Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 3 - Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

NEGATIVE AND POSITIVE

  Detec Bell

“Never ye stop! Chaerge!”

Melville’s voice behind the girls pushed them out of their frozen stupor, and with near-perfect synchronicity, they all leaped into action.

Keeping her shield between herself and the dragon, Nokko moved into position to protect Genopsyko and @Meow-Meow as she beat out the fire on their bodies with her mop. Behind her cover, she turned on her magical phone and used recovery items on the pair lying motionless on the ground.

Detec Bell ran, silently praying that the dragon would not come her way. She’d been told that the solid weight of the Shield +5 in her hands and the shining blue water charm hanging from her neck would keep her safe, but that explanation wasn’t enough to convince her terrified heart.

Ahead, Lapis Lazuline blocked the dragon’s flames, but the violent impact was too much for her shield to absorb, and it drove her to her knees. The remnants of the flames danced on the flagstones, close enough to nearly bowl them over with the waves of heat. Rionetta ran past them on the right, Nonako Miyokata on the left, as the dragon’s fire-breathing rampage grew even more aggressive. One of the jets rocketed toward Detec Bell, and she hunkered down on one knee with her shield tilted up at a forty-degree angle from the ground.

She bit back a curse. The fire was igniting everything it could reach—the fringes of her cape, the ends of her ribbon, the hem of her skirt—and even leaping to her hair as well, producing sparks. The awful stench of scorched protein reached her nose despite the cavern’s moldy smell. Her skin was burning. It was hot—so, so hot—and painful.

Detec Bell couldn’t tell what had happened to her left eye, but her eyelid wouldn’t open. Under the shelter of her shield, she activated her magical phone to use recovery medicine on herself, praying all the while that no more attacks would come her way. Her role was supposedly escorting the others into battle, so it was funny that she was pleading to be spared when she should have been playing decoy. But still, reason and emotion are two different things, and the pain she was experiencing just then was affecting her emotions considerably. The survival instincts underpinning her fear warned that she couldn’t afford to get hit again.

Someone cried out. Though Detec Bell felt like she was about to die, she looked toward the scream’s source and found Clantail, her lower body transformed into a grasshopper, collapsed on the ground near the platform. The dragon’s thick, long tail was whipping up a gust of wind. It looked like Clantail had attempted to leap high onto the circular platform, but the tail had flung her off.

A javelin pierced the dragon’s tail, and several scales flaked off. Blood gushed from the wound. The bodily fluid, resembling muddy red mucus, was flowing toward Detec Bell.

The dragon rose from where it lay, onto all fours. The injury had enraged it. The creature was big enough already, and this just made it look even more imposing. A mere glare from its golden eyes paralyzed Detec Bell with terror. It glared at Melville but didn’t attack her. She was behind the red line—the flames and claws wouldn’t reach her.

The dragon turned to the fallen Clantail and spat flame.

Clantail held the Dragon-Killer dagger. It was fair to say that their fates were riding on whether she could hit the dragon. And the dragon wasn’t targeting Melville, who’d attacked from outside its firing range. It had deliberately sought out Clantail and gone for her. That didn’t seem like a coincidence. Was it just instinct? No. The dragon’s cheeks were pulled back. Was it smiling?

Detec Bell was shocked.

They’d discussed their strategy right here in this cavern, right in front of the dragon. They had assumed the monsters had hardly any intellect and so wouldn’t be able to understand human language, either—despite the fact that none of them could have known for sure.

But then, right as the flames left the reptile’s mouth, a blue glimmer arced through the air and rolled to a stop just ahead of Clantail. Lapis Lazuline, her shield raised, blocked the flames. The fire continued with a second and third shot—Detec Bell ran toward them, as did the other girls, but they didn’t make it. After the third breath, Lapis Lazuline was blown backward, tumbling away until the rock wall forcibly stopped her. Her arms dangled limply, unable to hold up her shield as she slumped against the wall.

The dragon inhaled a breath to finish off Clantail, collapsed behind Lazuline, but then it paused, its cheeks bulging. Its target was gone. Lips pressed tight against the pressure in its cheeks, it looked around, but Clantail wasn’t to be seen. Before the dragon could find the target for its attack, a javelin pierced its throat, and the aimless column of fire disappeared just before the red line.

The dragon reared on its hind legs and howled, burying the malice and intelligence Detec Bell had glimpsed, revealing its bestial nature, roaring until the cavern trembled. Cracks ran up the rock walls, stalactites crumbled, and the rope ladder swayed wildly. The roar might have damaged human eardrums, or even knocked a human out with a concussion. Even a magical girl like Detec Bell felt her knees nearly give way.

She looked up at the rearing dragon, and the ceiling beyond it caught her eye. Something was holding on up there. It was faintly gray, sparsely flecked with color, and had a long tail. The five toes of each foot were splayed wide, sticking fast to the ceiling. It was a gecko.

If Detec Bell remembered right, hundreds of thousands of ultrafine hairs grew on those toe pads, producing a unique attractive force between them and any object they touched, and causing the gecko to cling…or so she had read in some article on an Internet news site or something. Clantail, her lower body transformed into a gecko, hid from the dragon’s howl and softly dropped down from the ceiling. In her right hand, she grasped the dagger.

The Great Dragon, roaring to intimidate its enemies and also, most likely, to embolden itself, was so loud that it didn’t notice the attack from above. Clantail thrust the dagger into the dragon’s crown, and a few seconds later, the earth shuddered below as it fell. Though it had been stabbed by a mere dagger, a large volume of blood gushed from the Great Dragon’s head, and its head and forelegs tumbled forward as it collapsed.

Even now, Detec Bell’s knees wanted to tremble, but she forced herself to run toward Lazuline, who was still leaning motionless against the rock wall.

Two hours later, a sudden gust of wind swept through the burned stench choking the underground cavern. Looking up, Detec Bell saw light slanting in through the hole in the ceiling. The air must have blown in from there.

The blood smell that had filled the place only moments ago was already gone—not because the wind had carried it out, but because the Great Dragon’s body, the source of the odor, had vanished. Monster bodies vanished a set amount of time after their defeat. The dragon was gone, as was its viscous red blood, and only the reek of everything it had charred remained. Though the monsters’ bodies would go, the players’ bodies did not.

Detec Bell had investigated every single spot she could: the carved rock walls, the tiled flagstones, the curved red line on the flagstones, the circular platform over twenty yards wide in the center of the red circle, the rope bridge hanging above the platform, and the hole leading beyond. She couldn’t sniff out anything suspicious on the floor, walls, or elsewhere. Detec Bell sighed. She had even thoroughly examined the dead magical girls’ bodies. It had made her sick just to look, but still, she’d closely and carefully mobilized all the knowledge at her disposal. Though her inspection wasn’t really reliable enough to be called an autopsy, she had examined them anyway.

A set of footsteps echoed across the stone floor of the massive cavern, which had once fit a great, fifty-foot-long creature with room to spare. The sound gradually got louder, then stopped.

“So, any results?” Pfle asked, lighthearted astride Shadow Gale’s back.

“Nothing good.” Detec Bell shook her head heavily. Genopsyko Yumenoshima had killed @Meow-Meow. While the Great Dragon’s flame had been the direct cause of their deaths, Genopsyko’s actions had clearly led to that attack.

Had Genopsyko been following them? @Meow-Meow had been at the rear, but they couldn’t ask her any questions now. Nokko, who’d been walking second to last, had said she’d checked behind them a number of times, but there had been no sign of anyone following them, or so Detec Bell had thought, which meant that Genopsyko must have been very good at tailing.

If Genopsyko had been following them, then she had to have heard Pfle’s explanation at the beginning: that anyone who crossed the red line would be mercilessly showered with the dragon’s flaming breath. Those flames had been powerful enough to evaporate a fist-sized rock, and as Rionetta had put it, hot enough to turn you into a “black smudge.”

Genopsyko Yumenoshima’s magic had been her invincible suit. She had said that as long as her visor was down, she could even jump into a sea of magma and be okay. But for some reason, she had lifted her visor and was burned coal-black to the core. If @Meow-Meow had been cooked like a Kamakura ham, then Genopsyko was charcoal. She had been carbonized, leaving hardly a trace of her remains. The reason @Meow-Meow was better off had to be because she’d been equipped with the water charm accessory, which gave her resistance to fire attacks. She hadn’t used her shield, so the flames had burned her up, but the water charm had still taken effect.

