An Exorcist Magical Girl! Chapter 86

A ghost who tried to kill people to get out of the “hell” it was invited to, a place it was forced to come to by the Bunshin Saba Ritual.

 

“Let’s just say it was the only thing I could do to get over the fence that… could never cross.”

 

The ghost’s words from last Saturday flashed through my mind.

 

“Oh, no.”

 

Mukgyeong Girls’ High School does not let ghosts out.

 

If you exist in a spirit state, whether you are dead or alive, you cannot leave the school.

 

In other words, those with bodies can leave.

 

To get out of the “hell” they were invited to, they needed an empty shell without a master.

 

A body left behind after the soul had escaped.

 

Murder was the most common way to remove the soul from the body.

 

The spirit that went on a rampage during the Palm Time wanted to kill the students and enter the disembodied body.

 

But it was obviously easier to take up residence in an already vacant space than to kill.

 

“You mean there will be ghosts that will target my disembodied body?”

 

“That’s right.” Seo Jun nodded and continued.

 

“I was with you during your training and the CPR, but I can’t be now, because I have to stop this procession. That’s why you wear the amulet, so the spirits won’t even recognize your body.”

 

“Wow… Seo Jun, if it weren’t for you, I would already be…”

 

I can see why Seo Jun looked at me with such salty eyes. I jumped in without knowing what I was doing.

 

“I’m still a newbie, thank you for saving my life.”

 

I’ll stay humble.

 

“Never mind. I’ll go then.”

 

Seo Jun followed the procession halfway down the hall.

 

“Thank you, Seo Jun, I’ll leave you to it!”

 

Seo Jun stopped when she heard my call.

 

“…Back here, always put your safety first.”

 

“Uh, yeah, of course.”

 

“If you think you’re in danger, run.”

 

“I will.”

 

“Fight in moderation, don’t risk your life.”

 

“Dude, when did you start worrying so much?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

With that, Seo Jun started moving down the line again.

 

“Alright, I’m going to fight the Head Collector now.”

 

First, I have to see if I can hold a weapon as a ghost.

 

I waved my hand at the mop bag I’d left on the floor. My hands went right through the mop.

 

“Eh. No.”

 

I can’t catch it because I’m not there.

 

The hand slipped through the mop and onto the floor of the hallway. I kicked at the wall, and my leg went through without missing a beat.

 

“What? How am I supposed to stand?”

 

I looked again, and I was now floating about 10 centimeters off the floor.

 

Hmm. So disembodied ghosts basically float.

 

Ghosts can throw chairs, desks, and other objects just fine. Maybe I can do that once I get used to the ghost state.

 

Anyway, since I can’t use weapons, I’ll have to rely on my skill “Creator of Nothing” to fight.

 

【Skills ▾】

【Basic Clairvoyance | Body Tinting ■■■■■■■■■■ …100%】

【Basic Destruction | Constitution ■■■■■■■■■■ …100%】

【A Craftsman Wears No Tools | Chehua ■■■■■■■■■■ …100%】

【Creator of Nothing | Constitution □□□□□□□□□ …10%】

 

I’ve gone from 2% Constitution when I first learned Creator of Nothing to 10% now.

 

I’ve been using it to create black thorns from my fingertips, and I’ve managed to increase my stats a bit, but I’m still not getting the full effect of the skill.

 

I can’t even use a mirror right now, but I’ll have to do something with it.

 

Didn’t it say, “You can use your energy to shape your weapon”?

 

After replaying the description of the skill in my head, I slowly made my way to the door of the music room.

 

The Head Collector was staring blankly into the hallway where the procession had disappeared, muttering to himself.

 

He seemed upset that all the students it had managed to get into one class had run away.

 

I quietly stepped inside the invisible wall.

 

Sensing my intrusion, the Head Collector extended his hand to me.

 

 

***

 

 

It thinks I’m a student?

 

I’m grateful for the mistake.

 

Long, transparent limbs waved at me.

 

Judging by the way the arms dragged on the ground, they must have been two meters long each.

 

A red core floated above the severed part of its neck, which seemed to have a small head disproportionate to its size.

 

There were no eyes, nose, or ears anywhere, except for a mouth attached to the palm of my hand, which gave away my location.

 

Maybe it senses temperature through its skin.

 

I quickly ducked under the desk by the door.

 

Knock, knock, knock—

 

The Head Collector nervously taps the top of the desk where I’m hiding.

 

The black energy I had concentrated on my fingertips from outside the music room had grown to about 20 centimeters.

 

Black thorns extended from each of my five fingers like extensions of my fingernails.

 

As the Head Collector lowered itself to bite into the desk, I slipped out from under it and aimed for its core.

 

Then I fired a barrage of fingertip spikes.

 

Ting!

 

Five times in a row, a clear sound like the tapping of glass beads rang out.

 

One by one, the spikes flew out and hit the core at the top of the neck.

 

However, the core was only slightly cracked, and the effect of the attack was minimal.

 

“Damn…!”

 

This was why it was so dangerous to fight ghosts as a spirit after leaving the body.

 

My attacks would be less effective than when I was in my body.

 

The Head Gatherer screamed and struggled.

 

As the Head Collector grunted, red breath spewed from between the lips of his hand.

 

“Ewww, it stinks…!”

 

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

 

The stench was so foul that I felt my entire body – or rather, my entire soul – stiffen.

 

Huh?

