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The main peak of Mount Aoame reached up to a height of seven kilometers!
There were even reports of an extremely dreadful monster living on the mountain!

The other peaks around the main peak were between four to five kilometers high.
And the mountain range at the border region was more or less three kilometers.

Never cross a mountain higher than three thousand kilometers; that was the iron rule for exploring Mount Aoame. That was because a High Ranked monster might appear beyond those regions!

The deeper and taller the mountain, the stronger the monsters became.

If a beautiful young girl like Lily wanted to enter such a big mountain to train, then she must resolve to never lose heart!

Be that as it may, it was still quite overwhelming to stand before the mountain that looked like a heavenly wall. And that was only speaking of the three kilometers mountain range. Everything above the middle part was covered by the clouds. The danger level far surpassed the other two mountains Lily had visited before! Even so, Lily resolutely took a step into the mountain range.

It was such a huge mountain, in addition to being alone, it was also nighttime.

Though Lily may look tough on the outside, it wasn’t like she was not scared.¹ She once had the thought of taking Nanako along, but as a Blade Maiden, she was destined to be lonely. Moreover, their power was already not at the same level. Though a Blade Maiden possessed powerful attacks, their defense was weak. She wouldn’t be able to protect her teammate like this, that’s why she couldn’t afford to take Nanako with her!

Sometimes, kindness could become a poison, Lily didn’t want to become a woman like that.

Not long after she entered the mountain range, she could feel the drastic fall in temperature.

“So cold! This feels as cold as that night in Kamakura City.² Of course, the monsters aren’t as strong as those from the night parade, but since there are more monsters in the mountains, the miasma is naturally thicker, causing the temperature to fall.”

Lily placed her hands on her breasts. Even in this frigid mountain woods, it would seem that her bountiful breasts were still slightly warm.

The icy wind blew past and brushed Lily’s long hair. Her slit skirt was blown up, revealing her slender thigh. The black side-tie panties she was wearing today almost loosened as a result. It would be a fatal blow to a female samurai if their panties became loose in the middle of a battle. Thus, Lily turned her upper body to the side and parted her skirt to adjust the string of her panties.³

The pine trees ahead of her swayed in the wind. They looked like some sort of demons spreading their arms to welcome her into this demonic realm. Not far away, a few balls of flame appeared out of thin air.

It was impossible for flames to exist in the mountain woods. If there was, then it’d already have caused a forest fire. Lily immediately noticed the oddity.

“Whoosh!”
“Whoosh!”

But before she could figure it out, those flames already transformed into fireballs and flew straight at her. Their speed was nothing to scoff at either!

Even though Lily was caught off guard, she dodged them unconsciously. One of the fireballs nearly scorched her hair.

The fireballs, having missed their target, hit the shrubs and trees. They exploded soon upon contact and Lily’s face was brushed by the scorching heatwaves they emitted.

Lily realized those fireballs weren’t really monsters. There were some ugly dwarf-like creatures hiding behind the trees and bushes as they moved around and jumped from time to time. There were also weird squeaking noises coming out from their mouths.

“It’s the Fire Imp!” The fireballs in their hands illuminated their ugly hairless face. Their entire body was covered by brown fur, and similarly to mountain imp, they had one vertical eye on their grey hairless face.

Fire Imp was the evolution of the Mountain Imp. Most of them were at the level of Normal Low Ranked. They weren’t that strong, but since they attacked at long range with fireballs and using the trees to shield them, they were really troublesome to deal with. However, since the Fire Imp had learned fire-attribute skills, they were unable to climb trees anymore as a result.

It was practically impossible to deal with them without a bow. It wasn’t an easy feat to catch up to them in the mountains, a katana’s reach just wasn’t enough.

It should be mentioned that the reason Hojo Dijon wanted to procure the firearms was mainly in order to deal with these Fire Imps. After all, even with the bow and arrows, it still wouldn’t be easy to deal with them if they used the surroundings to their advantage. And no matter how powerful Dijon was, he couldn’t replenish his Spirit Power like the Blade Maiden. That’s why he couldn’t waste them on these small fries. However, there was no way for Lily to know about any of these at present times.

Although Fire Imps could pose a big problem to most of the samurais, that wasn’t the case for Lily. To her, all the imps were meant to be crushed, regardless of their types.

Lily raised her katana and shrouded it with crimson spirit energy.
“Crescent Moon!” Lily let out a soft yell.

