"Do you look anything like a magical girl right now?"
Mana poured out crudely. Having only just learned to transform, Yinluo naturally had no fine control over it and simply hurled it about like stones.
Even so, it was lethal enough to ordinary people.
But Susan had, after all, received training. Even amid that dense barrage of mana bombs, she could swiftly find safe gaps to slip through, using the trees and walls along the way to barely buy herself time.
She had tried shooting, too, but with polluted mana protecting Yinluo, the bullets could not touch her at all.
She had kept two rounds in reserve, though she doubted she would have a chance to use them.
Fortunately, there were no residents around the Disaster Countermeasures Bureau. The surrounding area was all outskirts, with only a highway where vehicles occasionally passed.
Because a Calamity Beast had appeared inside the Disaster Countermeasures Bureau, a warning had been broadcast just a short while ago, ordering all uninvolved personnel to evacuate immediately, so there was even less need to worry about innocent people being caught in the crossfire.
Leaping again to avoid a grasping mana tentacle, Susan rolled behind a ruined wall. Polluted mana chased her and smashed into it, but failed to destroy it.
She swiftly drew her gun, reloaded, and chambered a round...
"Really? I feel closer to being a magical girl than ever before." Yinluo tilted her head and abruptly swept her hand. "Maybe there's something wrong with your understanding of magical girls, Susan."
Boom!
Pitch-black mana instantly smashed the ruined wall Susan was using as cover to pieces. Susan was thrown into the air, her handgun flying from her grasp. Watching her shield her head, Yinluo split off dozens more mana tentacles and sent them silently toward Susan.
Yet the mana tentacles melted and dripped to the ground as soon as they approached Susan.
Yinluo quickly noticed the spray can in Susan's hand, her face full of surprise:
"Calamity Beast repellent spray? You actually carry that stuff around?"
Rolling across the ground, Susan scooped up her handgun and climbed to her feet. "It became a habit after I lost the ability to transform. I couldn't keep troubling everyone else, after all."
As she spoke, she tossed the spray aside, raised her gun, and aimed. "The spray repels Calamity Beasts by deactivating polluted mana, so it's very useful at times like this, too. Learned something else, have you, my good-for-nothing junior?"
She pulled the trigger.
But the handgun exploded!
She instinctively shielded her face. At last seizing its chance, the mana beneath her feet caught her ankle and hoisted her upside down.
"Then let me teach you a little something, too, Susan. The spray doesn't work on large quantities of polluted mana. It can only disperse small amounts."
Yinluo slowly walked over to Susan and looked at her upside-down face. "Also, when bullets infused with pure mana are intercepted by polluted mana, the violent collision makes them explode. Have you learned something, too, Senior Susan?"
"You're as irritating as ever."
"So are you."
But where had the pure mana come from? Had Peony transferred some especially for her?
Continually corroding Susan with polluted mana, Yinluo intended to take her away To Live.
After all, she was a former magical girl. She had potential, which made her valuable to the Witch Association. Having used so many Grief Seeds, Yinluo feared the captain would turn on her if she failed to bring back some spoils.
First, she would cripple her with polluted mana, then take her back as experimental material.
To destroy the magical girl she had once admired with her own hands, to personally corrupt her into a witch.
The thought left Yinluo somewhat elated,
so much so that she felt more inclined to bare her thoughts.
"Can you understand me better now, Susan? The pain of being unable to transform, of being unable even to struggle against a powerful enemy-you must be able to feel exactly what I felt, right?"
Struggling to resist the polluted mana, Susan watched Yinluo draw closer and closer. "People can never feel exactly what someone else feels, Yinluo."
"True." Yinluo nodded. "After all, I find it hard to understand how you felt when you lost your power to transform because of a few little schemes of mine. But I admire you, Susan. Even then, you were strong enough to stay at the Disaster Countermeasures Bureau. Just what I'd expect from the magical girl I once admired. Most people would struggle to do that."
Susan's pupils trembled, and her voice even grew a little hoarse. "You did it?"
"If you were a real magical girl, shouldn't you have overcome a predicament like that? After all, you're a magical girl who holds a miracle in her hands. Unfortunately, you never lived up to my expectations, even in the end."
In the space over by the Disaster Countermeasures Bureau, the Calamity Beast's roars and tremors warped space, making this moment of peace here seem particularly abnormal.
Silent, Susan drew a slight breath, recalling everything she had gone through when she lost the ability to transform.
The torment and pain, day and night, and the hurt and unwillingness to accept it.
It had been such a long, long time.
Yinluo savored her changing expression, feeling nothing but pleasure and satisfaction.
Yet the next second, she saw Susan smile.
In such a dire situation, having just learned that the culprit who had ruined her life was right before her, she still broke into a radiant smile.
A smile so infectious, as though she were still a magical girl.
A smile Yinluo could never show.
So she reached out, wanting to tear that smile apart.
"You're right. I am a girl who holds a miracle in her hands."
When a pendant dropped from Susan's pale chest and touched Yinluo's palm, Yinluo's smile swiftly vanished.
She snatched her hand back as though scalded.
The Miracle Seed on the pendant swayed beside Susan's upside-down cheek, radiating a gentle, brilliant light!
Now that she was transformed and possessed Filthy Magic Power, she could naturally sense it.
The mana inside was still active!
Hadn't Susan's Miracle Seed already...
"I'm here to live up to your expectations, Yinluo."
The seed of miracles touched her forehead. Fine blue threads spread from the Miracle Seed like water, with Susan at their center, opening into a vast spiderweb throughout the little grove.
The watery-blue threads sliced apart and scattered the Filthy Magic Power tentacles, steadily weakening them.
"O tides."
The threads abruptly drew together, gathering onto Susan. "Roar!"
The instant her attire formed, blue mana surged in every direction like a waterfall, submerging all the polluted mana. Standing nearby, Yinluo was blasted away in an instant!
She slammed straight into the distant ruins like a cannonball, then disappeared beneath stones, dust, and all manner of rubbish!
"Transform!"
When the rising mana dispersed, a watery-blue magical girl stood at the center of the grove.
Her long, pale-blue hair drifted as though spread through water, only slowly settling after a long while. Her sky-blue eyes had a translucent, ethereal quality, and her skirt swayed like ripples. There was even a little fish-like pattern at her chest, swimming through the magical girl's dress, occasionally leaping from the fabric and stirring up splashes of mana before falling back into her clothes.
It made her magical attire seem like an ocean.
Picking up her wand, Zhulu spoke gently. "When a magical girl transforms, you should stand farther away. Otherwise, you'll take a heavy hit for nothing, just like now."
Climbing out of the rubble, Yinluo's face held nothing but cold malice. She looked at her magical attire, parts of which had even melted away, revealing an ugly, hideous corner of a Calamity Beast, and drew a deep breath.
"Why can you transform again?"
She pressed the five fingers of her right hand together and thrust her hand down toward the ground.
The enormous mass of mana poised overhead smashed down onto Zhulu!
The pitch-black mana mass kicked up dust again. Yet when the dust cleared, rippling water enveloped Zhulu's entire body, leaving her unharmed.
The black masses of mana slid down the ripples at her sides, failing to hurt Zhulu in the slightest.
"Mediocre work, number three: Glazed Realm of Vast Blue Waves."
Wand in hand, Zhulu tilted her head, looking like a mermaid amid the ripples. "Because your wish called forth a miracle for me."
Zhulu hooked a long, fine blue thread with her little finger and gave it a gentle downward tug.
Yinluo's right hand was pulled up with it. Only then did Yinluo discover in surprise that an extremely fine thread of blue mana had wound around her hand at some unknown point. Now it tugged firmly at her arm, and whenever she dared exert the slightest force, the thread began sinking into her skin.
Even the black Filthy Magic Power could not stop it.
"As a special reward for a fan," Zhulu said, her hands continually weaving threads through the air, graceful and beautiful as though gently stroking harp strings, "I'll teach you some fine mana control."
Compared with Yinluo, who had only just transformed for the first time and could do nothing but haphazardly throw chunks of mana around, Zhulu's mana manipulation was naturally finer and more concealed.
In the Azure Cloud Sect's test, finer mana manipulation had been the final major question, worth an enormous number of points. It had taken her considerable effort to master it completely; otherwise, she could not even have become an outer disciple of the Azure Cloud Sect.
Since then, although she had gone a long time without transforming, she had never slacked off on the relevant training.
With a gentle pull of both hands, Yinluo, her entire body covered in blue threads, was abruptly dragged backward and slammed hard into a thick old tree. More threads immediately wound Yinluo and the tree together.
Yinluo's expression darkened, even gaining a hint of agitation, yet she did not dare move rashly.
The threads passed through her magical attire and the tree, weaving the two together. Destroying the tree would destroy her own magical attire as well.
Magical girl Zhulu's specialty.
Masterpiece, number four: Riddled with Holes by Entwining Threads.
Its drawback was that once she used it, she could not launch any other attacks. Generally, she needed someone else to coordinate an attack to bring out its greatest effect. Alone, she struggled to inflict effective damage on an enemy.