 

I thought it was just my mood, but I’m really stiff!

 

I immediately tried to back away, but my legs wouldn’t cooperate.

 

“Oh shit…!”

 

I can’t even swear because my tongue is frozen. Damn it.

 

F*ck!

 

I barely manage to roll to the side and get out from under him as the Head Collector raises his long arm to strike.

 

Bam!

 

The Head Collector’s arms slam down where my head had been a second ago.

Wow, that must have hurt like hell.

 

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!”

 

Another scream erupted from the Head Collector’s palm-mounted mouth.

 

Kwajik─

 

…Crazy.

 

I take back what I said about it hurting like hell.

 

The red breath that accompanied the roar enveloped the iron desk I’d initially ducked behind, crushing it.

 

A shiver ran down my spine as I realized that if I hadn’t ducked, I would have been at the target before I could cry.

 

“Aaaaaaah!”

 

The Head Collector let out a short scream this time. The red breath spread out in all directions again.

 

“Deep breath.”

 

I held my breath. Apparently, breathing in this air would stiffen me.

 

But I couldn’t just hold my breath and run.

 

I stepped away from the fading red breath and began to breathe.

 

The music room was the size of two regular classrooms combined. That gave me plenty of distance from the head collector.

 

“Whoa…”

 

Fortunately, the radius of the red breath wasn’t very large.

 

The color and smell seemed to fade and eventually disappear once it spread more than a meter around the palm, the source of the breath.

 

The target, the core, was pierced by five spikes, so the damage would pile up if I continued to attack. I was about to draw out the black energy again.

 

Pababababababab!

 

The Head Collector began to move at a terrifying speed that I had never seen before.

 

I wondered if this was what it would feel like to be chased by eight ghosts on a motorcycle.

 

“Oh, come on, what the hell?!”

 

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!”

 

Red breath shot directly at my face from a distance of 30 centimeters, and I quickly swung my arm, spreading the black energy concentrated at my fingertips.

 

It looked like a fluttering black furoshiki, but it was enough to block the breath.

 

“Good!”

 

Seeing the red breath dissipate, the black energy transformed into a long string of furoshiki.

 

I tried to use this momentum to keep the Head Collector tied up for a while, but it was too much.

 

The Head Collector tore through the black ropes surrounding me with a single blow and charged at me.

 

I was a trapped rat.

 

“There’s nowhere to run.”

 

I thought I was in a state of mind, right?

 

The red breath was about to wrap around my neck. I slammed into the wall behind me, barely making it through the invisible and real concrete walls the ghost had placed all around the music room.

 

Beyond the back wall was the instrument storage room.

 

Still stubbornly refusing to leave the music room, the head collector didn’t follow me to the instrument storage room.

 

“Aaaaaaah!”

 

It didn’t take two eyes to see that this was not a cry of aggression, but of real anger.

 

It would be suicide to return to the music room now.

 

***

 

I decided to take a break.

 

“Wow, that’s a lot of sticks. I’ve got two boxes of sticks and two boxes of drumsticks…”

 

I sorely missed my 100% embodied “A Craftsman Wears No Tool” skill.

 

Of course, this skill is only about 5-60% as powerful as it was when I was disembodied, but I can’t ignore the comforting feeling of familiarity.

 

I still had an uneasy relationship with the “Creator of Nothing” skill.

 

So far, everything I’ve created with the “Creator of Nothing” has been nothing but crap. 

 

It’s no wonder, since I’ve been improvising in the middle of every battle.

 

Sharp thorns, tattered furoshiki, shoddy cordage.

 

They weren’t even in my normal arsenal, and they weren’t the kind I was used to using.

 

If a skill is unfamiliar, the weapon it creates should be familiar to me.

 

In fact, I hadn’t even created a specific weapon yet.

 

I had become complacent because I’d always been able to get by with a black spike.

 

I had other skills that were 100% embodied that I could pull out whenever I had something to hold on to.

 

Okay, now it was time to take it to the next level.

 

“Aaaaaaaaah!”

 

With the roar of the Head Collector in the background, I threw myself into the task of sculpting a weapon.

 

Cannons? Longswords? Bows? They’re complicated, time-consuming, and worst of all, I’ve never used them properly.

 

What I’m trying to make now is a decent-sized baseball bat.

 

“Ehh… I hate to admit it, but nothing feels as good in my hand as a bat…”

 

I can’t help it, I’ve been wielding blunt objects since I was a wannabe magical girl.

 

I didn’t have time to perfect the shape right away, so I made a rough imitation of a baseball bat.

 

The baseball bat I made in such a hurry had a shape that I was embarrassed to call a baseball bat.

 

In a baseball bat, the part that hits the ball should be thicker than the handle, but there was no difference between the thickness of the handle and the part that hits the ball. The overall thickness of the handle was too thin for a baseball bat.

 

“I guess everything else is the same, but why the heck are there corners…?”

 

In fact, it was so angled that I couldn’t even tell it was cylindrical.

 

“It’s not a bat, it’s a prism, right?”

 

So, I decided to add some decorations to match the prism.

 

I pulled a thorn out of my fingertip and glued it to the end of the damn stick.

 

“A thorn on a stick.”

 

It’s not what I had in mind, but I like it anyway.

 

I waved it around in the air a few times, and a status message popped up.

 

❰Congratulations on acquiring the first weapon in the “Creator of Nothing” skill, the Nailed Pronged Wood!❱