Xiphias crouched down and gently stroked Ando Meiko's cheek. Unable even to move, she was like a lamb awaiting slaughter, utterly incapable of escaping someone else's grasp.
[Master, pull yourself together. There must still be some way... there must be...]
Her magic wand had already slipped from her grasp. Although she knew Ruby could fly back on her own, she couldn't think of any viable solution right now.
Besides, with her current reserves of magic power, even if she could break free of Steel Ball's restraints, the outcome would be the same once her magic power ran dry and her transformation was undone. The gap in strength was simply too great.
Unless... a miracle happened now.
"Xiphias..." Steel Ball suddenly called Xiphias's name in panic.
Xiphias immediately swung her magic wand. "Steel Ball! Magic Defense Enhancement, Magic Defense Enhancement, Magic Defense Enhancement!"
As she threw herself over Ando Meiko, she also cast three magic-defense enhancement spells on Steel Ball, having him shield both of them in his arms.
[Master! It's an intense magic-power reaction! Be careful!]
Although she seized the opportunity to retrieve Ruby, she didn't dare make any rash moves after hearing Ruby's warning.
A thick beam of light descended from the sky. It engulfed the entire old dojo, and everything around them was pulverized under its magical radiance as though it were dry tinder.
Now they knew why Steel Ball had protected them, but the situation seemed to have gotten even worse.
"Steel Ball? Steel Ball! Are you okay, Steel Ball?"
"Xiphias... I'm fine..."
"You're hurt?"
Even with three layers of magic-defense Stacking, Steel Ball's armor had still been destroyed by the beam. His exposed back was scorched black as though it had been burned by fire.
"Damn it... Heal, Heal, Heal!"
She cast three more support spells of the same type at once, but even so, the area Steel Ball had been struck by magic showed no sign of improvement.
"The witch Orbital from God's Staff... I know it's you, you bastard."
"You're quite perceptive, outcast." What appeared before the two battered girls was a silver-haired magical girl standing atop the sports field fence, balancing herself on one foot.
"Yeah. Other than your Orbital Weapon System theme, no one could pull off a guided bombardment from such a wide-area concentrated cannon with that kind of power and precision."
"It doesn't matter. Since you've figured it out, I'll consider this a greeting."
"You call a gift this big a greeting? In that case, it'd be rude not to return the favor. Steel Ball!"
Steel Ball, who had been standing beside Ando Meiko just moments ago, vanished in an instant like an afterimage. A beam of light also chased after his departing body and flowed into him.
That was Speed Enhancement magic light.
Steel Ball's attack reached her in an instant, yet the silver-haired magical girl remained unhurried as she took out a card and swept it across her magic wand.
As the card dissolved into particles of light, two light bullets formed before her and spiraled toward Steel Ball.
The blade returned to its sheath, then swept out. Steel Ball's Iaijutsu Slash found the perfect angle and cut both light bullets apart at once.
From Ando Meiko's perspective, she couldn't catch Steel Ball's or the silver-haired magical girl's movements at all... because everything had happened in less than two seconds.
The exploding light bullets erupted into a blinding white flash, stinging everyone's eyes like a flashbang. But the attack did not continue. The magical girl Xiphias called Orbital had already disappeared.
"Open, Gate to the Mortal World." Taking advantage of the chaos, Ando Meiko opened a gate back to the Reality World and escaped the Void World before Xiphias could react.
Focused entirely on leaving that place and escaping the hands of those two terrifying magical girls, she had no idea how long she had walked.
Waves of exhaustion washed over her. Before long, her vision went black, and she collapsed to the ground.
"Where am I...?"
"Master, you're awake?"
She hadn't expected the first thing she saw upon waking to be Ruby.
After looking around, she realized she was in a space with a rainbow-like multicolored background, lying on the bed where she had first met Ruby.
All right, so I still haven't woken up.
"It's so good that you woke up. I was worried sick, waaaah..." Ruby wailed as she threw herself into Ando Meiko's arms.
Feeling that Ruby truly seemed worried about her, Ando Meiko patted her forehead. "All right, I'm fine."
Fine, totally fine... There's just something extra on my stomach... I wonder whether it'll affect me.
