Miss Heber is fighting her way out of the Lostbelt!

Shoko Toyokawa shouted the word in Latin.

So Silent Bookstore began to respond to her power - like an invisible sharp blade cutting through the air, the meadows with dim yellow eyeballs were quickly swept into it, and with the sounds of beeping and popping, they were chopped into powder along with the eyeballs.

So it is with meadows, and so it is with trees.

The trees with red eyeballs fell down under the sharp blades without even a wail.

The sunlight that was about to be blocked above my head became bright and brilliant again.

Shoko Toyokawa looked around. It was empty. The trees had no eyes and the meadow was still only an inch high. It seemed that the previous scene was just an illusion.

A question emerged in her mind: Miss Heber, had she anticipated this and placed the book containing the spell in front of her?

But again…is there anything about me right now that's worth someone going to all that trouble to plot their own death? Probably not.

Toyokawa Shoko smiled self-deprecatingly.

The spell can remove the negative influence in the garden, but it does not mean that it will be a permanent solution.

For the next two hours, Toyokawa Shoko stayed in the fragrant garden, using hand saws, axes, garden shears, and a push lawn mower to trim the lawn, cut off overgrown branches, and laboriously cut down trees that were growing into the road.

It was almost noon when Shoko Toyokawa finished cleaning the Fragrant Garden.

But she is not only working on the Fragrant Garden, but also the Martial Arts Garden.

Cleaning up two large areas in a row sounds somewhat inhumane.

But only Shoko Toyokawa herself knew how ingenious Heber's arrangement was.

Shoko Toyokawa gazed at the orchids blooming freely in the flower beds, like golden silk or the wings of fluttering moths, and sniffed their sweet fragrance.

After sitting in the fragrant garden for less than five minutes, her sore muscles and twitching nerves were completely soothed, and even the fatigue deep in her body disappeared.

Now she knew why Heber had asked her to clean the fragrant garden first.

After her strength was fully restored, Shoko Toyokawa crossed the corridor courtyard and went to the martial arts garden.

She still remembered what Heber had said yesterday: if the martial arts garden was not enclosed by a wall, strange things would happen.

"What could be stranger than what I encountered today?" Toyokawa Shoko said with some disapproval.

After the incident in the Fragrant Garden, her mentality underwent some subtle changes, and she became more confident overall.

Heber gave her the key to the martial arts garden.

Shoko Toyokawa used the key to open the heavy gate of the martial arts garden.

The moment the door opened, a wooden sword hit him on the head.

call!

The wooden sword stopped an inch between the girl's eyebrows.

Shoko Toyokawa's eyes went dark, and she fell to the ground on the spot, her mind going blank!

She saw a pair of gauntlets floating in the air, holding a thick training sword.

As if sensing Toyokawa Shoko's gaze, the pair of armored hands raised contemptuously in the air, and the tip of the sword drew an annoying arc in the air.

What the hell is this?!

Thirty Days of Branquage: 144 A Flaming Straight Sword

It was a not-so-big wooden training sword, the tip of which was drooping slightly in the air.

Shoko Toyokawa covered her forehead and gritted her teeth as she got up from the ground.

During this process, the armored pair showed no signs of attacking her, but waited quietly.

"...Is this the strange phenomenon Miss Heber mentioned?"

Toyokawa Shoko frowned.

She gradually began to understand everything.

In a park like the Fragrant Garden, where plants are predominant, the woodlands will undergo a dramatic transformation; and in the Martial Arts Garden, once a venue for all kinds of martial arts competitions, what will emerge? Naturally, the obsession of various powerful people to fight and kill each other relentlessly!

"I see..." Shoko Toyokawa tentatively struck a judo stance, hiding her inner uneasiness well.

Descendants of the Toyokawa family must reach adulthood before they are allowed to learn judo and sumo, two secret skills passed down by the Demon King.

She hadn't had time to learn judo, and all she knew were a few "postures" for training.

As if a switch had been pressed, when Toyokawa Shoko assumed the stance used in judo to fight the enemy, the gauntlet immediately responded.

brush!

The wooden sword made a terrible whistling sound, broke through the distance in an instant, and landed on Toyokawa Shoko's shoulder.

"Woo!"

The structure that Toyokawa Shoko had tried so hard to maintain was destroyed in an instant. She struggled hard, but the wooden sword seemed to have no delay at all, and it was pulled out from another direction again, slashing towards Shoko's side.

Snapped.

Another click.

The wooden sword hit his body, making a clear dull sound, but Xiangzi did not feel any pain, only a numbness mixed with itching.

If someone had the vision of an enlightened or even daytime person, they would be able to see clearly that when the wooden sword was about to hit Toyokawa Shoko's body, it would always slow down rapidly, then adjust the angle and lightly tap her body.

Shoko Toyokawa also realized this. She didn't know what the gauntlet was trying to do, but she could understand one thing.

If this gauntlet wanted to kill her, the first strike would have done it.

Xiangzi tried his best to maintain the structure of judo, protecting his head with his arms and counterattacking with his elbows.

This was very unwise, and Xiangzi was hit several more times.

Those subtle numbnesses eventually accumulated and became a destructive wave that impacted Toyokawa Shoko's fragile nerves.

Her structure was finally completely destroyed.

The wooden sword fell on Toyokawa Shoko like a violent storm, but when it was about to hit her, it turned into a gentle slap.

No words are needed, even a layman can see that this is an absolute humiliation.

"Woo..."

Xiangzi felt a lump in his nose and almost burst into tears.

She held her head in her hands, turned around and ran out of the martial arts garden.

The man in the gauntlet, leaning on the wooden sword, stayed where he was, as if watching her go away.

......

Shoko Toyokawa sat on the bench in the fragrant garden, but her tears could not stop flowing.

No matter what environment she is in, she always maintains her fragile and delicate self-esteem.

Of course, after coming to Branco and signing the ambiguous contract, Shoko Toyokawa's self-esteem was being challenged little by little and even shaken.

She carefully considered every word and every action she took when facing Hebe.

These were all a blow to her self-esteem.

After all, before this, even when she had to rely on working to support herself and her father, she did not participate in face-to-face work because of her age.

In just two short days, Toyokawa Shoko realized that darkness had begun to accumulate deep within her heart.

She realized that she could never hold her head up in front of Hebe.

But what was even more terrifying was that when Hebe showed kindness to her, she even felt flattered, and even a little...joy of being recognized.

——Want to be praised, want to be recognized, want to be... petted like a cat or dog.

Shoko Toyokawa felt extremely conflicted, but her motivation to act did not weaken at all.

She hopes that her soul will always be independent, but her body is working hard to show that she is indeed "valuable".

This contradictory emotion, combined with the grievance of being humiliated and beaten, mixed into a pool of unrestrained tears that flowed out from between her fingers.

Toyokawa Shoko sobbed softly at first, then began to cry uncontrollably, feeling wronged and in pain. This venting cry was heard by no one, only echoed in the garden.

No one came to comfort her until she was tired of crying - for Xiangzi, this was actually a good thing.

Whether it was Hebe or her family and friends, she didn't want others to see her ugly weakness.

After crying, Shoko Toyokawa wiped away the remaining tears.

The scent of the fragrant garden had healed her body, sweeping away the fatigue.

She calmly returned to the hallway, fetched water to wash away the tears on her face, and then changed out of her coat whose sleeves were soaked with tears.

Then, Shoko Toyokawa walked through the corridor courtyard and found a protective suit and mask that fit her body shape in the small house outside the martial arts garden.

She found the arm armor from her storage box and wrapped it around her arm.

Shoko Toyokawa found the knee pads and put them on neatly.

Finally, she took out a wooden shield that was large enough to cover most of her body, and in her right hand she held a training gun that was just long enough to hit the gauntlet.

Shoko Toyokawa's expression was calm, but her eyes revealed a hint of paranoia.

"I'm going to win...you can't stop me."

She stepped into the gate of the martial arts garden.

Sure enough, the man in armor was still waiting there, leaning on his sword.

Toyokawa Shoko walked forward step by step, with a shield in her left hand and a gun in her right hand. Her deterrent power was more than ten times stronger than her previous immature judo stance.

For the first time, the pair of armor no longer looked frivolous, but instead took a strange posture, like a knight standing sideways with a sword in hand.

Without saying a word, Shoko Toyokawa raised his shield and stabbed with his gun.

The gauntlet swung the sword and chopped it down.

"So fast!"

Shoko Toyokawa instinctively raised the shield in her left hand to block.

The wooden sword and wooden shield collided with a loud thud.

“And it’s heavy too!”

Shoko Toyokawa realized that the gauntlet was starting to take effect. She waited for an opportunity, and when the latter relaxed his stance, she fired back with a gun.

But the sound of the wooden sword hitting the shield was as endless as a rainstorm!

Shoko Toyokawa's eyes widened - what an unreasonable swordsmanship.

I saw the man in armor wielding the sword like the wind, continuously striking the sword as if there was no afterswing, without considering the balance of force and subsequent posture at all.

That's right, this is just a pair of gauntlets. Since it doesn't have a human body, it can naturally cancel the subsequent changes in swordsmanship with ease, and swing the sword as mechanically but efficiently as a lumberjack.

Shoko Toyokawa was forced to retreat step by step by the wooden sword.

She simply pressed her back against the wall, enduring the attacks from the gauntlet while stabbing randomly with the gun in her right hand - but the gauntlet's target was too small, and Toyokawa Shoko had never learned to use a gun systematically, so she couldn't hit it at all.

For a moment, the only sounds in the martial arts garden were continuous muffled sounds, like heavy rain hitting the glass windows.

Shoko Toyokawa struggled to hold on. In the endless muffled noise, even her sense of time became numb.

The sword swings of the gauntlet seemed to have no end, but the limit of attack and defense had quietly arrived.

Both the training sword and the wooden shield were carefully crafted by craftsmen, but the wooden shield in Toyokawa Shoko's hand had not experienced too much beating.

The wooden sword in the palm of the gauntlet was already scarred by battle.

Furthermore, this kind of swordsmanship, like a violent storm, places a huge strain on the weapon itself—thus, the first to reach its limit is the wooden sword held in the gauntlet.

When it hit the surface of the wooden shield one time, there was no muffled sound, but instead a crisp sound of breaking.

The wooden sword held by the gauntlet broke at the root, leaving only a short section of the handle.

With quick eyes and hands, Shoko Toyokawa shot the left hand armor away.

The metal gauntlets fell to the ground, making a crisp sound.

It struggled for a moment and then stopped moving.

Only a lonely gauntlet was suspended in the air.

A slight joy rose in Xiangzi's heart, but before she could begin to celebrate her victory, she felt a hot and dangerous afterglow coming from in front of her.