About Becoming a Magical Girl Chapter 27

"That's right. This file is one of the primary targets."

"Who else knows about this file?"

Efnir stared straight at the girl.

The girl stared back at her.

Silence fell between them for a moment, then the girl suddenly revealed an inscrutable smile.

"I know what you're thinking, Miss Efnir. You're thinking of killing me to silence me, aren't you? But please, calm down a little. Since I got my hands on something like this, how could I possibly have kept only one copy? This file has already been sent back. You're too late."

Efnir narrowed her eyes and raised her spear toward the girl's heart.

"Please wait!"

The girl panicked and raised her nearly severed left hand. Looking fearfully at the spearpoint before her, she took a deep breath, forced herself to calm down, and spoke quickly.

"Don't kill me yet, Miss Efnir. Let's make a deal."

The girl leaned to one side in pain, carefully watching Efnir's ice-cold eyes with her lips pressed together.

"What I showed you was only part of what I kept. I secretly made several copies of that document and uploaded them online with timed delivery settings, so killing me now won't do you any good!"

The girl paused before adding,

"So, here's the deal—I leave here safely, and in exchange, I'll keep your secret to myself. You can stay here and keep playing house with your sister, or find another way out and leave early. Either way, those people's 'plan' has only just begun, so they won't come knocking right away. As for me, I'll leave this city without a sound and never cause you any trouble. What do you think? Of course, you can choose not to believe me, or use your authority to immediately lock down every server terminal in the city, search for clues one by one, and delete everything. The choice is yours."

The girl curled her lips as she met Efnir's gaze.

"Personally, I really hope you'll accept these terms. I don't want to end my life as a Discarded Pawn. Besides, there's something I absolutely have to do... Of course, that's a secret. I'll only tell you if you agree."

The place Efnir longed for... was not the future, but a place called the past.

Childhood dreams became cold and narrow after one grew up. Efnir liked watching over her sister as she had back then, protecting everything simple yet happy.

But...

In this increasingly collapsing world, protecting even one person was harder than she had imagined. Even if she never took her eyes off them for a moment, cracks would soon appear in her vows.

Efnir had understood that deeply long ago.

So, she chose to run away...

Watching the people around her fall one by one, Efnir would feel relieved amid endless pain—at least Yukina hadn't died.

But...

That shameful sense of relief brought pain with it.

Efnir had wondered countless times what exactly she should do to protect someone.

What was right, and what was wrong?

That question had troubled her for a long time, and she had never found an answer.

Efnir gripped her spear tightly. Only after a long silence did she slowly speak.

"So that's what you meant when you said 'you and I are very alike'?"

"You finally understand?"

A faint smile appeared on the girl's lips.

"I'd been thinking it ever since I saw that file. You really are quite interesting... You fight as an agent on one hand, while hiding your sister's identity on the other. What is it? You want to 'protect' other people, but you can't find the balance, can you? If destroying this city could save your sister, would you try it?"

A trace of anticipation surfaced in the girl's eyes. Looking at Efnir, she struggled to prop herself up. The bone-deep pain had drained all strength from her body, and even that simple movement left her gasping.

"Well, well... I'm joking. Anyway, back to the point—what do you think? If you let me go, I'll leave right away. I absolutely won't cause you any trouble, and I won't let anyone see me. I'll leave this city, and we'll never meet again..."

"I would want to try."

Efnir interrupted her.

The girl froze, looking at Efnir in surprise.

"What did you say...?"

"If destroying the city could save my sister, then I really would want to try. But... no matter what, I would never do that, because my sister wouldn't want it. If someone as pitiful as you could understand that, you'd realize that you and I aren't alike at all."

Efnir lowered her gaze. The sharpness had vanished from her eyes, replaced by profound resolve.

The girl looked slightly stunned.

Efnir continued.

"So no—I will never let you leave here."

"Huh? Are you serious?! You're fine with your identity and your sister's secret being exposed just like that? You'd go this far just to refuse to let me go? Don't tell me you're stupid enough to think you'll be blessed after your secret is exposed?"

The girl furrowed her brows tightly and looked up in disbelief.

"Do you know what the other people in this city will think? They'll only think that you sheltered your sister, that she ran away from the duty that should have been hers. Then public opinion will snowball, and all your sacrifices and efforts will be ignored and slandered. The people you protected will curse the sister you cherish and push her onto the battlefield. And people like us will set our sights on her, constantly thinking of ways to get her and use her."

The girl questioned her loudly.

"You should have realized it by now, shouldn't you? What passes for normal in this withered, rotten world."

"How I choose is none of your business. Don't use your pathetic theories to presume what other people think."

Efnir withdrew her spear and looked expressionlessly at the girl.

"The world I see is different from yours. Though there is endless despair and darkness, hope and light have never disappeared—you see only blackness and filth through those eyes full of corruption. You're merely running away, judging everyone by yourself and believing everyone is as pathetic as you. Something like that is surely beyond the understanding of your pitifully narrow vision, isn't it?"

The girl stared straight up at Efnir in surprise. After a long silence, she suddenly spoke.