But its restraining effect was very good.
Moreover, such precise threading consumed a great deal of mental energy. Even Zhulu felt somewhat fatigued after finishing it.
They were roughly two or three hundred meters from the Disaster Countermeasures Bureau. Traveling about the same distance north through this little grove would bring them to the highway in the outskirts, where Shion had previously shot down the B-rank Calamity Beast Firebird.
The Azure Cloud Sect disciples should have little trouble finding this place.
Although she had restrained Yinluo, she could not be careless. Her opponent was a novice who barely knew how to use mana, but the seed she had used to transform was a Full Blossom-level Miracle Seed.
Although she had recovered considerably, she was still some way from her former peak at New Sprout.
So even if only Yinluo's mana reserves had reached Full Blossom level, she was still extremely dangerous to Zhulu.
When exactly will the help Lady Bingtang mentioned arrive...
As she thought this, still considering whether to add more threads, the black mana that had fallen like sludge beside her feet suddenly began to boil.
"You never stop surprising me, Zhulu."
Her azure pupils abruptly contracted, and she swiftly tugged the threads, trying to protect herself.
But she was still a step too late.
The boiling Filthy Magic Power had already swollen and exploded!
The blue figure was instantly blasted away, crashing through several thick tree trunks. Amid flying wood splinters, she rolled dozens more meters across the ground, plowing a deep furrow before barely coming to a stop.
Her blue magical girl dress was already stained with pitch-black mana, and blood seeped from the corner of her mouth. Dozens of threads pulled her upright, but she still could not stand steadily. She could only lean against a broken half of a tree trunk to keep herself from falling, coughing violently.
All the blue threads that had restrained Yinluo snapped and fell away, then turned into vapor in the air and dispersed.
Stepping away from the trunk, Yinluo looked at the badly injured Zhulu with something like a smile. "In the face of absolute power, technique is useless, Zhulu. My ability isn't as fancy as yours. It's just the simplest manipulation of mana to make it explode. Does it sting, being beaten so brutally and unreasonably by a beginner?"
Holding on to her threads, her magical girl dress had begun to waver, its mana visibly collapsing.
Even maintaining her transformation was difficult now.
A Full Blossom-level mana bombardment was not something she could withstand in her current state...
"Not really..."
Still answering stubbornly, Susan wiped the corner of her mouth. Finally unable to maintain her transformation, she lost her magical attire and returned to her original clothes.
Injuries sustained as a magical girl would not carry over to her original body, but some fatigue and pain would remain.
How can I buy time? I have to hold out until help arrives, or the mission will fail...
I'll disappoint Lady Bingtang and Lady Shion.
She racked her brain, finally asking before Yinluo could act, "If you do this, what will happen to Yinlian?"
Sure enough, even having become a witch, Yinluo stopped.
"Yinlian is a magical girl-phew-the captain of the Magical Girl Combat Team. You're her older sister, and you've joined the Witch Association. Don't you know how difficult that will make things for her? She respects you so, so much, relies on you, and this is how you, her older sister, treat your own little sister..."
"Yinlian."
Murmuring the name, the witch sighed. "She let getting magical girl powers go to her head. She usually pretends to be a good little girl, but when it matters, when has she ever listened to me? Throwing her weight around as captain of the Magical Girl Combat Team, ordering me about, enjoying the sweet revenge of trampling on me and leaving me behind-do you think I don't know?"
Susan opened her mouth. Even she was somewhat stunned. "What are you saying... Is that how you see Captain Yinlian?"
"Am I wrong?"
Yinluo spoke as though reminiscing. "How could I fail to see through my silly little sister's petty thoughts? My little sister, who had always hidden behind me, relied on me, and chased after me since childhood, finally got to hold her head high after becoming a magical girl. From then on, she never had any regard for her older sister again."
Her tone darkened. "She's worse than me in every way except being able to transform, yet she makes everyone think she's better than me. She tries so hard to act mature and powerful in front of me, showing off, proving to me that now I'm the one who has to chase her, that I'm the one who has to hide behind her. She must be so pleased with herself."
"You really are insane..."
"The person who least wants me to become a magical girl is Yinlian."
At Susan's response, Yinluo merely shook her head. "That's why I have to teach her a lesson, then make her see who the older sister really is. She can only ever follow behind me. She can only ever look up to me and chase after me."
Susan jolted in horror. "What are you going to do to Captain Yinlian?"
"Who knows? Perhaps it'll just be another accident, another magical girl losing her powers because of the incompetent Disaster Countermeasures Bureau..."
The black mana tentacles beside Yinluo intertwined and charged again!
