Chapter 120

“Miao!!” “B-Big Kitty?” All of a sudden, my familiar clutched the mouth on his bib, seemingly in incredible pain. A black fog began to seep out of it. “Aww, I put so much effort into making that toybox, and you broke it! You broke it! Boo-hoo-hoo!” The dark cloud took on the form of a person. Before I knew it, there was a young girl with an angelic smile floating before me. “You’re one of Kaito’s soul blades,” I said. I had seen him summon her before. Her name was Lust, I recalled. Her hair came down to her waist and was colored in a rainbow gradient. She had porcelain skin, and she wore a white sundress that danced as she moved. “Your voice,” I said. “It was you I heard in that awful, awful dream, wasn’t it?” Big Kitty was coughing and spluttering, so I recalled him and turned to face Lust alone. “Awful? How dare you call it awful! That’s so mean! So mean! Isn’t it? Is it? I don’t know! Maybe it is!! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!” Lust went on laughing in spite of my words. That caused the fire inside me to light up once more. “I’ll teach you!!” But just as I was about to pull up my sleeves and teach her a lesson, the spectral girl flew right up to me, peering into my eyes. “Why did you break it?” she asked. “Why?” Hers were dead and empty, like she could see right into my soul. “Isn’t that the world you always wanted?” she asked. “It was all real, you know. You could have lived there forever and ever if you wanted to. So why did you choose vengeance instead? Why did you choose to remember those horrible things that happened to you?” “Kaito said something very similar to me when he asked me to make a contract,” I replied. “He told me that if I waited long enough, I could forget my vengeance and live a happy life.” “I know. I was there. But why did you choose vengeance? Don’t you regret it? If you could ask your sister or your mother, wouldn’t they say, Forget about us, do what makes you happy?” “Sometimes I wonder, what if the positions had been reversed,” I said. “If I had died, and Shelmie had lived on. And that made me realize something.” “Which is?” “If they chose to forget me…to move on with their lives, I would be so sad. Of course, I’d be happy she’s happy, but it would hurt so much. I would always be thinking, Please don’t forget about me.” “…” “I don’t care how they remember me. I don’t care what they do. But if anybody tried to erase the fact that I was ever there…I would curse them from beyond. Even my own mother and sister.” That was what had brought me here. That was Shuria’s world. A black, inky ocean of blood that engulfed and suffocated me. “…I hate you! I hate you! …But I don’t mind being your friend! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!!” “Grr… I know you’re one of Kaito’s soul blades, but that doesn’t mean I have to like you either!” “Hooray! More friends to play with! Yippee! Yippee!” The girl laughed and laughed, swaying this way and that like a ghost. It was very annoying!! “You passed my trial! Ah-ha-ha-ha!!” Lust thrust her finger at me and cartwheeled through the air. As she did, her finger traced out a rift in space itself, and a blinding light leaked in through it. “Go through here, and you’ll meet up with my master!” she said. “But be careful! If you do, there’s no going back!” “Grr! Stop looking down on me!” I just wanted to beat her to a sorry pulp! “Anyway, there’s nowhere for me to go back to. There never has been. The only way is forward, through this ocean of blood.” “Come back and play with me again some time!” “Never! Bleh!” I stuck my tongue out and hopped through the rift, hoping to be reunited with the partners in crime who swam this ocean with me. “Hee-hee-hee! More friends! More friends!” After Shuria left, Lust danced alone, doing pirouettes in her room. “Did you see that, Mommy and Daddy? I found another person who thinks the same as me!” Lust turned to a beat-up pair of dolls and gave a sunny smile. She seemed even merrier than usual today. Trial of Lust: Passed. “Anemol Arsenal: Yamata Dragonfire!” I raised my naginata aloft, conjuring a ball of white flame swathed in winds. This fireball raced toward my foe, feeding on the oxygen my magic supplied to become a raging inferno. Just before striking true, it split into eight separate arcs of fire. These eight pillars of flame curved to meet their target, no less ferocious than the heads of the legendary serpent of myth after which they were named. However… “Come to me, Blackwheel Workshop.” My opponent, a giant of a man lying on his side, bored, swatted his arm at me. A semi-transparent wall of black cogwheels appeared, sapping my projectiles of all their energy and vigor. My spell disintegrated into particles of light that then disappeared. Krh. I’m trying to see my dear brother, but this buffoon is in the way! The place I was in was one that would ordinarily be called a forge. However, this forge was in such a state that the word abandoned ought to have prefaced any other description. The mud walls were coming apart, the floor was coated in dust, and all the tables and chairs were splintered and broken. Even the forge itself was cracked, and though a fire still burned within, the anvil was caked in grime, and all the blacksmith’s tools had started to rust. In the dead center of the room lay the giant, his back to me. He was bearded and rugged like a dwarf, but as large as a troll. He was dressed like a smith, with dulled gold and silver hammers at his belt. His broad shoulders were thick with muscle and ringed with metal. “Face my trial. The Sword of Sin: Grotto of Death’s Neglect. For this is the point of no return.” Those were the words I’d heard after suddenly ending up in this place. Kaito had told me stories about his soul blade “Sloth,” and it was a simple matter to surmise that this man before me must be the very same. Kaito had told me little of Sloth’s abilities beyond that, and I was unsure how to proceed, but with my brother’s safety on the line, hesitation would be the very height of folly. Following the rules we’d surmised thus far, I’d asked Sloth if defeating him would allow access to my brother. “Do as you wish,” he had replied. I had been confused at first, as the man hadn’t even attempted to prepare himself for battle. But after I fired off one or two attacks and he brushed them away with a flick of his wrist, I realized victory would be no simple task. I’d then attempted to get in close and slice him to ribbons, but before I could even reach the barrier, some strange and powerful force had repelled me like a magnet, while any magic spells I’d flung simply fell apart. I needed to defeat Sloth somehow, but so far, I hadn’t even made him stand up. “Grr!! Anemol Arsenal: Thorns of Ice!” How? What can I do to get through to him? My mind raced as I channeled mana into my next technique. Ten long spears of ice appeared, each two meters long and covered in spikes. Swathed in my magical winds, they began spinning, making a noise like a power drill. Then, as I swung my naginata, all ten of the spears descended on Sloth. “Urgh. Stop making a noise in my workshop.” I could have felled a dragon with that technique, but as the spears approached the barrier, it sapped their momentum, eventually shattering the spears into hundreds of little particles that melted away into nothing. “Urgh. What a drag,” spoke Sloth in a low, gravelly voice, like he’d pulled an all-nighter. As if merely continuing to speak required too great an effort, he peered over his shoulder at me, locked eyes for a moment, then turned away, bored.