Grand Welcome

"Yes, yes, I understand. I'm terribly sorry."

Down in the dim sewers, a somewhat weary man's voice came from above.

"Yes, alright. If your maintenance crew can't resolve it, we'll have someone at your place as early as possible tomorrow morning to provide service..."

The time was 11:00 PM. Lin Yun held his phone, standing beside an opened sewer manhole, and made promises to the person on the other end of the line with a deadpan expression yet a sincere tone.

Then he hung up, opened the text message interface, edited and sent a message, and finally put away his phone with a long sigh.

Investigating various locations where urban legends were rumored to be rampant, dealing with a customer complaints call from his subordinates in the middle of the night, and getting chewed out because he had no signal down in the sewers earlier—truly, it was mentally and physically exhausting.

Fortunately, though, there weren't many spots left. If a Pupa Stage aberrant beast really existed in Fangting City's sewers, he would be able to drag it out of its hiding place tonight.

Grasping the Flower of the Heart to transform once again into a Magical Girl, Larkspur flew into the night toward the next rumored location.

The "Sewer Song"—as an urban legend popular on the internet lately—had many different versions, but tracing it back to its source, most bloggers claiming personal experience asserted it happened in Fangting City.

The content of this urban legend was roughly that when passing by a sewer manhole late at night, one could occasionally hear ethereal, very bizarre yet magnificent singing. Though not a human language, it seemed to convey a certain emotion. Much like the legendary sirens, it tempted passersby, giving them the urge to check it out.

And once someone was captivated by this singing, they would involuntarily want to approach the source, or even move the sewer manhole cover in an attempt to listen to its wonderful melody at closer range. In the end, they would be grabbed by a hand reaching out from the manhole and dragged straight into the darkness.

If someone ignored the singing completely and showed no interest at all, then they would encounter a phenomenon akin to being trapped by a ghost wall, completely stuck in the same area. The singing in the sewer would grow stronger and closer until they drowned in it entirely.

Only those who showed sufficient appreciation without ever becoming completely entranced could safely leave the area where the singing was heard.

In its later stages, this strange tale even spawned some serious-sounding claims, saying that seeing an open yet unclosed sewer manhole meant someone had fallen victim, and news of a nearby missing person could definitely be tracked down.

However, Larkspur did not see any such thing.

Enduring the stench of the sewers while searching through them every time, let alone missing people, she didn't even spot many rats; the gloomy and oppressive sewers held only the sounds of trickling water and blowing wind.

Recalling the accounts from the urban legend, Larkspur kept her attention focused on her hearing, trying to catch traces of the so-called "singing," but with no results from beginning to end.

Just like that, she floated and flew through the maze-like pipes for a full half-hour.

The gray-yellow walls and densely packed pipes repeatedly appearing before her eyes grew annoying, but Larkspur still forced herself to keep searching all the way. Regrettably, however, this trip still bore no fruit.

Having failed to find what she wanted, Larkspur had to choose to head to the next location, but just as she prepared to pick a route and leave, she suddenly realized something was amiss:

--A half-hour, she had flown for this long, yet she hadn't encountered a single exit?

Her previously somewhat groggy consciousness instantly became clear, and her dormant magic turned restless. Larkspur moved her hand, traced out a few patterns, and then released her magic power, which spread outward in rings like sound waves. Waiting in place like that, after a round of probing, she realized: she might have finally found the right place.

Not only because she sensed extremely faint magical residue, but also because of the distinctly abnormal spatial structure here: it was not a normal city sewer at all, but rather merely looking like a sewer on the outside, while its actual structure resembled an ant nest—a cascading, nested spatial maze.

This was precisely the symbol of a Pupa Stage aberrant beast's nest, distorting the space that naturally existed in reality.

Adjusting her flight posture to lower her floating height, Larkspur flicked several balls of magical light from her sleeves to illuminate the surrounding field of vision. Her hands kept moving, rapidly tracing through the void. Accompanied by this motion, several Fawo Runes leaped from her fingertips, flying out to the surroundings to form a faint magical barrier. Moments later, the light extinguished along with the runes.

