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Three of them were descending from the second floor. And two more came from the passage on the first floor. Five of them gathered in the entrance hall.

They all wore Adventurer-looking gear, but it was customary for the Adventurers to wear cards that recorded their rank and background on their necks. However, none of them had any such thing. As expected, they weren’t the types that acted in the open.

Based on what I heard earlier, the basement was the most suspicious place, so I had to force my way here.

“Who the hell are-…”

One of them yelled at me as I stood imposingly at the entrance as I kicked down the door. But I didn’t wait for him to finish his words, and mowed him down with a diagonal swing of my thread.

It was done with the Mythrid thread from my trusty gauntlets.

“Hehehe, my partner is looking as sharp as ever.”

Despite wearing firmly tanned leather armor, the Adventurer was practically powerless against its slash. It was in a different league compared to the piano wires I’ve been using until now.

Since it had too many characteristics, I hadn’t been blessed with the chance to use them until now.

Thin and flexible, yet firm. Even disregarding the fact that they were my familiar weapons, their sharpness alone was making me fascinated all over again.

“W-What just…”
“Keep your s̲h̲i̲t̲ together! It’s clear she’s the one who did it!”
“S̲h̲i̲t̲, get her…”

Seeing their comrade getting defeated so fast caused panic, but I directed a crazed look at them. From now on, I could test my new weapon on them to my heart’s content. It would be a lie if I said I didn’t feel excited.

But before that, I had to ask one thing. No, strictly speaking, this was more of a formality. I didn’t think they’d answer me.

“Before we do this, I’d like to ask you one thing.”
“Huuh!?”
“Won’t you hand over His Highness Elliot that you kidnapped? If you hand him over without trouble, I will let you live.”
“The f̲u̲c̲k̲ did you just say…!?”

Of course, I didn’t believe even for an instant that they would do as I asked. Since the carriage that Priscilla had marked was parked here, these guys were definitely criminals.

Still, I asked it anyway, yet none of them tried to feign ignorance and said “we didn’t kidnap anyone” or “I don’t know who that is”. In other words, they were fully aware of what they did and weren’t even questioning it—in other words, they already confessed that they were criminals.

“Guess I don’t need to hold back then…”
“Kill her… No, catch her. You can have some fun with her after that!”

The man that seemed to be their leader gave them that command. Now that I think of it, I looked like a girl in her mid to late teens now. Since I was only a little girl in my real form, I had never received such lecherous gazes before, but experiencing it now makes me quite disgusted. Thanks to that, my bloodlust was elevated even more.

The men charged with apparent lust in their eyes. I swung the Mythril thread sideways to sweep them off their feet. Since it didn’t have much power put into it, it wasn’t able to seriously injure them, but it still managed to severely injure their shins and had some of them drop with a somersault.

“Tsk, only three, huh.”

Only three of the five were down on the floor. The other two jumped over it and headed for me.

My battle style seemed like it would be more advantageous in narrow places, but it was actually better in wider ones. To give the threads enough attack power, I needed to give them a big swing, much like a whip, and for that, I space both horizontally and vertically.

In uneven places like caves, forests or residences that had many obstacles, the threads were more suited for setting up traps, but lacked when it came to direct attack power.

These kinds of atrium halls were suited for direct flights. But putting it the other way, it was hard to fight if the opponent closed in on me.

I prepared to meet the enemies rushing towards me, taking one thread from my right hand and holding it with both hands.

One of them swung his sword down from overhead at me. I stretched the thread and blocked his attack. The thread bent and absorbed the sword’s momentum. However, it was my body where all that momentum headed to.

My body was still not developed, so it was impossible to stop an adult’s sword swing like that. Instead, I intentionally lowered my left hand, making the sword slide off the thread and warded it off.

“Wha!?”

Having his attack direction suddenly changed had broken his posture and left him leaning forward. I did a front layout and leapt over his back. I also did not forget to wrap the thread around his neck as I did it, either.

As my body rotated during the landing, the thread further tightened on his neck. Not to mention, the entire force of my somersault was concentrated on one point of his neck. Coupled with the thread’s excellent sharpness, it was enough to rip open his skin and spray the blood everywhere.

It seemed that it even managed to sever an important vein, the man lost strength and collapsed on the spot.

With that, I managed to neutralize two of them with this surprise attack, including the first man.

