Chapter 147: Tamed
Gritting her teeth, Daki lashed out with her sashes at the puppets closing in on her while trying, at the same time, to break through the cocoon.
Useless. The cocoon was like the walls of Constantinople.
Every strike of her sashes only left marks.
And anything she sent around it ended up swallowed by that thick shroud, unable to reach those sheltering behind it.
Meanwhile, the puppets and their severed limbs kept attacking under the command of the threads.
Daki cut the threads, but the speed at which Ivy reconnected them was far faster than she had anticipated.
Kaigaku, his right arm regenerated for the fourth time, snatched the katana dangling from the threads out of midair and brought down a slash, his face utterly expressionless.
The other two pulled themselves back together for the umpteenth time and flanked her, tightening the circle.
The room her sashes had to maneuver in was shrinking by the second.
The fight was leaving her frustrated and stifled.
The puppets felt no pain. They didn’t tire. They didn’t back down. She could tear them to pieces as many times as she wanted—they always got back up.
She, on the other hand, had to stay alert every single moment, because even the smallest severed fragment was still a weapon.
Suddenly, a finger shot toward her back, about to skewer the nape of her neck.
And a hand, which had crawled up to her feet without her noticing, clamped around her ankle.
"GET BACK!!"
She crushed the hand with a stomp, and her sashes swept away everything around her.
Yet the very next second, the puppets and the severed limbs lunged at her all over again.
Endless!
Relentless!
Her breathing began to quicken.
’I’m an Upper Rank!’
’I stand at the very top of all demons!’
’How did I end up like this because of two brats who came out of nowhere!?’
"You... miserable wretches!!"
Shrieking, her sashes thrashed wildly.
Her face, once pure and delicate, sharpened, turned vicious, and flowers bloomed across her skin.
Daki had completed her Demonization.
Her dodges grew faster, and her sashes, far more lethal.
But there was something she hadn’t noticed...
While she was completely focused on dealing with the puppets, Ivy had been seeding the air around her with dozens of threads, invisible under the moonlight, hidden among the scattered limbs and the suspended drops of blood.
They had settled on her arms. On her waist. On her sashes. So gently that she never felt a thing.
And in that brief instant, just as the transformation was complete and Daki was about to slaughter them all.
Ivy pulled with all her might.
The puppets withdrew.
Daki stood bewildered for a moment, and before she could understand, an overwhelming force clamped down on her entire body!
She looked down.
Dozens of threads wrapped her completely. From her shoulders to her wrists. From her waist to her ankles. Even her sashes were tightly bound.
’When did they...?!’
She struggled.
The threads were astonishingly strong, but not strong enough for her in her demon form. With the screech of steel cables on the verge of snapping, Daki began to break free.
"Cheap tricks! I’m going to kill—"
Before she could finish, Pearl moved.
An avalanche of white silk burst from her hands, blotted out the moon, and crashed down on Daki.
In the blink of an eye, a sealed, circular space swallowed her whole. The silk squeezed from every direction at once, leaving her immobilized without a single gap.
Not suitable for claustrophobics.
She felt like trapped prey—useless, ridiculous. But she didn’t even get the chance to curse, as her mouth was sealed shut by the silk.
Pearl’s silk was different from Ivy’s threads. It wasn’t nearly as maneuverable, it had no flexibility, and it certainly didn’t have that cutting edge.
It had only one thing: hardness.
Besides, unlike Ivy, who mostly controlled individual threads, Pearl’s silk bundled together thousands upon thousands of filaments braided into a single brutal strand.
For cutting, Ivy was superior. For capturing and subduing... there was no comparison.
Anyone caught by Ivy could still manage to put up a fight.
But from Pearl’s silk, to this very day, no one had ever broken free quickly.
Not even Marcus!
Ivy and Pearl exchanged a glance and nodded.
Then they dove into the cocoon together.
Shortly after, sounds began to spill out from inside—struggling, scuffling, fabric tearing... and Daki’s furious, muffled groans.
A moment later, Ivy and Pearl came out. Each held soaked shreds of the pink kimono in her hands. Both wore the exact same expression of relief.
Pearl wiped the sweat from her brow. "That woman is seriously stubborn."
"Yeah." Ivy did the same. "She was harder to subdue than that boar."
Pearl balled up the scraps of clothing and sighed. "Done. Job’s finished. Let’s go."
Ivy cast one last glance at the cocoon.
"What about her?"
Pearl smirked scornfully and waved her hand.
The cocoon, enormous until then, shrank all at once, reduced to a sphere barely a meter wide. The adorable little white ball dropped to the ground and even bounced a couple of times.
"Since the cocoon wraps her so tightly, it won’t be easy for her to use her strength. Let her play by herself for a while. Sooner or later she’ll get out."
"Okay~"
Ivy moved her fingers slightly.
The severed limbs floating in the air had already vanished completely, and the puppets lined up to return to the basement, their gazes vacant, docile under the command of their threads.
Once they were locked back in their cell, the tiny spiders clinging to their bodies—the ones holding the threads—detached, turned the key, and dissolved into the air.
"These puppets really are useful. Good thing the master agreed to keep them."
"Hehe~ See? Without them, it wasn’t exactly a sure thing we’d have won today."
"But you’d better watch it. Don’t go saying whatever you want just because the master likes you."
"Well, I wasn’t that far off with what I said earlier. If we’re seriously talking about making puppets, that boar-headed boy is the perfect candidate."
"I’ve never seen a body that flexible. Turned into a demon puppet, he could pull off any move, no matter how twisted!"
"Not this again?!"
"Fufufu~ Look how spooked you get, it’s just a joke."
"You’re shameless. I wonder what the master even sees in someone like you."
"He sees... three things in particular~!"
"Bah! You’re more like him every day. Pervert!"
"You’re jealous~"
"You...!! Get over here right now!"
"Nyah nyah nyah~!"
Their laughter and teasing faded into the distance, and the courtyard finally regained its calm.
Yushiro, leaning out the window of the guard post, saw that everything had settled down and grimaced in disappointment.
"Tsk. All bark and no bite."
"I thought the new girl was worth something, the way she hissed at everyone who came near her. In the end she runs into a couple of nobodies and ends up tamed."
"How boring."
Grumbling, he shut the little window.
Under the moonlight, in the vast courtyard, nothing remained but a cocoon thrashing and hopping about.
"Let me out!!"
Daki’s muffled screams came from inside.
"Bitches!! Damn servants!! How dare you?!!"
Evidently, she had freed herself from the gag, but her voice was smothered by the cocoon.
The little ball shook violently, rolled back and forth across the flagstones, slammed into the fountain, bounced off, and went flying toward the opposite end.
Daki was furious.
Just as Pearl had said, the silk clung so tightly to her body that she couldn’t get any leverage.
Even sashes as sharp as swords weren’t much use when there was no room to swing them. All she could do was extend them millimeter by millimeter, boring through the silk like a patient drill, earning her freedom one puncture at a time.
And so, between one convulsion and the next, the cocoon went stumbling and rolling toward the back courtyard.
Meanwhile, in the back courtyard, in the middle of a small, lovely garden where a bed of freshly bloomed flowers flourished...
A tiny figure holding a little shovel, with a little butt peeking out, dug, and dug, and dug...
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Throw your stones, drop them ALL! 💎
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