Choir and Dancer

Boom—splash!

A violent crash rang out through the underground cavern.

Fleshy tendrils rained down from above, slamming heavily into the water and blasting up columns of spray several meters high.

The fish-shaped Aberrant Beast at the center twisted its body and opened and closed its maw as though performing a bizarre, ominous dance, while directing the surrounding flesh to attack Larkspur with its impassioned song.

Larkspur skimmed low over the water, circling along the edge of the cavern to evade the tendrils that lunged at her from time to time. She raised her wand and tentatively fired several bolts of magic power at the Aberrant Beast in the center.

Yet when the magic bolts struck the Aberrant Beast, they vanished without a trace like stones sinking into the sea. They provoked no reaction and caused no damage.

From Larkspur's perspective, she could see that the bolts disintegrated the moment they touched the Aberrant Beast's surface, silently dissipating.

"Does it really have a Pupa Shell?"

This was the first time she had shown surprise since entering this place. "It's already evolved this far?"

A Pupa Shell was a bodily ability that Pupa-stage Aberrant Beasts developed as they continued stockpiling nutrients and evolving toward higher levels. It granted them a limited ability to dissolve and defend against attacks made purely of magic power.

Aberrant Beasts had always been extremely difficult to harm physically. Once they evolved a Pupa Shell, their defenses could be said to have no blind spots, making them even harder to injure. The thought alone was enough to make most people feel powerless.

Fortunately, the word "shell" in Pupa Shell indicated its nature—at least for Magical Girls, it could be broken.

Normally, there were only two ways to harm an Aberrant Beast through its Pupa Shell: one was to continuously attack with magic power beyond its limit of endurance, overpowering it and forcibly shattering the shell; the other was to use an ability that dealt neither physical nor purely magical damage.

The first method meant besieging it, and it had the lowest requirements. All it took was enough Magical Girls; even a group entirely made up of Seed Stage novices would suffice. A crowd of Magical Girls could swarm it and attack with magic power, using their sheer combined magical force to break through the Pupa Shell and strike the Aberrant Beast itself.

Of course, if an exceptionally powerful Magical Girl arrived, it was not impossible for her to crush a Pupa-stage Aberrant Beast with magic power that utterly surpassed it as an individual.

The second method offered more options, but its requirements were correspondingly higher. The most common was a Magic Construct. The power of a Magic Construct came from a Magical Girl's true self, a product of soul and magic power fused as one. By nature, it had a certain restraining effect on the Pupa Shells of Aberrant Beasts.

Therefore, when numbers were insufficient, those participating in the extermination had to be Magical Girls at Bud Stage or above.

While flying at high speed, Larkspur tilted her head to look at the Aberrant Beast in the center, calming herself once more. Its Pupa Shell had surprised her, but it had not been entirely unexpected. That was precisely why she had come alone.

Even now, Fangting City had only three Magical Girls. That number was certainly not enough to break a Pupa Shell. Considering that the other two had not mastered Magic Constructs, they would not have been able to inflict effective damage even if they came, so Larkspur had decided not to involve them.

Now, perhaps because it knew it had only one enemy, the fish-shaped Aberrant Beast was especially unrestrained. After receiving Larkspur's counterattack, it danced even more wildly, summoning more tendrils from every direction toward her.

Larkspur's expression remained calm. Her garments snapped in the wind, her hair streaming through the air as she parted her lips slightly.

"Magic Construct, release."

She murmured as the wand in her hand dissolved into scattered magic power. Dense, glittering threads of magic power linked together throughout the cavern.

Fleshy limbs were blocked, tendrils severed, and the Aberrant Beast's blood sprayed everywhere, yet not a single drop touched the corner of her clothes. She continued flying, and in an instant, the space around her was empty again, without the slightest trace of an enemy.

But this grand choral symphony performance was far from over.

The vast cavern was the stage. The Aberrant Beast at its center was the conductor of this concert, as well as its own choir. The fleshy limbs hanging throughout the cave were its symphony orchestra and backup dancers.

Its performance had not stopped, and neither would its attacks.

As one wave of offense was dissolved and broken tendrils littered the ground, its song changed, becoming a mournful chant entirely unlike before.

As though summoned by the song, a string of bubbles suddenly rose from the murky yellow pool beneath the cavern. Countless objects abruptly emerged from below the surface, surging high into the air.

Larkspur had yet to see what had emerged from the water, but the warning in her heart made her flight path suddenly change.

Boom!

At the very instant she changed direction, a shell of filthy water abruptly streaked past her former trajectory and slammed straight into the cavern wall with a thunderous crash.

A water cannon.

Larkspur understood. As her thoughts raced, she had already realized what lay in the pool below. Looking down from above, she could now see the true forms of those densely packed objects: they were all Aberrant Beast heads.

—The heads of Cavity-Melting Aberrant Beasts.

The choir's song was mournful and heartrending, yet its voices gradually rose and its rhythm intensified. High notes surged and fell, heavy chords lifted the music's emotions to their peak, as though it had entered its climax.

Boom, boom, boom!

Water cannons fired one after another in time with the beat, blasting from the pool below toward Larkspur.

Swish, swish, swish!

Tendrils that cracked like bladed whips lashed down from high above, carrying shrill gusts of wind as they struck at the figure in the air.

Larkspur twisted her body in flight like a bullet and accelerated again.

Such dense and dangerous attacks would have made it difficult for any Leaf Stage Magical Girl to escape unscathed, but Larkspur was different.

Like a solo dancer who had burst into a symphony pit, Larkspur darted between every section. Her light footwork and fierce movements were unconventional yet strangely fitting, as if she had become part of the performance herself. Constantly evading attacks and counterattacking with her Magic Construct, the solo dancer kept leaping from the edge of the orchestra pit toward the conductor's platform at its center.

She easily passed the brass section, and the woodwinds could not impede her steps either. The violinists were held to the side by her threads, their music unable to hold back her dancing figure.

The singer on the conductor's platform felt challenged.

It was the singer and the conductor; this concert should not have escaped its control. Outsiders ought to sit quietly beneath the stage and appreciate the performance, rather than intrude upon it and disrupt its playing.

The grand welcome was over. Next, it would drive away this troublesome audience member.

So, it closed its mouth.

As the fish-shaped Aberrant Beast at the center shut its enormous maw, the booming song suddenly ceased.

The strings of flesh banners hanging in the air writhed and swelled. The chunks of flesh overhead split apart one after another, revealing maws full of sharp teeth that stretched out their tongues. The Egg-stage Aberrant Beasts below also withdrew their cavities, stopped their ceaseless water-cannon bombardment, and opened the mouths that should have been their weakness.

Larkspur's pupils contracted slightly.

She abruptly raised her hand and made an uncommon gesture toward the dense threads spread through the air.

Then, explosive sound waves erupted from every direction, piercing through the cavern walls, blasting apart the accumulated pool, and nearly shattering every foreign object in the entire space.