Then she said the decisive
words.
"I knew all your
plans from the very beginning."
Karen took a deep
breath and entered a deep state of concentration, then thrust her right palm
forward.
The eyes peering
through the hole in the mask widened in astonishment when he saw the pale
crystal produced at the tip of her right palm.
Nonsense, it
can't be.
Surely Karen
had already inhaled the scent of the perfume.
Such questions must
have been swirling around in his head. Karen could tell that much.
"Indeed, sniffing
that custom-made perfume was a condition of deactivating my [Jolly Undertaker].
But that was only until a week ago. I've already changed the type of perfume I
use."
The torrent of
unleashed crystals engulfed Jin Kirihara's body.
Even as his entire
body exploded like a water balloon, splashing red liquid all over the place,
she felt no guilt.
The narcotic secreted
in her brain makes her feel so ecstatic that she can hardly stand up.
The pleasure of having
the upper hand. Karen was soaked from head to toe in such an aphrodisiac.
She turned a look of
pity on the reddish-black mass of flesh that was trapped inside the beautiful
tombstone.
"Think about it.
Where in the world would an idiot keep using the same thing that the rats have
discovered?"
＊One Week Ago＊
As usual, she was
inspecting the daily necessities delivered from the Ashby family when she found
something strange in a wooden box that she could not ignore.
The Ashby family's
resident butler - Satya's father, Karen's personal maid - was a very meticulous
man, who respected a certain order when packing things into boxes.
Heavy items such as
tea bags were placed on the bottom, and fragile items such as dishes and
bottles were wrapped in cloth or paper and placed on top. The arrangement of
the items was always the same, with the perfume <Aeris no. 6> sitting in
the center of them.
However, this
arrangement is clearly disordered.
There is no way that
such a diligent butler could have been the cause of such a peculiar mishap. It
would also be unthinkable for the shipping company to change the arrangement on
its own.
─Could it be that someone else had intervened?
It seemed like a
rather absurd notion, but she couldn't help but check.
The first thing she
checked was the perfume.
At first glance, there
was nothing unusual about the jade-colored bottle containing the liquid. She
inspected it from all angles and held it up to the light to see if there was
any discrepancy.
"...... This
is."
She noticed that the
adhesive on the label wrapped around the bottle had shifted just a little.
Of course, <Aeris
no. 6> is a custom-made bottle, hand-filled by artisans just for Karen. A
mistake of this magnitude would be acceptable.
But on that day, she
could not miss the slightest change.
She peeled the
jade-colored bottle bare, peeling her fingernail across the small gap between
the tightly glued labels. In doing so, she discovered conclusive evidence.
The label was covering
a hole so small that a needle could fit through it.
The hole had been
sealed with a piece of glass of the same color, but there were clearly marks
where it had been forcibly glued in place.
─Was a poison injected into the needle?
─No, what would be the point of putting something like
that in a perfume?
─The purpose is something more .......
It didn't take her
long to come to a conclusion.
"...... Forced
Deactivation, huh?"
Karen utilized several
<conditioning> techniques to control her overly powerful psychic
abilities.
Not only did she
forcibly increase her concentration with breathing techniques she learned at
the shady dojo, but she also imposed on herself that she could only reach her
maximum output if she were to fight against students from the Heiberg School
who had harmed either her or Satya.
And then there comes
the perfume.
By smelling the
fragrance of this <Aeris no. 6>, she will be able to force herself to
stop before her psychic ability goes out of control.
Most likely, the enemy
took a few drops of the perfume from the bottle.
It is a shallow
strategy to soak a cloth with it or put it in a spray can and then approach her
during a <duel>.
"...... You
filthy rats."
Although she could not
hide her surprise at the fact that someone would do such a thing a week before
she initiated the plan, she had nothing to fear once the seed of the trick had
been cracked.
In short, all she has
to do is rewrite it.
Karen is a genius at
self-brainwashing.
Within a week from
now, it should be possible to <re-condition> herself using a different
perfume. Once that was done, it was time to take action.
As she walked to the public
phone in the women's dormitory, she considered which perfume to choose with the
same ease she would consider a gift for a friend.
Suddenly, an option
popped into her mind.
Considering the time
required for conditioning training, the perfume should be ready by the end of
the day. If so, it couldn't be anything other than a popular product widely
available in the market.
She put her ear to the
phone and dialed the number of the shipping company.
The person that
answered the phone was clearly horrified. Perhaps he was bribed with money, but
someone so cowardly would not be suited for such treachery. Without needing to
interrogate him, her hypothesis was confirmed.
She ruthlessly told
him to deliver the perfume to the dormitory by the end of the day, and that if
he betrayed her again, he would be dead, and slammed the phone down to further
incite fear.
＊
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