As a follow-up, I mercilessly slashed at one of the collapsed guys. With that, the third one was out of commission, too.

The other collapsed one stood up despite his leg injury and charged at me. The one that had avoided my initial attack also timed his attack and rushed at me together with him.

However, I intentionally shifted my position towards one of them and ruined their timing. I did a shoulder charge at the man, but of course, someone as light as me could never take him down like that.

Instead, I rotated around my shoulder on the point of contact and got behind him. At the same time, I let go of the thread I held in my left hand, pulled out my dagger and pierced it into the left side of his abdomen, that is, his kidney, before he could manage to turn around.

“Gah!!”

Kidneys were hard to heal, so as long as no one cast healing magic on him, he was almost certain to die. Even if it wasn’t a fatal wound, having his internal organ pierced would still lead to excruciating pain that could kill him from agony.

As expected he groaned like a frog and collapsed face-forward.

As for the other man whose timing was disrupted, I used his comrade as a shield and thrust the dagger at his abdomen from the side.

Having missed his timing and becoming full of openings, the man took the blind attack straight on, and collapsed forward. He was the only one left now.

I retracted my thread and tried to adjust the length for the follow-up attack… But suddenly, I sensed a strange vibration from my gauntlets. And at the same time, the winding of the thread stopped.

“Eh!?”

The sudden malfunction made me raise a strange yell. But thinking about it, it wasn’t strange that something as complex as these gauntlets could malfunction after not being maintained for so long. Still, why now of all times…

“Hah, I have you now!”

Seeing me stop, the man slashed at me. Looking at his swing, I could clearly tell that he was no longer thinking of “enjoying” me later. I suppose seeing his comrades killed one after another made him lose that composure.

I immediately blocked his attack with my left gauntlet, but due to the difference in our weights, I was flung away. I rolled on the floor and ended on my knees, barely avoiding collapsing down.

“Huh?”

Then, I felt a sudden sense of discomfort in my body. Or more precisely, my limbs, I guess? I was using threads to strengthen them, but I could no longer move them as I wanted.

“Hey now, don’t tell me… The left one too?”

As if to ascertain my doubt, my limbs started to lose strength. No, that was the wrong way to put it. They started losing the strengthening of the threads.

At this point, those threads were nothing more than fetters that restrained my movements. The only thread I could properly control was the one from my right hand. But it was only a meter long at most.

He seemed to have noticed the abnormality in my condition and immediately charged at me. But rather than a sword, he did a body dive to push me down. Perhaps he was vigilant of my threads.

My threads were mainly used to slash at the neck, face, joints and such. It wasn’t effective when an opponent did a body charge while prepared to take some damage.

It was one thing if I could set a trap to entangle his legs, but now, I had no way of stopping his charge.

And with my limbs currently restrained, I had no way to even dodge it.

Thus I took the blow and fell on the floor. The man straddled me and grasped my neck.

It was a distance where swords and threads lost all meaning. I looked like a young girl through the illusion, but in reality, I was only a child, and that made the situation even more disadvantageous.

But the man had overlooked one thing. That is… I was not alone here.

“Coo-coo!”
“Gwaaaaah!?”

With a high-pitched cry, a white flash crashed into his face. No, it wasn’t a flash—but a pigeon.

Maxwell’s familiar that was staying alert near the chandelier did a nosedive at his face. The attack clawed out the vicinity of his left eye and the man sprung up with a yell. That also led to him letting go of my neck.

The air flowed into my formerly blocked respiratory tract. As much as I wanted to cough and enjoy the air, I couldn’t let this once in a lifetime chance go.

I couldn’t use my threads, but the dagger in my hand was still there. I thrust it into his right side with all my strength.

It was far from a fatal wound, but his front was covered with skin armor. Following that, I made it oscillate. As it violently vibrated, it started wreaking havoc to his internal organs far more than it did to my hand holding it.

The fine oscillation spread through his entire body like waves, damaging the organs that offered no resistance.

“Ugh-gh…bweagh!?”

After grunting as if trying to endure something, the man finally threw up blood. His limbs then started to convulse until eventually, he fell flat… On me, that is.

Before long, his movements stopped completely. It wasn’t worth confirming whether he was dead or not…

“…Sorry, having a man ride on me isn’t my hobby, nor it will ever be.”

With those words, I pushed him aside as he drew his last breath, and stood up.