In other words, that meant that Genopsyko had leaped onto @Meow-Meow with no flame-resistant equipment, her visor up and leaving her entirely unguarded, so she could be burned to a crisp. She had been prepared all along to take @Meow-Meow down with her—it hadn’t really been an attack. More like forced double suicide.

When Melville, Cherna, and Lazuline had witnessed Genopsyko’s actions, they’d also been left a message hinting of a traitor among them. Detec Bell had seen that message herself. Was @Meow-Meow the traitor Genopsyko had been referring to? Had Genopsyko, through some means, discovered that @Meow-Meow was a traitor and killed her in order to stop her? To punish her? To get revenge?

Pfle swept her bangs back and gazed up at the platform. When she reached for her hair, her elbow hit the back of Shadow Gale’s head, making her mount yelp. “Does it look like further investigation will benefit us at all?” Pfle asked.

Detec Bell looked up at Pfle. With her bangs out of the way, her eye patch was clear to see. It was in the shape of a little bird, classy and sweet, and somehow silly, too. “I believe I’ve investigated everything I should,” Detec Bell replied.

“All right. Thank you, Detec Bell. Just one more thing, then.” Pfle’s gaze shifted from the platform to the hole above it.

Two figures were descending the rope ladder from the opening. The boisterous one was Lapis Lazuline. Of all the survivors, she had to have been most seriously wounded, but after her recovery, she was just as chatty as ever. The next one down was Nokko. She was glum, showing no reaction to Lazuline’s babbling. Detec Bell sympathized entirely with Nokko’s depression. Of course she would be upset.

What didn’t seem natural was Lazuline’s chipper attitude. She had acted as Clantail’s shield and ended up badly hurt. One more hit, and she would have died. But despite all that, she was acting like her usual bubbly, loud, idiotic self.

“Could you help bury the two of them?” asked Pfle.

The remark came while Detec Bell was lost in thought, figuring she should hurry up her investigation, and she looked over at the other girl without thinking. She gazed at her for a while, then silently nodded.

  Nokko

Except for the girls who were particularly proud of their strength, no one had objected when Nokko said she wanted to dig the graves herself. They looked sorry for her, as if she was terribly tragic and pitiful. Clantail approached her quietly, pulled out her magical phone, turned to Nokko, and did something with it. There was an electronic sound. “Use that.”

She spoke so briefly, it was hard to tell, but Clantail had most likely transferred an item to her out of kindness. The word SHOVEL was displayed on Nokko’s magical phone.

Nokko used the shovel to begin digging two holes and piling the earth that would cover their bodies. Come to think of it, she’d helped with burials a number of times since Daisy’s death. This time, now that they had this shovel thanks to R, the big job of digging graves for @Meow-Meow and the others was a lot easier.

“I’m the strongest, so I’ll dig the holes,” Lazuline said to her, perhaps because she believed Nokko was hurting. Maybe she was trying to be considerate, since @Meow-Meow and Genopsyko, Nokko’s two allies, had killed each other, leaving her on her own.

“No…I’ll do it,” said Nokko.

“You should just leave it to Lazuline and me,” Detec Bell said.

But Nokko shook her head at her, too. “I want to do it. I’m sorry, but could I ask you for some stones to leave on top?” She stuck the shovel into the ground.

If a human attempted to dig a hole big enough to bury a whole body in this hard wasteland, the job might take half a day. But Nokko, though smaller than the others, still had the strength of a magical girl. Quickly and efficiently, she had no trouble breaking into the ground and piling up the earth from the hole beside it.

Nokko eyed the blade of the shovel. There were no chips, breaks, or dents. It was sturdy, and it stood up to magical-girl strength, too.

@Meow-Meow’s body was in such a horrible state, it hurt to look at it, while Genopsyko’s corpse was difficult to even recognize as a body. Maybe Lazuline had wanted to take over the grave-digging in order to spare Nokko from seeing this.

