/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>46465038 71

It takes almost no time to track down Seiga, she’d only moved a short distance away to the village graveyard and was making no effort to hide her presence.

It is a trap, that much is obvious. She intends to lure her into whatever preparations she’d made and use them to turn the tide against Mima. The tactically sound decision would be to wait outside of whatever Seiga has prepared and attack her when she must inevitably leave.

Unfortunately, such an option is not in the cards. For one, it defeats the purpose of this whole mission. To gather faith she must show herself worthy of it, and the best way of doing that is by confronting foes head-on. Beyond that, the longer this skirmish persists, the more likely Yukari is to intervene. For better or likely for worse, Mima flies off to the graveyard.

The location is about what Mima expected. There are stones, dirt, and buried under them are the dead. Seiga leisurely waits by some hastily scrawled sigils on some of the stones.

Mima hesitates for a moment, the danger is clear. A necromancer enters a cemetery for only one reason and Seiga is clearly a rather skilled necromancer. Still, she quickly resolves herself, there is a battle to be won.

As Mima descends, Seiga greets her. “Still following me? I’d expect you’d turn tail and run after such a poor performance. Or perhaps is that why you don’t run? You can’t accept that you’re outmatched?”

Mima growls back, “Meaningless insults from a meaningless woman. We both know what must happen.”

Seiga nods before tapping her hairpin against a gravestone, causing the ground to shift. As the dead rise, Mima pulls back and unleashes a barrage of spells at the witch.

Seiga negates the spells with a few talismans that crumble away after absorbing the attack. She does not need to use many as Mima’s attention is quickly drawn to the risen dead.

As expected of all undead, they’re disgusting. Rotten carcasses possessed by Seiga’s bounds spirits. Still, they number only six. Seiga seemingly is unwilling to employ any more of her captured souls.

Before the dead can freely free themselves from the earth, Mima hacks into the first’s chest and splits it horizontally. The next two closest, a ‘woman’ in the vaguest sense of the word who’d long succumb to rot and a seemingly freshly buried young man, attempt to grab at her while she frees her sword, but she quickly disavows them of that notion by slashing off their arms and then heads.

Seiga fires a few shots at Mima, but they’re unpowered for a hermit of Seiga’s level. A mild distraction to buy time for something else. What that something else could be however eludes Mima.

No matter, she blocks or evades the attacks easily, and the next three undead are slashed into pieces. As the last undead falls, Mima senses Seiga gathering power and makes a quick retreat as Seiga unleashes something…

It is wholly without color, just an indistinct mass of darkness that Mima only has moments to study before it launches at her.

The thing is fast, but Mima is faster and takes to the sky only to impact a barrier hemming her in. It’s a floating Yin-Yang symbol blocking the air above connected to transparent walls boxing in the sides of the cemetery. Again, Mima has only moments to attempt to decipher whatever it is Seiga has unleashed before having to evade the shadow.

As she shifts to the side, it doesn’t. Rather, it stops suddenly and moves in the opposite direction with no issues. Reacting on muscle memory, she unleashes a deluge of curses at the thing, but it warps its form so that they pass harmlessly through.

In a moment it is upon her, attempting to tear her apart with the curses engraved onto its being. It’s… frankly insulting. Seiga clearly knows that spirits may consume each other given she attempted it against her, and yet she throws this thing at her.

It may have been human or Youkai or something else long ago, but whatever made it up is long gone. Even compared to her other bound spirits this thing is hollow, without the bindings driving it forward with frenzied abandon it would do nothing. While torturing a soul to such an extent makes it extremely easy to control and shape, the same is true no matter the shaper.

Mima takes the thing into herself, pulling it in and severing the connection. A normal soul would struggle and attempt to take control of its host when it finds itself in such a position, but the broken thing just there sits inert like a puppet whose strings were cut.