Yuriko walked behind the crowd, eyes focused on the two brawlers. One had black hair cut in the military style, while the other had golden hair in a style called a mullet. The golden mullet man was attired in a military dress uniform, complete with medals, while the brunette wore tight-fitting red clothes that had a kite shield-shaped symbol on his chest, striped red and white. The two were exchanging haymakers.

The amusing thing was that they didn’t try to dodge the wild blows, but took them all on the chin. It barely did anything, for all that force waves blasted out from behind every hit. Yuriko spent a bit of her Animus to use Chaos Sight, but the energy they were using wasn’t visible. Intrigued, she used Elemental Sight, but to similar results. She was tempted to extend her perception aura, but they were too far away from her limited reach.

“What’s going on?” she asked a rubbernecking man at the edge of the crowd.

“What else?” the man said gruffly. “The Homelander was monologuing then the Shielder interrupted him.”

Yuriko returned her gaze to the two Altered as she drew on Lilibeth’s memories. The brunette was Shielder, a vigilante, while the mullet man was an agitator at best, and more often than not, called a terrorist.

The two fighters flew all across the skies and eventually moved away from the shopping mall. Shaking her head, Yuriko headed towards the service entrance, once again allowing Lilibeth’s residual memories to guide her to the proper areas. She was employed part-time as a shopping assistant in the department store, Macy’s, that occupied about a third of the mall’s floor area. She had exchanged her school uniform for her casual clothes and carried her store uniform in a duffel bag.

While she made her way through the labyrinthian depths of the mall’s service passages, she mulled over the two Altered Humans’ fight. From the shockwaves, she was surprised to find that the two were definitely stronger than her current incarnation. In terms of bodily might anyway. Neither showed any kind of Anima, spells, or any kind of energy manipulation techniques other than flight. She wasn’t sure how they accomplished that though, but definitely not with an awakened Anima, Elemental spells, or Animus.

It looks like the Altered weren’t as simple as she expected and it was an entirely different way of strengthening. Hmmm, but from how other people reacted to Altered…

The man she asked had been nothing but disgruntled, but the rest of the crowd had their phones held up, taking videos and pictures of the fight. She was a bit more surprised not to see any kind of law enforcement personnel or even military presence, but then again, neither of the two caused any collateral damage other than that bit of a spectacle. Caused a traffic jam though.

She reached the locker rooms, changed into her uniform, ignored the lingering stares of her fellow female employees, and made her way into the department store floor. Ah, wait, she was supposed to report to Lilibeth’s supervisor first for assignment, who turned out to be a middle-aged, sour-looking woman who barked out, “Toy department!” before Yuriko could get in a word. With a shrug, she headed over to the correct place.

The store was rather crowded, and there were dozens of young children, under ten years old, running amok. They pulled toys from the shelves, played with them for a while and when they were done, left them on the floor. Yuriko hummed as she collected the displaced items and used her perception aura to figure out where they should go.

She danced gracefully around the running kids, even on the heeled shoes she’d been forced to wear as part of the uniform. The ensemble was a navy blue pencil skirt and a white button-down long-sleeved shirt that had a ribbon tie. The Macy’s logo was stencilled on the left side part of her chest, which also somewhat distorted the image.

After a while, she drew a gaggle of kids who followed her around and ran deliberately towards her in an attempt at collision. Yuriko giggled as she danced around their efforts, surreptitiously preventing the rowdier boys from colliding with each other when she evaded.

All in all, it was actually a fun four-hour shift and by the end of it, she was no worse off than when she trained. She didn’t restrict herself too rigidly during the shift, which left her completely unwinded. She didn’t even sweat a single drop even though the store’s climate control was suffering under the crowds. By the end of it, she managed to get a word to her supervisor asking for the extended shifts so she could cover her rent for the next cycle. Unfortunately, the schedule for the week was already fixed and any changes would only apply by next week. Too little too late, though.

A pity. That meant that she wouldn’t have enough to pay her rent that was due on the 5th Day of High Earth, which was really the 66th day of Earth and was eight days away. She had a hundred Torries to her name and she needed nine hundred more. This week’s labours would give her four hundred twenty Torries, though the Earthsday stint at the cafe might give her more than that in gratuities. Maybe. Note sharing, after splitting the profits with Scarlett, would only give her twenty Torries, so all in all, she had five hundred forty, and she needed two hundred for the next week’s groceries too. What to do? About six hundred sixty Torries in the hole.

It was well past seven in the evening by the time she arrived home. She prepped her dinner, ate, bathed—not quite as relaxing without a tub—and settled on her sofa afterwards. It was early in the evening, so she turned on the television set and channel surfed, devoting a single thread of consciousness to keep track while using the others to do other things. Animakinesis helped with multitasking, and since she was in the privacy of her apartment, there was little need to be careful.

As she watched the news, she also handled her phone messages. There was a group chat between the four of them that Yuriko had not noticed before and she sent them a message.

Lilibeth: I’m a bit short for rent next week. Any ideas where to go about getting seven hundred Torries?

Scarlett: Check out the community board/job postings. Trinityuniversitycommboard/jobs/temps.

Nora: Sell your body.

Jenna: Sell your Anima.

Yuriko’s eyes twitched.

Scarlett: Hey! Lili’ll get more than seven hundred if she sells her body.

Jenna: Undoubtedly. Lots of experience there.

Lilibeth: Oi!

Nora: You can’t deny it after everything you’ve told us! Haha!

Jenna: But then, would people pay for experience or would they prefer innocence?

Nora: No such thing. Skill gives better experience.

Jenna: Oh, and you can tell? How much have you spent?

Nora: Not as much as you!

Yuriko chuckled at the teasing. Lilibeth’s memories assured her that the girls weren’t being serious. Or at least, she was sure they weren’t. Not that she’d sell her body, and what did Jenna mean by selling her Anima?

Wait. Jenna’s words earlier…were they a hint about the daemonic ritual? If the girl also has the ritual papers, when she attempts the ritual, she’ll die.

Or she could be kidding. Or she might be the one who tried to kill Lilibeth? Or perhaps it was a coincidence? Yuriko didn’t detect any hostility beyond the typical teenage woes. All three had been startled by Lilibeth’s change, and all three harboured a little bit of jealousy. Nothing that would prompt a murder attempt, she was sure. And there was no malice or deep-seated frustration. The connection the Mien established with them was quite light, which meant that the emotions she read weren’t more than what appeared on the surface.

Well, another mystery for another time. She doubted Jenna was the one who wanted to kill Lilibeth with the ritual, but she couldn’t eliminate her suspicion. But then again, was it anything more than an accident? Was Jenna also the source of the blood ritual?

Hmm, more importantly, would she try to stop the woman from enacting the ritual?

‘Yes,’ Yuriko decided, she should stop the girl from committing suicide, even if that was not Jenna’s intent. She manipulated her chatting app to send a private message to Jenna and sent her a quick message, “Don’t try it.”

Jenna: What do you mean?

Lilibeth: Don’t use the papers.

Jenna: I don’t know what you mean, but fine.

Was she mistaken? Yuriko frowned. She had a hunch, but perhaps she had misread something. Instead, she focused on what she needed to do. She used the Network Explorer app to navigate the university’s community board and tabbed towards the quick jobs bulletin. She browsed the listings, which wasn’t that expansive, and every now and then, she saw some posts become unavailable as others took the job.

“Walk my dogs, 15.50 T per hour. One hour in the morning, one hour in the evening.”

“Mathematics tutor, 20 T per hour…”

“Painting model, 30 T/hr. One time, Watersday, 30th Mid Earth. 10 AM to 12 PM. Female models only.”

There were more than a few listings, but Yuriko latched on to the highest-earning one and applied. The button turned to pending and she left it at that. She browsed a few more listings, finding out that most didn’t pay much above minimum hourly wages of fifteen Torries. Ah, she could talk to her boss in Beans and Coffee for an extension if she found nothing else. Hmmm, she was already slated to work eight hours at the cafe, and more than that a day was overtime, something most business owners preferred didn’t happen often.

There were many people looking for jobs these days, and employers had limited capacity. It was one of Lilibeth’s gripes as the girl wanted to intern at a news outfit rather than clerk at a department store or wait tables in a cafe.

While she browsed the community board’s listing, she also cracked open Lilibeth’s notes through her laptop computer. She couldn’t rely on the memories to learn everything since only things that were emotionally significant remained.

“Look at me, reading and studying about things not related to self-improvement,” Yuriko muttered to herself. Her head throbbed slightly as her reading went past the ten-minute mark, but it didn’t grow much worse.

“Huh.”

Both her incarnation body and her true body paused to consider it. Her true body pulled out a pamphlet that Johann had given her and she read the perks of being affiliated with Millenium State Conglomerate even as she returned to practicing Severing Shard. Ten minutes later, her true body’s head started to throb painfully, and at the twenty-minute mark, her incarnation body gained a headache. She wasn’t sure if it was a sympathetic response from her true body though. Both bodies stopped reading. The true body continued practicing and fighting, while Yuriko’s incarnation body watched the television drama.

“I think I should go back to Dragon Fall City and grab Gwendith and Heron,” she muttered to herself. But the endless battlefield was a bit too tempting. While the foes were weak, if she only did her sword training, they were an adequate training dummy. Fluffington barked at her from his post inside her backpack and licked her cheek.

Once her incarnation body’s headache subsided, she resumed studying Lilibeth’s notes and cross-referenced them with the textbooks. With her Anima perception and her multiple strands of consciousness, she could read several notes and different textbooks at the same time, and it was the only way to really get around her reading problem.

Come to think of it, she hadn’t practised her spell-casting lately. Yuriko looked at the dusty surfaces on the cupboards and kitchenette counter, then cast Clean, using three somatic components, a runescript component, and a final verbal component. She had to use her Animus to gather the Elemental energy however, since the ambient energy was too sparse. The result was that several tiny whirlwinds gathered the dust and dumped them into the wastebasket.

It took less energy than annihilating the dust by having Radiant energy consume them. The fact that her Radiance was limited here hit her badly, and she groaned in annoyance. There was little to do since she couldn’t rebuild her Radiant Physique until she finished reforging her flesh. Everything takes time, and she could only take one step at a time.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep