She endured Yuria's gaze until the other girl finally stopped scrutinizing her. Only then did Miko start to feel a little better, and Hana's behavior no longer seemed quite so awkward.
Honestly, was Hana really that timid?
Miko looked at Hana again, amused. Hana always managed to make her happy. She really was an innocent, adorable girl—unlike Miko.
Yes, unlike Miko.
They walked a little farther before Hana lost heart again. She let go of Miko's hands and crouched down on the ground.
"I can't do this anymore. My heart can't take it!"
"What now? Are you giving up?"
"No! I don't want to give up the doughnuts."
Yuria had no idea why Hana was afraid of a haunted house when she wasn't even scared of the Cursed Building, but she still tried to comfort her.
"I think it should be over soon."
"Yeah, it definitely must be."
Miko agreed. Only then did Hana reluctantly get to her feet, replying weakly.
"I'll do my best."
As soon as the words left her mouth, the panel behind her clattered. When the three of them looked over, a maniac wielding a chainsaw stood behind Hana. He even switched the chainsaw on.
"Rrrr..."
"..."
After a few seconds of silence, Hana wrapped an arm around Yuria's neck and shrieked, then dragged Yuria off in the opposite direction.
Miko could only run after them.
Hana, you're way too timid.
Thanks to her Spiritual Sense, Miko wasn't particularly affected by any of the scares in the haunted house. As she followed Hana around, dodging the various maniacs who appeared everywhere, she pulled her phone from her pocket and snapped a picture of the two girls' faces.
It would make a nice keepsake.
The photo was blurry from all the running, but the two girls' terrified expressions were still obvious—Hana's especially.
Well, I should at least scream a little, too.
With that thought, Miko put her phone away and made a sound from deep in her throat—a scream she had never let out before.
"Ahhh!"
It was less a scream of terror than a shout directed at the morning sun, the silent mountain forest, and the vast emptiness of Tono.
The moment the sound left her lips, Miko suddenly felt lighter, as though she had finally done something she had always wanted to do but never managed.
It had been so long since she'd let herself shout like that.
She thought as much, then joined in with her friend, calling out loudly together.
Even her Spiritual Sense probably didn't notice that Hana suddenly curled her lips into a smile before turning frightened again.
"Help!"
Hana shouted, with her fear and a faint hint of some other emotion mixed in.
###
By the time they came out of the haunted house, Hana had completely reached her limit.
But the moment she got her doughnut, she came back to life.
"So this is the weight of life?"
Hana took the doughnut and sighed. Only after nearly being scared half to death in the haunted house could she feel such a special attachment to the food in front of her.
"It's not that light," Miko quipped. She valued life far more than a little box of doughnuts.
Still, the haunted house had been a pretty good experience. She had shouted out her fear like an ordinary girl, letting out all the emotions she had been bottling up inside.
For that instant, she had even forgotten that she was a demonic cultivator.
Until... she spotted a Ghost among the people dressed as maniacs and, on instinct, smacked it in the face with a beam of black light.
"..."
Only when the Ghost vanished into thin air did she come out of that dreamlike state.
In any case, at least she had had a good time with her friends.
After Zen found the Iron Pellet Miko had planted on him, she gave up on using the pellets as trackers. Zen had gone home after school, but the Iron Pellet had headed in a different direction. He had probably thrown it in a trash can.
Once tonight was over, the spiritual energy in the pellet would run out, and she would never be able to find it again.
But Miko didn't really mind anymore.
Her shoulder bag contained a whole box of Iron Pellets, all engraved with talisman patterns. Originally, she had planned to use other objects as their carriers, but since spiritual energy could be used to work metal, she had settled on metal instead. Cheap iron goods could be refined with spiritual energy into plenty of Iron Pellets.
Buying fish still accounted for most of her talisman-pattern expenses, but the "ink" made from fish could be used to draw plenty of talisman patterns. That was especially true for patterns based on a template; they almost never failed. As a result, Miko had built up a large stock of Talisman Iron Pellets over quite some time.
Though... because of her recent impulsive behavior, she had wasted a great many of them.
She hadn't considered what the consequences of her actions might be at the time, but now, thinking of all the money she had spent making those Talisman Iron Pellets, Miko felt a little pained. After all, they weren't disposable. She could reuse them many times after infusing them with spiritual energy.
"Hey, have you heard of Guardian of Silver Pellets?"
"You mean that urban legend?"
On her way home, after saying goodbye to Yuria and Hana, Miko absentmindedly listened to the people around her talking, even though she had already learned the whole story from a social media post.
Rather than Guardian of Silver Pellets, it would be more accurate to call them strange little iron pellets.
Right—her Talisman Iron Pellets.
Quite a number of people had been possessed by Ghosts, and at the time, she had gone from house to house, keeping an eye on the possessed and quietly using spiritual energy to slip Talisman Iron Pellets into their pockets.
The pellets were tiny, but not so tiny that people could simply overlook them. Many people had noticed the one-millimeter pellets. Along with the pellets, they also noticed their mental and physical condition improving. After all, the purpose of the Talisman Iron Pellets was to destroy the Ghosts attached to them. The Ghosts had seriously damaged their bodies by possessing them for so long, so it was only natural that they felt much better once the Ghosts were gone.
At first, no one thought much about the connection between the pellets and their improved health. But someone posted about the coincidence online, and after the discussion caught on for a while, the connection gradually became clear. It turned into a fairly popular urban legend, and people respectfully called it "Guardian of Silver Pellets."
Many online users were fascinated by the urban legend, while others thought it was nothing but a gimmick. Miko silently looked at the topic being debated on her phone, feeling something hard to describe. She found it amusing that something like this had become so popular.
"What is this...? They're just... a few iron pellets."
