Invisibility, super speed, time pause—as Takatsuki's hand of cards grew, ordinary humans unconsciously became completely unworthy opponents in direct combat.
But even so, he was too lazy to bother with these people and simply stopped time.
"To prevent you from going to other places to catch children, I'll confiscate these things."
He said confiscate, but Takatsuki didn't care for their equipment. After taking their Varanium-related weapons as reference, he simply waved his hand and made the rest of their equipment disappear with a grand lie.
"It's a good thing these children can't see this, otherwise, at such a young age, they'd be so traumatized."
Looking at his masterpiece, Takatsuki raised his left hand to cover his eyes, seeing the few people left only in their underwear.
"But how do I take so many children back?"
The advantage of pausing time was that nothing he did would be discovered, but there were also disadvantages.
That was, he had to do everything himself.
In the distance, there was a car that this group had prepared to capture the cursed children, but with time paused, no matter what operations were performed, the car could not be started.
"Hmm? I've got it."
Looking at the car, Takatsuki thought of a solution.
If it couldn't be started, he would just carry it himself.
Anyway, this weight was nothing to Takatsuki. Not to mention the immense strength brought by the Ox Talisman, Takatsuki's LV8 Adventurer rank had long given him the ability to easily lift several tons of objects.
However, after glancing at their car, Takatsuki abandoned the idea of using it, because the back compartment of this car was prepared for captured cursed children, so there were no comfortable seats, but rather special cages fixed inside the car.
"Go!"
After kicking the empty car away, cutting off the retreat of those people, Takatsuki took out his paintbrush and once again replaced his Kumagawa Misogi character card with Kanjuro, drawing a huge circular sofa on the ground.
And then...
"I was stupid..."
Just as a car cannot be started in a time stop, things drawn do not belong to Takatsuki once they are drawn, and it takes time for a drawing to become a physical object. Although that time is short, it still requires time, and now, time would not flow.
"Let's resume time and then pause it again."
Takatsuki glanced at the staff members in their underwear in the distance, and directly moved the children who were also time-stopped nearby, and those who hadn't climbed out of the sewer yet, one by one, to a distance.
"Hereby, time begins to flow."
The gray-white world regained its colors, and the painting on the ground beside Takatsuki immediately moved, slowly swelling up from the ground to become a huge circular sofa.
Meanwhile, the cursed children who had been temporarily placed on the ground were still seamlessly affected by the tear gas, coughing continuously.
"Wow! What's going on!"
"Where are our clothes!"
"What's happening? What happened!"
Compared to the cursed children, the staff on the other side were more panicked, but the next second they were once again covered in gray-white.
"Now you'll have to work hard yourselves."
Looking at the several staff members hugging their shivering bodies, although Takatsuki didn't know the exact month, the ambient temperature felt like early spring, still quite cold. Wearing only underwear was indeed very cold.
But this had nothing to do with Takatsuki. Although it was cold, it wasn't enough to freeze people to death. Even if they walked back, they wouldn't die, though if they were unlucky, they might get seriously ill.
Even these things were nothing compared to what they had done to the cursed children.
In their eyes, they didn't even see these children as human beings.
Carrying each child onto the sofa and wiping away the tears streaming down their faces from the tear gas, Takatsuki sat on the edge of the sofa.
"The magic of levitation combined with the magic of super speed."
The sofa Takatsuki was sitting on suddenly floated into the air: "That's the power of flight!"
The power of the Chicken Talisman and the Rabbit Talisman could not only be applied to himself, but also to objects in contact with him.
Although he could directly connect to the villa he had opened up using [Close at Hand Yet Worlds Apart], moving these children one by one was quite troublesome. By the time Takatsuki "drove" the sofa and landed next to the suddenly appearing villa, he lifted the time stop.
"Cough, cough..."
The time that had flowed for only a few seconds before was not enough for these children to recover.
However, the cursed children's physical fitness was extremely strong; they recovered from tear gas, which might take ordinary people a long time to recover from, in just tens of seconds.
"Where is this..."
"Were we captured?"
The dozen or so children in front of them, after regaining their composure, were not overly panicked. For their current age, they were mature to a heartbreaking degree.
Perhaps because they already knew about the IISO's capture of cursed children, they weren't very flustered.
But some children with blood-red eyes stared warily at Takatsuki.
"Alright, children, you don't need to be afraid. I think you should still remember what just happened; I saved you from those who threw tear gas into your home."
Takatsuki clapped his hands and said, "If you're wondering why you didn't feel anything, it's because of my ability."
"Like this."
In a blink of an eye, the dozen or so cursed children saw Takatsuki disappear and reappear behind them.
This scene made all of them widen their eyes, especially the cursed children who were wary of Takatsuki, because they all had extremely strong dynamic vision, yet they didn't see any trace of movement.
The cursed children were all abandoned orphans, and in this outer district, some lived alone like lone wolves, while others formed "families" like this, living together and supporting each other. In the absence of adults, the older or more mature ones acted as spokespersons.
"Thank you for saving us. Did you bring us here because you need something from us?"
A brown-haired girl took the lead and stepped forward. Judging by the reactions of the others, she was probably their "big sister."
"Why would you think that?"
Takatsuki's question made the girl falter, but she maintained a docile tone: "You possess great power, and since you confronted the IISO, it means you don't fear their influence. You've also prepared a comfortable environment for us, so I believe you must need us cursed children. I can't think of any other reason."
Upon waking up, Fukada Misha quickly observed her surroundings.
In this outer district, they knew the terrain perfectly because they searched for food every day. She could confirm that this villa had definitely not been there before.
Moreover, this place was at least several kilometers away from the sewers where they lived, and for so many things to happen, bringing them here without their knowledge, the power of the person in front of them far exceeded Misha's comprehension.
"Can't it just be a simple case of seeing injustice and helping out? Perhaps it's just pure kindness?"
Takatsuki's words made Misha freeze again. She carefully chewed on the meaning of Takatsuki's words before speaking again: "We were all abandoned and driven here by the people of the Tokyo area. If it's just about seeing injustice, then driving away the IISO people would be enough, so I think you must have another purpose."
"What you said is not bad. What's your name?"
Although she had long suspected that the person in front of her had ulterior motives, being confirmed still made her a little nervous.
"My name is Fukada Misha."