Chapter 137 – Star (3)

The murderous force that oppressed my whole body stabbed my eyes, and I blinked once to see Esther and Grape facing swords in my field of vision.
It flew in an instant with unrecognizable speed and attacked Esther, and Esther blocked the attack.
A movement too fast to be seen is felt along with the wind pressure that follows.

“This state… Magic attribute… This, Ash’s…”
“Give me aaaaa!!”

Grape, who cut off Esther’s words with a slightly startled voice, raised the shield in his hand and lowered it with swords facing each other.
The place I am aiming for is the shoulder of Esther who is holding me.
I can feel that it’s not an attack against me, but it’s so fast that I can’t see it, and the pressure alone makes my whole body nervous.

Esther blocked Grape’s shield with flames wrapped around his wings and confronted each other with both hands blocked.
With this grinding sound, Grape’s gaze turns to me.

“Give it up?”

In the air, Grape twists his back and tries to kick Esther in the stomach, and Esther’s leg blocks the foot.
His tail wraps around his ankles, immobilizing him, and Grape shakes his head and headbutts him.
But that doesn’t work either.
Esther gently wrapped her wings around him, completely absorbing the impact and blocking it.

“Leave it now… Let go now… Right now… Right now… !”

From Grape’s body, where all attacks were blocked, magical energy flowed out with a chilling sound and climbed up Esther’s body.
The screams that twist around are terrifying.
The sharpened mana is piercing through Esther’s arm as if it were about to be forcibly ripped off.

The black magic power piled up in layers, transforming into sharp thorny tentacles made of metal and coiling around them.
If she didn’t know that Grape was causing the phenomenon and saw it, she would have thought that she was more like an infected or negative attack rather than a magical girl.
It’s a bit bizarre to think of it as a magical girl’s attack, but the negative Esther adds to the bizarre thing.

Thick tentacles came out from the tips of the wings and joints, grabbed Grape’s arms, pressed them, and attacked them.
Esther’s magic burns upside down and burns like a flowing fire, engulfing Grape’s black magic.
Melts Grape’s magical power like a high-temperature furnace that melts steel structures.
All these attacks and confrontations are taking place completely out of reach of me.

“It’s harder than usual, Grape? Giving up is… You’re going to take my fan away from me too, right?”
“Pan… ?”

Upon hearing Esther’s words, Grape’s eyes trembled as he examined Esther’s head and chest.
Esther’s unrestrained red hair swayed like fire, and Grape’s eyes twisted when he saw her large breasts against my face.

“Anger… I can’t be your fan!”
“… Anger?”
“The tentacle monster, don’t misunderstand and touch it arbitrarily!”

Grape, like Rapid, sees Esther holding me and thinks that she will drag her like this and turn her into a monster with tentacles.
I feel an urgent and desperate feeling.
To the point where I couldn’t help but feel it, her thick magic was dripping from the sword and shield.

Grape’s sword made a crackling sound and cut through Esther’s fiery sword.
I think it’s ridiculous to cut fire, but Esther’s sword is actually being eaten little by little.
Thinking something was strange, Esther’s foot kicked Grape’s chin, and the sword that touched them fell, causing Grape to fall down.

“Keugh… !”

Grape’s hand, which landed softly on the ground, held my sleeve, which I don’t know when.
It seems that I grabbed my clothes and deliberately tried to pull them out of Esther’s arms after being hit by her attack.
But it was impossible to get me out of Esther, who was holding onto me, just by pulling the hem, in case I would drop it.

“Ah ah ah ah ah! Esther oh oh!”

Throwing the hem he was holding onto the floor, Grape roared and attacked again with a grotesque cracking voice.
Seeing Grape like that, Esther muttered quietly as she aimed her fiery sword.

Esther’s sword, as if thinking about something, blocks Grape’s attack.
Grape, who blocked Esther’s sword with her shield in front, stabs the sword hidden behind the shield like lightning.
Just like before, the sword aimed at Esther’s shoulder misses when Esther slightly twists her wings and moves her body.
Grape falls, then jumps up again.