In several highly upvoted posts, the people involved had shared their relief and gratitude. Miko hadn't paid much attention to them before, but now that she was reading them, her feelings grew complicated.
[Thank you so much, dear gods. I was dragging my exhausted body off to work when the silver pellet appeared, and I immediately felt much better. It helped me avoid a car accident I nearly got into. If not for that, I might have been hit by that out-of-control bus and sent to another world. That would've been awful. (Wry smile)]
[Wouldn't that be a good thing? (Laughs)]
[Not at all. (Angry)]
Further down in the comments, people had already taken the silver pellets to another world. They were even arguing about whether the gods of this world were fighting against the gods of another world who were luring people away. Comments were rarely sensible, wherever you went.
The people involved had also expressed their gratitude to the silver pellets. Some had recovered from colds, others had gotten promotions at work. They attributed all kinds of good fortune to the pellets, and in the telling, the silver pellets had become treasures that could grant any wish—like the Holy Grail.
[Fake Holy Grail: some black, muddy cup (picture) Real Holy Grail: a little metal ball (picture)]
"This is... pretty interesting."
As Miko scrolled through the posts, she felt that the Talisman Iron Pellets she had sent out had taken on a new meaning. They hadn't just been the result of her temper. The feeling that she had helped other people eased some of the frustration she had felt lately.
But she soon realized there was a problem.
"Those pellets don't have any identifying marks."
In other words, if someone tried to cash in on the popularity of "Guardian of Silver Pellets" by selling ordinary pellets that didn't do anything...
"...I should stop doing things like this from now on."
Miko fell silent for a moment, put her phone in her schoolbag, and kept walking.
Anyway, she had only sent out a limited number of pellets. After a while, the urban legend would completely disappear from people's attention and become nothing more than a passing topic of conversation.
And she had absolutely nothing to do with that legend. She was just an ordinary high school girl.
With that in mind, Miko returned home, ready to finish drawing the new talisman pattern she hadn't completed the day before.
"Big Sis, have you heard about that urban legend? The one about Guardian of Silver Pellets?"
"I don't know. Maybe it's fake."
Miko answered.
"Anyway, rumors like that will disappear after a while."
###
"So it really is impossible to let other people use the silver pellets..."
The female teacher who had retrieved an Iron Pellet from the trash can beside Zen's desk thought to herself as she slumped over her tea table.
She had once thought of Zen as a handsome, unsmiling iceberg. After seeing him throw away the silver pellet, she now thought of him as a gloomy man. The moment she saw him toss the Iron Pellet, she knew she and Mr. Zen would never get along.
"And on top of that, he threw it away... Tch, doesn't that guy have any imagination?"
Holding the Iron Pellet high above her head, the female teacher couldn't help sighing.
"I was hoping the silver pellet might help Dad get better, but it didn't work."
Because of his age, her father had injured a tendon or bone during an outing. He had been receiving treatment at the hospital for several months, but still needed rehabilitation, and the hefty medical expenses had fallen on her shoulders.
For a teacher like her, it was undeniably a huge burden. It was perfectly understandable that she would put her hopes in an urban legend like "Guardian of Silver Pellets."
"Or maybe this really doesn't do anything."
She pinched the Iron Pellet in her hand and thought for a moment, then quietly put it in her pocket. She had made a special trip to visit her father in the hospital that day and left the silver pellet beside him for a long time, but it hadn't reacted at all. Still, she thought she might have been too hasty. She should have let her father keep the pellet by his side a little longer.
"Please, you have to make my father better."
The young teacher prayed.
"If you make my father better, I promise I'll repay you."
After making a fairly solemn vow, she quietly looked over her lecture notes and prepared for the next day's classes. She worked until late, then finally lay down in bed.
But even if she was willing to fulfill her vow, Miko couldn't hear a wish like that. She wasn't a god, after all.
Miko drew a new talisman pattern in her room. It wasn't until one or two in the morning that she finally completed it.
"That was enough of a hassle."
Once she was done, she checked the time on her phone and realized it was still fairly early—not even 2:11.
"Should I go check on that tracking point?"
The Iron Pellet she had used to follow Zen still had some spiritual energy left, so she could track its location.
"Maybe I'll find out something new."
With that thought, she grabbed her shoulder bag from the windowsill and leaped down.
She was already quite used to this. She easily avoided the cameras and quickly sped along the rooftops toward the signal from the Iron Pellet, taking the chance to destroy a few Ghosts in her way.
Miko might be a demonic cultivator who cultivated Spiritual Sense, but that didn't stop her from using spells and talisman patterns to give her body far more strength than an ordinary person. After dealing with the Kimono Ghost, she had decided to find a way to make herself stronger. Thanks to the spells she had practiced and the talisman patterns she had learned over time, her physical abilities had now reached a monstrously inhuman level.
It probably wouldn't be hard for her to punch a speeding car and knock it over.
Though that wouldn't do much against Ghosts.
After more than ten minutes on the road, Miko reached an apartment building. She perched on a utility pole beside the window of one of the units, rather surprised.
"Someone actually took it?"
She didn't know what had happened, but at least it hadn't ended up in a dump.
"Never mind. Now that I know where the Iron Pellet is, I should go back."
Miko shook her head and was about to leave when she suddenly wondered why this person had taken the Iron Pellet.
"Did she hear about that urban legend, too?"
Zen throwing it away hadn't surprised her at all. From his expression, he seemed like an extremely rigid person.
"So did she run into some kind of trouble? But if it isn't a Ghost, there's nothing I can do."
After thinking it over, she decided not to get involved. "Guardian of Silver Pellets" would disappear soon enough anyway.
"So, even if I switch it out for another Talisman Iron Pellet now, it wouldn't cause much of a stir."
Before you continue