‘Today is the day, the day to face my fears and triumph over them!’ I motivated myself when I woke up again. I got out of bed and started to change my clothes back to the one dress that I owned. ‘Now that I think about it, I only have one outfit to wear… I really should get some others soon.’ 

While changing my clothes, I heard someone knock on the door of my room. “Hey lil sis, time to wake up!” By the voice and their way of addressing me, I knew it was sis who knocked on my door. 

“I’m up! I’ll be right out!” I loudly responded to sis. After a minute, I had finished changing and stepped out of my room and into the royal chambers corridor. Once there, I saw all my family gathered there.

“Is today the day when you will challenge Rumia?” Big sis asked me.

I nodded in response. I was already preparing myself mentally for the battle, but I still couldn’t help but shiver slightly when I thought of the sphere of darkness. Then everyone started to reassure me.

“Don’t worry, you’ll do fine.” Big sis told me.

“You got this lil sis!” Sis said.

“Just try your best and you’ll do splendidly,” Orin said while lightly smacking my back. 

“Good luck!” Okuu gleefully yelled. 

“Thanks, everyone! I’ll do my best to make you all proud!” I responded to all their statements of encouragement. 

“You’ll make us proud regardless of how well you do!” Orin told me. 

“You guys make it sound like I’ll lose.” I pouted. “Just watch me! I’ll show you that I can do this by myself…by the way, will any of you be watching me when I do this?” 

They all laughed loudly in response to my words, but all of them except sis slowly shook their heads.

“Sorry Ayaka, I have a pile of urgent paperwork that needs to be completed right now or else there would be severe repercussions.” Big sis answered.

“I’m sorry, but the temperature of the Hell of Blazing Fires is rapidly lowering, so I have to look for corpses to bring back. However, I will be going to the Surface, so I can accompany you there, but I won’t be able to stay for the battle.” Orin informed me.

“Sorry as well Ayaka, I have to go recharge the nuclear furnace to start heating up the Hell of Blazing Fires and to prevent it from cooling too much before Orin returns,” Okuu added.

‘They mentioned this Hell of Blazing Fires again. I remember Mio also saying something about this place, I wonder what it is.’ I thought to myself.

“What is this Hell of Blazing Fires that you are talking about.” I decided to ask Orin and Okuu.

“It’s the place that the hole in the Untamed Garden leads to. It used to be the place where criminals were banished, but that place changed locations a few years ago. Now it primarily serves as a sort of prison for vengeful spirits. Although it is like a prison, it could also be called a playground for them because of the high heat of the place.” Orin explained.

“I see… thank you,” I said to Orin while starting to think to myself.

‘So it’s the place where vengeful spirits are located and where they play. Maybe I should visit it in the future to test out my spirit seer title. Actually, would vengeful spirits be the best spirits to test this ability on? Given their name, I’d imagine they would be aggressive and not as open to conversation. I’ll talk to Orin later about this. I should stop stalling for time and leave for the Surface now.’ 

“I’m off now, wish me luck!” I told my family before moving toward the door to the Great Foyer.

“““Good luck!””” Big sis, Orin, and Okuu all said to me.

Right when I was about to open the door and enter the Great Foyer, I heard sis say something to me. 

“I’ll go with you! I don’t have anything else to do!” I turned around to see sis running toward me. Once she reached me, she slowed down and grabbed my hand before running off toward the front entrance.

“See you all later!” I managed to say before sis had pulled me out of the room.

We left the mansion and went through the same city that we walked through when we headed up to the surface the first time. This time, the city was much quieter. There was almost no one on the streets and almost no lights were on in any of the houses. Then after the city, we went across the bridge, again encountering Parsee who just scowled when she saw us. When we got to the place where we had to fly, I saw two unfamiliar people there. One of the two was a small green-haired girl who hid herself in a wooden bucket, while the other was a blond-haired girl who reminded me of a spider. We paid them no mind and simply flew past them and went toward the mouth of the cave. We soon exited the cave and found ourselves back on the Surface.