Swing the sword and get blocked by the sword.
Block it with your shield and swing your sword, get blocked by the sword and get kicked.
Avoid kicks, swing your sword, and move your wings slightly to drop damage.
The next charge and the attack after that have the same result.

Esther in her magical girl days was slightly inferior to Grape in melee combat, and slightly inferior to Rapid in long-distance combat.
Currently, Esther is able to face Grape in a simple melee fight, and does not lose to Rapid even in a long-distance battle.
In addition to that, being able to fly freely in the air, Grape became an opponent with no way to do anything alone.

In her Grape swordsmanship, you can feel that it will be fatal if you touch it properly even once with a strangely creepy aura unlike usual.
But that’s all.
She looks powerful, but she doesn’t get along well with Esther.

“Are gorillas good at jumping?”
“Shut up!”

Grape’s attacks are all straight-line attacks that jump or shoot.
Grape cannot fly, and Esther can fly freely.
Dodging an attack flying in a straight line from the air is too easy for a magical girl.
It doesn’t just jump from the bottom, but it jumps on the wall on purpose and kicks the wall to twist the trajectory, but it doesn’t work.

“Get your hands off Anger!!”

Grape’s attack changed when he realized that there was no way he could do anything about Esther in the air.
Stomps on the ground to break the floor and launch rocks into the air.
As it was, she kicked the rocks that floated up one by one with her feet and hit them with her fists, sending out bullets wrapped in her magical power at breakneck speed.

Countless magic bullets aim for Esther’s wings and pour like a storm.
The idea of ​​aiming for the wing first and knocking it down is exactly the same as Rapid’s earlier.
However, the number of bullets is different from what Rapid did.
The speed at which she fires continuously is unbelievable, perhaps because she does not need to greatly increase her magical power or calculate magic, just apply her magical power to a nearby stone block and send it flying.

“Shooting Star!”

If it was an ordinary negative or a monster, it would have easily torn off its wings and fell helplessly.
But Esther, as a magical girl, smiled leisurely as if she had been through this many times before, raised her tail and fingertips, and began shooting down her magic bullets one by one.
Explosive bullets are fired from both the tips of her hands and the tip of her tail, and only the bullets aimed at her Esther are detonated.

Naturally, every single rock and stone is bursting out, creating a mist of dust.
Grape ran into the dust again.

“Kuk!”

I made the trajectory invisible because I read the trajectory of the spur and rushing to the floor and easily avoided it.
Esther’s sword swings at Grape, realizing that even if she hurriedly moves her wings to avoid it, it’s too late.
Even though I couldn’t react properly, it was frighteningly fast.

Grape kicks the wall again to Esther, who narrowly ducks her head and cuts her hair to avoid it.
Placing her sword of fire against Grape’s sword, who had been charging back, Esther twists his body and drops Grape to the ground.

“Since before, Anger, Anger… What are you two doing?”
“You don’t need to know!”
“I didn’t ask you, gorilla!”

I looked up at the gaze I felt, and met eyes with an angry Esther.
My left hand throbs, and complex emotions come through.

“Answer number 1, how are you?”
“Haaaaa!”

Before he can answer the oppressive atmosphere, Rapid’s voice is heard and Grape falls from above his head again.
Esther pointed her sword down and twisted hastily to avoid the lightning-like falling grapes.
Grape, which had apparently fallen down, reappeared in the air.

“Linking machine for Twinkle Twins… ! These children!”

As Esther muttered, the falling grapes disappeared in the air.
A dark-colored portal appears, swallows the grape, and spits it out in a different direction.
Grape, who appeared behind Esther, stepped into the air and was shot, receiving the power of the fall, disappearing again the moment it was hit, and reappearing in a different place.
Repeatedly appearing and disappearing here and there to the point of dizziness.

When I looked down at the scene where space seemed to be distorted, I saw Rapid quietly raising his mana.
He is assisting Grape’s movement by moving his hand to and fro and aiming at the air.
It catches the air and hardens it to form a foothold for Grape, twisting the space to make it difficult for Esther to block it.
Whenever Grape’s sword misses, it creates a portal in the air to swallow Grape, then spits it out in another place to resume the attack.

“This gorilla monkey!”