Chapter 23
“OHO, INCREDIBLE. Can you really do that? Perfect.”
Amazed by Scorpion’s versatility, Mira agreed to her idea. If this was the most likely place to catch her, then Scorpion’s plan would deal with what came next. If Scorpion did her job well, nobody would notice the disappearance, and Melville Commerce would be none the wiser. Scorpion’s spycraft would come in handy.
They got right to work. The duo left the room and cautiously made their way back to the fourth floor.
Inside the room, the woman was still searching through the coffin. But one thing was noticeably different: the white sack next to her was now stuffed full. It seemed she’d been transferring her loot into the bag.
The two peeked in from the door, got a good look at the enemy’s current position, and nodded to each other. With that as her signal, Scorpion lit the ball on fire and rolled it like a marble toward her.
It stopped perfectly at her feet and began emitting white smoke. Mira and Scorpion backed away, keeping the entrance
well within view. They had to avoid breathing in the smoke themselves, after all.
***
After watching for a full five minutes, Mira asked impatiently, “So, did it work?”
Things were surprisingly quiet. In those five long minutes, nothing had happened—no woman noticing the smoke and running away, no kicking the ball out of the room, not the slightest resistance.
“It should’ve burned out by now…I think.”
The drug was powerful. Even if the elite had noticed it and tried to get away, once she breathed it in, it would be too late to save her from a day’s sleep. Anyone would notice smoke suddenly rising from under them or a totally new smell, so even an amateur ought to react a little. Yet they hadn’t sensed the slightest response from within the room.
If this person was a Chimera elite, it was entirely possible that she’d held her breath this whole time.
The two became even more wary; she might be a difficult opponent, after all. They prepared for battle as they slowly approached. Mira and Scorpion stopped beside the door and, with perfect timing, they charged together into the room.
Mira promptly fixed a summoning point, and Scorpion whipped out her dagger and took a low and ready stance. But in the next instant…
“Well… That’s anticlimactic,” Mira sighed.
The woman was right next to the coffin where they’d seen her before—except now, she was slumped in sleep against the side of it. She breathed in and out in a comfortable rhythm, and a strand of drool hung from her lip. She was fast asleep.
But what if her strategy was to feign sleep and take them by surprise? The thought crossed Scorpion’s mind, so she carefully and silently approached from behind. Once she was close enough, she sprang, holding the woman down.
There was no resistance.
Now lying flat on the floor, the woman didn’t move a muscle even when Scorpion pressed down hard on her. She poked and tickled but got no response. Scorpion’s final analysis: the drug had worked.
“Now that’s truth in advertising!”
The recipe for the sleep drug had been passed down in Scorpion’s village. It hadn’t given the woman even a moment to struggle. Scorpion found herself a little stunned by just how well it worked, but settled on throwing out her chest proudly with a big smirk. What mattered was that it worked.
Enemy neutralized, Mira and Scorpion promptly set to work. They first removed the woman’s mask, baring her face. Mira’s spirits were lifted by the sight of her pleasing features.
Ooh. She’s quite the beauty!
“Not very striking for an elite, huh?” Scorpion muttered, peering at her face. It seemed Scorpion had different tastes.
Sure, the woman may not have been beautiful enough to turn all heads, but she had a certain charm that attracted Mira. Her short purple hair was glossy and well-maintained, giving her an air of neatness and intellect. Yet deep sleep—drooling all the while—gave her the charm of youthful innocence. She was just the kind of girl to be popular with certain types of men.
Now that they’d seen her face, Mira and Scorpion began stripping her of her possessions. Scorpion removed her spirit-blessed coat, and Mira took off her shoes with a lascivious grin. Once her coat was off, Mira grinned even deeper and pulled down the woman’s slacks.
After stripping the woman down to her underwear, Scorpion took a bundle of cloth from her toolkit. The item, covered in what looked like magical symbols and patterns, was a restraining tool called binding cloth. Those bound and wrapped by it had 50 percent of their power sealed, making resistance difficult. It was like police handcuffs; many security officers kept one on hand.
But the binding cloth used by Isuzu had been powered up by Wise Man Kagura’s own Celestial Arts. It sealed a full 90 percent of the target’s abilities and made it all but impossible to escape.
“I’ll tie her up. Mira, lift her legs for me,” Scorpion instructed.
“Oh, I certainly will!” Mira readily took the opportunity to savor the warmth of the woman’s skin as she lifted up her legs. Truly, these were the actions of a pervert.
But nobody was there to notice Mira’s ulterior motives. Even the depraved look on her face was not enough to betray her true identity, except to those who knew her already. Scorpion was none the wiser.
“Keep her just like that for me,” she said as she bound the woman’s legs. “Okay, done! Now help me tie her hands behind her back.”
“Oh, I certainly will!” Mira replied. She gingerly set down the woman’s feet and moved to her upper body. Mira straddled her, wrapped her small hands around the woman’s chest, and lifted her up.
“Umm… Okay. Interesting technique… I’ll start tying, so just keep doing that, I guess.” Scorpion had assumed that they would simply flip the woman onto her stomach, but she appreciated Mira’s enthusiasm as she quickly tied the cloth around the woman’s hands.
Mira, meanwhile, appreciated the woman’s body heat. “Of course! You can count on me!”
Scorpion’s dexterous hands had the woman trussed up in mere minutes. After a few other finishing touches, their mark was fully restrained.
Mira took a step back and surveyed their work. No part of the woman especially stood out, but she was curvy in all the right places. Clad only in her skivvies, smooth skin on display, arms and legs bound…and the pièce de résistance, a gag in her mouth.
Truly, this was less than wholesome.
This is what happens when you join the likes of Chimera! Mira tried to convince herself of her righteousness as she ogled the poor woman.
“Okay, on to the plan…” After spot-checking to make sure that the restraints were properly secured, Scorpion began stripping herself. “I’ll need you to hang on to these for me, Mira.” She handed over her clothing.
“Right. I won’t let them out of my sight!” Mira said firmly and accepted the still-warm clothes. She watched closely as Scorpion donned the clothing their mark had been wearing.
Scorpion’s undergarments were a pair of tight black shorts and a short black tank top. Neither was particularly sexy on its own, but when combined with her toned body, they highlighted her fit physique despite their simplicity. The result was a surprising level of sex appeal.
This is just as wonderful, Mira thought to herself as she gazed dumbly at her partner and placed the clothes in her Item Box. As it turned out, Scorpion’s Item Box was at maximum capacity from her various tools; that was why she’d carried her clothes in a suitcase.
Best of all, she did not notice Mira’s prying eyes as she got dressed.
***
“I…I, I. …I? There, that’s it. I…am…not…Scooorpion.” After changing clothes, Scorpion practiced her voice. The tone changed with each word until it sounded like someone else’s voice entirely—the voice of the girl sleeping next to her. She had memorized and perfectly replicated it just from briefly listening in on the woman’s earlier complaining.
“That’s fantastic!” Mira was genuinely amazed. She was like a phantom thief from a novel.
“I’ve practiced imitations ever since I was a little girl.” Happy to receive Mira’s praise, Scorpion proudly donned the mask as the finishing touch. Her mimicry was flawless, far beyond the realm of mere imitation…but it seemed that was all in a day’s work for Scorpion.
The strategy they had devised was for Scorpion to pretend to be the woman and leave. This would make the guards at the entrance think that she had simply gone home. They would no doubt testify to seeing her if it came to it. This would hide the fact that she’d been kidnapped while within the Melville Commerce compound and allow them to avoid alerting the enemy.
Fortunately, the woman had worn a mask that hid her entire face, making it quick work to hide the difference in their features. She was also about as tall as Scorpion, and the spy could mimic her voice. Now they could use this ideal situation to capture the elite and obscure their objective. This enterprise would not have gone nearly as well if Mira had tried to do this on her own.
While Scorpion gathered the woman’s belongings and tools she’d brought, she suddenly looked into the coffin and beckoned Mira over. “Oh, Mira! Look at this.”
“Hrm? What is it?”
She obediently approached and peered into the coffin. Inside lay a figure wrapped in a dirty, tattered cloth. Mira couldn’t see what it was exactly, but she could guess its identity from a single glance.
A mummy.
But it was no ordinary mummy. Some of the cloth had been peeled away, likely by the woman’s hands, revealing an arm shrouded in black mist.
“This mist… Does that mean…?” Surprised, Mira reached out and slowly peeled layers of cloth away from the mummy’s head.
The closer she got to the head, the darker the cloth became. As she pulled off the final layer and exposed the corpse’s face, something black spewed out.
It spurted out with enough force to take both girls by total surprise, sending Scorpion jumping back to the wall with a muffled, “Eeep!”
Mira’s shoulders twitched, and though she had managed not to scream, she threw the cloth away and froze in place. She had been so tense as she focused on the mummy that the sudden dramatics were a huge shock. But it had only spewed that same black mist, which hit the ceiling and melted away into nothing.
“That scared me…” Scorpion complained. She laughed off the shock and approached the coffin again.
“Likewise. This is bad for the heart.” Mira pouted and stared at the corpse.
This mummy had almost no skin remaining on its face. It might be better described as a skull under cloth. However, it was nothing like a normal skull—this one was as black as darkness. And though it no longer spewed any out of the coffin, it was still enveloped in more eerie black mist. Most striking of all, however, were the two horns on its brow.
It may have been human-shaped, but its skull made it clear that this was no human.
Scorpion gasped. “Could this be…?”
“So it seems. But then, that means all of this is…”
The question in their minds was answered. Mira turned from the mummy and looked into the recesses in the walls around her, all filled with coffins. The cursed black mist, a corpse with two horns… There was no doubt—this was an oni.
Mira enlisted Scorpion to help her search the other coffins. All were the same.
“I see. So, this was how they were able to defeat so many spirits.” Mira looked down at the sack by her feet, checked the contents, and nodded in understanding. Inside were the fragments called “black mist ore”—in truth, the bones of long-dead oni.
These catacombs were an oni burial ground. The roots of the spirit-devouring curse—oni corpses—slept in great numbers here. Chimera Clausen had been able to suppress such powerful prey as spirits by using all these cursed items. And if the weapon Mira had snatched from the elite she’d fought was anything to go by, their research had progressed quite well.
Mira and Scorpion returned the cloth they’d pulled away, closed the coffins, and put them all back in their original positions. Then, they looked around to ensure they hadn’t forgotten anything that might serve as evidence in case the enemy realized someone had been abducted from this room.
After her final checks, Mira surveyed the coffins present and thought, I really can’t just leave such a terrible curse untouched…but now is not the time.
If she drew out Sanctia’s true power through the Spirit King’s blessing, she could exorcise the curse. That was why she’d used her free time to practice with the sword. But unfortunately, she hadn’t felt it working yet.
She knew it would take more time. The Spirit King was a being beyond human reckoning, and Sanctia was his daughter. Mira had just contracted with them; she could barely use even their basic abilities, let alone their true power.
Someday, I will see that promise fulfilled.
But not today. Mira smiled with determination and swore an oath to the Spirit King’s power within her.
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