"I'm already a first-year high schooler. I'm an adult!!"
Seeing Karin look down on her, Kotoko angrily shouted back.
Unfortunately, in the eyes of the actually grown-up Karin, Kotoko was still just a little kid.
"Mm-hm, sure, you're an adult."
She nodded in a perfunctory way, then changed the subject.
"So, Takumi, what exactly are we doing now?"
"That was way too dismissive!"
Kotoko grumbled, but didn't keep arguing with Karin.
Instead, she turned to Takumi and asked about the current situation.
Takumi then gave them a rough summary of his encounter with Steel Lady the night before.
"We need to split this into two fronts. Kotoko, you handle debunking the rumors online and weakening Steel Lady. Karin, you're coming with me. Once we subdue Steel Lady, you'll absorb her. That's the plan. Simple enough, right?"
Karin immediately clenched her fists and agreed.
Kotoko, meanwhile, pulled out her laptop and at once began drafting posts to debunk the rumors.
At this point, the people discussing the Steel Lady urban legend were all basically crammed into the same internet forum.
"So, Nanase-san, I need your help with this first. Restore your old account. The moment you show up again and prove you're still alive, this urban legend will collapse on its own."
Kotoko quickly called Karin over to help her with the debunking effort.
The strongest possible proof that Steel Lady was fake was the very much alive Karin.
Rather than wasting time fabricating some elaborate explanation, it was far more effective to have the person at the center of it all appear in public herself.
And Karin had her own obsession with proving she was still alive, so naturally she didn't refuse.
She was sitting here perfectly fine, and yet the internet was full of people saying she was dead and had turned into a vengeful spirit.
After reading through the urban legend at home, Karin had a whole lot of anger pent up inside her.
Takumi didn't rush either of them. Instead, he created a computer of his own and logged on, using his hacking skills to work together with Kotoko.
While the three of them moved into action, the city's traffic division had already sent people out early that morning.
The disappearances along the mountain road, together with the growing number of people claiming to have encountered Steel Lady, had already attracted the traffic division's attention.
They might not have believed in those rumors, but they still had to come investigate the scene.
"Karin Nanase—apparently this idol's ghost turned into Steel Lady and started attacking passersby."
"That's ridiculous. Haruko Nanase is clearly still alive and well."
The one who flatly shot that idea down was the short-haired beauty standing there in a traffic division uniform—Yumihara Saki, tall and slim, with a sharp, clean look to her.
Her superior at her side chuckled.
Their department didn't hold much power, but they still had enough authority to verify whether someone was dead or not.
Before they even came out that morning, they had already checked and confirmed that Haruko, who used the stage name Karin, was alive and well.
"I was just saying it casually. But looking at the conditions out here, someone's probably been deliberately attacking passing vehicles. There's no way this many accidents would happen in just a few days otherwise."
After her superior made that judgment, Yumihara Saki nodded slightly.
Now that was a proper, rational conclusion. This Steel Lady business was obviously just an internet rumor.
"Besides stationing patrols here, we should probably install a hidden camera too. That way we can catch whoever's behind this."
"Looks like that's our only option."
After discussing it, Saki Yumihara and her superior finalized a plan to catch the culprit.
At that moment, a black-haired beauty in a car drove past them.
The moment she noticed the broken guardrail nearby, a trace of alarm appeared on her alluring face.
Those golden eyes of hers narrowed slightly as she immediately slowed down.
She didn't know exactly what had happened here, but something serious had obviously gone wrong.
Touko Yotsuya let out a sigh and glanced at the rearview mirror, checking the wreckage left by the roadside.
"Was there a car crash here? Better be careful."
Muttering to herself, Touko Yotsuya eased off the gas even more.
As a female driver, she was currently driving with the caution of someone guarding her life with both hands.
But the instant she turned her eyes back to the road ahead, a faceless woman appeared in her line of sight.
The woman's lovely face was hidden behind a layer of pitch-black shadow, while her voluptuous figure looked even more pronounced in that black-and-red pleated skirt.
Most terrifying of all, she was carrying a two-meter-long steel beam with one hand.
The Steel Lady that had suddenly appeared was wreathed in black cursed energy.
Even the surrounding space seemed affected by it, the light around them dimming several shades.
"AAAAAHHH!!!"
Touko Yotsuya, who had never seen anything like this in her life, immediately screamed in terror.
The little braid hanging over one shoulder snapped backward as she jerked violently.
She instinctively tried to spin the car around and flee, but before her foot even touched the gas, Steel Lady charged.
"No!!"
Right before Touko's horrified eyes, the little car that had accompanied her for years was sent flying like a golf ball, smashed away by a single swing of that steel beam.
The hood crumpled instantly, and the airbags exploded out, absorbing the first wave of impact.
Duang~~
Touko's lush, mature body softened another layer of that impact too.
But the whole car still spun out of control and rolled down the slope.
Standing by the bent guardrail at the corner, Yumihara Saki and her traffic-division superior, Terada, were both stunned by what they saw.
Only when the car came flying toward them did Yumihara Saki react, shouting, "Move!"
But the car was even faster than her voice.
Splatch!
Right in front of Saki, her superior Terada was run over on the spot, crushed into a smear of flesh. Parts and chunks of him exploded everywhere.
"Blergh!!"
At the sight of that, Saki immediately threw up.
She'd only worked with her superior for a few days. They'd only met face-to-face a handful of times.
And yet on their very first outing together, things had turned into this.
The sheer terror made Saki tremble all over, and her mind instantly flashed back to that previous incident when she'd run into Takumi.
"Why are ghosts actually real when the person involved is still alive!!!"
It wasn't that Saki didn't believe in ghosts and monsters anymore.
But this still had to follow some kind of basic logic, didn't it?
According to the information she'd checked, Karin was alive and well!
So why was her "ghost" standing right in front of her now!?
Had Karin actually died after all?
With her mind in complete chaos, Saki no longer had time to think.
Watching Steel Lady slowly walk toward her, Saki exploded under the weight of her fear.
"That red monster from last time, and now this vengeful spirit too—I don't care what the hell you are!!!!"
Saki rushed forward.
The instant Steel Lady swung that steel beam down at her, she twisted sideways and dodged.
An opening!
Catching Steel Lady off-balance, Yumihara Saki gathered every ounce of strength in her body and drove a punch into the wide-open center of Steel Lady's chest.
Whoosh!
Saki's expression froze in shock as her fist passed straight through Steel Lady's body.
"How is that possible!? That's completely unfair!"
Seeing that the thing was physically immune, Yumihara Saki's pupils contracted hard.
She had never imagined that all her effort would amount to absolutely nothing.
...
For every 50 Power Stones → +1 extra chapter.