“Now where do we go now? How are we supposed to find Rumia in this place? She could be anywhere.” I asked sis while basking in the sunlight. 

“No clue! Let’s just walk around and explore!” Sis suggested.

With no other plan, we did as sis said and just went around the Surface trying to find Rumia. The first place we decided to head to was a large village. The village was surrounded by a large wooden wall. There was a large gate embedded in the wall and two people stood in front of it. When we walked up to the gate, we were stopped by these two people.

“Halt! This is the human village, youkai like you are not allowed to enter!” The person on the left said while holding his lance toward us. The person on the right silently nodded before doing the same.

“Let’s go somewhere else!” Sis told me. I nodded and we promptly left the village. 

On the outskirts of the village, we ran into Reimu who seemed to be heading toward the village. 

“What are you two doing here?” She asked us.

“We’re looking for a youkai named Rumia!” Sis told her.

“Rumia? She usually hangs around the forest between the Human Village and Misty Lake. Why are you looking for her?” Reimu informed us before asking about our intentions.

“Lil sis here wants to challenge her to a battle!” Sis answered. 

This whole time, I was hiding behind sis because I did not want to interact with Reimu and because I was lost in thought. ‘Oh, so that village was the village of humans that I heard from Orin the first time we met. So we just need to go to the forest between there and the place known as Misty Lake. I’m guessing the name is pretty literal, so I’d assume we are looking for a lake covered with mist.’ I concluded, then I remembered something I had seen the first time we had come to the surface. ‘Didn’t I see a giant lake covered with a faint layer of mist before? If I remember correctly, it was somewhere close to a giant red mansion.’ 

“-lr-ght t-e-.” I heard bits of Reimu’s voice when I turned my attention back to reality. After she said whatever she said, she resumed her flight to the village. 

“Well, looks like we have a destination to go to now!” Sis said before turning to me and grinning. “See, I told you this would work!”

“I guess you were right. I’ll fly up to see if I can spot this Misty Lake.” I started levitating higher and looked around me. I saw the Human Village behind me and a small forest followed by a large lake in front of me. The lake was covered with a bit more mist than the last time I had seen it. Coincidentally, it turned out that we had gone in the right direction when we walked away from the village. 

“We are heading in the right direction, just a bit further and we should reach the forest where this Rumia person allegedly is,” I told sis after I had landed on the ground beside her.

We walked toward the direction I had seen the forest, and before long, we reached the entrance to it. Taking a deep breath, I slowly stepped into the forest while keeping my eyes peeled for anything that looked off and my ears perked for any unnatural sounds. Sis followed closely behind me while masking any sign of her presence. 

After about 15 minutes of walking around the forest, I heard a large thud resound in front of me. It sounded like someone crashed into a tree. Sis and I walked toward the sound. When we got closer to where I thought the sound came from, I saw a childlike girl with blonde hair and red eyes. She had a red ribbon tied to the side of her hair and wore a black dress with white sleeves. Her hands were held to her forehead and she showed an expression of pain. 

“Are you okay?” Sis asked while tilting her head to the side.

“Yeah, I’m fine. I accidentally flew into a tree.” The girl replied. 

“Okay! What’s your name?” Sis inquired while smiling.

“I’m Rumia!” The girl, Rumia answered. 

‘This clumsy girl is Rumia, the one I am supposed to defeat. I was honestly expecting her to have a more sinister appearance. Now that I think about it, Mio did say that Rumia had a childlike appearance.’ Even though I had these kinds of thoughts in my head, I still shivered a bit at the sight of Rumia. ‘*sigh* it doesn’t look like I have completely overcome my trauma yet… still, now’s not the time to get cold feet. I have to do this now, and I can. My family believes in me to do this, and so I will also believe in myself. I can do this!’ I gave myself a motivating speech.

“Ahhh, so you’re Rumia,” Sis started to say. “My lil sis here wants to challenge you to a battle of danmaku!” 

“A battle of danmaku? Sounds fun! I’m in! Where is she?” Rumia replied to sis while pushing me out from behind her back.

