The return to Dragon Fall City took about half a day. It wasn’t because the roadhog she liberated from the gangers was slow; instead, there was a literal tide of bounty hunters after her. Yuriko should have cut her devices’ connection to REI-space, but she didn’t. Not because she forgot, but because she felt the need to…well, vent.

A longstride down the road from where she left the remains of the gangers, she encountered another biker gang. With Fluffington sitting at the back, he didn’t have the ability to fight. The bike was going at a brisk eighty longstrides an hour, and it should have taken just a bit more than a couple of hours to reach the city center, not that she needed to get there. Gwendith and the others were in Junktown, a bit farther from the district where they had their initial residence.

The biker gang came in hot. The funny thing about them was that all of the dozen bikers only had their left arm replaced with ‘Chronian Gear. They might have replaced their legs, too, but those were covered with their trousers and heavy boots. The lead biker yelled at her, but at the speeds they were going, and the fact that they were coming from the side, she only heard a garbled account of their demand. She had her perception expanded, of course, but the ‘Chronian gear prevented her from getting a good look. It took a bit of a mental shift to listen through her Anima perception, and once she did, the bikers’ message was the same as the previous gang. Surrender or die.

Yuriko pursed her lips. Her guns were inside the backpack, along with a select few forged blades. The only one she had was the same chopping sword she used to cut up the bullets earlier. It was about thirty six inches long, including the handle and pommel and meant to be a single-handed weapon. It was heavier than normal; she’d compressed and folded the metal hundreds of times, then added even more blood metal, until the blade was nearly three inches wide. It was sharp only on one edge and had a slanted tip. It was a straight blade, and the back of it was considerably thicker than the edge. The extra weight helped with the power of its chops, giving it incredible momentum. Most of what she did with it was simply to guide it where to go. She enjoyed dancing with this blade, and the contrast between the huge thing and the litheness of its movements was pleasing to her senses. It was no match for Fri’Avgi but she was an artefact and it wasn’t a fair comparison. She needed to wrap the chopping sword’s hilt with something else, however, as she was just using a slab of metal force welded to the tang. The blade’s center of balance was towards the middle of the blade, but that was intentional.

She plucked her chopping sword from the saddle and saluted the bikers mockingly.

“You little whore! Don’t regret it!” the lead biker roared, but they didn’t open fire. Foolish of them. Instead, a couple of them sped close, reaching over to pluck her from the roadhog. A casual swipe divested them of their limbs, but since they used their ‘chronian arms, the air was filled with sparks instead of blood.

“Aieee!”

Whoosh! Thud! Bam!

Yuriko’s sword dance, even atop a motorcycle, was impeccable. As soon as she cut off both bikers’ arms, she twisted the handlebars, leaned over to her side and caused her ride to tilt and spin. Her chopping sword swept out and sliced through both bikers’ front wheels, and with another deft manipulation of balance, body, machine, and a little help using her kinesis, she slipped through the two crashing bikes and was speeding towards the rest of the gang.

This time, the bikers didn’t hesitate to open fire. Yuriko couldn’t possibly reach all of the bullets heading her way, even if she could easily react to them. She expanded her aura to slow the bullets about to hit her wheels, deflected them with minute and precise kinetic pushes, and then sliced the bullets that were going to hit her instead.

A moment later, she was upon them and with easy swipes, she denuded them of ‘chronian arms and motorcycle wheels. Then, she blasted them with her Terror Mien for good measure.

“Mommy!”

“Help!”

“Daddy, come back!”

Varied cries of pain, terror, and helplessness were left behind as Yuriko returned to the road. The roadhog she drove thrummed noisily from the original rider’s exhaust pipe modifications. It wasn’t a pleasant sound, but after an hour, she kinda got used to it.

In her incarnation body, the class was about to end. Yuriko’s pose had changed from the original to one where she had her back turned, and she was glancing over her shoulder. The blanket covered her buttocks, barely hinting at the crease. She had also slightly tensed her back muscles, making them stand out. She could feel the students’ as well as Madeline’s sticky gaze on her back, and she had to hold in a shiver of pleasure at the attention.

An eye in the dreamscape told her that every last one of them had connected to her, and she half wondered why it was so quick. People had become attached to her easily in the past but from the looks of it, they’d progressed quickly into Aspiration. They might become Supplicants if she pushed them, but thankfully, she had better control of her Mien than to allow that. Still, the greenish film coming from the connecting threads was practically filling her space. She could see their connections and there was a little bit of that film already forming. That was new, she thought. She hadn’t noticed when the film began appearing, but she had an inkling that it was when she first became intimate with Heron and increased her control of the Mien.

She was tempted to touch the film, but held herself back. She wasn’t alone, and she shouldn’t expose herself like that.

“Alright! We’re about done!” Madeline clapped her hands. “And, that’s it! Put away your brushes. You can continue this on Earthsday if you please, or you can bring your canvasses home. Let me double check the pictures you all took. Lily, my dear, you can retire to the side office and get back into your clothes. I insist that we have lunch together. My treat, of course!”