"You got kissed by that awful woman. It's unforgivable! No! And Fuko too, and Rei too. Even if it's only consciousness, I'm going to make it all up here with Master! Entrust your body and soul to me, Master. You'll feel good very soon."
Ando Meiko pressed down on Ruby's approaching face and said irritably, "Quit fooling around. What's going on right now? Where am I?"
"Mm! Master's body is in the nurse's office right now. Rin found you when you collapsed while she was looking for you."
"Right, my clothes..." Xiphias had torn most of her clothes apart in the Void World. If she had collapsed like that, wouldn't every passerby have gotten an eyeful?
"Don't worry. I'll protect Master's body properly. When you collapsed, I used my last bit of magic power to repair your clothes."
Your last bit of magic power... Is this idiot staff sure I didn't collapse because she drained me dry using that last bit of magic power? Whatever.
She had escaped Xiphias's hands anyway, so she had no intention of dwelling on those details.
"However..."
After Ruby's teasing expression vanished, the seriousness in her gaze toward Ando Meiko made her scalp tingle.
"W-What is it?"
"Master, take off your clothes first."
"I swear, you..." Ando Meiko initially thought Ruby was trying to take advantage of her again, but seeing how serious she looked, she said nothing more. With a thought in the Consciousness Space, every piece of clothing covering her body vanished.
Lying on the bed and holding down her inconvenient breasts, she looked at her smooth, slightly raised lower abdomen. The lines she had seen in the mirror before had disappeared.
Maybe releasing magic power during her transformation had interrupted the process.
"Master, this isn't the time to breathe a sigh of relief."
Under Ando Meiko's startled gaze, Ruby pressed a finger against an area the size of a palm below her lower abdomen, then injected magic power into it.
"Consciousness and the body are linked, so the body's condition can be reflected through consciousness. As for this, I think it should be Master's current physical condition."
As magic power flowed in, the spot Ruby's finger brushed began to tingle in waves as though shocked by electricity... A heart-shaped pattern made of pink lines emerged along with the magic power, continuously appearing and fading like a breathing light.
Her luck had run out. Although Ruby's teleportation had been timely, she had still been one step too late.
Before Ando Meiko had even transformed, the Magic Mark Xiphias had planted in her had already been fully drawn. But while it was complete, the Magic Mark was still missing a crucial final step, so Xiphias couldn't control her directly.
"Ruby, it was nice knowing you. If I'm no longer myself someday, find a way to dissolve the contract, then find a more suitable master." Ando Meiko was somewhat despairing.
She had thought she had escaped death, only to turn around and find herself still trapped in a desperate situation.
"Master, don't say that. This Magic Mark is complete, but it hasn't been fully completed."
"What do you mean?"
"Let me explain it in a way Master can understand more easily. When you download a game or software, don't you have to unzip it?"
"Yeah."
"Right now, it's like the download finished, but the unzipping suddenly cut off halfway through."
"Wow, that really is an annoying feeling." Ruby's explanation was much easier for Ando Meiko to understand.
In other words, although this Magic Mark had been completed, it had only loaded part of its functions. It was actually a half-finished product.
"But using magic power makes Master's body react. Isn't this kind of Magic Mark meant for enslaving people?" Ruby said through gritted teeth. "Xiphias is just too awful."
When Xiphias had helped them deal with the Void King Serpent, Ruby had thought she must be a wonderful person. She never expected her to be such a villain.
"This is far more than something used to enslave people." Having calmed down, Ando Meiko began to analyze it rationally. "This is basically..."
No way... heavens... My glorious life actually has a day when I get branded with this kind of mark... First the magic wand, then that little tentacled Evil God, then Void Creatures, and now even tattoos...
If anyone dared say magical girls weren't a high-risk profession, Ando Meiko would definitely give them a hard slap, then lecture them properly.
After calming down, she began wondering who exactly the silver-haired magical girl she had seen at the end was.
Xiphias had mentioned that she was a Star Tarot whose theme was the Orbital Weapon System. It was obvious that she was a Starry Magical Girl.
But why orbital weapons? That stuff hadn't even been developed in the Reality World yet. What did it have to do with magical girls?
