"Wait, what did you say?"
Larkspur frowned and interrupted Lantern. "People were feeding Aberrant Beasts? You're not joking, are you?"
"I wouldn't joke around at a time like this."
Lantern emphasized solemnly, "But if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I probably wouldn't have believed it either."
"Humans feeding Aberrant Beasts..."
Mulling over the information Lantern had given her, Larkspur thought for a moment, then realized there was another blind spot in it. She suddenly looked up and asked, "What was he using to feed it?"
No one answered her question.
Lantern merely shook her head without speaking.
Yet Larkspur already had a guess. Even if Lantern said nothing, she could roughly figure it out, so she asked in a low voice, "People?"
"...Yes." Lantern's voice carried a hint of helplessness. "I couldn't save them."
Larkspur's expression turned icy.
Her fingertips twitched, curling inward instinctively as if she wanted to clench her fist. But after a brief hesitation, she ultimately did not.
For a moment, the words How could they dare? nearly burst from her lips. But the person before her was not an enemy; she was a companion who had been hurt in battle. There was no need to display her anger before a companion.
Coldness and rage were things reserved for enemies. This group called Black Ash Dawn had already left an utterly terrible impression on her.
Aberrant Beasts were humanity's disaster and magical girls' enemies. Every human living in the Material Realm would, to some degree, encounter Aberrant Beasts directly or indirectly during their life.
For those less affected, it might mean seeing reports of Aberrant Beast attacks around the world online. For those more seriously affected, someone they knew might have died in an Aberrant Beast attack. Others might have had the places where