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Chapter 19: The Final Mission

Chapter 19: Chapter 19: The Final Mission

"Are you here at the bookstore to read again?"

"Ah... yeah. The library at school is still being built and isn’t finished yet, so whenever I have free time, I come to the bookstore to read."

Kobeni Higashiyama actually liked reading books outside of class, but because of her family situation, she had no money to buy books.

"Can’t you borrow books? Do you need to come to the bookstore every day?"

"To borrow books... I’d need a library card. Since I’m still a minor, getting one is pretty troublesome, and the documents I need are all at home. My parents..."

Kobeni hesitated for a while, but in the end, she still did not say anything about her family.

Although Kobeni did not say it, Kotone Asaba could more or less understand.

Clearly, her family was restricting her. In the original story, they directly refused to let Kobeni go to college and made her go earn money instead. What surprised him a little, though, was that even reading books was restricted. She could only secretly read at the bookstore after school.

Just as Kotone was about to say something, the phone in his pants pocket suddenly rang.

When he answered, Aki Hayakawa’s voice came through.

"Are you done with your business? If you are, hurry back. We’ve got a multi-person mission here."

On the other end of the phone, Aki’s tone was a little urgent, because as long as he completed this final mission, he would be able to enter Tokyo Public Safety.

"Got it. I’ll be right back."

After hanging up, Kotone said to Kobeni, "Something urgent came up, so I have to go."

"Mm-hmm."

After that, Kotone hurried into the bookstore, picked out a collection of past exam questions, bought it, then directly transferred himself into the Kamui dimension before transferring to the guild hall where he had already left a "coordinate."

Seeing Kotone suddenly appear before his eyes, Aki was still a little surprised even though he knew Kotone had this ability. "You got back fast."

"Hayakawa, so this is your partner? His ability looks pretty impressive."

"Wow, looks like he’s even younger than you, Hayakawa. He’s probably a rookie, right?"

There were two other people beside Aki. They were probably going to act with them during this multi-person mission.

"Ouchihara, Ryoko Yamada. These two are partners, and they’ll be acting with us on this mission."

Aki introduced the two of them to Kotone. One was a tall, burly man with a crew cut, while the other was a young woman with a bandage wrapped around her right hand.

Then Aki introduced Kotone to the two of them. "This is my partner, Kotone Asaba."

"Well, I really didn’t expect you to be willing to find a partner. I’m guessing your partner’s strength can’t be bad either, right?"

Ouchihara patted Aki on the shoulder, his laughter bright and hearty.

"He’s very strong. This mission shouldn’t be a problem."

Aki spoke calmly.

"Oh? For him to get such high praise from you, this guy must not be simple."

Ouchihara’s tone carried a little surprise.

"Then I’ll be riding your coattails this time."

Ryoko Yamada, who was standing to the side, said it with a smile.

Of course, her tone was joking. With a mission of this difficulty, there was no way they could afford to be careless.

Since Ouchihara and Ryoko Yamada had only returned a few days ago from a break, they did not know about Aki and Kotone’s achievements over the past two days, so they did not know how strong Kotone was.

But since Aki could describe him as very strong, they had a good idea.

A so-called multi-person mission was a mission with higher difficulty that required multiple people to act together. The four of them immediately took transportation to the target location.

In the car, Aki finally explained the details of the mission to Kotone.

"According to the mission description, a Carp Devil appeared in a river nearby. Based on its name alone, it should be a fairly ordinary Devil, but the destructive power it displayed was abnormal. Hopefully, it hasn’t eaten a piece of the Gun Devil’s flesh. Otherwise, we’ll have to request support from Public Safety."

"..."

Kotone was a little speechless.

That was definitely a Carp Devil that had eaten a piece of the Gun Devil’s flesh. As expected of a classic jinx, the final mission had to involve running into this kind of powerful Devil.

If he were not here, Aki might not be in trouble, but things would be hard to say for Ouchihara and Ryoko Yamada.

"Then we should prepare for the worst-case scenario. Let’s assume that Carp Devil has eaten a piece of the Gun Devil’s flesh. You two need to be careful."

Kotone’s words were mainly meant for Ouchihara and Ryoko Yamada.

Ouchihara and Ryoko Yamada nodded with serious expressions. They also understood the level of danger in this mission.

...

At that moment, the four of them arrived at the target location.

This was a small river. The ordinary people nearby had long since been frightened by the Devil’s commotion and scattered in every direction.

But the Carp Devil was no longer in the river. It was standing on the ground by the riverbank.

The Carp Devil looked exactly like an abnormally enormous carp. It had only one large eyeball on its head, giving it an extremely wide field of vision. The dorsal fin on its back had transformed into sharp spines one to two meters long, and many white, bone-like human legs grew from its underside, giving it the ability to walk on land.

It was currently chewing on a human corpse, seemingly feeding on humans.

Devils like this, ones that had eaten pieces of the Gun Devil’s flesh, had not suddenly reincarnated from Hell into the human world. They had been hiding in the human world for a long time. Otherwise, they would not have obtained pieces of the Gun Devil’s flesh.

It had probably usually hidden somewhere at the bottom of the river, coming out from time to time to prey on humans.

"Human blood... how delicious! ...Hm? More food delivering itself to me?"

Hearing the Carp Devil’s voice, Aki said nothing. His right hand formed a hand sign, preparing to use the Fox Devil’s power.

"Kon!"

The Fox Devil’s enormous head immediately appeared and bit the Carp Devil’s head clean off.

"I’ll be taking this head..."

After leaving those words behind, the Fox Devil disappeared.

Looking at the Carp Devil, whose severed neck was constantly spraying blood and had stopped moving, Aki said with slight surprise, "It was solved that easily... Looks like this thing didn’t eat a piece of the Gun Devil’s flesh."

"Uh... it was actually that easy? I thought we were going to have a bloody fight. We didn’t even need to do anything."

Ouchihara scratched his head. This mission’s difficulty was completely different from what he had imagined. It did not feel like a multi-person mission at all.

"Isn’t it better if it’s easy? Bringing this corpse back will sell for quite a bit of money, and then we can relax for a while."

Ryoko Yamada stretched lazily, the upright curve of her body especially eye-catching, then turned and prepared to leave.

She had already decided that once she got back this time, she was going to enjoy a nice soak in a hot spring.

However, Kotone was still staring at the Carp Devil’s corpse. He felt that something was off.

Only someone with his extremely sharp insight could notice that the Carp Devil’s tail fin was still trembling slightly. It did not look like a postmortem twitch.