“Here she is, now I’ll watch from the sidelines!” Sis told Rumia and me. 

“Yay! Time to begin then!” She loudly and cheerfully exclaimed.

‘Here it is, the time for me to prove my strength, the time when I can prove that I am not useless, and the time when I can show that I’ve successfully overcome my trauma!’ I psyched myself up. 

We both started to fly into the skies and summon our first nonspell pattern. She started to shoot out straight lines of red small bullets to where I was, to which I sidestepped easily. After I had completely dodged the lines of bullets, I finished casting my first nonspell. A large bubble bullet appeared in the middle of the pattern, 3 arcs of small and medium bullets emerged out of this central bubble bullet and curved outward before returning back into the central bubble bullet, and a few red jagged bullets randomly appeared where the arcs did not reach. The arcs left behind the medium and small bullets that originally comprised the arc, which then quickly spread out all over the battlefield. 

‘Seems like I need to work on my channeling speed so that I can activate my danmaku patterns faster.’

Rumia got hit by a few of the arcs of bullets because it was a fairly unique and unpredictable pattern if I do say so myself. After a few hits, Rumia started to understand the general idea of the pattern and began to dodge it more easily. Now that she had a bit more leeway with dodging my pattern, she summoned a different array of bullets. She shot rings of blue tiny bullets and small bullets toward me. The rings formed tight circles closer to her, but the further away from her the rings of bullets were, the looser the circles became. The pattern was daily simple to me, but I ended up sustaining a few hits because the tiny bullets caught me off guard. 

I was not too used to dodging tiny bullets because no one used that type of bullet against me in the mock battles I had with my family. Many of the tiny bullets evaded my perception and ended up hitting me when I wasn’t paying attention. Despite taking these hits, the condition of the energy stored in my first nonspell was still doing fine. While I was trying to dodge this new pattern that Rumia sent out, I saw that my own nonspell entered its second phase. Instead of arcs of bullets coming out of the central bubble bullet, lines of bullets targeting Rumia appeared instead.

I saw a surprised expression appear on Rumia’s face while she was trying to dodge the new pattern; however, she was ultimately unsuccessful and I saw her sustain hit after hit. Her nonspell was starting to flicker, but in the end, it continued. In retaliation, she returned back to her first pattern and shot out the lines of red bullets toward me again. I simply sidestepped again and just continued to watch as she failed to dodge my nonspell.

‘This certainly is easier than other battles I have fought, as Miu told me. The patterns of Rumia are much more simplistic, easier to dodge, and have wider gaps between bullets.’ I started thinking to myself.

Moments later, I felt a few bullets hit me, catching me off guard and forcibly returning my attention to the battle. I was expecting Rumia to return to her second pattern with the rings of bullets, but instead, she shot out more waves of the red bullet, which I had not realized because I was lost in my thoughts. As a result of taking those hits, the energy in my nonspell quickly began to decrease and was almost at a critical level. The pattern flickered for a fraction of a second before returning to normal. 

I felt a sense of anger overtake me both toward myself and toward Rumia. ‘I can’t keep getting lost in my thoughts like this! If I keep this up, I’ll end up getting hit more times than I would have if I was paying full attention to the battle. Also, why do people keep attacking me when I am trying to think!’ I furiously thought to myself.

In my anger, I began the third variation of my nonspell earlier than it was supposed to appear. The arcs now extended from a series of imaginary walls before moving toward the central bubble bullet before returning back to these imaginary walls. The switch in pattern was too much for Rumia to deal with as I saw her giving up on dodging and instead focusing on unleashing the most powerful attack she could with the energy remaining in the nonspell. Soon she released a large number of blue small bullets and tiny bullets in rings like before. This time, there were more rings with more bullets and less distance between bullets, making it much harder to dodge than the first time she used something like that.

Because I already knew the basics of the pattern, I was able to dodge it fairly well, but I still ended up getting grazed by a few of the bullets. The energy in my nonspell was decreasing quickly, but a slither of it still remained, allowing me to continue it. Rumia on the other hand continued to get hit by the third variation of my nonspell and quickly ran out of energy for her first nonspell. The bullets that she had created disappeared in a flash of light and I saw her beginning to cast her first spell card. A red magic circle appeared behind her and she started to grin.

