abcnovels
Chapter 10 part1
Chapter 10 part1
Welcome to Underground
I Love the Way Samurai Train in Shounen Manga
Part 1
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At Amanoiwato, if you move the wine bottle that's fixed to the floor in the far back of the cupboard, you release a lock and the entire set of shelves moves sideways. I'm quite proud of this gimmick, since I made it myself with rails and metal fixtures I bought from the home center using my psychokinesis. If you go down the spiral staircase (I used the one from Kaburagi-san's house as a reference) in the small room that appears when you move the shelves, there's a pair of massive and sturdy steel doors that have a sun emblem engraved on them. If you open them, Amaterasu's secret base will appear. There's no electronic lock/password system set up, since the world's darkness isn't the kind of thing that can disguise itself and sneak in. It's OK if some member of the general public gets lost and wanders in. For now.
After getting out of the bath, Touka-chan is guided around the secret base by Kaburagi-san. Kaburagi-san shows her the high-efficiency PC and widescreen display installed in the surveillance room, the spacious training room, and the equipment room lined with shelves that have things like blade-resistant vests, stun-grenades, and rapiers on them. After Kaburagi-san showed Touka-chan around, she took her home. Touka-chan has school tomorrow, after all. It had become late, but since both of Touka-chan's parents work until late at night anyway, so long as she gets home before the date changes, no one will notice she was out. But when she discovers her superpower, all of that should stop and the despair will be easily swept away.
I transplanted Nenrikin into Touka-chan while she was receiving her tour of the secret base. Based on the animal experiments I've done and Kaburagi-san's experience, it should take about 5-10 days for the mutation to be established. Outwardly, it'll look like Touka-chan, who had a superpower sleeping inside of her, awoke that power without realizing it, and thus was attacked by the world's darkness, which is attracted to and hungers for power. She will be protected by the boss' 'mysterious superpower' (lol), until she has trained enough to be able to defend herself, and her newly awakened power will be hidden by contact with other ESP'ers and meditation.
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Now, let me explain about the 'boss' of Amaterasu. He is the founder of Amaterasu, and has an ability that allows him to sense when/where the world's darkness will appear. The true nature and details of his ability are shrouded in mystery! Kaburagi-san is the only person who knows what it really is, even though she has only seen a small fragment of his seemingly bottomless ability! Kaburagi-san highly respects the boss, since he was the one who guided her when she was finding her superpower to be too much to handle.
But there's still one more thing!
Who exactly is 'the boss'?!!
No one knows!!!
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Now then, setting aside the fact that the true identity of the mysterious and cool boss is 'Sago Kinemitsu'1, let's go back to Touka-chan's superpower. There's no doubt that Touka-chan will acquire a superpower due to the Nenrikin transplant, however it's unknown what kind of superpower it will be. It may be something simple, like body strengthening. It may be a clairvoyance-like power. It may even be something like teleportation. But, no matter what kind of ability it is, so long as she dedicates herself to improving it, she'll be able to fight the world's darkness. There's no worries on that front.
What I am worried about is a situation where Touka-chan develops the power to read minds. It would be inevitable that she would discover the 'match-pump'2. If that does happen, I can only reveal the truth to Touka-chan and hopefully get her on my side. I don't want to snatch away the brilliance of youth, but this is in God's hands… I have no choice but to pray to Buddha.
Oh Buddha, please bless those who walk your path.
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Three days after the attack by the world's darkness, Touka-chan's summer vacation had started, so she was coming to Amanoiwato every day via train. Today, Kaburagi-san is here as well, and is happily chatting about this and that while I listen. Though I'm always there, Kaburagi-san is sometimes absent due to work and socializing. When it's just me and Touka-chan, she sits in the corner seat of the bar, silently takes out her palm-sized wooden sculpture of Buddha, and silently works on carving it.
I can't start a conversation with Touka-chan due to my 'bar-master' character being taciturn, and Touka-chan can't start a conversation due to her peculiar aura. Touka-chan is unable to open her heart… how sad…
Do you not understand the appeal of a bar-master who's sullen toward middle-school girls? No, I just don't have enough charm. My (biased) excuse is that I'm disappointingly at the approximate age of an unfashionable old man.
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I'll think about how to polish my charm later; it's been six days since Nenrikin was safely transplanted into Touka-chan, and she's starting to show signs of her superpower awakening. Unlike Kaburagi-san, who took a while to understand what exactly her superpower was, Touka-chan understood hers at a glance. When she focused and used her power for a moment, in an instant there were sparks dancing above her hand. It's obviously a fire-starting ability (pyrokinesis)! It's so easy to understand!
When I named the origin for Touka-chan's pyrokinesis [Burninglutamine]3, Kaburagi-san barely held back her laughter, and when Touka-chan heard what I transmitted to Kaburagi-san from her, she muttered, "I guess since the boss likes it, I'll get used to it." Would you prefer if the boss or the bar-master came up with the name? No, I guess it doesn't matter which.
Touka-chan's pyrokinesis is similar in usage to psychokinesis; she is able to get fire to appear when she has a sense of putting power into her hand. In the beginning, the only way to practice is through repetition. Completely exhaust Burninglutamine through overuse, and, after going through growing pains, experience ultra-recovery. A steady basic training to improve basic skills is waiting for Touka-chan.
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Whether it's because she can work hard because she's young or simply due to her constitution, Touka-chan grew by leaps and bounds. Well, a growth rate of 1.4 times is not that high, you know.