"...Then... will you kill me?"

"Not now."

Efnir said.

"But I definitely won't let you off like this either... You don't seriously think that, after all this, you—the only lead—can leave safely, do you? Let me tell you something too..."

Efnir stared coldly at the girl, enunciating every word.

"You and those people behind you should have prepared yourselves to be utterly destroyed the moment you set your sights on my sister. Through you, I'll find those people behind you and pierce their hearts... I won't spare a single one!"

Efnir crouched down until she was level with the girl, gripping her spear beneath its tip with one hand. The cold gleam reflected deep within the girl's eyes.

"This is a declaration of war."

32, Calm

Running away was a shameful yet helpless choice.

Because she lacked the strength to resist, because she feared her recklessness would bring misfortune to Yukina, because seeing the predetermined fate of agents had frightened her.

For Efnir, that was probably it.

When all was said and done, Efnir still did not understand whether running away was resistance against fate or a compromise with it.

But one thing was clear, and she would never yield on it: Efnir had to protect her sister.

"If anyone sets their sights on Yukina, I'll kill them without mercy."

Efnir stared intently at the Apostle girl, her words firm and unyielding.

The girl froze.

"Is that so... So that's how it is... How enviable, to be able to say something like that with a straight face... Well, allow me to take back what I said. In any case, I understand deeply now that you absolutely won't let me go..."

The girl sighed and leaned back.

"My road ends here... How sad..."

The girl struggled to raise her hand. Silver light flashed, and the armored skirt around her body scattered into stardust, transforming into a silver-white ring in her palm.

As though all her strength had been drained away at once, her entire body slumped in an instant, and her face turned deathly pale.

The girl laboriously raised her head and looked at Efnir, breathing weakly.

"This... is my Sacred Relic. Well, it's what you call a Beacon... Anyway, I surrender. Can you stop pointing that thing at me now?"

Efnir pulled back her spear. Its tip trembled faintly before stabbing forward and flicking upward, precisely knocking the ring from the girl's palm and catching it in her hand.

She lowered her eyes and looked at the object in her palm.

The Sacred Relic the girl spoke of was a silvery-white ring. Unlike the Beacons used by the Orderkeepers, it bore no engraved symbols or markings. It showed slight signs of wear, felt icy cold, and the fluctuations it emitted felt different to Efnir from every Beacon used by the Orderkeepers.

"A Sacred Relic..."

Though Efnir did not know much about the Ruins, this clearly was not a product of the Orderkeepers.

If Shinomiyami Nami was right, and Apostles were actually agents as well, then this so-called Sacred Relic was really a Beacon. There should not have been any difference.

What exactly was different...

"Did 'those people' give this to you?"

"Mm."

The girl nodded.

"A product of the Ruins?"

"Even if... you ask me... something like that is beyond what I can access..."

"You really don't know anything when asked, do you? Is your head full of cement?"

"Huh!? You..."

The girl used all her strength to prop herself up, but upon seeing Efnir's expression, she swallowed the words that had reached her lips.

"I advise you not to make any strange moves. Next, you'll be detained and interrogated. Behave yourself."

Efnir clenched the ring in her hand, gave the weakened girl one last look, and then connected the call.

"This is Efnir. Can anyone hear me?"

In the distance stood the heavy Whale, like a black cloud, while black smoke spread through the air like ink in water.

Piercing alarm sirens rang out all across the streets.

Outside the venue, two Special Disaster Division action squads had gathered. As emergency response units, they had remained within the disaster zone on standby to respond to sudden developments.

Compared to the sports venue at the center of the disaster, this was a relatively safe location.

Several armored vehicles were parked beside concealed buildings. Team members guided several injured civilians who had been separated from the evacuation force over here, and they boarded one of the vehicles before leaving for the outskirts.

Canary stood atop a building with her weapon in one hand, looking toward the venue.

Yukina tightly clenched her fingers as she sat silently inside a vehicle, leaning out to look in the direction of the venue.

Battles were taking place both inside the venue and in the sky. On one side were Efnir and the Apostle; on the other were Ayse, two other agents, and the Erosion Entity.

Ayse's battle had already entered its final stage. Under the siege of three agents, only the Whale, which seemed to lack any offensive methods befitting its size, remained trapped and unable to escape immediately.

The battle between Efnir and the Apostle inside the venue had also fallen silent.

From the explosions that had swept through half the venue at the beginning to the eerie quiet now, Yukina's heart had been clenched tight the entire time.

Energy response monitoring data retrieved by Orderkeepers headquarters showed that Efnir was still alive, but since she had been out of contact for more than three minutes, they could not determine the current situation.

Bang—

Startled by the heavy landing sound, Yukina looked up and saw Canary crouched on a swaying streetlamp, her face gloomy and deeply troubled.

Yukina pushed open the door and got out, then worriedly approached the streetlamp and asked Canary,

"Miss Canary, is Miss Efnir... all right?"

"Eep? Little Yukina, why did you come out... Gah—"

Canary jumped down from the streetlamp and came over to Yukina.