欧美日韩国产综合在线

Detective Kumano’s nickname changed from Bear-san to Kuma-san. See notes below.

Kuma-san is a veteran detective who has been involved in a number of cases and has solved quite a few of them. In addition, he has participated in and won numerous athletics and martial arts competitions. As a result, he is well known and is respected by his peers. When he returned to Tokyo MPD with Shouta-kun in tow, he announced to all on-site officers “Anything about the World’s Darkness or espers, you all inform me first”. Since he was originally in charge of investigating espers, nobody found anything strange with his request and obliged.

With this, even if one of Amaterasu’s member is caught by the police, we would just have to contact Kuma-san, and unless it was a serious offence, he would dissuade the police officers on the scene and prevent the arrest. As amazing as it may sounds, it was not a get-out-of-jail-free card… yet. But we would reach that point eventually. Furthermore, Baba had told me that she had a deal with her partner, Detective Gesui, as well, so we’re good on that front.

In addition, Kuma-san would feed in misleading intelligence to his superiors, who were not under the control of Kaburagi-san and continued the investigation in a roundabout manner. This way he would continue to produce results. Consequently, this would secure his position as the lead investigator of esper related cases and increase his influence over the department. He would convince the top-brass that it would take time to get to the bottom of it and they must proceed with caution.

In this way, Kaburagi-san pressure the police from the outside and Kuma-san would mislead them from inside. How very dependable, the two of them.

As a matter of fact, the World’s Darkness was rather heinous. Its base stats were too high and police officers would most likely die while facing it. Their baton would be useless as well since its body with no bones or organs almost nullifies any physical attack. Also, it would be difficult to accurately shoot through its fist-sized stone nucleus while its moving around with a pistol. Basically, you there was no way to win.

They could, however, win if they understood its composition. They would then realize that bombs and flamethrowers were effective. But they can’t just carry around bombs and flamethrowers on their duty. It will be necessary to form a dedicated task force. The easiest way to defeat it would be to run over it with a car, but a car won’t be able to pass through a narrow alleyway or the underground sewer or a abandoned building, where the World’s Darkness appears in most cases.

Frankly speaking, it would be wise for the police not to get involved in such a case and just stay out of sight. If the World’s Darkness turned violent, it would be the worst thing to half-heartedly confront and publicize the incident.

From time to time, Kuma-san would come to Amanoiwato for drinks on his way home from work. He’d usually either complain or have a casual chat, but it was strangely enjoyable. It probably would make for a good story. I’m an esper, and Kuma-san wants to beat up an esper with his bare hands, but we somehow are able to have a fun conversation even with our differences.

Kuma-san lent me some classic sci-fi novels and manga that could be said to be the origin of modern battle genre, and I introduced to him to the wonderful world of Light Novels. It was a very fulfilling exchange, indeed.

I may not be exaggerating when I say Kuma-san and I had become close friends in the blink of an eye. Sometimes, even Kaburagi-san would join us and the three of us would go see a spy movie spy movie together.

In addition, at the request of Kuma-san, I adjusted the size of the psychokinetic PSI drive which was too small for his hands. When switched on and struck, a short-range psychokinetic force is released. It’s a real shockwave, and with this PSI drive, you would stand a chance against the World’s Darkness.

There’s no doubt that PSI drives are excellent weapons. They are easy to carry, do no damage to the user and don’t make any noise. On to top all that, their firepower is impeccable. However, they still have flaws. Firstly, they were hard to maintain. Secondly, they were made of platinum, so they were expensive. As such, it would prove difficult to issue it to the entire police department. But we could manage by giving them to individuals.

Kuma-san has superpowers (or so went the setting), but he refuses to be awakened and insists on beating up the espers barehandedly. For what it’s worth, he wanted a PSI drive since it’s a good weapon to use against espers. It’s his obsession. I get it though. Because he was “powerless”, he would make use of tools and his wisdom to fight with tact. For instance, when he used the drain spout and beat up Shota-kun.

And as our newly joined external cooperator, the two students turned to him for help almost immediately.

Kuma-san was a complete outsider at the time of the PSI drive’s smuggling. And now he was laying the groundwork for the police and at the same time cooperating with Amaterasu. So, it was safe to conclude that he definitely wasn’t the culprit but only a good investigator. He was fit to be the student’s ally. Rather it’d be crazy not to rely on him.

Our initial plan was to have them get closer to the truth, gathering clues little by little and confirming their suspicions, but after being consulted, Kuma-san collected fingerprints from the inside of the briefcase where the PSI drive in the vault had been replaced. It was then sent to an analyst and a match was found almost immediately. They knew it was Baba in one shot.

Hey! Don’t you think its unfair to get help of professional forensics?