Powers and Growth Rates of Amaterasu Members
Sago Kinemitsu ···Hasumi Touka ·····
Kaburagi Shiori ······ Psychokinesis, 1.3 times
··· Pyrokinesis, 1.4 times
··· Time-Stop, 1.7 times
When you line it up like that, her growth rate looks normal. However, due to Touka-chan's unusual constitution, her growing pains weren't as intense. If Kaburagi-san or I overuse the base for our superpowers, we'll be assaulted by growing pains the next day. Since it usually goes away a day later, the growth rate is 1.7 times or 1.3 times every two days, respectively. But for Touka-chan, if she overuses her ability, she will experience growing pains on the day of, and then be fine the next day. In other words, each day she grows by 1.4 times. That's 1.96 times in two days! Her growth rate is better than Kaburagi-san's! Stop the inflation!
Kaburagi-san and I are both secretly in denial. It's like how, as I age, I experience a longer delay before I get muscle pain. When I was a high-school student, intense exercise would leave me with plenty of muscle aches the next day, but as I got older, the muscle pain got delayed by a day, so now there's a two day delay before I mercilessly experience the decline of my body.
Is the difference in growth rate really like that? Is the growth rate really just higher for younger people? We're both in our twenties, so I definitely thought we'd still be young for a while yet, you know. I guess we're getting old. Well, I experienced the awakening of my psychokinesis when I was 17, so it tilts my head if I say there's a difference in growth rates between the ages of 14 and 17. As of right now, there's a large bias in the data due to having a three-person sample.
In addition, Touka-chan says that her growing pains are like "The feeling of drowning in the vacuum of chaos while karma appears to wander aimlessly in the the body." It made me laugh, it's a very Buddhist thing to say. I don't mind her having such a personality!
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Touka-chan is able to emit fire from both her hands, but the temperature is only around 41°C (105.8°F). It's like the fever you get with a cold. She definitely creates sparks, but at 41°C (105.8°C), rather than bursting into flame, it just looks like her hands are turning red. It's not a real physical fire. There's no 'phantom flame' either, since it's difficult to create without higher temperatures. The temperature isn't even high enough to burn anything. It would be a suitable replacement for a heating pad in winter, but using it for offensive purposes would be tough. The basic exercise for pyrokinesis is increasing the usage time; increasing the amount of time you can keep the flame burning by continuously using it. Applied training seems to be necessary to raise the temperature.
At the beginning, Touka-chan could only burn for less than a second, but 14 days after she started training, Touka-chan was able to keep it burning for up to 55 seconds, exceeding Kaburagi-san's time limit. And she can continue to go further. Although I was asked by Kaburagi-san to try to transplant additional Nenrikin into her because she wanted to try and surpass her limit, no new growth or other obvious changes occured. The amount of transplanted Nenrikin doesn't seem to affect the growth rate or the growth limit.
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Fighting the world's darkness! Touka-chan had hardened her resolve, but while initially she was delighted about the awakening of her superpower, nowadays she looks bored. Well, it is only 41°C (105.8°F). Even if Touka-chan hits someone with her fist while using her ability, it wouldn't be a [Fire Punch], it would just be a [Comfortably Warm Punch]. Using a stun gun or knife is clearly a more effective attack method.
Such a shame.There is growth, but Touka-chan's lacking motivation. "What a disappointing ability" is what Touka-chan is most likely thinking. While she does simple training exercises for less than a minute each day, Kaburagi-san and the boss are going out to defeat the world's darkness (according to the setting). Touka-chan most likely feels frustrated at not being able to fight with them.
But, Touka-chan. That's the same route I took. It's dull, but if you stick with it and steadily build up your training, you'll always get results.
It's boring and you'll have no free time.
You'll become a pyrokinetic.
Your fire will become even hotter.
Your own blood will become hot and burn.
When humans become hot, that's when they meet their real self!
So train more! GET HOOOOOTTTTT!!!
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Yes! It's time for applied training! For today's bored middle-school girl, this 'ojisan' has thought about how to improve fire temperature training! Having 55 seconds as a baseline is fine for now. Basic training will continue along with applied training; Kaburagi-san also did applied training and as a result, her applied use time became set at 44 seconds, so we should avoid starting too early.
What I focused on was the temperature of 41°C. Why is it 41°C, not 100°C or 36°C? I don't know why, but it seemed to be stuck at that temperature for no obvious reason. In ordinary everyday life, 41°C is the same as the fever you get with a really bad cold, or the temperature of the bathwater in the bathtub. When Kaburagi-san questioned Touka-chan, she said that she didn't remember anything about having a cold, but she did recall that her daily bath is usually heated to 41°C.
Touka-chan can activate her pyrokinesis, but since she only has vague sense of releasing fire, it doesn't feel especially hot. Which means that, in this instance, the temperature is cut off when the fire reaches 41°C. I made the inference that because 41°C is the only temperature that Touka-chan has experienced everyday and has memorized in her body, it's not that the temperature is being cut off, it's that she doesn't know how to put out a higher temperature.
Kaburagi-san tried to poke holes in my theory by saying that I'm relying too much on guesswork, but I don't think so. I always carefully consider things when it comes to my psychokinesis training, then try them out, and usually end up succeeding. I'm doing the same thing here. This also applies to Kaburagi-san's time-stop training. In the first place, superpowers themselves are an illogical existence, so it's fine to not rely on logic to a certain extent. It's about thinking and feeling.
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Footnotes:
1: In case you forgot, this is the MC's name (fun fact: it would've been Sago Pestle-Light or something if I hadn't found the pronunciation guide in the character sheet later on).
2: Defined back in (footnote #1), here the MC is worried that if Touka-chan develops mind-reading powers, she'll find out that he is, in fact, the source of everything (aka, the match-pump)
3: Yes, we continue with the weird naming scheme. It's not going away any time soon. And just to clarify, the things with the weird names are what gives them their power. [Nenrikin] for psychokinesis, [Stoprotein] for time-stop, and now [Burninglutamine] (burning glutamine) for pyrokinesis. They are the 'base' that their power is built off of.