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Volume 5 Prologue Part 14

(So. . . .  so. . . MEDIOCRE ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !)

Even though this girl commanded such extraordinarily powerful familiars, then aside from its speed, that iai strike she just performed could never have hoped to even hold a candle to them in terms of pure destructive power. It was a plain attack made by a regular human that contained barely any killing intent, which made Lamia question if Asuka was seriously thinking about defeating their enemy. If she were to grade it in the same way you would do a test, then she would have to give it a barely passing grade in terms of attack speed, but in terms of all the other parameters she would have to give it fail marks all across the board.

However. . .   even though Asuka’s attack could indeed be called mediocre in terms of its power and killing intent, damaging the enemy in an ordinary way with that attack was never her intent. Her intended target was not Charybdis’ outer layer, but something that lied deeper within it, and she send her slash trough such a trajectory that would ensure that the mark of her attack would definitely be hit despite the slash not having all that much power behind it. And in the next moment, something that looked like a crack has appeared on Charybdis’ body near where its core was located, and that core then begun to emit an increasingly dazzling light. As a result of that, the monster’s entire body began to cramp and convulse as if it has been inflicted with a powerful poison, its tentacles started losing their power one after another and fell back into the lake, looking limp and lifeless.

「Did. . . . did she do it? Did. . . she really managed to beat it?」

「. . . ? Why would an attack like that kill it? No matter how you look at it, it does not look dead at all to me.」

Returning back to Suzuka, who was anxiously observing Asuka’s battle, Lamia replied skeptically to her question. Charybdis was certainly not dead, because it was visible even with the naked eye that it was still performing all of the life-supporting activities in an uninterrupted manner, but for whatever reason, it basically stopped moving.

Truly, this situation that they found themselves in was most definitely strange. Forget bot reacting to Asuka herself when she casually began to approach it with light, springy steps as if she was just out on a Sunday afternoon walk, it was also not reacting at all to Deen, whom it tried to turn into scraps of iron with its tentacles just a moment ago.

When she finally came right next to Charybdis’ body, Asuka bend over and picked something up from the ground, after which she turned back toward Lamia and Suzuka and called out to them while waving her hand in an inviting manner.

「Okay, we are done here! You can come out of hiding and come here if you want!」

「. . . .  you are done? Surely that cannot really be it, because to me, that thing still looks like it is still alive and kicking.」

「Hey, Miss Asuka? Did you. .  did you put it to sleep or something?」

「Fufu, perhaps? you will immediately understand one you come here.」

Asuka laughed mischievously while obviously hiding something in her hands, so the two of them headed over to her while looking at each other with question marks popping up all over their heads. And when they finally got to her, Asuka put her hands forward and opened them, revealing a small and trembling humanoid-looking Spirit.

「W. . .  W-W-W-W-What is up with this incredibly, incredibly cute-looking fellow?! It look similar to Miss Asuka’s Galatea, but it cannot possibly be the same thing, right?! So, Miss Asuka, tell us already! Who is this cutie and how did she got here?! Or no, scratch that! Where did you found it, because if there are more of them, then I certainly want one!」

「This cute looking-fellow, as Miss Suzuka called it, is the Spirit that made up the core of Charybdis, which was placed inside of that huge body right here. But now that it has been separated from the body of the monster we know from the Greek folklore, it assumed the form of a regular Spirit. And with that, it should be free from the curse that has been placed upon it, causing it to rampage and kill against its will.」

「. . .  N-Now wait just a damn moment! Run that by me again?! Did you really just say that you have separated a Spirit that made the core of a Divine Beast from its main body like it was the most obvious thing to do. . .  ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ? ? ? ? ?」

As soon as she heard Asuka mention something like that so casually, Lamia was so shocked that her entire body began to tremble. Under any normal circumstances. . .  no, even under most of the abnormal circumstances, doing something like that should have been absolutely impossible to do. Like, even if we were to talk about a one in a million miracle, that still should have been something that an ordinary human should not be able to achieve, even with a very powerful Gift and even more powerful familiars at their command. Among all the features that would be labeled as 「Not Happening」, this one would have to get its very own label of 「Absolutely, Positively, Definitely Not Happening」.

In Little Garden, there are basically three indicators that are used for the purpose of measuring the exact amount of Divinity that a God, Spirit, monster or a person might possess.

The first indicator is called 「Total Mass」that the measured subject possessed while they were still in the Outer World. When it comes to that particular value, Spirits are usually the ones who are counted amongst the strongest of all the other species in that field due to the fact that their very origins are mystical in nature. And even among the Spirits as an entirety, there are still the ones who tend to have a higher 「Total Mass」 than others, the most prominent example being the Divine Spirits that are capable of creating material, spiritual and imaginary bodies for themselves in order to firmly establish their existence into the world and integrate themselves into it as complete life forms.

The second indicator is 「Time Density」. It constitutes of the many time related factors, including the time that has passed from the moment a particular Spirit was formed and appeared in the Outer World until the present day, the probability of the same Spirit materializing in a parallel world and the like. Generally though, it has been agreed that the main rule for this indicator should be something along the lines of 「The longer the time of the Spirit’s existence, the higher its density, and the higher the density equals the stronger Spirit」because the level of their Divinity has been observed to be responding to this exact correlation: the really old Spirits had a lot of Divinity to their name, while the newly-formed ones or the ones that have been in the Outer World for only a couple of years at best had barely any of it or small amounts of it. In this second category, Divine Spirits are also counted among the most powerful beings, but unlike in the case of the first indicator, humans, royalty and Demigods also count among one of the most prominent beings, as unbelievable as that may sound.