“Are there naughty kids around?” she asked.
“What the hell is that?!” everyone shouted at once.
Reiko was wearing a dual-layer disguise: a potion, plus optical camouflage through her bracelet, so she looked neither like herself nor the newbie hunter Can. That was why she only wore a simple half-mask covering her eyes. The Namahage—Reiko, that is—could use magic (probably due to some super-advanced science), which was easier to fine-tune than my nitro potions, and she could neutralize enemies in a way that looked more natural. Conversely, my nitro potions would just blow people into smithereens, and putting them to sleep would make it obvious that there was something supernatural going on. And of course, throwing them into the Item Box would be out of the question. That would definitely make it seem like a deity had gotten involved. Time was frozen in there, so the person who got stored inside wouldn’t know what had happened, but there were far too many witnesses around to use that method. It would’ve been fine if I had been all alone like I’d originally planned, but here we were.
On the first night that I’d arrived in town, I’d contacted Reiko and explained the situation. I’d thought I could handle things on my own, but you could never be a hundred percent sure about anything. It was always best to have a contingency plan or two just to be safe. If things really went south, I could’ve had Kyoko pick me up in her dinghy, and the story would’ve been that the Angel had come for Edith the priestess and they ascended to the heavens. I’d have to start from scratch with a new face and name in that case, but I’d gained a lot of knowledge during my time here, and I could keep a portion of my reputation as Edith by saying I was her younger sister or junior from the same organization... Oh, but I hadn’t told Kyoko about this case yet. It was best not to give her a reason to do anything rash, for the sake of my enemies, allies...and everyone else, really.
Anyway, the masked angel, the Namahage, had arrived. Everyone here was probably confused out of their minds, but the appearance of a small woman—who, judging by the parts of her face that weren’t covered by the mask, appeared to be a young girl who might or might not be a minor—wouldn’t make any difference in a battle of this scale. Therefore, the only reaction from both sides was a momentary surprise—until the Namahage began moving, that is.
Reiko the Namahage began walking toward the enemy soldiers, completely relaxed as if she were taking a stroll through a park. Although she hardly seemed like a threat, the enemy soldiers couldn’t help but grow wary as the armed stranger approached them. Reiko then put her hand to her sword’s hilt and drew it. Several of the enemy soldiers instinctively unsheathed their own blades in response, but it appeared they had reservations about all of them drawing on a lone little girl, maybe because that could have caused everyone on our side to also draw their weapons, triggering an all-out war.
As Reiko closed the distance, one of the enemy troops called out, “Stop! If you don’t, I’ll cut you down! This isn’t just a threat; don’t think I won’t do it just because you’re a little girl!”
He was the first person she’d walk into at the rate she was going, so he had no choice but to call out a warning, but Reiko continued moving forward without paying him any mind.
“All right, you asked for it! Don’t blame me; blame your own stupidity for not stopping!”
With that, the soldier took a step forward and swung his sword. The other enemy soldiers averted their eyes slightly, perhaps because they didn’t want to see a girl getting murdered senselessly, but they still kept watching us with their peripheral vision.
The soldier’s sword closed in on Reiko, and she moved her sword to intercept it, but as an amateur, she lacked the skills. The blade was swung into her left shoulder with a diagonal slash known as a kesagiri. Everyone assumed she was dead. However...
Clang!
The enemy’s blade stopped right in front of Reiko’s shoulder, and she pressed her own sword against the immobile weapon.
“Ha ha ha, so slow! I can block your blade without even trying!” she said.
There was a heavy silence for a moment. Then...
“What the hell was that?!” they shouted in unison.
Their reaction was understandable. Reiko’s sword was nowhere near fast enough to have intercepted the attack, but some of the people on our side were nodding sagely for some reason.
Wait, do they think Reiko’s actually an Angel because I said I called upon a “masked angel” earlier?
If that was the case, they probably expected an Angel to be able to pull off a feat like that. Why did I have to use phrases like “land of deities” and “masked angel”...? I mean, I had just been making a reference, but it was too late now. This mysterious masked Namahage would be one of the Goddess’s people. I was just an ordinary human who was slightly blessed by the Goddess, but she’d manifested to protect in my place the devout servants who’d put their lives on the line for a priestess— Wait, now everyone thought I’d summoned her with my speech earlier! I’d only done that because I’d thought it’d be funny, but I’d ended up screwing myself over. Unfortunately for me, I never learned from my mistakes...
Meanwhile, Reiko seemed to have realized she had gone a bit too far and decided to change her approach; instead of protecting herself with a magical barrier, she cast a spell to buff her physical capabilities. She’d once made me help with magic practice—or rather, with checking the effects of her magic spells. After much trial and error, she’d developed this spell, which strengthened muscles, improved reflexes, accelerated thinking speed, and allowed multiple thoughts to be processed at once. Not to mention, it came with a barrier. It pretty much made you invincible.
What kind of cheater is she?!
This time, she parried the enemy’s sword for real and struck back. There were several dull thuds and cracks, and the enemy soldier sank to the ground. Reiko’s sword didn’t have an edge to it, so it was actually more of a bludgeoning weapon, which meant the soldier’s arm hadn’t been cut off. It didn’t seem to be a fatal blow, but he looked pretty beaten up.
Everyone stared with their mouths half-open. As the soldiers stood dumbfounded at the shocking sight, Reiko rushed forward into the enemy group. There were more thuds and cracks as the enemy soldiers, hunters, and thugs dropped to the ground one after another.
Our forces are unstoppable!
Although this was the perfect chance to take out the enemy forces, the soldiers and hunters on our side simply stood where they were. Come to think of it, it would’ve been stupid for them to go out there and get themselves injured or killed when an invincible Angel was beating down on the enemy for them. It may have even been considered blasphemous if they’d gotten in the way of the Angel’s holy war. It would’ve been better for me if they’d joined in, though, and we could have said that everyone had a part in the victory. Otherwise, this would be hard to describe as anything other than a one-sided beatdown by the Angel. It would’ve been a lot easier to twist the story in a convenient way if we could say our forces defeated most of our enemies with a tiny bit of help from the Angel.
There were only a few enemies left already. The enemy soldiers fought desperately, but they couldn’t even hit the magically empowered Reiko, and even if they could, she’d already demonstrated that their attacks would be completely ineffective. Not to mention, the soldiers weren’t fighting well. If I had to guess, they were being held back by the fear of potentially making an enemy out of the Goddess. Maybe their will to fight had been completely broken already.
Everyone in this world knew the Goddess was real and that she was a short-tempered and merciless deity. The hunters and thugs were committing to defense as if they just wanted to get by without dying or getting injured. After all, even if they’d won, they all knew what would happen to them if they ended up angering the Goddess. I had to give them credit for not fleeing— Actually, they wouldn’t have been able to run anyway, not with so many of our soldiers and hunters here. My allies were just standing there doing nothing at the moment, but they were positioned in such a way as to cut off the enemy’s escape route, so they’d probably stop any runners if it came to it—not with words, but with their swords. So, the best option for the remaining enemies was to survive until most of their soldiers were down, accept defeat, then claim they were just doing the job they’d been hired for. Of course, that wouldn’t get them off the hook or anything, but the chance of them getting the death sentence shouldn’t be very high. If they were lucky, they may only need to do twenty or thirty years of manual labor as punishment.
Anyway, our victory was pretty much assured, but I still had to figure out how I was gonna wrap things up here...