Ando Meiko quietly complained to herself.
"God's Scepter? The witch Orbital of God's Scepter..."
Witch was not merely an abbreviation for magical girl. Ando Meiko remembered Ruby explaining that from the beginning.
Their enemies were not only Void Creatures. There was also a group called Rogue Witches.
At first, she had thought Rogue Witches was simply a collective term for different monsters. She never expected Rogue Witches to refer to hostile magical girls.
In that case, the meaning of this thing called God's Scepter was already obvious: a Witch Organization.
"This is my first time seeing how a Starry Magical Girl fights. Isn't that way too broken? She just swiped a card over her magic wand, and such powerful Fixed Magic was cast instantly. Unlike me, who has to imagine everything and charge up forever."
Especially her strongest current attack, Silver Impact. By the time she finished charging it, grass would be growing over her grave.
But if magical girl themes could include something as intangible as an Orbital Weapon System, then perhaps she, an Obsidian-Type Magical Girl who fought through imagination, could learn something from her opponent's abilities.
If she could also use magic power to guide down a concentrated cannon blast from the sky like the witch Orbital, then whenever she encountered a Void Beast, she could ambush it and kill it in one shot. She wouldn't have to wield a frying pan and fight in close quarters anymore.
Of course, that was only Ando Meiko's imagination and speculation. As for whether she truly had that ability, even she didn't know.
Obsidian-Type Magical Girls were beings capable of creating miracles, because they could use imagination to materialize the process of releasing magic power and turn it into their own magic.
That had given the early Ando Meiko a preconceived notion that the Obsidian-Type way of fighting was imagination.
But maybe she didn't need imagination at all.
If existence implied reason, then perhaps as long as she understood the principles behind something, she could use magic power to recreate its original rules.
To create pistols or missiles, did she only need to understand their internal structures, use Ruby to convert Aether, then replace the explosive kinetic or thermal energy with magic power?
If Ando Meiko's line of thought was correct, then she needed to begin researching physics, chemistry, and even weapons knowledge.
Of course, that process would probably be very long.
For simpler firearms, Ando Meiko could likely make them herself.
But if she wanted to produce something with a complex structure like an airplane, tank, or missile, her brain probably didn't have the capacity for it.
Still, having found a direction for battle was not a bad thing for Ando Meiko.
At the very least, once she gained the ability to resist, whether she was dragged into the Void World or faced Rogue Witches, even if she couldn't win, she would at least be able to protect herself.
"Meizi, you're finally awake. What happened? How did you suddenly collapse in the passage beside the school building? Weren't you following behind us just a moment ago?"
Hearing Fuko's worried voice, Ando Meiko's emotions calmed considerably.
Everything that had just happened had been far too dangerous, and she had learned a great deal that she never should have known.
"I don't know either... I suddenly lost consciousness, and I don't know what I went through."
She wasn't entirely lying. After all, she really had walked out of the Kendo Club through sheer consciousness, and she really had lost consciousness midway through. She didn't even know where she had fallen.
"How long have I been unconscious?"
"More than half a day."
At Fuko's words, Ando Meiko looked out the window. The orange sunlight of dusk fell over her face, making her eyes sting slightly.
The rare school festival had passed just like that. Although it was only the first day, she had spent an entire afternoon asleep. What a waste of time.
"Where's Rin?" Ando Meiko waved her hand, refusing Fuko's support as she pushed herself against the bed and leaned back against the pillow. "Why are only you and Nanako here?"
"Rin went back to the classroom to wrap things up. Rei also messaged that she was going back to help, so it's just the three of us here now."
At that, Ando Meiko suddenly realized that she seemed never to have exchanged contact information with anyone in her class, not even the teacher. Even if they wanted to ask her to return, they probably wouldn't have been able to find her.
"Eat... delicious... this too... delicious..." Nanako mumbled in her sleep, drool already soaking the nurse's office bedsheet.
Ando Meiko smiled and stroked Nanako's head. The gesture seemed to stir something in her, and she suddenly lifted her head, smacking her lips as if she were still chewing something.
"Meizi... How is Meizi feeling? Are you better now?"
Before you continue