For two magical girls whose Blossoming abilities had reached Leaf Rank or above, five minutes was enough time to fly dozens of miles.
Though limited by their total reserves of magic power, few magical girls would actually do so. But with an Aberrant Beast attack imminent, Cornflower and Ink Lotus still rushed to the scene at their maximum speed.
What lay before them was a district that had, for the moment, remained largely intact—and in the center of it, an enormous Aberrant Beast trapped inside a cage of magic power.
This magical cage was Luen Nore's City Lockdown Spell Formula, suited to a variety of emergency situations. One of its primary purposes was to limit an Aberrant Beast's range of movement when it appeared, preventing further damage within the city. At the same time, such a large-scale, high-intensity Spell Formula could not possibly last very long. By the time Cornflower arrived, the surface of the magical cage was already covered in cracks, on the verge of collapse at any moment.
Yet Cornflower, who had seen this Spell Formula countless times, did not focus on the Spell Formula itself.
She stared at the Aberrant Beast, which stood motionless as though it were a statue, and her pupils contracted slightly.
"W-What a huge Pupa."
Nina landed behind Cornflower, breathing faintly from the heavy drain on her magic power. Looking at the Aberrant Beast, she instinctively hunched her shoulders. "It, it looks scary... and even more disgusting than ordinary Aberrant Beasts."
For a magical girl to describe an Aberrant Beast as "scary" was enough to show just how unsettling its appearance was.
The Aberrant Beast curled inside the cage was grayish-black all over, its body marked by hard, sharply defined lines and ravines. It had a roughly human body and limbs, but its