Hunting in the Shadows

In an abandoned warehouse, several plainly dressed people crouched in a room. Aside from a precariously swaying light overhead and several mattresses left behind, there was nothing else inside.

Though they were in such a crude Ring, each of them held a phone, scrolling through short videos.

"Must be nice."

One scrawny man watched a video of a Magical Girl sending Monster flying with a punch, his eyes full of envy.

"I want to be treated like that too."

He let out the heartfelt sigh.

The others all turned to look at him.

Among them, a scar-faced man glanced at someone beside him, then pointed at that person and ordered,

"Go. Slap him twice and teach him a lesson."

The man who had been ordered stood up and gave the sighing man two loud slaps.

After being slapped twice, the scrawny man clutched his face and looked at the scar-faced man with aggrieved eyes.

The scar-faced man glared at him and said fiercely,

"Look at you. All you do all day is cling to your phone and drool over those Magical Girls. What kind of Monster are you supposed to be? Magical Girls are our enemies."

"But... I transformed into a Monster because I liked Magical Girls too much. I can't change that."

The man defended himself with a deeply wronged expression.

The scar-faced man's mouth twitched. He kicked the scrawny man, sending him flying through the door and far outside the room.

"Fuck! That's fucking embarrassing."

He cursed, then looked around Ring at the other three and said,

"Remember, we're Monsters now. We belong to an organization too. Keep yourselves under control for the time being. Don't go out and cause trouble. Wait for the right moment."

"If I see any of you unable to control your urges and going out into the streets to make trouble, then even if the Magical Girls don't kill you, I'll chop you up myself."

He viciously warned the people around him, and they repeatedly nodded, saying they would obey.

At that moment, one of them raised his hand and carefully asked,

"Then, boss, how long are we waiting?"

The scar-faced man glanced at him and said flatly,

"The day of the competition is the day we move."

While the scar-faced man was lecturing the others, the scrawny man lying outside the room twitched his nose and suddenly caught a scent that made him salivate.

A faint fragrance slipped into his nostrils, and his eyes flew open.

"This is... the scent of a Magical Girl!"

Drawn by that fragrance, he crawled to his feet and slowly made his way out of the warehouse...

After the scrawny man had been gone for quite some time, the scar-faced man looked outside the room in confusion.

"Huh? Where'd that kid go?"

On an empty street, several stray cats were silhouetted beneath dim yellow streetlights. They fought one another over a fish bone in a pile of trash.

"Hiss!"

One black cat guarded the fish bone, its body arched high and every strand of its messy fur standing on end. It let out threatening hisses as it faced off against the other stray cats.

Then it looked up and suddenly saw a cat with pure Bai fur atop a low building ahead.

The Bai cat's vertical pupils glowed faintly red as it suddenly glanced at it. With just that one look, the black cat immediately wilted and fled with a meow.

The Bai cat paid no attention to those ordinary strays. It silently turned around and looked instead at the two girls on the rooftop.

The girls stood on the roof, carefully observing Ring's surroundings in hopes of finding a Monster lurking nearby.

They were still streaming. Other Magical Girls' streams were either online performances, chats, or games. Some were even streaming themselves sleeping.

Yet the sleeping streams worked surprisingly well. The camera filmed the Magical Girls' sleeping faces up close, while their soft breathing passed through the recording equipment into every viewer's ears. It was like nighttime companionship, and everyone in the stream got a wonderful night's sleep.

It was indeed rare to see people like Molis hunting Monsters at night.

Of course, if they failed to find a Monster, it would all be a Bai Bai waste of time.

Molis glanced around. There was not a single person in sight.

"Factories, factories, nothing but abandoned factories. What the hell was the city planning department doing?"

She muttered under her breath.

Who would have thought Cloud City still had a derelict industrial district like this? It was practically the perfect hiding place for criminals.

"Let's go. We'll check somewhere else."

Xia Ya stood beside her with one hand on her hip, swept her gaze over the surroundings, and prepared to continue searching.

Just as the two were about to leave, they suddenly stopped.

A familiar Abyssal aura surged toward them from behind.

They turned around in unison.

The Bai cat and pink fairy beside them also turned the livestream camera toward the rear.

Tap, tap, tap.

The scrawny man staggered down the street, his nose constantly twitching as though he had been drawn there by some scent.

When he came closer, his eyes snapped open, and he looked up to see the two Magical Girls atop the low building.

The man instantly became excited.

His body trembled with excitement as he hurried beneath them.

"Oh, those wonderful figures, that enchanting scent. They really are Magical Girls."

Standing in place, the man looked at the Magical Girls above him and took a deep sniff, immediately revealing an intoxicated expression.

"You two..."

He looked up at the girls and was about to speak when two shadows suddenly appeared over his head.

Before he could react, two differently colored shoes had already slammed into his face.

Bang!

The man was kicked to the ground, and the next instant, a barrage of punches and kicks rained down on him.

"Monster, beat him!"

Molis and Xia Ya attacked together, delivering a righteous group beating to the Monster that had come right to them.

"No! Ah! Wait! Ah!"

As the Magical Girls punched and kicked him, the man cried out in pain again and again.

Yet beneath the beating, the man suddenly revealed an expression of enjoyment.

Seeing the Monster's strange behavior, both girls stopped. Molis's face darkened as she looked at him with disgust.

"Tch. Pervert."

Being called a pervert by a Magical Girl made the scrawny man freeze, and his old face could not help turning red.

"Why the hell are you blushing?!"

Molis clenched her fists, then summoned her Magic Armament, its spear tip aimed straight at the Monster.

"Forget it. I'll erase you now."

When the Monster saw the girl before him about to attack with a weapon, his face changed dramatically, and he immediately begged,

"No, don't! You can kill me, but could you not use a weapon?"

"?"

Molis tilted her head, baffled by the Monster's words.

"Just beat me to death with your fists. I won't resist."

The Monster scratched his head sheepishly and made that request.

"...You should just hurry up and die."

Not wanting to listen to any more of the Monster's nonsense, Molis's spear glimmered with light, and she raised it to strike.

Just then, a powerful aura suddenly arrived. Xia Ya and Molis instantly became alert and looked over together.

Not far away, a scar-faced man strode over with both hands in his pockets, three others with equally ominous auras following beside him.

The scar-faced man stepped forward, his wolfish eyes glaring at the girls as he said viciously,

"Oy, oy, oy! What are you doing to my brother?"