“Whoosh!” With a swing of a sword, a crimson-colored sword wave in the shape of a crescent moon was launched towards the Fire Imp in the distant.

The Mountain Imp futilely attempted to hide behind a tree.

“Boom—!” With the power behind Lily’s sword wave, the half-meter thick tree was cut like butter. The imp hiding behind the tree wasn’t any better off.

Crescent Moon was the skill name Lily gave to the long-range sword wave attack she learned. There wasn’t any special meaning to it.

The penetration force of Crescent Moon was approximately sixty to seventy percent of her actual power. The power would naturally weaken according to distance, but it was still over a thousand kan of force.

Lily didn’t want to waste time on these small fries and launched several Crescent Moon in succession. With the speed she’s going at, most of the imps failed to dodge in time. However, there were two Fire Imps who jumped out of the way in advance.

Nevertheless, Lily’s Crescent Moon changed their trajectory and formed an arc to chase after the Fire Imps. The two were cut in half from their back, spilling their blood everywhere!

These Crescent Moon weren’t the same as firearms, as they were made out of Lily’s Spirit Power, it was possible for Lily to will them to change direction to a limited degree. Naturally, since they were launched at such a high speed, it was impossible to influence their trajectory too much.

The group of six Fire Imps was all eliminated. The fire in their hands either burned their own bodies or extinguished.

Lily opened the Sakura Parasol to absorb the anima.
Yet Sakura advised, “Master, why not replenish your Spirit Power first. This stuff doesn’t worth much anyway.”

Lily nodded in agreement, she had indeed spent a lot of Spirit Power in that last battle and hadn’t replenished them yet.

Using her sword to absorb the Fire Imp’s anima, she found that the ones that flew over were dark orange with a faint amount of flickering fire surrounding them.

“Fwoosh—!” After her katana absorbed a few of them, Seiwa Tamashi ignited, turning into a flaming sword.

“T- this is…” Lily looked at her sword in surprise.

“Hehe, master, not only can a Blade Maiden’s katana absorb the anima, they can even absorb the elemental attribute of the opponents. These are Fire Imps, so they naturally have the fire attribute. The fire attribute has been attached to your sword, but unfortunately, Seiwa Tamashi isn’t really a Cursed Katana, it will not be able to maintain these flame for a long time. Otherwise, it’d have been really useful,” Sakura explained with glee.

Sheesh! This Sakura, she was keeping me in suspense again! Lily had a feeling that she knew about this all along, but didn’t explain to her at an earlier time on purpose!

“But, how can I sheath my sword like this?” Lily asked awkwardly.

“If it is a real Cursed Katana, then it will be possible to seal the fire energy within the sword inscription. And you will be able to activate it whenever you need to use it. When you no longer need it, you can even deposit them into the Anima Container. However, animas of different attributes may offset one another when they are deposited into the same Anima Container. Though you don’t need to worry, I can accept all kinds of animas without a problem.”

“Hehe, you are so great,” Lily answered with a forced smile. Not to mention Cursed Katana, she couldn’t even afford to have one forged. It was extremely expensive, wasn’t that the reason she came out here in the middle of the night? To earn some money and buy the high-grade materials?

But the Grade 4 tamahagane, she might not necessarily be able to buy them even if she could really save up enough money!

When the fireball flew past Lily earlier, she felt that it was very close to the hair near the left side of her face. ’Did it get burnt? That would be so unsightly,’ that kind of thoughts crossed her mind. Although the possibility was very small, Lily was very mindful of her appearance. Thus, she took out the copper mirror and looked at her face with the lighting from the flaming katana.⁴

“Phew, it’s okay, the hair didn’t get burnt. That’s great.” Lily heaved a sigh of relief.

After all, Lily was still a little out of it when the first fireball came her way.

Just at this time, however, in the shadows of the deep mountain, a huge and robust figure awakened.

As the figure opened its chestnut-sized eyes, two red glints became visible in the darkness. A vigorous yet gloomy voice came out from its mouth, “Mirror… I feel the mirror… hand it over! The girl with mirror, I eat!”

1. Robinxen: Courage is not an absence of fear.
2. Refers the the Night Parade. See the first few chapters.
3. Silva: Kek… author oh author… he’s really going all out with the lewdness after chapter 100 xD
   Robinxen: I need to take notes and up my game.
4. Silva: Ok, this is definitely a flag. A wild Dijon appears!

   Robinxen: At least it’s more subtle than some previous flags?