Having already lost the ability to transform, Susan finally had no way to escape. She could only close her eyes and raise both hands in front of her.
Then she heard something cutting through the air.
A figure leaped up and fearlessly kicked at the polluted mana in midair!
The heavy mass of mana was kicked away like a ball, slamming down beside the distant highway. The sounds of screeching brakes and colliding vehicles rang out from the highway, followed by faint, angry curses.
Yinluo froze too, watching the polluted mana that had been kicked into the distance with some surprise. Once it was too far away, she quickly lost control over it, and it gradually dissipated.
After all, she had only just transformed and was not very familiar with this power.
Then she turned back and looked at the boy standing in front of Susan, the one who had kicked the polluted mana away. Rubbing her neck, Yinluo spoke wearily:
"I'm in a very good mood right now. If possible, I'd really rather nobody disturbed me..."
At first, Susan was delighted too. The help Lady Bingtang had mentioned was finally here!
But when she took a closer look, her expression quickly sank again.
It was Jiang Si...
"You're not the help Lady Bingtang mentioned, are you?"
"I don't know, but Bingtang did send me."
Susan covered her face and let out an inward wail.
You're always so reliable, so why would you do something so foolish at the crucial moment, Lady Bingtang!
What can an ordinary person like him possibly do here? We're facing a witch with Full Blossom-level mana!
Struggling to rise, she clutched her Miracle Seed. Her transformation cooldown was nearly over.
She could transform into a magical girl one more time, but now she had to figure out how to get Jiang Si away, too! It had been hard enough with just herself. Why did he have to add to the mess at a time like this!
Just as Susan felt like crying but had no tears, Yinluo mused, "Let me guess. You're close to Shion because you hope she can give you power approaching that of a magical girl, or perhaps relieve the pain of strengthening your body with polluted mana. Unfortunately, she can't do that, so you came to me..."
Jiang Si interrupted her. "You know how to strengthen the body with polluted mana?"
"Once you join the Witch Association, you'll naturally find out."
"I'm asking about you." Jiang Si's voice grew a little impatient. "Do you know or not?"
"Do you think I need something like that?" Yinluo could not help laughing. "All I want is a magical girl's power. Strengthening myself with polluted mana? What's the point of that? Before a magical girl's power, it's nothing but a firefly's glow!"
Yinluo suddenly flung her arms wide, and terrifying, polluted magic engulfed the entire little grove. The once lush, thriving trees rapidly withered, shedding leaves in a rustling shower!
"Look! This is the power of a magical girl, the power that represents hope and happiness! Though you can never obtain this power, Jiang Si, as long as you join the Witch Association, we can provide you with power approaching that of a magical girl, letting you glimpse one ten-thousandth of its splendor!"
Susan's face was pale. "Don't listen to her nonsense. A magical girl's power is certainly strong, but it has never been something everyone needs. Even if you can't obtain a magical girl's power, the Azure Cloud Sect has other ways to help you fight alongside magical girls."
"Yet when you lost the ability to transform, you felt despair too, didn't you?"
"Even so, I never once considered regaining a magical girl's power through the Witch Association!"
"Naturally, you can speak with confidence now that you've regained your power."
"You're in no position to talk about me!"
Yinluo drew her magic together, countless strands of it turning into sharp spikes aimed at Susan and Jiang Si. "I'll ask you one more time, Jiang Si. Do you want to pursue the power of magical girls with me?"
"Jiang Si! Don't let a magical girl's power bewitch you! You've never needed anything like that!"
Susan gritted her teeth. "Don't disappoint Lady Shion. She likes you so..."
The boy raised his eyes and unclenched his right hand.
A purple seed hung from a cord, dropping down and swaying gently.
The argument stopped abruptly. A breeze brushed past, the polluted magic trembled, and withered leaves like scraps flew from the broken trees nearby.
Only deathly silence remained.
"Is this what you're talking about?"
As though their throats had been seized at the same time, both girls stared blankly.
Susan looked at the seed, then struggled to turn her gaze to Jiang Si's face. Her lips moved slightly, as though she wanted to say something, but in the end, they merely hung open meaninglessly.
She seemed to hear Jiang Si say something, but she could no longer make out any of it.
All five of her senses had grown somewhat dull.
She merely stared in a daze at the purple flames that erupted from Jiang Si just as Yinluo's magical spikes were about to fall.
Those flames ignited all the polluted magic around them, dyeing the sky a riot of purples and reds!
Then a lovely purple figure quietly appeared amid the flames, reflected in her somewhat confused eyes.
Jiang Si, Shion...