The Otherworld Was Way Too Brutal – After I Healed the Mutilated Girl, She Turned Into a Completely Obsessed Yandere Guard Dog - Chapter 28

Chapter 28

A few days had passed since Ray got his right arm back.

The empty lot behind our rundown shack—our home base—had turned into a full-on training ground now.

“Sei!!”

With a sharp kiai that cut through the air, Tsugumi stepped in hard.

She was gripping the short dagger I’d picked up for her at the market.

The blade wasn’t long, but it was light and easy to handle.

On the other side stood Ray, casually holding a greatsword almost as tall as he was.

“Nice step-in! But it’s way too straight!”

Ray caught Tsugumi’s charge with the flat of his greatsword.

Metal clanged loud, and Tsugumi’s body looked like it was about to get sent flying.

But she twisted mid-air and landed on her feet like a cat.

She was already starting to master the full-body abilities she’d gotten back.

“Not done yet!!”

The second her feet hit the ground, she charged again.

This time she didn’t go straight—instead she circled to Ray’s blind spot, the right side, where his newly regenerated arm was.

“Right there! Not a bad call!”

Ray laughed big and bold while swinging the greatsword one-handed with just his fresh right arm, blocking her path.

The heavy whoosh as it sliced the air.

Tsugumi clicked her tongue, didn’t force it, and backstepped to open some distance.

“…Haa, haa.”

“What’s up, giving up already? Training with Lady Cattleya’s way tougher than this, right?”

“I’m not stopping…! If it’s to protect Jin, I’ll do way more…!”

Tsugumi’s eyes were blazing like fire.

Me and Cattleya watched from a little ways off.

“…She’s scary as hell for the future.”

“Yeah. It’s past the point of being teachable—kinda gives me chills.”

Cattleya said it with a wry half-smile.

Ray was looking at Tsugumi with his mentor face on too, but you could see straight-up shock mixed in his eyes.

Tsugumi had talent.

Not just sword talent—more like talent for killing, if you had to put a name on it.

How to disable an opponent the fastest way possible.

How to kill without getting killed yourself.

It was like that kind of thinking was baked into her instincts.

“Alright, that’s enough for now!”

I clapped my hands to call it.

Tsugumi’s murderous vibe vanished in a second, and she ran straight over to me.

“Jin! How was I? Did I get stronger?”

“Yeah, you were amazing. Going toe-to-toe with Ray like that? Insane.”

I wiped the sweat off her face with a towel, and Tsugumi narrowed her eyes all happy.

You’d never guess she had that demon face just a minute ago.

“Ray, how’s the right arm feeling?”

“Best it’s ever been. Feels like power’s flooding through it more than before. Every single muscle fiber moves exactly how I want.”

Ray swung his right arm around in big circles to show off.

It was blending in perfectly—couldn’t ask for more.

“Okay, warm-up’s over.”

Cattleya stepped forward.

Her expression tightened up.

“Time to get serious. We’re checking out the northern forest.”

Right.

Today was the new team’s first real fight.

The northern forest after the Mad Bear and Gratony Frog were gone.

The ecosystem had collapsed, everything was chaos—we were going in to scout and thin things out.

“I’m fighting too this time.”

Tsugumi took a step up.

I hesitated for a sec, but when I saw how dead serious her eyes were, I knew I couldn’t stop her.

Plus Cattleya and Ray were with us.

Being too overprotective would just hold her back.

“Got it. But don’t push yourself too hard, okay? Stay close to me.”

“Yeah! Promise!”

And just like that, the four of us headed into the northern forest.

The second we stepped inside, the air clinging to our skin felt totally different from before.

It used to have this heavy pressure, like the presence of strong monsters.

But now it was thicker, stickier—some kinda bottomless unease that crawled under your skin.

“…Smells way heavier with blood.”

Ray sniffed while resting the greatsword on his shoulder.

“Yeah. Proof the territory fights are getting brutal. Dead bodies everywhere.”

Just like Cattleya said, we barely walked a bit before running into mangled magic beast corpses.

And it didn’t look like normal survival of the fittest—it felt like straight-up mindless slaughter.

“They’re coming.”

Cattleya gave the warning.

A nasty rustling sound came from all around.

What came out of the grass were giant praying mantis-like magic beasts.

Giant Scythe Mantis size—Mantis.

They had razor-sharp scythes on both arms—predators that could easily lop a human head clean off.

Three of them.

“Me and Ray take front. Jin, you and Tsugumi stay back.”

“Got it!”

Right after the order, the two of them charged.

Ray swung his right greatsword in a huge arc.

A wild horizontal slash.

The Mantis tried to block with its scythes, but that didn’t matter.

The blade cut right through the scythes and split the body in half, spraying green fluid as it flew back.

“Haha! Man, two hands really are the best! Power doesn’t slip away at all!”

