Magical Girls Exposed!

They had to come up with a way to deal with it.

The Investigation Department's Disadvantage

In truth, the Investigation Department was currently in a rather awkward position.

In name, it was the investigative department responsible for handling matters related to magical girls, but in reality, it was essentially the logistics department serving all magical girls.

The Investigation Department did have certain authority. It could mobilize the military and local police forces, and even had the ability to deploy modern weaponry.

But there was one thing it could not do.

It could not fight Demons.

First of all, aside from the toys demonized by Song Niandong, ordinary humans could not see Demons. They were unaware of their existence.

Second, unless a Nightmare Barrier actively dragged ordinary people into it—such as the Magic Barrier Song Niandong had created—ordinary people had no way of entering a barrier to deal with Demons.

They could not see them, could not enter their barriers, and therefore could not possibly fight them.

He Xuan had even now discovered a new "weakness" of the Investigation Department: they had no resistance to magic whatsoever!

Magic, something that had appeared in this world for the first time, was almost overwhelmingly powerful when used against ordinary people.

Just look at the battle between Xiao Bai and the Songstress Witch on the Sky Screen.

Their battlefield had practically been bombarded into oblivion, and that was only its display of brute force.

In everyday life, Song Niandong—whom the police officers had seen yesterday yet overlooked—was the best example.

If humans were hypnotized with magic, they would overlook the fact that they had seen Song Niandong. Even if they remembered afterward, they would not find anything strange about it.

Song Niandong simply did not want people to find her and Fang Ming, so she had only used magic to make them overlook her.

But what if new magical girls appeared in the future?

Or what if special Demons emerged who could use magic without being magical girls?

Once they used magic on those in power, it would be disastrous for the entire world.

As He Xuan realized this, anxiety inevitably welled up in her heart.

She had long known how powerful magical girls were, yet she had never made them cooperate with related research.

It was not that she did not want to. She simply could not do it.

Not only could she not do it, He Xuan also had to stop those people who truly harbored ulterior motives toward magical girls from conducting those damned experiments on them.

Since the Investigation Department had been established, He Xuan had received no one knew how many request letters.

Those letters had only one request.

They requested that the Investigation Department open up research into "magic technology."

Every one of those requests had been rejected by He Xuan and her superior, the department head.

Precisely because they had been in official circles for so long, they knew very well what sort of people stood behind those letters.

Officially, they wanted to research "magic technology." In reality, they wanted to research "magical girls."

He Xuan had said that she had always protected magical girls. That was true.

But she had also been protecting these damned humans. That was true as well.

For that reason, He Xuan had never demanded anything from the magical girls, only blindly provided them with all kinds of benefits.

But now... He Xuan was starting to buckle under the pressure.

She had to produce something to shut up those old bastards behind her. Otherwise, the adult world that He Xuan had kept outside would descend upon the magical girls.

"Magical girls..."

He Xuan turned back toward the Sky Screen, a trace of longing flashing through her eyes.

Once upon a time, she had been a little girl too, and she had wanted to become a magical girl.

But now, she had already lost her former dream.

The schemes of adult society and all the filthy "knowledge" she had gained had long since left her unable to understand what "love," "hope," and "dreams" truly were.

She envied the children who possessed such dreams, yet she also knew that she would never again possess what they had.

But He Xuan had things she could do.

She wanted to protect the children's dreams.

To protect that "love," those "dreams," and that "hope."

Because those were the source of magical girls' strength. They were also things she had once possessed, only to lose them.

["Whoa! Look, look! I can make this carousel spin!"

Beneath the curtain of rain, Chen Xiaoxia splashed through the puddles and ran over to the motionless carousel.

The magic in her hand flowed into the carousel's machinery. Then blue light flashed across the machine, and the wooden horses began to turn.

She happily played on one of the horses, while Yu Muqiu's eyes lit up in the distance. She ran over to the carousel, picked one at random, and climbed on.

"Xiaoxia, that's amazing!"

"Right? Right?"

Chen Xiaoxia proudly puffed out her chest and raised her chin.

At the crucial moment, the green-themed magical girl known as "Mama Xiaochun" spoke helplessly. "...You two, weren't we supposed to be looking for Demons?"

"Ah..."

"..."

Chen Xiaoxia and Yu Muqiu both froze in embarrassment.

They had been searching for quite a while, but they still had not found anything. Nino had also hidden inside Chen Xiaoxia's raincoat because of the low air pressure brought by the rain and refused to come out.

The three of them truly had no clues, which was why Chen Xiaoxia had gotten distracted and run off to play on the carousel.

And dragged Yu Muqiu off course along with her.]

(Xiao Bai's side: Fighting is awesome! Xiao Qiu's side: This is fun, that is fun!)

(I'm dying, no wonder Xiao Bai said they were just kids. She wasn't wrong at all.)

(But they are kids. Isn't playing their nature?)

(You have a point, but Xiao Bai is getting beaten up right now www)

(That said, is time different inside and outside this Nightmare Barrier? It feels like a long time has passed on Xiao Qiu's side, but only a little while has passed on Xiao Bai's side?)

Sigh, that question really hit the mark.

The flow of time inside and outside the barrier created by the Songstress Witch really was a little different.

Generally speaking, time inside moved slightly slower.

But Fang Ming did not know that at the time. He would only realize it after leaving the barrier and noticing the changes in the time outside.

"Is it common for time to differ inside and outside a Nightmare Barrier?"

If you did not know, you asked. Fang Ming happened to have Youyou, an outstanding student from the Magic Academy, beside him, so she was the perfect person to ask about Nightmare Barriers.

Youyou did not immediately answer Fang Ming's question. Instead, she asked him:

"What do you think a Nightmare Barrier is?"

"Um... a projection of... the real world?"

Judging from what a Magic Barrier could accomplish, it was probably like throwing a group of people into a projected world similar to reality. No matter how they fought or how much they destroyed there, it would not affect reality.

To put it more bluntly, this was a convenient setting the production team had come up with to avoid having to create more scenes of destroyed streets.

Just like how Ultraman always fought on a soundstage.

But in reality, Nightmare Barriers and Magic Barriers genuinely existed. Sometimes, a setting casually dreamed up on the spot could be far more terrifying in reality than imagined.

And far more absurd.

Like Tsuburaya plugging numbers in with their feet...

"More or less, but... it's more like a projection of a 'dream.'"

Youyou explained, "The term 'Nightmare' already explains the meaning represented by the barrier, and time within a 'dream' was never synchronized with reality.

"Often, a long time passed in reality while only an instant passed in a dream. Or an instant passed in reality while countless years passed in a dream. Things like that were very common.

"The Songstress Witch was already a Mid-Tier Demon, so the barrier she created naturally possessed such properties. But because she was only a Mid-Tier Demon, she could not control the barrier she created.

"Otherwise, her magic would not have penetrated the barrier and affected reality, nor would she have been unable to control the time difference inside and outside the dream."

The Nightmare Barriers of Lesser Demons had the same flow of time inside and outside, and they had no control whatsoever over anything within their barriers.

Mid-Tier Demons were a little stronger than them, but not by much.

Not good enough for the higher tier, but more than enough for the lower one. That was about it.

Then that meant... Demons capable of perfectly controlling their barriers would definitely appear in the future.

After all, every Demon they had faced so far had only been Lower Rank or Middle Rank.

The legendary High Demons and Overlord Demons had yet to appear.

...Wait, wouldn't the power scaling in this show break through the heavens later on?

Thinking of the power-creep stacking unique to certain anime, Fang Ming felt a faint sense of crisis for the first time.

He could not put off improving his magic any longer.

He should first think about what to learn.

Who Would Have Thought It Was in the Sky!

[The three magical girls circled around inside the amusement park, while the rain curtain in the sky grew heavier and heavier under the influence of magic.

After searching for half the day without finding anything, Chen Xiaoxia finally burst out:

"Where the hell is this Demon?! The rain is already this heavy, yet we can't even find a trace of it. Does that seriously make any sense?! Don't tell me we've been played!"

Chen Xiaoxia was wearing sandals, but even so, her feet had been soaked by the rain until they were wrinkled.

The other two were the same.

Combined with the low-pressure environment brought by the rain, their moods grew worse and worse. Their initial smiles had vanished, leaving only anxiety and impatience.

Yu Muqiu patted her cheeks, forcing herself to perk up, and said:

"Since the source of magic is in this amusement park, then the Demon must be here. And didn't Xiao Chun sense Xiao Bai's magic?... Xiao Chun?"

Yu Muqiu mentioned Xiao Chun, only to find that the umbrella-holding Xiao Chun had somehow fallen into deep thought.

Hearing Yu Muqiu's question, Xiao Chun finally raised her head toward the sky.

"This patch of dark clouds was created by that unknown Demon, right?"

"Isn't that obvious?! Why else would we come here?!"

"Then... why don't we look in the sky?"

"?"

Xiao Chun's words instantly reminded the other two and Nino.

Nino poked her head out from the cat carrier, lifted Chen Xiaoxia's raincoat, and looked up at the sky. Suddenly, she shouted:

"Up there!!! It's there!!! Look!!!!"

The three followed the direction Nino pointed and looked upward.

Amid the torrential rain, beneath the dark clouds, a transparent rift flickered in and out of sight.

That was the entrance to the Nightmare Barrier!

It had been right above their heads all along!]

(As the ancients said: Never look up during a CT scan.)

(No, who could have guessed it would be up there? It was raining so hard that everyone was walking with their heads down. Who would look up at the sky?)

(But there actually was foreshadowing. It was mentioned before that the dark clouds had gathered because of the Demon's magic, so the Nightmare Barrier should have been closer to the sky.)

(Hindsight genius, huh?)