ch21-ch40 · 025-ch22

Chapter 22

Hiyori and Mio had received instruction on enhancement from their teacher, Sai.

They'd parted ways with Sai at the Adventurer's Guild, and now the two of them were soaking in the bathhouse attached to the guild, washing away their sweat. It was a daily ritual after an adventure.

"Aaahhh... I'm so tiiired..."

Having finished washing herself, Hiyori sank into the bath up to her shoulders, mulling over today's lesson.

"Hiyori, you look completely worn out."

Next to her, Mio was already in the bath.

She must have been in the hot water for a while, because her face was flushed.

"Well, yeah. I haven't even got Five Senses Enhancement down yet, and then there's that... Mana Perception thing, right?"

"Ah, that topic..."

According to Sai:

Beyond Five Senses Enhancement, there was apparently something called "Mana Perception" as a sixth sense.

It was a sense that measured the flow and quantity of magical power, it seemed. The sixth sense following sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell — Mana Perception. He'd said that if you trained all of these up, you could become something else entirely.

"I might've mentioned this back then too, but I think Mana Perception is basically what we call spiritual sensitivity."

"That's the ability to sense evil spirits and demons, right?"

"Yeah. It's something that's been talked about in exorcist circles for a long time. It's a known concept."

"So even though the words are different in another world, the ideas are the same."

"They're the same, but they're also different."

Hiyori sighed.

"Different how?"

"At the very least, my dad and my grandpa can't do Five Senses Enhancement, and I don't think they know how to train spiritual sensitivity."

That was it. Spiritual sensitivity was something you honed, not something you could train systematically.

"Hone" was something talked about in terms of willpower and grit — she'd never heard of it being trained in a structured way.

"Seriously, all my common sense is getting smashed to pieces. Smash, smash, smash..."

Hiyori dunked her mouth into the water, letting out bubbles as she lamented.

"If we're talking about common sense being shattered, for me it would be the talk about intuition."

"Ah, that thing about 'how to build intuition.'"

Sai had said that intuition was the power to read the flow of battle, born from all enhanced senses combined with knowledge and wisdom.

Apparently, it was a kind of precognition.

"So even the stuff we learn in school might actually come in handy after all."

If intuition was the power to read developments, then the five senses alone weren't enough to read everything.

How much knowledge and wisdom you had — things that couldn't be covered by empirical rules, like physics, chemistry, and mathematics — would make your intuition more detailed and sharper, apparently.

Mio was a good student and fairly capable at studying. But she'd thought that to succeed as an adventurer and exorcist, the best approach was to train hard and get stronger. So hearing Sai say she should also study her school subjects seriously had surprised her quite a bit.

"Might as well go all the way to university, huh..."

Hiyori wasn't bad at studying either, but her school grades were average. When it came to exorcism-related topics, she had a lot of knowledge. Because she needed it. She was operating on a philosophy of "if I don't feel the need, I don't learn it."

But now she was being told that school studies were also necessary.

"Ever since I met Sensei, everything's been a lesson."

"That's true, but still..."

Hiyori had been walking the backstreet path of an exorcist until now.

Exorcist work wasn't public knowledge.

She had a pride in doing things different from ordinary people, but at the same time, she felt she could never truly be an ordinary person.

But now — this Five Senses Enhancement, then Mana Perception and intuition.

Training methods she was told she should learn if she wanted to get stronger as an adventurer.

If these things could be trained, then someday ordinary people would notice too.

That this world had evil beings called phantoms and monsters — that evil spirits and demons existed outside of Shinjuku Tower too.

When they noticed, what kind of ripples would spread through society?

There was no point in thinking about it, but her mind wandered anyway.

"Ah, no no no. That's not like me. Blub blub blub..."

Once again, Hiyori dunked her mouth into the water, blowing bubbles to blow away her doubts.

"What's not like you?"

"Blublublub... nothing."

"Hehe, is that so? Well, regardless, it means we can get even stronger."

"Wow. Mio-chan, you're being super positive..."

"Hmph."

Maybe because they were in the bath, Mio's motivation expressed itself in a small, subdued way.

"...Isn't that a pretty small way to show motivation?"

"Mmm."

Sitting next to Hiyori, Mio stood up with a splash.

"Are you saying I should stand up to show it?"

"At least hide yourself, Mio-chan..."

Maybe the bath had gone to her head and made her silly. Hiyori gently teased her.

After getting out of the bath, Hiyori and Mio walked through the Shinjuku night with warm, relaxed feelings.

Around the area where Shinjuku Tower stood — unlike Kabukicho and its surroundings — perhaps because it was originally where the imperial garden had been, the bustle was moderate and the atmosphere pleasant.

From there, the road to Shinjuku Station felt like being drawn into a more crowded world.

As the two of them walked that road, Hiyori suddenly let out a strange noise.

"Mmm mmm..."

"Hiyori, what's wrong?"

"Hang on a sec..."

"?"

"Pshoo~... Aah... no good. I can't maintain it at all."

"Are you trying to enhance your Mana Perception instead of your Five Senses?"

"Yeah. I kind of have a knack for spiritual sensitivity... I mean, Sensei's Mana Perception."

Coming from a family of exorcists, Ichijō Hiyori's spiritual sensitivity was strong by blood.

So if she could train it, she wanted to strengthen it as much as possible.

"But you can't maintain it at all."

"I think I need to get more used to Five Senses Enhancement before I can push into Mana Perception training."

"Sensei said the same thing, didn't he. I'm struggling just with Five Senses Enhancement alone."

"Same here."

Even the short Five Senses Enhancement they'd done in Shinjuku Tower had left them gasping.

On top of that, they'd need to add the sixth sense — Mana Perception. No wonder it was hard.

Hiyori looked around again.

High-rise buildings. Crowds of people passing by. Countless cars running.

"Even on this road we're walking right now, if I used Five Senses Enhancement to take everything in, the resolution of information from sight, hearing, smell, and touch would get really high."

"Yeah."

The brain processed information split across five layers — the five senses. That processing itself was something they'd been doing since birth, so they were used to it.

What would happen if a new layer — Mana Perception — was added?

"How should I put it... when I'm aware of Mana Perception, the increase in resolution is insane."

"In other words, your head explodes."

"Yeah, yeah. Explodes. That's the image."

"That's exactly why Sensei said to get used to Five Senses Enhancement first before training Mana Perception."

"That's true, but~ I'd like to train it sooner rather than later."

"Impatience is the enemy."

At a lull in the conversation, Hiyori tried to strengthen her Mana Perception again.

But even after the bath, her body had been pushed hard in Shinjuku Tower, and her brain — unaccustomed to Five Senses Enhancement — was exhausted and starting to scream.

She couldn't maintain Mana Perception for even a second.

At that moment, she suddenly thought she sensed a malevolent presence.

"Mmm."

She looked around.

But she couldn't find any sign of an evil being.

"Must be my imagination..."

"What's wrong?"

"Nah, nothing."

Though there was the threat of Shinjuku Tower, everyday life repeated itself day after day.

Even if a powerful demon was going to revive, it wasn't something that would happen today or tomorrow.

Still, so that when that time came, she'd have no regrets.

An exorcist had to get stronger.

By the time they arrived at Shinjuku Station, the warm, relaxed feeling from the bath had faded.

Tonight looked like it would be colder than usual.

Chatting about things like that, the two of them boarded the train home.

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Thank you for reading.