On the other hand, it certainly makes sense. It’s reliably and quick way to identify the traitor.

But please do consider how I’d feel when all our preparations were rendered useless. It’s like a sword master barging into a mock sword battle between kids.

Alas, it’s no use crying over spilled milk. In the first place, everything we prepared was useless the moment the detective duo interfered. Or should we consider that the situation has turned out rather well?

-*-*-*-

The season is spring. It was the day after their high school entrance ceremony. The two of them had summoned Baba to the training room of the secret base.

The training room had thick steel plates on the sides and heat-resistant tiles on the floor. It was a desolate room with nothing but a ventilation fan and a doorway, designed to withstand espers’ powers at full force.

Having successfully called Baba under the guise of wanting to ask her some questions about the PSI drives, Shouta-kun locked the door after all three of them had entered the room.

“Hmm? Something you don’t want them to hear.”

“Yeah. Its only for you, Baba.”

Seeing the serious face of Shouta-kun blocking the entrance, Baba’s expression stiffened.

“Touka, this is–”

‘‘Baba-san, we’re going to ask you a few questions, so please answer honestly. Please swear to the Buddha that you will not lie.”

When Baba was about to turn around to reply, Touka-chan forced her to take an oath.

“Umm, Ok. I swear.”

“First. Was it Baba who replaced the PSI drive in the briefcase with a red herring?”

“…What are you talking about?”

At Shota-kun’s question, Baba questioned back after a slight pause.

She is a fine actor. No doubt.

“Two months ago, we discovered that some PSI drives in the vault had been swapped out for a red herring. Every briefcase with a red herring had Baba’s fingerprints on it.”

“Finger..paint?” [1]

“You don’t understand. Here, look, this thing on your finger.”

Shota-kun pointed at her fingertips and Baba laughed.

“What are you talking about? Doesn’t everyone have this? The scale might vary slightly depending on the size of the finger, but the pattern remains the same for both an old man and a baby. Don’t you know?”

“It’s probably just for elves. It’s more like you are the one who doesn’t know. Every single human being has a different fingerprint pattern.”

When Shota-kun pulled out a comparative drawing of the fingerprints from his pants pocket and showed it to Baba, her face, which had loosened a bit, tightened up again. Man, seriously, I don’t know how you could control your expressions with such finesse.

Baba you are awesome. You even broke out in cold sweat.

“I’m the creator of the PSI drive. I was also the one who put them in the case and delivered them here. It must have gotten the fingerprint during that time. And red herring? Never heard of that.”

“We found your fingerprints on the red herring, too.”

Shota-kun’s cold voice caught Baba off guard.

That was a lie, though. Fingerprints could not be taken from the red herring because of its slippery scales. It’s was a bluff taken straight off from the book of Kuma-san.

In fact, the fingerprints taken from the outer surface were of Amaterasu member. And only on the inside were Baba’s fingerprints.

“Hey. You swore earlier, right? You would never, ever tell a lie.”

“Hihh!”

Touka-chan grabbed Baba’s shoulder from behind and stared at her up close with her eyes wide open, which caused Baba to let out a small shriek. Scary scary scary that’s frikin scary! Even I, who was watching through psychokinesis, got freaked out. You look like one of those cursed Japanese dolls, Touka-chan!

However, the fact that she screamed in Japanese instead of her native language meant that Baba still had room to spare. Her acting skills are too good.

“Why did you lie? Come on, answer me. You have to convince us. We’re all in this together, right? How do you explain the fingerprints if Baba-san didn’t smuggle the PSI drive?

“Calm down, Touka. Ah, Baba. If there are any circumstances, I want you to be honest with me. I haven’t told Kaburagi-san or Master about this story yet. If you had no choice but to do it for some unavoidable reason, please say so. I’ll help you and we’ll apologize together.”

“However, if you had pulled off that nonsense with the red herring on purpose, then I will bring you to a temple and ring the bonsho bell there with your head 108 times. I won’t stop until every last scrap of earthly temptation is gone from your head, not even if you cry.”

“Touka.”

“What?”

“Please be quiet for a minute.”

“…….”

Touka-chan went quiet, but she didn’t remove her grip on Baba’s shoulders.

Shouta-kun said kindly.

“Hey, Baba. Touka’s pissed off, but don’t worry, if you’ve smuggled off the PSI drives, we’ll get it back. I’ll help you. You’ll have to take the punishment, but I’ll take it with you. We’re living together. We’re having dinner together. We went clothes shopping together. We’ll be together through the good times and the bad times as well.”

Baba turned her face away from the dazzling Shota-kun, who kneeled to match his height, looking straight into her eyes as he said that. There’s no one in the first year of high school who could say something like this.

I mean, this is almost a confess…

Bruh! What have you done! You shut the heroine down but then you start flirting with a loli!

