Densely packed petals covered the savage bull Calamity Beast. The enormous creature, nearly three stories tall, roared thunderously, merely stomping the ground over and over and wildly releasing its magic, shattering countless petals into specks of starlight that fluttered down.
"Rose!"
Seeing that the Calamity Beast was about to break through the encircling petals again, Yinlian called out. Rose descended from above and raised her wand beside her, enveloping the beast's entire body in a hazy, pale yellow glow.
It could not really inflict any damage on the Calamity Beast.
Instead, it turned every petal from pink to scarlet. The petals swelled in size, seemingly growing heavier as well, pressing the bull's head down until it crashed into the ground and forcing its enormous body to hunch over.
Rose's ability amplified the powers of magical girls. In terms of destructive power alone, her ability did not rank highly, but working together with other magical girls, she could provide a tremendous boost to their abilities.
Yinlian's petals were a case in point. A moment ago, they had been unable to restrain this Calamity Beast, but after Rose amplified them, the fiery red petals pinned the savage bull firmly inside the enormous furrow in the ground, leaving it unable to move.
Yet filthy black magic continued to gush from the bull's mouth and nostrils. The red petals covering it began to pulse along with the breathlike surges of its magic.
They were already showing signs of withering.
"Keke!"
With one hand, Yinlian controlled the petals, keeping them plastered tightly against the bull without allowing a single one to fall. With the other, she supported Rose, who held her wand aloft as her magic began draining furiously. "Hurry!"
Keke, who had remained seated on her broom above the bull, took a deep breath.
The restless, filthy magic surged below like waves, and the palm holding her wand had grown a little sweaty.
This was her first time confronting such a terrifying Calamity Beast at close range.
Yet she did not feel much fear.
Her earlier magical bombardment had not been very effective, only inflicting a little damage and enraging the beast.
So she needed a more powerful magic cannon...
Yinlian's original plan had been to restrain the beast while Rose amplified Keke's magic so she could destroy it. Yet the beast's strength kept growing, until in a short time it was almost indistinguishable from B-rank, and it was still getting stronger.
Yinlian's petals could no longer hold it down, forcing them to change plans on the fly and have Rose strengthen the petals instead. Now everything depended on whether Keke's own output was enough.
She frantically squeezed out her magic, gathering it into a new magic cannon, yet it never felt like enough.
Keke also knew that if she failed, this savage bull would cause even greater destruction.
Water gushed from underground pipes the bull had torn apart. Severed wires sparked all around, amid broken glass, soil, dust, stones, and rubble...
The urgency of her surroundings pressed in on her, and even her wand hand trembled slightly.
She remembered how Teacher Ziyuan had turned magic into arrows and fired them through a Calamity Beast's defenses. But that required far too fine a degree of magical control. She had tried it and simply could not do it.
Anyone could simply pour out magic, but drastically altering magic that flowed freely like water, then fixing its shape, was considerably difficult.
As she clenched her wand, Keke suddenly remembered the magical girl named Dandelion.
She had turned her wand into wind...
Had she used her wand to help shape her magic?
Closing her eyes, Keke delayed no longer. She immediately gathered all her magic inside her wand, then began shaping it bit by bit along the wand's outline.
"Keke!"
As Yinlian called out anxiously once more, the bull below had already freed its head from the red petals. One of its horns had been blasted off by Keke's earlier magical bombardment and dripped black blood. Now its blood-red eyes stared savagely at Keke on her broom above.
Keke finally opened her eyes as well. The wand in her hand had been molded into a spear.
But its shape was unstable, its outline constantly shifting as though it might fall apart at any moment.
"Whatever!"
Gritting her teeth, Keke seized the magical spear formed from all her magic and sent it shooting down as the beast kept breaking free of the red petals covering it!
The savage bull raised its hideous face and roared again. The surging magic blew Keke off her broom!
The magical spear shaped with the aid of her wand also stalled for an instant amid the torrent of filthy magic.
But it still fell. The magical spear, rather tiny compared with the beast, pierced its skin with a wet squelch and sank completely into its skull.
The beast that had been roaring at the sky a moment before fell utterly silent the next, its body like a statue, motionless in its skyward-roaring pose.
Then its head began to swell and distort, great quantities of flame spilling from its mouth, nostrils, and eyes.
Finally, it exploded with a thunderous boom!
Yinlian flew up to catch Keke as she fell after being blown away, then looked down in a daze at the beast's enormous body as it collapsed to the ground without its head.
Gentle breezes swept through the air, dispersing the surrounding dust and the beast's stench, as soft as a caress against the cheek. Feeling the tickle, Keke touched her cheek and looked around.
Somehow, it felt a little like the wind Dandelion had blown when she stopped her and Yinlian earlier...
"Keke, how... did you do that?"
Hearing the shock in Yinlian's voice, Keke felt a little pleased with herself, but still put on an embarrassed look. "I just suddenly remembered how Teacher Ziyuan used her magic, and how Dandelion used her wand to help shape hers, so I gave it a try. I didn't expect to succeed right away."
Rose had already undone her transformation and landed on her backside. Sitting in the dirt, she stared at the beast's corpse on the ground and sucked in a cold breath. "Captain, did we... actually recruit a genius?"
Whether she had used magic shaping or not, having such terrifying magic at the Bud Stage was truly rare.
Yinlian also recalled that Keke's magic reserves had not been outstanding during her test at the Disaster Countermeasures Bureau.
She was growing far too quickly. Would Keke surpass her someday...?
A small worry stirred in her heart, giving her a slight sense of crisis, but for now, Yinlian still smiled and patted Keke's head. "You're amazing, Keke! Maybe someday you'll be the strongest magical girl in our Disaster Countermeasures Bureau!"
"Don't tease me, Captain..."
After setting down the somewhat exhausted Keke, Yinlian surveyed their surroundings again. The other Calamity Beasts that had appeared earlier had mostly been dealt with by the Azure Cloud Sect.
When it came to dealing with Calamity Beasts, the Azure Cloud Sect's magical girls were always reassuringly reliable.
"Stay on guard here for now." Yinlian rose into the air as she spoke. "It looks like Calamity Beasts have appeared over at the Disaster Countermeasures Bureau too. I have to go back and check immediately. If there's any danger, don't try to tough it out yourselves. Contact me right away!"
"Don't worry, Captain!" Rose patted her chest. "We've still got the Azure Cloud Sect's magical girls here. There's no need to worry. Go on."
She had wanted to tell them to rely less on the Azure Cloud Sect, but looking at the situation, she found those words rather difficult to say.
She could only wave and streak straight toward the Disaster Countermeasures Bureau like a shooting star!
"You're still just the same as before, Susan."
In the darkness, Susan panted heavily with her back against a wall. She tore off her sleeve and bandaged her ankle.
Although she had known Yinluo was bound to have some bizarre tricks from the Witch Association up her sleeve and had made plenty of preparations.
She had still miscalculated.
Because she could never have imagined that a lunatic would raise a Calamity Beast inside her own body.
She took a slight peek from cover, and the tiny Calamity Beast perched on Yinluo's shoulder immediately spat a mouthful of venom at her.
Retreating behind cover, Susan looked up toward the distant Disaster Countermeasures Bureau.
The two of them had fought their way out from the Bureau's safe room. With the Calamity Beasts providing cover, they probably had not been discovered.
The Incubators inside the Bureau were all busy maintaining the magical barrier. As the purest crystallizations of magic, they would be the beasts' first targets once the barrier was broken.
So at a time like this, they could not spare any attention for the two women, let alone anyone else.
Almost all the guards had been dispatched to fight the Calamity Beasts, and the clerical staff could not possibly dare to stop them.
In any case, she had successfully gotten the Witch Association member to bring the Miracle Seeds out.
The remaining question was how to bring the Miracle Seeds back to the Azure Cloud Sect. Bingtang had said someone would meet her, but so far, she had not detected anyone nearby...
"Back when you were still in the Magic Combat Team, I really admired you. As a magical girl, you fought brutally and recklessly, never backing down, as though you feared nothing. You believed absolutely in your own strength and certain victory. Strong. Brave."
"Just a newborn calf unafraid of the tiger."
She removed the magazine, pried out one of the bullets, and silently borrowed a little magic from the Miracle Seed.
She discreetly infused the magic into the bullet, loaded it back into the magazine, and pushed the magazine into the gun. Only after hearing it click into place did she continue, "That wasn't because I was brave. It was because I was ignorant."
"Don't sell yourself short. More than Hyacinth, more than Peony, more than Rose, you were the magical girl I admired most. I hoped I could become a magical girl like you, charging fearlessly ahead, confident and strong."
"Well, that's quite an honor."
The little beast's venom ate through the wall, and Susan abruptly rolled away from the next mouthful.
She immediately rose, chambered a round, aimed, and pulled the trigger!
Bang!
She had chosen an exceptionally tricky line of fire, aiming at both the Calamity Beast's head and Yinluo's.
The bullet struck the beast squarely. Empowered by magic, it finally blasted apart the ratlike beast's head, but when it struck Yinluo, it ricocheted away with a sharp crack.
It was as though invisible walls of bronze and iron surrounded Yinluo.
"Come to think of it, having lost your ability to transform, you should understand me better than anyone."
Ignoring Susan's attack, Yinluo took a Miracle Seed from the box and held it up, bathing in the sunlight along with it.
The happiness and delight overflowing on Yinluo's face moved even Susan, who loathed her.
"Wanting to become a magical girl, yet not even having the qualifications. My dream since childhood was to become a magical girl. Although BH City suppressed all news of magical girls back then, and you couldn't even find information about them online, even then, I firmly believed magical girls existed. And I believed I would definitely become one when I grew up."
The beast on her shoulder melted and slid down her body like a puddle of mud. Yinluo's gaze grew a little unfocused, as though she were remembering something from long, long ago.
"Back then, whenever I said at school or at home that I wanted to become a magical girl, everyone laughed at me. They thought I was dreaming. Even Yinlian didn't actually believe it. She only comforted me, saying she wanted to become a magical girl with me, but she didn't believe magical girls existed at all."
"So do you know how thrilled and excited I was three years ago, when Calamity Beasts appeared in BH City and Senior Larkspur appeared in the sky?"
Yinluo tightened her grip on the seed. "Even the firmest heart can be shaken by its surroundings and doubt. I was almost ready to give up back then, but magical girls really appeared, letting me hold on to my dream. I searched everywhere for a way to become a magical girl, for a way into the Disaster Countermeasures Bureau. For those two years, I gave everything I had."
"Exams, studying, interviews, exams, studying, interviews. Facing Calamity Beasts again and again, seeking the arrival of hope amid despair. I did everything. Everything, everything! I tried every possible way to become a magical girl!"
Yinluo grew more agitated as she spoke, her face even becoming somewhat ferocious. "But I was never chosen! I couldn't get a Miracle Seed. I couldn't become a magical girl. Even after enduring countless hardships to join the Disaster Countermeasures Bureau and get close to you, I still... I still couldn't become a magical girl!"
"But Yinlian did it so easily."
Putting away her handgun, Susan sighed, a trace of pity in her eyes. "It's not too late, Yinluo. Turn back."
But Yinluo did not listen to her at all, merely continuing on her own. "She did nothing. When BH City suppressed news of magical girls, she never believed they existed. After learning they existed, she never once thought of working to become one. Yinlian, she! Did nothing!"
Enunciating every word, Yinluo stamped her foot hard. "Just because she wanted to save me when I was facing a Calamity Beast, she got a Miracle Seed. Just because of that! I would rather she hadn't saved me!"
"Why!"
Yinluo took out the drug she carried and violently plunged it into her neck, injecting all of it into her body. "Why can you do it! Why can only you do it! Why am I the only one who can't, no matter what I do!"
Vast quantities of magic began seeping from her body. Holding the Miracle Seed, Yinluo carved a bloody cross into her forehead, stroke by stroke, locking in the escaping magic.
The contaminated magic awakened the Miracle Seed in her hand, and Yinluo's formerly savage, twisted face gradually calmed.
Then she smiled again, looking at the magical girl she had once admired.
"I am willing to sleep forever in a beautiful dream. Please grant me the poisoned wine I would savor as sweetness."
Like a waterfall, contaminated magic instantly poured over Yinluo's entire body from above her head!
"Transform."
When the magic dispersed, the pitch-black magical girl-no, the pitch-black witch-let out a long sigh, filled with boundless satisfaction and emotion.
"The unbearable despair is finally over, Susan."
Yinluo reached out to Susan. "Become a magical girl with me."