This series of actions used up about half of the spellcrafts Larkspur mastered. The spellcrafts she studied were mostly detection and defense-related auxiliary abilities, and when facing powerful enemies, one could never have too many.

Having made this series of preliminary preparations, Larkspur braced herself with maximum alertness to greet the enemy that might arrive at any moment.

A Pupa Stage aberrant beast could be considered a relatively rare enemy even for her past self. Now, 19 years later, her strength today had indeed regressed quite a bit compared to the past. For an enemy whose victory she couldn't guarantee, a cautious mindset was of the utmost importance.

Trekking along the crisscrossing passages, Larkspur made sure the magical light balls illuminated the environment first at every intersection to avoid being ambushed by enemies hiding in the dark.

This instinctive vigilance soon paid off—she discovered a lurking aberrant beast on the ceiling of a passage at a certain turn.

Like a piece of rotten meat smashed against a wall, scattered minced flesh adhered to the walls, and tendrils like feelers fixed its form in place. Without a doubt, this was an Egg Rank aberrant beast.

Thump!

Within a few breaths, it was pierced through by a beam of magic fired by the time-pressed Larkspur. Its preemptive deterrent roar was choked back into its throat forever, and it dropped dully onto the water surface, splashing up a patch of filth.

Stretching out her hand as points of starlight gathered within it to collect these Egg Rank echoes, Larkspur pressed onward.

From the moment she encountered this aberrant beast, the enemies she encountered along the way grew increasingly numerous.

A large number of Egg Rank aberrant beasts, and even a few Looper Stage ones, poured toward her from all directions of the tunnel. It was as if something was directing them, enabling them to accurately locate Larkspur's position.

Larkspur was completely unafraid.

Enemies of this caliber, barring the need to demonstrate to a newcomer, wouldn't require much effort from her anyway. Magic Armament precipitated, and strands of deadly magical thread spread across the surroundings. Many charging aberrant beasts collided head-on before they could react, directly sliced into piles of fragments by the razor-sharp thin threads.

She marched forward with a deadpan expression. Along the way, aberrant beasts shrieked and fell from time to time.

The drainage tunnel seemed to have turned into a slaughterhouse, except that what was being slaughtered inside wasn't livestock, but aberrant beasts. The smell of blood even overpowered the foul stench that sewers ought to have had, and the yellow water was dyed into a river of red by the blood of the aberrant beasts.

Larkspur didn't bother counting how many aberrant beasts she had killed, only remembering that by the end, she couldn't even be bothered to collect the Egg Rank echoes.

Until finally, she heard the singing.

It wasn't the faint, elusive a cappella from the rumors, but a grand, magnificent chorus resembling a lavish performance.

What appeared before her was no longer a narrow, cramped tunnel, but a huge cavern that normally should have been impossible to appear in a sewer.

One could not see the top at a single glance, only winding, interlacing pipes and bricks and tiles. Countless drainage outlets extended from the periphery of the cavern, and massive amounts of wastewater cascaded down from all directions, converging into a bottomless pool of water.

Above the pool of water was precisely the entity emitting the singing.

That was neither a siren nor a mermaid; without a doubt, it was an aberrant beast.

Larkspur looked up, and what first met her eyes was flesh, flesh chunks, and flesh limbs.

Flesh and blood resembling intestines hung suspended mid-air, dotting the entire upper space of the cavern like a string of colorful banners, much like a holiday festival. At the center, a huge aberrant beast hung down from the air. Its entire body was only the pink and red of flesh and blood, resembling a fish stripped of its scales and skin, yet without the fish's eyes and gills, leaving only a huge mouthpart.

That huge mouthpart was opening, closing, and writhing like a human's right then, and the graceful singing spewing from it resounded through the surrounding corridors. The intense echoes mixed together to form a chaotic chorus, sounding sacred and solemn.

There was no human language within it, yet Larkspur seemed able to discern its meaning:

It was welcoming—welcoming the arrival of the Magical Girl.