Didn’t you like big tities! Please take a proper look at Touka-chan. She will defin…itely grow a nice pair sometime in future!"

Well, that being said, I understood the conclusion the two of them had arrived at. Event Resolution with Route D: “Dialogue”. That was a pretty easy route to take.

If without any basis they had said, “We are allies aren’t we? So, please tell us the truth”, in a bland manner, I would have then taught them the harshness of reality and spanked them for spouting such bullshit, but the two of them went to collect hard evidence to identify the traitor and accepted the consequences and forgave them kindly. They are smart, sweet kids.

I’m sorry that I had thought of Route A that is “capturing Baba by surprise, tie her up and shove her in front of Kaburagi-san”

I am such a terrible person.

I shook the dog tags Baba wore around her neck and underneath her clothes to send a Morse code, signaling the decision to take Route D. Then Baba held her head and crouched down painfully.

“Shouta….Touka….I..I…ughhh…”

“So there really was a reason for this?”

“Wait. Something’s weird.”

Baba eyes rolled back and she started mumbling.

“No, don’t do that. Shut up, shut up, I’m not going to do that. To my family, to my friends, that sort of thing. Ugh….shut up…shut up!”

“What’s happening? Why are you doing this?”

“That’s not it, this… she’s probably having hallucinations. Touka, hold her down for me. Baba, it’s all right. I’m here for you. You can do it. I believe in you. Don’t lose to something like this!”

Rather than Shouta-kun being perceptive. I’m sure he must have had read something similar in a manga or something.

Why do I know? Because I read it too!

Shouta-kun held Baba’s hand tightly. Touka-chan held her from behind, desperately holding down her small body as she began to writhe and rage in agony. Eventually, Baba (our fine actor) who was in a mental struggle against whatever it was whispering to her, screamed.

“Get the fuck out of my head!”

“To respond to Baba’s screams, I made a mini World’s Darkness-kun, about the size of a pinky fingernail, hidden in her voluminous, long silver hair. The glass ball was scratched and scraped by psychokinesis and popped out of the top of her head with the deafening scream.

“Whoa!”

“Aah! What the heck is that!?”

Mini Darkness-kun jumped out and stuck to Touka-chan’s hand as it began to crawl up her arms, its countless short legs scurrying. I spent hours watching cockroach videos that I didn’t even wanted to watch in order to recreate these physiologically disgusting and creepy movements.

As planned, Touka-chan let out a shrill scream, letting out flames and burning down Mini Darkness-kun. The hot wind sent the hair of the three of them flying. The body of the World’s Darkness was incinerated and its core which was charred, rolled on the floor.

Baba’s will, that had been strengthened by the warmth that she received from her allies, had overwhelmed the World’s Darkness that had been possessing her. As such, it could not hold on any longer and got expelled.That’s awesome! The power of friendship. In a fantasy world, this is a common trope, so there is nothing funny about it, though.

In addition, the fact that the World’s Darkness she had expelled, started its search for a new host was just a little extra touch to up the horror level.

Baba who weakly took Touka-chan’s hand, which was dripping with sweat, thanked her in a quiet voice and then fainted (pretended).

Shouta looked at the aftermath with a grim look on his face, while Touka-chan shivered as if feeling sick from the bottom of her heart. In the meantime, the Demon King’s pawns who were inciting Baba…the World’s Darkness has been safely eradicated.

Afterwards, the Mini Darkness-kun’s remains were sent to the boss via Kaburagi-san as a valuable sample, and the boss sent back the results of the investigation.

According to the boss, the World’s Darkness is a simple embodiment of the desire for violence in the first place, and it’s impossible to use a roundabout strategy like the one that leeched off Baba this time. But it was actually happening. Why?

For some reason, even the boss didn’t know. However, he said that it was no coincidence that Baba was trying to make a weapon to defeat the Demon King, and that Baba was chosen as host for the parasite.

The way Baba told it, the experience of being possessed felt like something (might have been the demon king) had been interfering with her thought process and influencing her to do evil things. But considering how roundabout the method was, as well as how it didn’t actually cause any severe damage, Boss conjectured that such methods were against the real nature of the World’s Darkness and thus they were very bad at it.

If Baba had been completely taken over by the World’s Darkness, she would have either killed Shouta-kun in a surprise attack or killed herself. They must have resorted to roundabout methods such as smuggling of PSI drives and replacing it with red herring because they could only induce malicious intent rather than completely control her. It’s like a fish trying to force itself to run and fail. It’s inherently impossible for the World’s Darkness to be used for mind manipulation.

In short, as long as you are wary of parasites, you won’t be leeched off, and espers don’t even need to be wary, meaning that Amaterasu’s members won’t have to worry about Mini Darkness-kun parasites in the future. Psychometry is a lie to lend credibility to this analysis.

If we didn’t make an official announcement, they would have lived with the suspicion that their friends might have been used as hosts. Mental care with a cover story was important.

You all need to be careful.

After the incident, Baba stopped coming to work at Kaneyama Tech for a while to heal her mental fatigue from being mind controlled, and went to rest at the Takahashi family residence. It was a pretense to recover the PSI drives that were supposed to be smuggled around in the meantime. The plan was to make it clear that Kaburagi-san had retrieved it with her money and connections.

Having overcome this trial by learning to suspect but also having faith in their allies in the face of doubts, the two students were going to open a new chapter of their high school life with a new heart and a fresh mindset———

-*-*-*-

The evening of that day.

Stripping off her clothes and underwear and putting the branch she had weaved in her hair in a vase, Lonalia Linalia Baba-Nyan gingerly entered the bathroom. After closing the bathroom door tightly, she stood still and listened carefully. Alves’ peculiarly superior hearing revealed that none from the Takahashi family were approaching the bathroom, nor were they paying any attention.

Still, Baba-Nyan didn’t went to the bathtub straight away instead she headed turn the shower knob to ensure the sound of water gushing out camouflaged other sounds. Next, she placed her finger in a small recess in a bathroom wall tile and move it slightly in the following order: right, up, down, back, right.

Then the tile came off with a small click of unlocking. The space hidden by the tiles was just large enough to fit a briefcase, which contained a sheet of shaved platinum and several tools, blueprints, and fragments of a frame to work on. Baba Nyan let out a relieved breath after making sure everything was in its original position without incident.

It had taken Baba-Nyan six months to create this little secret space. No one knew about this space. Neither the Takahashi Family nor Sago.

As per his promise to Kaburagi Shiori, Sago was forbidden to use his powers to peep into women’s baths. Therefore, as long as she could hide the tools in her hair or underwear and work in the 30 minutes of bath time a day, she could get away undetected from psychokinesis and finish her work.

Baba-Nyan took the sheet metal and tools out of the secret space and began to carve them out with high speed and precision. The movement was more mechanical than even a machine, and Baba-Nyan’s eyes were serious.

It was a PSI drive, of course. It was also the strongest Demon King slaying weapon with maximum performance and a powerful psychokinetic attack function.

One more piece of the PSI drive was being chiseled out.

Her research at Kaneyama Tech had already determined the best structure for the superpower that existed on Earth. The blueprints were complete. All that was left to do was to finish it according to the blueprints.

Suddenly, the memory of Sago revealing the truth about the secret society resurfaced in Baba-Nyan’s mind. She pressed her mouth on the spur of the moment. Boiling anger threatened to burst forth.

Even at the end of Baba-Nyan’s long life, this anger would not subside easily. She still gets jittery and her chest still burnt. She managed to suppress her urge to scream and curse.

No one knew of this. It was secret plan, after all.

To Yasui, who was cooperating with her, she had not revealed the full extent of the plan. She had him do some insignificant errands, each time with a hefty reward, to keep him from being dissatisfied, and to make the final push for a last ditch effort.

“….I don’t have much time…”

Baba-Nyan muttered and resumed her work.

After exactly twenty-five minutes, she stopped and put everything back together, and in the remaining five minutes, she washed herself quickly and got out of the bath with a nonchalant look on her face.

Baba-Nyan smiled at Shouta who offered her an ice-cream cup after the bath.

It was truly a beautiful smile that showed no signs of evil.

TL Note 1:

I have changed Bear-san to Kuma-san. Kuma means bear and also is the short form for Kumano.

I have decided to keep using Baba-Nyan. I’ll change it to Vava-Nyan if at some point a foreigner or someone from Baba’s home, Alves, is narrating.

[1]: Here, in raws, Baba said “Simon?". Now fingerprint in japanese is “Shimon”. So, Baba got confused (pretended to) it with the christian name “Simon”. Now the closest translation I could think of was changing “fingerprint” to “finger…paint”.

TL Note 2 / Bad News:

Few days ago one of my close relatives was hospitalised because of breathing issues. Thankfully, it was not Covid. But unfortunately it was Pneumonia.

That destroyed a fair amount of motivation I had for translating this novel. Combined with the stress of finding a job post-covid (I will graduate next month. probably.) I had to muster every bit of motivation to complete this chapter.

So, after this chapter the release speed will most likely be slow like reaaaally slow. Might even be non-existent.

That being said, if you are a potential translator reading this or you know someone willing to translate at a reasonable pace and quality, this novel is up for grab (at least for the immediate future). Ping me on Discord or comment section and I’ll drop it if at that time I am not doing consistent releases.

Thanks for reading till the end.

Have a nice day.