Both Adah’s [Sparkling Strike] and Rika’s [Shining Shot] fired from their hands at the same time. Adah saw the projectiles approach the gray portal in slow motion, their flights streaking through the air with the same kind of residual light as Rika’s railgun. Her eyes were hyper-focused on the paths the attacks traced toward their target until, after an eternal moment, both projectiles exploded against the Cruelty’s portal.

  The gray oval broke apart and dissipated like wisps of smoke. This portal was similar to those of Ekki’s [Vanishing Vapor] in that way, then. So long as Adah and Rika’s attacks could disrupt the formation of these portals, they could prevent anything from traveling through them.

  That gave them a plan for the present moment, but left Adah with even more questions about the portals. There hadn’t been any other Cruelty around when they encountered the portal by Ketzia’s cabin—not unless Ketzia had killed it first. No, she would have mentioned that when she explained what she knew about the portals. Then this bat must be different somehow. The portal itself was likely different as well. Presumably the one they had encountered by the cabin was impervious to magic, otherwise Ketzia would have destroyed it before the humanoid could travel through it.

  Or would she have?

  If the Cruelties had to expend human essence to create those humanoids, then it might make sense to allow one to spawn. By eliminating it, Ketzia had essentially reduced the amount of human essence available to the Cruelties. Had that been something she had thought about, or possibly even been ordered to do?

  “Another!” Rika yelled, putting a stop to that line of thought.

  The bat Cruelty had flown away from the first portal while the girls had fixed their attention on it. Now, the monster landed again and held out its wings to shield the beginnings of yet another portal.

  Adah and Rika flew in the direction of the bat, with their hands already pointed at the spot where the portal would appear once the creature moved its wings. They hoped to close as much distance between themselves and the bat as they could before the portal spawned. The closer they got, the easier it would be to coordinate an attack on the bat and put a stop to this portal creation.

  As soon as the bat retracted its wings, the girls fired another volley of their spells at the gray oval they knew would appear. Rika’s laser struck first, destroying the portal in a burst of red light. Now that they’d seen its trick once, they were prepared to chase after the Cruelty as soon as it retreated with another wing-wrapped barrel roll. If one of the twins were here, they could probably keep pace with the bat as it rolled away, but Adah and Rika fell slightly behind. The bat would manage to gain enough distance to summon another portal at this rate.

  The girls needed to change their tactics, or this would go on indefinitely.

  “Focus on the portal,” Adah said to Rika as they flew after the Cruelty. “I’ll stick to the bat.”

  Rika’s aim was sharper and her spell quicker, so she could more easily transition from targeting the portal to chasing the bat. Meanwhile, Adah could charge her [Nightwind Whip] as she beelined to the Cruelty’s next destination. Even if she couldn’t damage its core through the shield of its wings, she could potentially knock it out of the sky or disrupt its next attempt to summon a portal.

  Rika understood Adah’s intentions without further explanation, so they immediately put the plan into action once the Cruelty touched down for the third time. The scene played out as it had before, only this time Adah paid no mind to the portal the monster left in its wake. Her focus was fixed entirely on flying forward.

  Without the minor slowdown caused by lining up her spell, Adah arrived within striking distance of the Cruelty just as it lifted off the ground once more. She had primed her whip ahead of time, its smoky magic trailing behind her like a gymnast’s ribbon. Likewise, she activated her [Parietal Perception] for safety’s sake—she didn’t want her whip’s smokescreen working against her. It seemed the bat was prepared for her assault, for it wrapped its wings around itself like a cocoon and made no effort to fly out of range.

  It was an odd response for such a Cruelty, but perhaps this variant had stronger defenses than the last one Adah had fought.

  She would soon find out. Adah swung her arm down as she flew past the bat, and her whip carved through the air like a small cyclone. Her spell hit the monster’s wings with a thunderous boom and burst into a cloud of smoke that rushed out in all directions, soon covering a whole section of the tobacco fields.

  From the way the bat’s wings had held firm against her spell, Adah knew the bat couldn’t have been incapacitated. She watched the Cruelty’s gray afterimage of movement that her enhanced eyes tracked beyond the shroud of smoke. She readied herself to dodge any retaliation that may come now that she had gotten into close combat with this monster.

  Yet, the Cruelty didn’t retaliate.

  That was even odder. One of the main dangers with the last bat variant Adah had fought was its counterattack. The monster had excelled at striking back with a bite or a swipe of its claws immediately after it had dodged or defended against one of Adah’s attacks. Those counters had formed the basis of its fighting style. Had this variant abandoned that style in favor of simply creating more portals?

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The movement of the monster’s gray trail gave Adah her answer. The bat wasn’t moving toward her but away. It wanted to flee, and there could only be only reason for that.

  Still, something wasn’t adding up. As worried as Adah and Rika were about what might come through these portals, the girls had no trouble destroying them. Rika in particular could snipe any portal as soon as it appeared. The bat made no effort to protect its creations, but rather ran away and set to work on making the next. It was as if the Cruelty expected each portal to be destroyed.

  The monster wasn’t attacking the girls directly, and it wasn’t trying to keep the portals intact. Then what was its objective?

  Practice? Observation? In that case, Adah wouldn’t play into its hand—she’d make this an opportunity to do some learning of her own.

  Adah flew up and over the smoke cloud left behind by her whip, and let her eyes follow the trail of the bat’s movement to hunt it down. On the opposite side of the field, much higher in the sky, Rika had also started to chase the bat to its next destination.

  The pattern of the battle thus far repeated once more, with the Cruelty dropping to the ground to create another portal behind the shield of its wings. As before, the monster made no attempt to defend the portal and fled into the air only a few seconds after landing.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Adah saw Rika prepare another shining bullet for this new portal.

  “Leave it!” Adah shouted.

  Rika squinted at her from across the battlefield, her hand still pointed at the newly spawned portal.

  “If it can experiment, so can we,” Adah said. “Kill the Cruelty, leave the portal.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Rika followed Adah’s command and turned her attention toward the Cruelty itself. The bat had flown off yet again, most likely trying to create enough distance to safely spawn a new portal once the girls dealt with the one it had just made. Unfortunately for it, Adah and Rika would be focusing the full brunt of their magic on destroying the Cruelty instead of its creations.

  Adah cleared her mind of the gray trail that was tracking the Cruelty, and recast [Parietal Perception] with a focus on the new portal it had summoned. She wasn’t sure if the spell would help her notice if any creature—humanoid or otherwise—exited the portal, but this was a worthwhile safety measure in case the portals had any additional abilities she was unaware of.

  In the distance, the bat Cruelty came to a halt and floated in midair. It looked to be watching Adah and Rika, but made no move to land and generate a new portal. Either it could only create one at a time or—more likely, in Adah’s view—it wanted to observe how the girls would react to the one it had already summoned.

  “Charge your railgun,” Adah told Rika. “Take all the time you need, this guy won’t bother you.”

  “You sure about that?” Rika asked.

  “Absolutely,” Adah said. “Make it extra strong. Show off your power for the camera—we’re still filming, after all.”

  Though Adah said as much, she’d nearly forgotten about their original goal for the day: to get some interesting footage for their video. If this bat wanted to play games with these portals, then they could at least take advantage of the situation to let Rika’s spell run wild.

  Trusting in Adah’s words, Rika began to charge up [Renova Railgun] with every bit of essence she had available. She hadn’t had an opportunity to let loose like this in a while, and her FP level had increased significantly in the meantime. With the only limit on her spell’s power being the amount of magic she could muster, higher FP meant a stronger spell.

  The crimson aura that normally surrounded Rika during her charge-up soon grew to a blinding red light. Rika’s body was hidden entirely behind the glow of her magic. A surge of heat rushed past Adah as well, even though she was floating a full field’s length away from Rika. Adah had thought Rika had looked like the sun when they battled that scorpion Cruelty, but in comparison to the light Rika emitted today, she had been but a far-off star in the sky.

  However, charging all of this power took time—more than enough time for the bat Cruelty to wise up and retreat. The beast rolled away in its defensive cocoon, anticipating Rika’s impending attack.

  Adah moved to give chase and attempt to disable the Cruelty, but Rika’s voice called out to her.

  “Stay,” she said. “Don’t take your eyes off me.”

  Adah had never heard Rika speak in such a stern tone. She had no choice but to obey.

  After a few seconds more, a silence during which Rika honed her focus onto her target, a beam of light appeared in the air. Though she had seen the railgun’s shot before, it still seemed like a magic trick to Adah. Out of nowhere, a light like a tripwire revealed itself, connecting Rika with her target far in the distance.

  Something about the railgun was different this time, though. Adah saw it in two distinct frames, like a slideshow projected onto her eyes. In the first frame, the beam of light was already there, already piercing the center of the bat Cruelty as if a divine being had drawn a line connecting Rika and the monster with a ruler. In the next frame, some two hundred feet behind the bat, a mound of earth erupted like a volcano, spewing dirt and rocks high enough into the sky to block out the sun.

  The railgun had lost nothing of its power as it decimated the Cruelty, and so it had drilled a hole deep into the land behind its target, displacing enough earth to fill a pool in the process.

  The deafening sound of all this destruction reached Adah’s ears in what felt like multiple seconds after she had seen it.

  The bat Cruelty was no more and, as Adah watched the earthen debris fall from the sky, she saw Rika wilting with exhaustion as well. She flew over to her partner and slipped under her arm to prop her up as she had during their first C-Rank mission.

  Rika looked over at the crater her attack had carved out of the landscape and said in a meek voice, “Might have overdone it.”

  “Maybe, but it’ll look cool as hell on camera,” Adah said.

  Adah helped Rika float to the ground; the girl took a seat in the grass at the edge of the crop fields to recover. Between heavy breaths, she asked a question that Adah was already on her way to learn the answer to.

  “Nothing came through, did it?”

  Adah floated above the fields once more and looked back to where they had left the final portal standing.

  The gray oval remained where it was, its center a swirling mass of magic.

  The fields surrounding it were empty, with no afterimages of movement for Adah’s eyes to see.

  While Rika regained her energy, Adah flew over alone for a closer look.