Meanwhile Cattleya toyed with hers using smooth, flowing swordwork.

She dodged the Mantis’s flurry of strikes by a hair, then threaded a thrust right through the gap.

Pierced clean between the eyes—the second one dropped.

Total domination.

To these two, regular magic beasts weren’t even a challenge.

But the last one.

Maybe because its buddies got killed and it panicked, or maybe instinct told it to go for the weakest-looking prey.

It jumped high, sailed over our heads, and landed behind us.

Its target—me.

“Jin!!”

“!?”

Right as I started to raise my knife—

A white blur shot past my side.

Tsugumi.

She didn’t freeze up in fear at all—she dove straight into the Mantis’s reach on her own.

The Mantis swung its scythe down.

Tsugumi slid low across the ground to dodge, then slipped right under its guard into the soft spot below its belly.

“I won’t let you… touch Jin with even one finger!!”

Tsugumi flipped the short dagger reverse grip and thrust upward.

Right into the seam of the Mantis’s outer shell.

She gouged the soft joint perfectly.

“Gishaaaah!?”

The Mantis screamed.

But Tsugumi didn’t stop.

She used the stabbed dagger like a foothold to lift herself higher,

then drove her hidden backup knife into the base of its neck with the other hand.

Where all the nerves bunched up.

A wet, nasty zuburi sound.

The Mantis’s movements froze dead.

Tsugumi kicked it away and flipped back lightly to land.

Thud.

The giant mantis went limp and stopped moving for good.

“…………”

Silence hit.

Me, Cattleya, and Ray just stared, totally stunned.

Tsugumi steadied her rough breathing, wiped the blood splatter off her cheek,

then turned to me with a huge, blooming smile.

“I did it, Jin! I protected you!”

That innocent grin.

But right at her feet lay the magic beast’s corpse, its weak points brutally torn open.

The contrast left me speechless for a second.

I snapped out of it quick and ran over.

“You okay!? No injuries!?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I watched how Cattleya and Ray moved.”

Watching didn’t explain moves like that.

She really had something special in her.

And more than anything, that crazy-strong drive to protect me was ripping off all her limits.

“…I gotta admit, I underestimated you.”

Ray scratched his head as he walked up.

“First real fight and you pull that off? Scary doesn’t even cover it.”

“No wasted movement. She’s picking the shortest path to kill every time.”

Cattleya nodded, clearly impressed.

Tsugumi barely reacted to their praise—just kinda brushed it off and grabbed my sleeve.

“Jin, praise me.”

“Yeah, that was incredible. You saved me.”

I patted her head, and she made the happiest face I’d seen from her all day.

As fighting power, she was perfect.

But that pure, almost dangerous single-mindedness… I couldn’t help worrying it might hurt her someday.

We pushed deeper into the forest.

More and more magic beast corpses.

Then we reached an open clearing.

And that’s when we saw something really weird.

“…What the hell is that.”

There was the body of a One-Horned Rabbit Almirage.

But it wasn’t a normal corpse.

The body was swollen up huge, skin split open, and purple crystal-like things were poking out everywhere.

It had four eyeballs now, and instead of fangs, tentacle-looking things hung from its mouth.

No way this was a natural mutation.

“Magic runaway…? Nah, this feels man-made.”

Cattleya walked up to it with a grim look.

She poked the purple crystal with her sword tip.

“This crystal… I’ve seen something like it before.”

“You know what it is?”

“…In the Sumeragi family’s underground storage. I only saw it once, way back. It looks just like the stones they used in experiments—forcing super-high concentrations of magic into living things.”

Sumeragi family.

The second that name came up, my heart made this awful thud.

Genzou Sumeragi.

Was that immortal-chasing monster involved in this?

“So it’s not just mutations from the ecosystem breaking down… someone deliberately let these freaks loose?”

Ray growled it out.

If that was true, what was happening in this forest wasn’t some natural disaster.

“…Let’s take it back. Even just a piece of this crystal.”

I pulled my knife and carefully cut a chunk of the purple crystal off the Almirage corpse.

When I held it, it felt faintly warm, and there was this creepy pulsing vibration like it had a heartbeat.

My skill <Repair Evolve> at Level 4 now.

Maybe with this, I could figure out what the crystal really was.

We left the forest carrying that eerie silence with us.

Tsugumi’s first-battle win, Ray’s comeback.

Bright stuff like that…

but at the same time, a pitch-black shadow was definitely creeping closer to our feet.

On the way back, I looked up at the sky.

I opened my status window.

Still Level 4.

But I had this feeling.

The next time I leveled up, I was gonna have to face the darkness of this world head-on.

“Let’s head home, everyone.”

The three of them nodded at my words.

We weren’t alone anymore.

No matter what darkness was waiting, the four of us would cut through it together.

I gripped the crystal tight and hurried back home.