“Time for the fun to really begin! Night Sign [Night Bird]!” Her voice turned a menacing tone and her grin morphed into a creepy smile. The one that I had imagined her having in the nightmares I saw. Then darkness began to surround her before forming a solid sphere of darkness around her. When I saw that happening, I began trembling again. I was frozen in place, I started sweating bullets, my body would not respond to any of the commands my brain gave it, and the energy in my body started to go berserk.

I could not react even though I saw her charging straight at me while surrounded by her shield of darkness, so I got hit. The last vestiges of energy disappeared from my nonspell and all the bullets that it summoned disappeared. Despite my nonspell ending, I did not immediately cast my spell card, rather I couldn’t. Fear still ran rampant in my mind, disrupting any attempt to gather the danmaku energy in my body and focus it on the paper talisman containing my first spell card. I was completely dazed and was not able to do anything. As a result, I started taking hit after hit, quickly draining the danmaku energy from my body. In my fear, I was still able to notice that my danmaku energy was running dangerously low and that if I didn’t do anything, I would lose.

‘I-I-I h-h-have to d-d-do s-something o-or e-else I-I’ll lose! B-b-but I-I can’t d-do a-anything! S-she’s t-t-too s-s-scary! I-I h-have t-to though. M-my f-family b-believes i-in me.’ I started to regain my confidence, lost in my own mind again. Feeling a bit more at ease with the situation, I turned my vision back to reality. Once I laid eyes on the shield of darkness that was quickly approaching me, I began to cower in fear again. ‘I-I c-can’t d-do i-it. I-I w-won’t b-be a-able to w-win. I-I’ll l-lose again a-and t-this t-time, m-my family m-might h-hate m-me for letting them down.’ Tears started streaming from my eyes. 

I started drowning in my own sorrow, completely oblivious to the things happening around me. I felt a bit of pain every few seconds, but it quickly disappeared before another pang of pain appeared. I felt the warmth in my chest quickly decreasing and I began to despair. I couldn’t beat her even though she should have been easier to defeat than all the other people I have faced. This would be another loss for me.

‘I’m completely useless, why does my family even like me? Actually, maybe it’s better to get used to calling them something else because I don’t think they want to continue being family with someone as inept as I am. I’m sorry for disappointing all of you and accept my punishment of exile…” Then I suddenly remembered the consequence of failing this quest, bringing me even deeper into despair. ‘Not only that…I have to face another trauma on top of this one. How will I ever manage this? I’m just a tiny spec of dirt in this massive vivid world.’ 

“Come on lil sis you got this! Believe in yourself!” I thought I heard sis talking to me, but it was probably a figment of my imagination. After all, there is no way that sis could still like me after seeing how inept I was.

“Continue fighting! Don’t give up! Remember what you practiced with us!” The imaginary sis told me. I ignored her because I thought she was not the real sis and that the real sis had already left me.

“Little sis, we all believe in you! Now it’s time for you to believe in yourself! You are stronger than you think you are! You got this.” She said again. I once again ignored her, yet a warm feeling appeared in my chest.

“We all love you for all you are, even all your flaws! They aren’t even flaws to begin with, they make you very cute. We don’t mind taking care of you because it’s fun for us to do so! Don’t give up hope!  You got this little sis, I believe in you, so believe in me!” The voice of sis once again appeared in my head. I still believed that this sis in my head was not real, but a seed of doubt began to grow. I opened my tightly shut eyes and saw sis on the call from the ground, her hands in a position to amplify her voice. When she saw that I opened my eyes, she smiled before saying,

“There is nothing to fear lil sis, stay calm and you’ll win without any problem! Just be confident in yourself!” Sis told me, making me realize that the voice I had thought was my imagination was in reality the voice of sis who was encouraging me.