Yuriko smiled and nodded. “I appreciate it, Madeline.”

She pulled up the blanket so that it covered more of her body and stepped off the platform. She nodded to the students and strode into the side office to get dressed. She emerged five minutes later to see that nobody had left the classroom yet, but their gear had already been stowed.

Yuriko looked questioningly at Madeline, who chuckled sheepishly. “Turns out they all want lunch.”

Yuriko shrugged and looked pointedly at the professor.

“Hmm? Ah, yes, of course.” The woman took her phone, fiddled with it a bit and then said, “I’ve sent your fee to the community escrow, along with instructions. You may withdraw it from the office directly or have it credited to your account.”

Yuriko’s phone vibrated with the notification. “Thank you, Madeline.”

“No worries, we’ve got you next Watersday again, hehh.”

“As agreed.”

“Let’s go! Come on, you dogs, I’m not treating all of you!”

Yuriko chuckled a bit,then followed the arts professor to the eatery in the building.

In the meantime, her true body was approaching the outskirts of Junktown. She had expected another attack but nothing else materialised. She cast a Sending spell to Gwendith, asking for where they could meet up. She could follow her connecting thread, but that was a straight line disregarding any obstacle in between. Junktown was a mess of abandoned buildings, refuse, and scrap. Every time it rains, Scourge come out of the sewers and halfway terrorise the inhabitants, while the other half kill them and sell their bones.

The mega buildings of the city stop at around fifteen leagues from the center, but the shadow of the huge, squat things were visible even from the foothills. They grew more prominent the closer she came, and it was from there that the next attack came.

Whish! Boom! Thud.

A sniper’s bullet. If it had been aimed directly at her, she would have blocked it, but since it struck several paces off road, she didn’t do anything. She did spread her Anima perception as far as it would go.

A second bullet hit on the opposite side of the road. She ignored it. A third would have hit her front wheel. She swerved around the bullet’s path. A fourth and fifth soon appeared, almost at the same time, telling her that there was more than one marksman. She avoided one, though it put her in the path of the other bullet.

Swing!

Her chopping sword cut the bullet in twain, and she applied a little bit of kinetic force to push the split parts wide away.

A sixth bullet came, but it didn’t come even close. No other snipers made an attempt and Yuriko soon entered the tangled warren of alleys that was Junktown. She gave the onboarding ramps a wide berth, though she could sense several vehicles coming down on it before she drove out of range.

Now that she was in Junktown, where other residents may become collateral damage, she finally cut her devices off from REI-space. Then, she spent the next ten minutes weaving around Junktown before she lost the bounty hunters.

In Bernard Hall, the college cafeteria was Mama Louie’s. The entire class pulled a couple of long tables together and sat Yuriko down in the middle, while Madeline went and ordered food. About half the students brought their own lunch, and by the time her meal was served, everyone was happily chatting with each other.

“You’re from the College of Mass Communications?” one of the girls repeated Yuriko’s answer.

“Journalism. Though I might change my major.”

“What are you thinking?” A tall and muscular young man with brown hair and hazel eyes quite reminiscent of Yuriko’s Da, Virgil, asked.

“Hmm, I’m not sure. I’m kind of interested in engineering now.”

“Really? That’s quite a shift, isn’t it?” the young man, Michael, commented. “A real interest or just something casual?”

“I’m not sure,” Yuriko deflected.

She might stick with Lilibeth’s major in the end, however, but she needed a way to earn Torries to live. Her memories indicated a split from her birth family, but she was sure Lilibeth still had some assets to her name that would be out of reach until she graduated with a degree. A Trust Fund?

Hmmm, either way, it would be better to have a source of funds outside of her estranged family’s control.

“Hey, hey! Let’s go to the mall after this!” Another of the girls said.

“I will, but only because I have my part time job at Macy’s later.”

“Eh. Macy’s…” The girl hummed. “Wait! I knew you looked familiar!” She fetched her phone and scrolled through an app before turning and presenting it to Yuriko. A video of her in the Macy’s uniform dancing around flying kids was prominently displayed.

“Ah, yes, that’s me.”

“Eh! Wow! Why are you a clerk? You can be a dancer, or rather, an entertainer! You’ll get more out of that than suffer under Macy’s predatory wage slavery!”

“Yes, that would be a waste of your beauty,” Madeline commented. She tapped her lips then said, “The college can only pay so much and there’s only so much work, but if you’d like, I can connect you to a friend. She’s in fashion and could use a model.”

Yuriko raised an eyebrow. Fashion model? Well, she supposed that was better than working in a department store.

“Thank you, Madeline, I appreciate it.”

“Oh, don’t worry. You’re too beautiful to

hide from the world.” Madeline’s grin had a manic tinge to it, but Yuriko ignored it. It should be fine, right?

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep