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Inyouchuu Kyou Chapter 4 Part 2

Mikoto thought to herself while raising the tip of ‘Raikou’ even higher and focusing on controlling her breath.

「Six steps to greatness. Three steps to smallness. Two steps to comparison. Four steps to contention.」

Rinko hugged her teddy bear and mumbled those words as if she was talking to herself. It was a direction and distance instructions to pass through the barriers that were stretched all around them at the current moment.

The azimuth indication was sixty four hexagrams, and if you were to convert it to the method of expressing one rotation in three hundred and sixty degrees, it was about five degrees and six minutes. The margin of error here must be less than two point eight minutes. It was a precision that cannot be achieved with half-baked skills or some cheap trickery.

But the ponytailed girl in her school uniform held her breath, lowered her hips, and slipped her steps forward. There was no hesitation in her footwork at all.

Within the “Black Cat’s Extermination Brigade’s” Branch Office, Mikoto was regarded as a Power-Type Exorcist along with the rugged, clumsy, straightforward, half-human half-youma Tachibana Yamato, but that, but truth to be told she owned that classification solely to her her favorite Exorcism Sword, ‘Raikou’. And truth to be told, she owned that sword a whole lot. Although she was not very aware of it herself, she was actually reasonably dexterous and surprisingly delicate, and her knowledge and skills were all above average. She was also flexible enough to work with a rushed and crudely assembled team like this one in a snap.

「Three steps to Daiyu. Five steps to Meng. Set the direction to Qin. And set the direction to the new Qiankun.」

「…… I can see the wall directly in front of me. Are you sure that this direction really is okay?」

Just as Mikoto said, the wall of the corridor was right in front of her, and it just so happened that it looked mighty suspicious. It was not a dead end per se, it was a corridor that extended from east to west facing a wall in the middle for some reason.

No matter how you think about it, they must have made a mistake somewhere along the way, or taken a wrong turn.

「Leave the thinking to someone who is actually capable of doing so. I can see that thinking is not exactly your strongest suit, you big-breasted woman, you! Could it be that your head is deprived of nutrition, is that it? Could it be that those huge boobs are taking all of the nourishment that would be best spent somewhere else? But I see that you’d actually prefer to have two balls of fat on your chest rather than smarts in your head.」

Rinko, who neither followed nor left Mikoto behind, snuggled up to her like a shadow, and spouted some really harsh words all the while making a lovely face, looking just like a little angel. Rinko’s dislike of big breasts was really hardcore, even to a fault here, and it seemed she could not say enough about it even if she was to repeat herself a dozens and hundreds of times.

Mikkoto, on the other hand, chose to remain silent. Normally, even though she knew she would lose the argument in the end, she wouldn’t hesitate to quarrel with her until the last bitter word, but now it was not the time for her to do that.

(This is all my fault. Because I was so scared of ghosts, Sui had to step up and get captured as a result……)

And because Mikoto was currently so obsessed with her own failure, she did not react at all to Rinko’s bad-mouthing at all, and she quietly stared at the front wall and waited for her next set of instructions.

「…… Hmph. This is no fun at all when you are not barking back.」

After a brief moment of silence, Rinko let out a small sigh from her mouth, and then she quickly switched her focus to the task at hand.

Squinting her left eye, and peering into the darkness with it, Rinko inspected the flow of the energy that was invisible to the eyes of the ordinary people.

「Familiarity. Humility. Demand. Solution.」

She then made a move as if she was cutting some sort of invisible string with her finger.

‘Raikou’ made a cutting movement at that exact moment, accurately cutting off the invisible meridians that were placed hanging in space.

What Rinko instructed Mikoto to cut was a docking-type barrier that twisted space and perception of those who were trying to observe it.

Therefore, every time that Mikoto’s ‘Raikou’ was swung down and flashed brightly, the surrounding scenery swayed and distorted like a mirage on the desert, — and before long the wall in front of the two of them disappeared and the stairs leading downstairs appeared in front of their eyes.

「…… Huh!?」

Mikoto was about to start running at full speed, but then she used all of her willpower in order to stop herself in her tracks at the last possible moment.

There was a sign of Sui’s spiritual energy drifting from under the stairs that appeared in front of them, but it might have been also some other civilian, as far as the two Exorcist girls were concerned. Knowing the danger, they’re-infiltrated the middle of the enemy territory in order to rescue Sui. She has come this far and has been caught by the enemy’s agents, and now that she was in their captivity, there was literally nothing that she could possibly do in order for her to free herself.

「T-This staircase here…… Think that it leads down to some sort of basement?」

While Mikoto was sounding all impatient and cautious,

「Well, it’s only natural. That’s what stairs leading downwards are for.」

Rinko puffed out her small and barely-existent chest and answered the red-headed girl bluntly.

「B-But there are traces here…… of Sui’s spiritual energy…… You think that she might……」

「Aaaggghhh!!! See this is why! This is exactly why big-breasted women are so useless that it should be considered a crime! That dairy cow of a woman was obviously caught and is in the enemy’s claws right now. And we cannot possibly expect such tits-for-brains to be able to break free of captivity on her own. The only thing we can do here is to let the smart and cute Rinko-sama do all the heavy lifting for you all good-for-nothings.」

「Yes, yes, that’s right! It is exactly as you say! Rinko-sama is the only one I can rely on right now! You’re the cutest and the smartest! Now hurry it up and tell me what it is that I need to do before……」

But for some reason, before Mikoto was able to finish that sentence, the one-eyed girl holding a stuffed animal tightly to her chest suddenly pulled away from her, which left her all confused.

「W-Wait just a moment, Rinko……! This is neither time nor place for you to be acting all mean all of a sudden!」

「Were you still unable to figure it all out? Good grief, I do have my job cut out for me with this one, don’t I? There is no need for us to go anywhere anymore. Because the one that we are looking for has already arrived before us.」

「H-Huh? What do you……?」

Rinko’s mood got even better when she saw that Mikoto was making a puzzled expression, as if she was unable to understand what the little girl meant by that. She smiled brightly and there was a smirk painted all over her lips, and she seemed to be almost shining with confidence.

「You might be able to deceive the eyes of a good for nothing, tits-for-brans woman like that one over there, but you can’t possibly deceive Rinko-sama’s cool, clear, round eyes! Now then, right foot! Step back! On the double!」

She said while pointing to the bottom of Mikoto’s feet.

「H-Huh? HUH!? AHH……!!」

Mikoto took a step back with her right food as she was instructed to do, and her eyes widened as she spotted a talisman tag that was revealed on the floor in the place where she was just standing. What’s more, she was sure that the talisman was not there before, at least not before that staircase was revealed to them.

In other words, at that exact moment, the wall did not just disappear and the stairs appeared in place of the wall, but did they just move to another place inside of the building? They were shown a scene similar to before when they were moved, and she was just about to descend down the stairs where she thought Sui was being held, all because she could faintly feel her presence from before. It was a clever bait, and even more of a clever trap.

「Now, poke that thing with ‘Raikou’!」

「L-Like this……!?」

At Rinko’s directions, Mikoto switched ‘Raikou’ into the backhand position and lowered it towards the ground, poking the spell talisman on her floor with its tip.