3 bar menu

Last Embryo Volume 8 Chapter 3 Part 6

Sensing the scorching heat, Sharol had a premonition that caused her blood to leave her face all at once.

「H-Hey, You-neechan, wait! I’m still here, see?! I haven’t run away yet!」

Sharol kept on screaming, but You continued to ignore her.

While having a Golden Wing Flame dwell within her, she held up the 『Genome Tree』as well as the other Gift that she had at her disposal, the fang of the Venomous Dragon that was said to gnaw at the roots of the World Tree.

You Kasukabe, who prepared to overlap the two Gifts with one another, roared while having both gold wings and black flames erupt from her whole body.

「Taking the new weapons for a test drive… this is just the opportunity that I was waiting for!」

「Wait! Really, You-san, wait!! I haven’t escaped yet!! Also, if this Geass Roll gets burned, we won’t be able to ever replace it!!! This is a super valuable document for me and my Community, so seriously, just wait a moment!!!」

「I see. Well then, do your best to protect it then.」
A gigantic heat haze rises from the ivy cage along with the screams that begged You to stop being so unreasonable. And as for the one who was in the center of it all…

Was it a Black Dragon, or was it perhaps a Divine Bird?

In order to protect the Geass Roll from being turned to cinders in an instant, Sharol deployed her own trump card, but even that was still not enough to completely cancel the power of the flames that You continued to spew out indiscriminately.

As a result, Sharol Gunark ended up suffering severe burns and the images of everything that happened in her life so far continued to flash before her eyes, but thanks to the miraculous healing properties of the Unicorn’s horn, she was able to narrowly escape losing her life.

This particular story is a part of Kudou Asuka’s journey and a certain quarrel that she got herself involved in.

It all happened in a large red-light district governed by the famous Onihime Alliance, known as the Capital of Flowers.

The city of love, one of the best of its kind in the entire Little Garden, where the sweet, mind-numbing purple smoke covers the entire city and where everyone could buy himself the right to a night of their dreams that transcended the boundaries of both gender and race.

Under any normal circumstances, Asuka wouldn’t even think of setting her foot anywhere close to such a town.

Originally, Kuon Asuka would be a distant town. However, right now, when she made a detour in her journey focused on improving her martial artist skills, she was for some inexplicable reason running through the streets of the city of love after she was forced to come here by Alma, who said that this would be an ideal place for her in order 「For Master to get to know a little bit more about femininity」, as Alma herself had put it.

「Fuh…!」

A symphony of elegant sounds was resounding all around her, bouncing off from the colorful walls of the buildings and their tiled roofs, and even if she tried to get away from how loud they were, the melodies reminiscent of those played on the koto would still find their way to her, making her feel as if her head was about to be blown off.
In the city of swaying dreams, a stunning mechanical puppet was rampaging on the streets.

The puppet that seemed to be moving without any kind of puppeteer pulling its strings looked more beautiful than the young women working in the City of Flowers, because it has been made in the likeness of Hyakutayu, the Divine Spirit of Entertainment worshipped by every prostitute of the town as the flower blooming at the apex of this red-light district.

However, despite the image of the Divine Spirit in the likeness of which it was made, it has been said that this puppet has been appearing on the streets of the city after nightfall for some time now, cutting apart every woman who was unfortunate enough to pass by it even on accident.

(Ahhh mou! I knew I shouldn’t have used such inflammatory words without thinking it through, even if it was tit for tat!)

Even though Asuka’s physical abilities and combat prowess with a sword have gradually started to improve as a result of the training that she went through so far, she was well aware that such an enemy was still too much for her to handle entirely on her own.

It all started when Asuka was spotted by the courtesan fox youkais responsible for running the red-light district in this particular section of the City of Flowers.

At first, she only engaged in some idle chatter with them, which then turned into a light argument after a particularly rude remark, but before any of them realized, they were already exchanging insults back and forth, which then somehow got derailed into Asuka agreeing to exterminate the doll that was running rampant in the city as it killed women and spread curses around just so that she could prove to them that they were wrong about her.

And now, the courtesans, who were watching Asuka as she was putting up a brave fight against her enemy from the safety of their residences were screaming out in shock every time when Asuka’s head was about to be cut off from her shoulders as she continued to narrowly dodge the doll’s attacks.

「Asuka-chan, don’t overdo it!」

「We’re inside the barrier, so feel free to run away if you feel the need to!」

「Thank you for your kind offer, but you don’t need to worry about me!」

Asuka responded to the cheerful shouts of the courtesans as she desperately continued to avoid silver flashes that the dolls continued to hurl her way, all the while keeping a steady eye on the opponent right in front of her.

As far as Little Garden went, it was not uncommon to encounter mechanical dolls that have been possessed by spirits or malicious curses inside of it despite them being advertised and displayed primarily as good luck charms, but when it comes to an actual object of worship, then it was another story entirely. Your average warrior is never going to be able to match something like that in combat.

Whenever that puppet was shaking its head with a clatter, it would create a silver flash accompanied by an elegant sound, and a single slash from its arms was enough to leave the tiled roofs around them completely naked. If Asuka were to hazard a guess, then she would say that this puppet in front of her must have been created by a famous and powerful puppeteer.

After she observed Asuka’s situation for a little while, Alma, who was still inside of Asuka’s Gift Card, asked her with a particularly mocking tone.

『You seem to be having a hard time, Master. Are you sure that you don’t want e to help you out?』

「I told you that I am fine, didn’t you hear me?! Please don’t interfere in other people’s fights!」

『As expected of my master. I’m glad to see that you’re so dedicated to making so much progress on your own. By the way, this is just me talking to myself… but do my eyes deceive me, or does it seem like this mechanical doll is only capable of seeing things that are only in front of it?』

「… Mu?」

Asuka murmured to herself as she turned her head around in confusion. The pair of eyes of the mechanical doll looked the same as before to her, that is to say as if they were constantly paying attention to everything that was happening around the doll while twirling and moving around in its eye sockets. In all likelihood, having the left and the right eye move in different directions at different times was probably its attempt at widening its field of vision as much as possible.

However, to put it another way, it was pretty much exactly like Alma said, and that mechanical doll was probably only capable of searching for and detecting enemies within the limited range covered by its artificial eyes.

『If the Divine Spirit of Entertainment made its appearance here in the form of a tsukumogami, then both the audience and the stage are probably indispensable for its performance. That mechanical doll probably sees Master as the spectator to its performance, and that is why it performs its attacks as if it was trying to show off its most flashy moves… but that is all from me. However, you choose to use this information is entirely up to you, Master. Best of luck to you.』