Hajimei's Secret Transformation Guide

On the deserted street, the streetlights stretched Su Bai's shadow out long behind him.

He trudged past a 24-hour convenience store on the corner.

Cold light spilled through its glass doors onto his exhausted face.

He stopped by the roadside, unlocked his phone again, and checked the balance in his banking app.

"Single digits. Forget a ride—I can't even afford the cheapest rice ball."

Because the mission at the abandoned factory was under lockdown, the system had suspended online QR-code payments.

The thought jolted him awake. He fumbled for the pocket of his hoodie.

His fingers touched a cold, hard crystal.

He hurriedly pulled it out.

The bloodstained F-rank Tier 2 Abyssal Core had remained safely in his trouser pocket from before the transformation.

He let out a long breath.

His entire hoodie had vanished when he transformed, yet the stone had somehow survived intact.

"At least this thing doesn't make everything I'm carrying disappear. That's almost considerate."

He held the Abyssal Core beneath the yellow streetlight and examined it closely.

A faint dark-red glow swirled inside the crystal, reflected in his bloodshot eyes.

"That's fifty thousand yuan right there."

He swallowed. The exhaustion vanished from his gaze, replaced by the look of a starving wolf spotting a fat sheep.

With that to keep him going, the three-kilometer walk home no longer seemed so far.

Two in the morning, Room 703, Xingfuli Apartment.

Su Bai slipped his key into the lock and turned it twice as gently as he could, trying not to make a sound.

He pushed the door open.

The old living room wasn't dark. A yellowed ceiling light still burned stubbornly overhead.

The television in the corner was still on, playing a special overnight news update from Xinghai City's local station.

"According to our latest reports, a large-scale clash occurred tonight in the West District Abandoned Factory area."

"Powerful blade marks were found at the scene. Preliminary findings suggest an unregistered demon hunter intervened."

"The Monster Hunting Bureau has yet to release a detailed casualty report..."

The television was quiet, its volume deliberately set to two.

He looked away from the screen and toward the chipped wooden coffee table.

Two bowls of noodles sat in the middle, both completely cold.

Most of one bowl had been eaten, and a little grease had congealed on the surface of its broth.

The other was untouched, with an overturned plate fitted snugly over it to keep it warm.

That was how Su Xiaoxiao always did things at home.

No matter how fiercely she argued with him in the afternoon, or how much she called him unromantic and clueless, she would still come home after a night out and make dinner.

Su Bai stood where he was without changing his shoes, staring at the cold noodles for several seconds.

His Adam's apple shifted slightly in the shadows.

He walked over, pulled out a plastic chair, and sat down without expression.

He lifted the plate, picked up the big bowl, and started eating straight from it.

Even the greens had clumped together, cold and stiff between his teeth.

It didn't matter. Cold was fine.

As hungry as he was, he could have found a way to swallow a whole live cow.

In the quiet living room, the only sounds were the news anchor's measured voice and the boy gulping down his noodles.

Back in his room, Su Bai immediately locked the door behind him.

First, he opened the top drawer beneath his desk and carefully hid the gleaming Abyssal Core at the very back.

Then he fell flat on his back onto the narrow single bed.

He stared at the mottled ceiling, his mind racing through everything that had happened.

Tonight's trial run in combat had exposed far too many potentially fatal problems.

"First, maintaining the transformation burns an absurd number of calories."

He silently made that an iron rule.

Before every demon-hunting job, he would have to eat plenty of high-calorie food, then replenish his carbs immediately afterward.

Otherwise, he might pass out from hunger and revert halfway through a transformation. He'd become the biggest joke in the entire demon-hunting world.

From start to finish, this transformation mechanism was nothing but a money pit.

"Second, those transformation effects are way too bright."

That kind of flashy spectacle was a fatal flaw for someone who wanted to keep his head down and make money.

From now on, he would have to take jobs in remote places far from crowds or work in the dead of night.

"Third, I have no idea how many times I can use it or what the side effects are."

Whether using that power repeatedly over a short period would cause irreversible damage to his body was anyone's guess.

But amid all those problems, there was one thing he could be grateful for, and of that he was absolutely certain.

"The destructive power of this thing is ridiculous."

Tonight, he had fought three enemies alone. The Tier 2 Blood Curse Species he had cut clean through with one strike had driven even an official frontline squad to the brink.

And he had killed that monster with this utterly impossible power in just one second.

He didn't know how much time had passed.

Su Bai sat up, reached for the colorful notebook in the corner of his desk, and picked it up again.

It was the book that had changed his life tonight: Magical Girl's Ultimate Transformation Guide (Xiaoxiao's Personal Edition).

He followed a folded corner and flipped straight to the last page.

When he'd tossed it back to his sister that afternoon, he hadn't looked closely. Only now did he notice a line of tiny pencil writing tucked into the bottom corner of the page.

The pencil marks were so heavy they had nearly torn through the paper. Su Xiaoxiao had clearly sneaked it in while he was out.

"I wish Magical Girls really existed in this world..."

Su Bai read the words aloud in a low voice.

"Then a superhero could protect Hajige, right?"

"He works so hard delivering food every day. What if he runs into one of those Monsters out there...?"

"That idiot brother of mine has been too proud for his own good since he was little. If he were ever in danger, he'd take a beating before he ran away."

When Su Bai finished the last word, his hand went still.

He stared at the crooked pencil writing on the page for a long, long time.

At last, he closed the Transformation Guide and slid it back across the desk.

His slender fingers tapped the cover twice.

Su Bai switched off the ceiling light in his room and closed his eyes.

Darkness swallowed the bedroom. Not even a trace of starlight came through the window.

Then a question struck him, one he couldn't reason his way through.

He still didn't understand.

Why had the embarrassing chants in a transformation guide made up by a little girl actually let him transform?

"Could it be... the one the Will of the World chose was Hajimei all along?"