Magical Middle-Aged Man, Transform!

Su Bai looked toward the night sky above central Xinghai City. Violet-gold light flashed through his eyes.

The clouds there were twisting in a way that defied every law of physics.

The sky looked as if a pair of invisible giant hands had violently torn it open from the middle.

A sickening dark-red glow rimmed the enormous rift. Inside the Rift, two vast shadows that blotted out the sky were colliding wildly.

Piercing sonic booms carried across half the district, making the windows hum.

"Master, that's no ordinary dimensional rift!"

Kabi's chubby spirit bounced up and down in front of the window, despair filling his beadlike black eyes.

"Lord-Class Monsters are fighting across dimensions for territory! And there are two of them!"

The star-shaped part atop Kabi's head flashed red in a danger signal.

"I can sense the concentration of Deep Space Particles leaking into the air!"

"Both monsters are at the peak of E-rank, ninth tier! Their magic power is nearing D-rank!"

E-rank, ninth tier.

Su Bai knew exactly how the Monster Hunting Bureau's textbooks defined that level.

E-rank Monsters had a magic-power rating between five hundred and two thousand. Ninth tier meant their ratings were approaching the two-thousand limit.

Monsters could even exceed that upper limit!

For a Demon Hunting Flesh Mage at the ordinary Star Mark level, that was an impossible gulf. Touch it, and you died.

The textbooks explicitly stated that when such a Monster appeared, it was best to send an Enforcer-level Demon Hunting Flesh Mage!

After all his frequent night-shift battles, Su Bai's magic-power rating had only just passed fifteen hundred.

"If one had appeared before, that would've been bad enough. Now there are two at once!"

Kabi spun frantic circles in the air.

"If we don't stop them from crossing over right away, the energy turbulence when those two start fighting could flatten half of Xinghai City! Master, we're magical girls! We can't just stand by, or the world consciousness will punish us!"

Punish us, too? Su Bai ignored Kabi's wailing.

He turned around without a trace of fear.

"A Mutant Leech sells for around a hundred thousand."

That feverish gleam of a man eyeing a prize returned to Su Bai's dark eyes.

"Which means a ninth-tier Abyssal Core would be purer, with energy closer to a liquid state."

He picked up a calculator and entered a string of zeroes.

"Add in the profits you get from something rare."

He flipped the calculator around and shoved the screen in Kabi's face.

"Sell those two Abyssal Cores as a pair, and they'd fetch at least three hundred thousand by a conservative estimate."

Kabi's entire spirit went still.

He could hardly believe his ears.

"Master! You're calculating how much you can sell their cores for?!"

Kabi clutched his head with his stubby hands.

"Your magic power isn't even at two thousand! Ziwei's basic attacks might be absurd, but those are two lords about to blow up a whole district!"

"Once they start fighting indiscriminately in the city and unleash all that energy, the aftershocks will dissolve buildings across a huge area. Ziwei alone could never contain the damage!"

That much was true.

However powerful Su Bai's attacks were, he didn't have three heads and six arms. He couldn't block the devastation erupting in two directions at once.

But Su Bai held the calculator without the slightest sign of panic.

"Who said I was going alone?"

Under Kabi's stunned gaze, he pulled out his backup phone.

With practiced taps, he opened a hidden work group chat.

The group was called "Star Magical Girls—Tianhai Daily Squad."

It had only four members.

Besides Su Bai, whose group-owner handle was "Star Guiding Deity," the others were girls with gaudy profile pictures.

"Our top worker and Xinghai City's current star player: codename Mint, Xia Ning."

Su Bai's tone was strictly businesslike.

"Plus our secondhand-goods runner and newest member: codename Cherry, Lin Guoguo."

Lin Guoguo was the gaming addict who ran merchandise to Black Crow for him and pocketed a cut.

Unable to afford a certain limited-edition game console, she had felt an intense, pure, unadulterated desire for money right there on the street.

That extreme emotion had produced a strange resonance with a wandering F-rank Monster on a nearby corner.

And so the magical girl Cherry was born.

Su Bai had naturally brought the whole operation under his management.

Kabi's eyes suddenly lit up.

"Oh, right! How could I forget?"

Kabi spun twice in excitement.

"Under the rules governing companion spirits, if multiple true magical girls are present and their magic power resonates—"

He drew a circle in the air with a plump finger.

"—you can erect an absolutely defensive Starlight Barrier over the area!"

"Once the barrier's up, no matter how badly you hack the Monsters apart inside it, all the destructive force stays within the barrier! The streets and innocent civilians outside won't be affected at all!"

Su Bai entered the coordinates and instructions straight into the group chat.

"Mission posted. Objective: double lord kill. Late arrivals lose fifty percent of this month's shared commission."

He hit send.

In the four-person group, two accounts replied almost instantly with cutesy "Roger" stickers.

Su Bai pocketed his phone and walked toward the balcony, his face expressionless.

"The show's about to begin."

Monster Hunting Bureau, Xinghai Branch.

Holographic command hall.

The alarm lights, once cold blue, had all turned a glaring bloodred. Urgent electronic sirens stabbed at everyone's eardrums.

On the enormous circular display, the figures showing energy concentration above Xinghai City soared.

"Director! Two separate, extremely high-risk energy sources have appeared in the sky!"

At the front row, an operator's hands blurred over the keyboard. His voice cracked with fear.

"The readings have passed four thousand and are still climbing! They're nearing the danger threshold of eight thousand! We've got two of those things!"

The director of the Monster Hunting Bureau's Xinghai Branch planted both hands heavily on the console.

Several sleepless nights had left his eyes bloodshot and his hair a mess.

He stared at the roster of agents, knowing that sending every last one of them would only get them killed. He was at his wits' end.

Just then, an intelligence officer hurried across the hall with a thick stack of documents in his arms.

"Director!"

The officer spread the documents across the console.

"This is the latest report tracing the origins of the Star Organization."

The director whipped around, his bloodshot eyes locking onto the photographs.

"What did you find? Did you identify the source of Mint's power or the organization behind her?"

The officer swallowed and pulled up several surveillance clips.

"The data center checked everyone's movements past every camera along the light-rail line in the two days before the incident."

In the footage, several girls in school uniforms flashed across the screen.

"The target last disappeared into a camera blind spot just before the magical girl appeared. We found no trace there of any known extraordinary family or conglomerate."

The intelligence officer wiped sweat from his forehead.

At that same moment, Old Wang from logistics pushed a heavy supply cart into the center of the hall.

On it sat a custom-made High-Manganese Steel blast-proof case covered in yellow security seals.

Old Wang entered a code. The lock clicked open.

The lid sprang up.

Hundreds of workers in the command hall craned their necks.

The case was lined with thick shock-absorbing foam.

Neatly packed inside were dozens of plastic magic wands confiscated en masse from a convention downtown, complete with pink lace trim and heart-shaped crystals.

The director stared at the case full of cheap plastic toys. The corner of his eye twitched twice.

"These are the important Monster-related items you confiscated?"

His voice was a whisper on the verge of an explosion.

The officer forced himself to answer.

"Director, every eyewitness confirmed that Mint transformed and cast spells with a wand that looked like these. We suspect a genuine high-level magic artifact may be mixed in with the toys."

The director glared at the case.

Then he looked up at the magic-power warning on the display. The readings were nearly high enough to destroy the city.

The Bureau's prized standard breathing techniques and psychic blades were barely better than paper against a disaster of this magnitude.

Desperate enough to try anything, he gritted his teeth and issued what might have been the most absurd order in the Bureau's history.

"Now. Immediately."

The director pointed at the dozen or so special-operations agents standing by in the hall.

"Try these suspected magic artifacts yourselves!"

His voice rang through the hall.

"You must figure out the magical girls' mind-driven transformation! It's our only chance against this catastrophe!"

An eerie silence fell over everyone.

The scar-faced captain in charge of security screening stood at the front of the line.

A thick beard made him look utterly unapproachable. His heavy tactical body armor was covered in marks, and the scar on his right cheek ran down to his chin. He could usually scare new recruits to tears.

The director's gaze settled on him.

"You first. Take one."

The scar-faced captain froze.

His eyes widened in disbelief. He pointed at his rugged face, then at the blast-proof case full of pink toys.

"D-Director... me?"

"Follow the order! We're out of time!"

Dozens of high-pressure surveillance cameras blinked red and focused on his hardened face.

At the front of the hall, female researchers held tablets and data recorders, watching him with bated breath.

The scar-faced captain's hand shook violently.

This was a man who wouldn't bat an eye before an E-rank Monster.

Yet faced with that pink, heart-topped wand, he could barely breathe.

With a trembling, calloused hand, he pulled a pink plastic wand from its foam slot.

His finger rested on the plastic button that made it light up.

The researchers around him took half a step back and raised their sensors.

The scar-faced captain drew a deep, ragged breath and closed his eyes.

His voice was hoarse and grim, as though he were marching to his death.

"I'll defeat you in the name of the stars."

He even followed the investigation report and traced a tiny, badly formed half-circle before his chest with the wand.

One second.

Two seconds.

The only thing that happened was a few flashes from the wand's tip: cheap red and blue lights straight out of a bargain shop.

No magical effects appeared.

No pink pillar of light. No chic tweed outfit. Certainly no elaborate Gothic dress.

An unprecedented, drawn-out silence filled the holographic command hall.

The scar-faced captain gripped the glowing plastic wand tightly.

He felt hundreds of complicated gazes on him.

At that moment, the Xinghai Branch's elite special-operations captain—

—felt his defenses, forged through blood and fire, shatter completely.