Chapter 388: Babysitting

“Damn it,” Sonia yelled, having crashed on the asphalt once again. Lyra’s knockback was messing with her fight rhythm, which was a necessary trigger for her to activate the curse art that she had honed. Lyra was interrupting her even before she could begin to warm up.

As someone gifted with an insane amount of stamina and recovery speed, Sonia had practiced a fitting curse art that not only supported her reckless fighting style but made full use of her insane recovery abilities, turning her into a war machine designed to mow the battlefield.

Slamming her hand on the asphalt, Sonia once again got back on her feet. However, this time she did not blindly charge at Lyra, knowing that the latter could just throw her away, breaking the momentum she was trying to build. She needed to be clever about this, which she hated.

Meanwhile, Ace was dodging various luminous yellow constructs that Ava kept throwing at him. She was done trying to punch him and just wanted to land a single attack on him. Ace wasn’t just dodging but trying to deduce Ava’s ability along with his Toy summons.

He was right about the surroundings suddenly turning colder and dimmer. Emi’s senses that were connected to her master’s had also noticed the change in the temperature and surrounding brightness. They immediately credited these changes to Ava’s curse ability by process of elimination, which was easy since he already knew the curse abilities of the other two curse users in the domain, and the effects of the reality isolation domain disc.

‘Emi, are you done?’ Ace asked impatiently as dodging Ava’s attacks was starting to bore him.

‘Yes, master. My initial findings were correct. The luminous yellow constructs are indeed condensed light. Ava’s curse abilities are somehow able to gather and condense the light in her surroundings into these luminous yellow constructs.

What’s scary is that her body is displaying the properties of both light and her curse ability. Allowing her to transform her body into a streak of light and travel to the desired location with insane speed, almost like teleportation, before condensing back into her human form.

From the information I have on the curse item she used in her awakening ceremony and the abilities she has displayed so far, I have reached the conclusion that her innate curse tool has the ability to gather and condense light from its surroundings according to its master’s will. As for Ava’s body displaying the properties of light and condensation, I believe it must be because of the innate curse art she awakened.

That is to say, you might not be able to subdue Ava just by separating her from her innate curse tool. Also, it’s highly likely that she is immune to physical damage. Therefore, I recommend using the Rail Rifle to stun her and then finish it with my explosion talisman.” Emi gave a detailed description of Ava’s curse abilities with pausable counters to neutralise the threat based on her deduction.

“Emi, I want to K.O. her, not kill her.” Ace immediately rejected her suggestions.

“Well, I don’t recommend using the barrier talisman. Though it is debatable if she could pass through its luminous barrier. But based on the properties of light I learned in school, it is possible,” Emi said, as if having read her master’s mind.

Yes, Ace was indeed planning to use a stack of Emi’s barrier talisman to bury Ava under multiple layers of barrier, but listening to her, he now needed to think of a different approach to subdue Ava without hurting her.

No, Ace was not finally accepting Ava’s feelings for him. He was just being considerate of EAD Matthews. In his mind, he and Matthews were equals, which made her daughter his junior. Now, you wouldn’t hurt your colleague’s kid, would you? You would try to tolerate them within your limits, right? That was exactly what Ace was doing, hoping EAD Matthews could reciprocate similar consideration to his sister and family.

“How long are you planning to dodge? Aren’t you worried about your sister?” Ava tried to provoke and put pressure on Ace by using his sister, but to her surprise, it wasn’t working. Forcing her to wonder if Ace was just too cold-hearted or if he was confident his sister could take care of herself.

“How long are you planning to keep throwing frozen light at me? Aren’t you worried your mother will come searching for you?” Ace shot back, wondering if he should just use DD’s engineered pollens to get Ava so high on her emotions that her brain has to forcefully shut down by losing consciousness, a.k.a. fainiting. But that would be crueler than beating her to an inch of her life, and also involved the risk of her developing some permanent trauma or even losing her mind.

‘Babysitting is hard,’ Ace thought, shaking his head with a long sigh.

Now that Ace had an understanding of Ava’s ability. He knew what Ava was doing in his house instead of being trained like a dog by her mother. It seems that having awakened godlike curse abilities, Ava had grown more unruly than ever, so much so that EAD Matthews was forced to rely on Ace to remind her daughter that she was nothing special.

Yes, with her strength, she could smack some sense into Ava, but it was only a temporary fix. However, if the same smackdown came from someone who was of the same age and strength as her, then it would be far more effective and long-lasting as a lesson, which could also serve as motivation. Especially considering Ava’s fascination with Ace. To EAD Matthews, Ace seemed like the best tool to discipline and improve her daughter that she could have ever asked for.

Just like how Ace planned to use Sonia to train his big sister, Matthews planned to use Ace to train her daughter. Which meant Matthews was watching from somewhere nearby.

Thinking of this, Ace immediately used the curse map function of his status screen to find that there were five curse users in the artificial domain, not four. However, the unknown curse user was hiding by the edge of the domain, allowing them to avoid his enhanced curse senses. Ace was certain that this unknown curse user was EAD Matthews. He wondered how she was avoiding Sonia’s detection. After all, Werefur Curselings were notorious for their tracking abilities, not to mention she was in control of the reality isolation domain disc. Now he knew why Matthews gave something as valuable as the reality isolation domain disc to Sonia. It was rigged.

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