‘That’s right! My family believes in me! I can do this! For my family!’ I yelled in my head. 

Hearing her words of encouragement, the fear inside me began to decrease and I was able to return back to sanity. I stopped trembling and confidently gazed at the sphere of darkness that was Rumia. I took a good look at Rumia and saw that she wasn’t summoning bullets, but instead just trying to tackle me. I saw her approaching me and quickly sidestepped before trying to summon my first spell card. I tried for a while, but each attempt failed.

‘I can’t declare my first spell card. The damage that Rumia dealt when I was trembling with fear must have drained my actual danmaku energy reserves to the point where I can no longer summon the pattern. Time to use my nuclear energy now! It’s time to turn the tides in this battlefield!’ I told myself. 

After commanding the atomic model orbiting my leg to start the fusion process, I directed my nuclear energy to fuse with the energy produced by the combining atoms. The two energies meshed perfectly and a new fused energy was produced. I channeled this energy into the talisman of my second nonspell, and a few seconds later, a pattern of bullets appeared. A decently small sun appeared in the middle of both of us. Once the sun appeared, two lines of bullets started being shot out from the sun and a small gravitational pull toward the sun could be felt. Additionally, the light and heat produced by the sun managed to dispel the darkness shield around Rumia.

“Too hot and too bright!” I heard Rumia yell while she covered her eyes with her hands.

While she was covering her eyes, the lines of bullets started to rotate, one clockwise and the other counterclockwise. These lines of bullets hit Rumia many times as she was still dazed by the sudden light and heat from the sun. I could see the energy quickly draining out of her spell card as it began to flicker. Before it completely disappeared, Rumia managed to get a hold of herself again and started to retaliate with a bullet pattern of her own while dodging the lines of bullets being shot out of the sun. She shot streams of blue and light blue small bullets at me in a way that reminded me of a rope. It was like she held a rope of bullets in each hand and when she swung the rope toward me, bullets appeared taking on the appearance of the rope at set intervals.

When the pattern just started, I took a few hits, specifically 3 hits because of being unfamiliar with the pattern. The energy in my nonspell decreased a bit, but not too much as my nonspell danmaku pattern did not even flicker. After those 3 hits, I realized the pattern and the way to dodge the spell card. There were quite a few gaps between bullets and each wave of bullets that I was able to seamlessly slip through them without much issue. I turned my attention to Rumia and saw her still struggling to dodge the pattern of my nonspell. She was constantly getting hit, and before long, the energy in her spell card had run out and the bullets created by her pattern quickly disappeared. 

She quickly switched to her next attack, which was her second nonspell and a bullet pattern quickly appeared. She started with 4 lasers that homed onto where I was in the air when they appeared followed by two waves of green small bullets in the same rope-like pattern of her spell card. After those two waves, she shot out two lines of green small bullets slowly moving toward me. I thought it was a fairly simple pattern and turned my attention more so on Rumia than her bullet pattern. I saw her getting hit by the lines of bullets shooting out from the sun. The lines started to rotate slightly faster because my nonspell had been going on for quite some time now and because each time the lines finishes one full rotation, they move slightly faster. The energy in her second nonspell was running out quickly as she continued getting hit by the lines of bullets.

I began to feel a bit more confident in myself, then I felt something hit me. It turned out that Rumia had prepared 4 more lasers after sending the lines of slow-moving bullets, likely to catch me off guard. If that was her intent, then it worked. I took my eyes off the pattern for a moment and ended up getting hit by lasers because I did not notice that they had locked onto me. The lasers dealt quite a bit of damage to the energy of my nonspell and it began to flicker. After about 12 seconds of flickering, it returned to normal and I continued to maintain it, this time being more cautious of the bullet pattern.

Soon, the bullets shot by Rumia completely disappeared so I knew that I had bested her second nonspell and that her second spell card was likely coming. I began preparing myself for whatever her second spell card could be. The energy in my nonspell was also completely out, but I still have the slightest sliver, which was enough to allow me to continue the pattern a little while longer.

“Here we go! Darkness Sign [Demarcation]!” She yelled out in a sinister tone, once again smiling. This time, it wasn’t the creepy smile she had shown last time, but instead one of genuine joy and excitement.

A pattern began to appear from her. Rings of jagged bullets appeared moving in slanted lines that caused them to frequently coincide with other bullets. After sending 4 waves of these slanting jagged bullets, she sent out a large amount of blue small bullets in lines that homed to where I had been standing. I quickly sidestepped out of the way of these small bullets, but I ended up dodging into one of the jagged bullets that I thought was still behind me. It turned out that the jagged bullets moved outwards slowly enough that the last 2 waves of them would stay until the waves of blue bullets finished appearing.

That one hit I took dropped the energy in my nonspell to critical levels, causing it to unceasingly flicker for several seconds before returning to normal. Seeing this, I made the bullets rotate one more time hoping to hit Rumia at least once more before the nonspell faded. The line rotating counterclockwise approached where Rumia was, but she was able to dodge through the gap; however, she did not seem to notice the line rotating clockwise just behind her, causing her to get hit once again.

In response to this, she sent out another wave of the slanted jagged bullets followed by the lines of blue bullets that went straight toward me. I managed to dodge the jagged bullets, but I was hit by the lines of blue bullets causing the energy in my nonspell to run out. The bullets quickly disappeared and I felt the atoms in the atomic model dwindling. Soon, all the atoms ran out and the atomic model started collapsing on itself. Before it could, my failsafe activated and a vortex appeared from the atomic model, siphoning atoms out of the atmosphere. The number of atoms in the atomic model doubled, then tripled, then quadrupled. The energy being produced could not be compared to the original output of energy. Seeing this, I once again willed my nuclear energy to fuse with this energy and the resulting fused energy was of a much more wild and chaotic nature than the original. This energy was meant for destruction. I guided this energy into the talisman of my second spell card and chanted out.

“Sun Sign [Red Giant]!” My voice deepened and echoed around the area, even though we were in open skies. 

The sun that had appeared in my nonspell once again appeared, but as soon as it did, it rapidly expanded to more than twice its original size. 4 Lines of bullets appeared from the sun, each rotating around the sun at different speeds and directions. 2 moved clockwise while the other 2 moved counterclockwise. The sudden increase in bullets caused a lot of trouble for Rumia as I saw her getting hit by bullet after bullet. The energy in her second spell card rapidly dwindled. While she was still trying to dodge the lines of bullets, she shot out another wave of her pattern. Waves of jagged bullets appeared followed by the lines of blue small bullets. I did not try to dodge the jagged bullets, causing the energy in my spell card to decrease slightly, but I did move to dodge the lines of small bullets.

After I dodged the wave, I accelerated the rotational speed of the lines of bullets, making it even harder to react to and dodge as a result. This ended up working as Rumia got hit by even more bullets, and soon, her spell card completely disappeared in a flash of light.

“I give up! You win! That was fun though!” She told me. Maybe we should do it again later!” She then offered, but it was unlikely that I would accept her offer. There was still a chance though, a small chance but a chance nonetheless. 

‘Finally, I did it, I finally won my first match of danmaku!’ I celebrated in my head.

“Congrats little sis! I knew you could do it!” Sis said before quickly flying up to me and hugging me.

I hugged her back, but quickly released the hug as I noticed something appear in front of my face. I noticed it was a transparent window, but before I could read it, Mio’s voice sounded in my head.

Quest Complete

       -Overcome Trauma

Reward: Unsealing of Second Family Memory

Granting Award… Success

Now Inducing Host Ayaka to Sleep to View Memories

After Mio’s announcement, I felt my body grow heavy. A feeling of drowsiness began to overtake my body. My mind became tired and my limbs started losing strength. I began to stagger to the ground, but sis caught me before I completely fell over.

“Are you okay?” I heard sis ask. I managed to nod to her before my drowsiness got the better of me and I once began to lose consciousness. Right before being completely unconscious, I had one last thought. 

‘So, I’m finally getting back more of my memories.’

Status: