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A bone-chilling wind swept across the land.
Haru looked down at the average-looking young man beneath him, who exuded an air of simple honesty.
"To be honest, I don't dislike you at all," Haru sighed, his tone filled with admiration.
Soujuurou Shizuki, in a way, was the male protagonist of Mahoyo. A simple country boy, kicked out of his mountain home after making a mistake.
Unlike the R-rated Tsukihime and Fate, Mahoyo was a story of friendship and bonds, the relationship between the male and female protagonists as pure as it gets.
And with Soujuurou Shizuki's naturally honest nature, Haru had no reason to dislike him.
Of course, letting the established trajectory play out, allowing Soujuurou Shizuki to live with Aoko Aozaki and Alice Kuonji—that was absolutely out of the question.
"Um, if you don't dislike me, then why are you stepping on me? I was just tired and resting here. I wasn't bothering you, was I? If I was, I can apologize," Soujuurou Shizuki said to Haru, a bewildered look on his face.
He couldn't understand Haru's logic. If he didn't dislike him, why was he stepping on him? Was stepping on people fun?
"Perhaps this is a good thing for you," Haru said, ignoring Soujuurou's words. A faint, black light emanated from his fingertip, and he gently tapped Soujuurou's forehead.
"Ugh…" Soujuurou grunted, his expression instantly going blank. The next moment, he vanished from the park, reappearing on the bustling main street of Misaki Town.
"I was… working, right? How did I end up on the street?" Soujuurou Shizuki looked at the crowd with bewilderment, scratching the back of his head in confusion.
In the park.
Haru sat at the bottom of the slide, watching the wary Aoko Aozaki, who was staring intently at the forest, with keen interest.
Erasing a few hours of Soujuurou Shizuki's memory and instilling some common sense—based on his knowledge of Mahoyo, that was enough to cause a major deviation from the established trajectory.
At the very least, the three of them living together, without Soujuurou accidentally stumbling upon Aoko using magic, was now impossible.
And Haru considered that not being dragged into the daily slaughter of mages was probably a good thing for this honest young man. In the end, he was the type of person who liked to impose his goodwill on others.
Tokiomi Tohsaka had been like that, Kariya Matou had been like that, and Kiritsugu Emiya had been like that too.
"Ugh—!" Aoko swallowed hard, slowly raising her arm, her palm facing the enemy in the forest ahead. The Magic Crest on her arm glowed with an azure light, a sign that her magical energy was beginning to fill.
Aoko Aozaki only had twenty magic circuits.
To be honest, in the world of mages, that was a very low aptitude, about the same as Waver's. Consequently, she couldn't perform any particularly skillful magecraft.
However, Aoko's magic circuits had a special feature: her magical energy utilization and speed were exceptionally high.
In other words, her casting speed was extremely fast, and her casting cost was exceptionally low. In a way, she was a 'genius'—albeit a genius with a skewed skill tree.
"—Burn!" Aoko chanted under her breath, and the magical energy, through the formula inscribed into the world, was instantly transformed into a spell.
A magic bullet the size of a basketball shot out from Aoko's hand, like a bullet from a gun, hurtling towards the enemy hiding in the forest.
Boom—!
The sound of a grenade exploding suddenly rang out.
Haru stared, dumbfounded, at Aoko.
"Tsk, did I miss?" Aoko frowned, her eyes darting around as she complained.
"…By five meters," Alice Kuonji, who had been maintaining an impassive expression, her lip twitching slightly, muttered under her breath.
"With the bonus of the barrier's lock-on, a magic bullet the size of a basketball can't hit a target five meters away?" Haru, having recovered from his shock, his lip twitching, looked at Aoko in disbelief.
In a way, Aoko's ability to miss was a divine skill. It was like a CS game, using a sniper rifle with a scope to shoot an enemy five meters away, and still missing. Her talent was truly terrifying.
"If I don't give her a little boost, Touko Aozaki will kill her in one go, won't she?" Haru looked at the flushed Aoko with a wry smile. Half-baked True Magic User, indeed.
Clank! Clank! Clank!
The sound of gears turning suddenly echoed.
While Aoko was blushing over her mistake, the puppet hidden in the forest, in Haru's eyes, raised its hand. The next moment, its arm shot out like a spear, instantly extending, growing from a normal-sized arm to six meters long, hurtling straight for Aoko's head.
"Touko's puppet… its attack pattern is based on Monkey D. Luffy? It's giving me a serious Gum-Gum Gatling vibe!!" Haru silently commented.
"To the left!" Relying on the perception of the barrier set up by Alice Kuonji, Aoko simply sidestepped, her hair flying, dodging the attack by a hair's breadth.
The next moment, a magic bullet appeared in the palm of her right hand. The glowing blue magic bullet and her arm, like a rocket launcher about to fire.
"—Burn!"
With an azure glow, the magic bullet struck the puppet's chest. With a rumble, azure flames instantly engulfed the puppet's body.
There was no smoke, no explosion. The puppet's body was instantly reduced to charcoal, only its head remaining intact.
Seeing this, Aoko cautiously approached the puppet, wary of a counterattack. She saw the featureless face and her lip twitched.
"It's a puppet? I've been… completely played," Aoko said, clenching her fists, grinding her teeth in frustration.
"This intruder is not easy to deal with," Alice Kuonji said, tapping her chin with her index finger, a thoughtful expression on her face.
Just then, the phone Haru was carrying rang.
——
A few minutes later, Alice Kuonji and Aoko Aozaki, having cleaned up the barrier and the puppet's remains, stood before the empty park slide.
"No one here. I guess we were just imagining that gaze," Aoko said, brushing her hair, which had been messed up by the earlier battle, with a light laugh.
Being the focus of a crowd for a long time, one instinctively senses when they are being watched.
Unfortunately, due to their beauty, Alice Kuonji and Aoko Aozaki were often the center of male attention, making them exceptionally sensitive to gazes.
"No. For both of us to have sensed a gaze at the same time proves someone was here," Alice Kuonji said, her expression impassive.
"And, there's a mark of someone lying here," Alice Kuonji said, crouching down and pointing to the patch of grass crushed by Soujuurou Shizuki.
"A witness!" Aoko's face stiffened, then turned cold.
To ensure the power of magic, to maintain the interests of mages, mages had an ironclad rule: any witness must be eliminated.
Though she was a half-baked magus, now that Aoko had entered the world of magic, she was prepared—
—for murder.
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