“My stats have all skyrocketed!”

“Little Ra—Shigaraki! That’s our powerful cooperative support magic, darling! Don’t waste it!”

“Un . . . understood!”

“I won’t lose.”

Not to be outdone, Murder Pierrot shot out a barrage of threaded needles, but Raphtalia repelled every one of them and closed in on Murder Pierrot at a speed that made her earlier sluggishness seem like nothing but a bad dream.

“I can withstand any attack!”

Murder Pierrot shot a web out of her ball of thread and tried to put some distance between them.

“We’ll see about that! Brave Blade! Mist!”

Raphtalia was dual wielding now. She faced Murder Pierrot and fired off her skill. Raphtalia’s blades followed a cross-shaped trajectory that cut right through the web of thread and into Murder Pierrot.

“Ahhhh!”

As if to follow up her attack, lightning shot from the blades into Murder Pierrot, who was sent flying. Still not ready to give up, Murder Pierrot broke the fall and sprang back up, ready to fight.

“You can’t beat ussss!”

Filo took a deep breath and fired off another Air Block Voice.

“Ughhhh . . .”

It hadn’t seemed that powerful this time, but apparently it was still more than enough to create a shock wave that did some damage to our opponent.

“Now to finish this! Combo Skill! Blade of the Thunder Emperor!”

Raphtalia swung one of her katanas down hard. When she did, the blade was enveloped in bluish-white lightning that radiated outward brightly, and a rain of thunderbolts fell on Murder Pierrot.

“Gaahhh!”

The violent impact shook the whole arena with a loud boom, leaving a large crater in the floor. It was almost as if the ceremonial magic spell Judgement had rained down from the sky. The only thing left standing inside of the crater was Raphtalia.

We won . . . I think? It sure seemed like we had won, but Murder Pierrot’s thread was still wrapped around me tightly. Raphtalia shook the blood from her blade and went to check to make sure that Murder Pierrot was incapacitated.

“. . . ?”

Raphtalia looked closely at her katana and then used the sheath to roll the fallen Murder Pierrot’s body over.

“This is . . .”

She poked at Murder Pierrot’s torso lightly with her sheath, and it made a hollow sound. It sounded just like . . . wood? And then the ball of thread that Murder Pierrot had been holding started to roll along the floor. That’s right. It went rolling off toward a pile of weapons that had been wound up in thread and tossed aside into a corner of the arena. I had a really bad feeling about this.

“Scape-Doll”

A pair of scissors appeared and cut open the cocoon of thread that had wrapped around the pile of weapons, and something came crawling out.

“I’m guessing that buff is——?”

A second Murder Pierrot was standing there right before us. Raphtalia raised her katana and readied herself.