Once Nokko was done burying the bodies, she packed the dirt back in and made two earth mounds. On top of those, she placed the small, fist-sized stones that Detec Bell and Lazuline had gathered for her. She would use these instead of grave markers. Now there were six graves lined up outside of the wasteland town. How many more are there going to be? Nokko couldn’t help thinking with a shudder before immediately erasing the thought.

Nokko stabbed her shovel into the ground, wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, and looked up at the sky. The glare of the sun was aggravating. It was scorching and bright, as it was every day.

Lazuline squatted before the graves and put her hands together. “Sorry they’re just makeshift graves.”

Nokko squatted down too, pressing her palms together and closing her eyes.

  Shadow Gale

From the platform, she could overlook the whole cavern.

Detec Bell had been investigating the area, but she was now gone. She had left to meet up with the others trail-blazing in the new area. They would be exploring and beating things up in the next level.

With everyone gone, the cavern felt incredibly lonely. Until all the magical girls had come, the Great Dragon must have just been gazing at these sights the whole time, all alone. It was just a monster in a game, just a lump of data, and though Shadow Gale thought it was stupid to feel empathy for such a thing, even so, she wouldn’t have wanted to need to take up such a role.

“You’re getting sentimental right now, aren’t you?” came a whisper in her ear, and Shadow Gale’s feelings evaporated. “But I’m not here to criticize you. Just stop thinking about our friend the Great Dragon,” said Pfle.

“Stop reading my mind,” Shadow Gale shot back.

“We’ve known each other for such a long time. I can read your mind as much as I want. For example…you think I act like an old man.”

“I mean, you do.”

“Oh, but being concerned about the comfort of your desk chair and saving up all your allowance to scour shopping sites for one is normal for a sprightly youth? That’s more senior citizen–like.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“If you’re going to be sympathizing with our dear Great Dragon’s situation, then it seems you won’t be able to carry out the mission I have planned for you.” Her voice lowered. With Pfle on Shadow Gale’s back, Shadow Gale couldn’t see her face, but she seemed to be speaking fairly seriously.

“What is it you plan to have me do?” Shadow Gale asked.

“It’s no great labor, and neither is it dangerous. It will just take some effort. For the first step of your task, go up that rope ladder, if you would.”

As per Pfle’s instructions, Shadow Gale climbed the ladder. It led to the next area gate. Going up and down the ladder with the added burden of a second person was a rough task. You’d have to be fairly strong, or you’d likely either drop your passenger or fall. Only today, Shadow Gale had had to do it a number of times. It’s a good thing I’m a magical girl, she thought, and then she realized, but then, it’s precisely because I’m a magical girl that I’m being worked like a dog.

After they climbed the rope ladder and crawled out of the hole, all around them was a great body of water, without a single ripple to be seen on its surface. To their right was a ledge, and to the left, a rock wall. Both of them looked natural, seemingly untouched. Within this space was the massive underground lake about half a mile in diameter, and the hole led to its shore. It was over thirty feet up to the ceiling, which was bristled with stalactites. The cavern’s width aside, it wasn’t nearly as tall as the cavern below. The whole area was green, and the lake was a faint blue. It was colder than below and filled with clear, refreshing air. These were the sights intended for powerful words like sublime or mystical.

The detail of this space was rather excessive and elaborate for just a path to connect the two areas. Shadow Gale was mildly impressed, but she couldn’t handle any more griping about her sentimentality, so she didn’t let it show on her face as she walked along. Fortunately, no monsters appeared. Was that because the gate that separated the areas was close by?

The boulders here were mossy, perhaps because of moisture from the lake, so she had to pay attention as she walked, or she’d have been at even more risk of slipping than they had been back in those caves in the subterranean area.

It seemed to Shadow Gale that the water in the lake was somewhat on the clearer side, but she still couldn’t actually tell what was in its depths. She took the widest possible detour around it, keeping one hand on the wall. Once she’d gone halfway around the lake, she came to a place on the left side where the rock wall was hollowed out. It was the only spot on this floor that looked to have a human touch. There were stairs carved out here, leading up. Shadow Gale was forced to climb the whole flight. She ascended over a hundred yards to reach a thick wooden door, and upon opening that, they finally arrived in the next area.

This area was a library: The endless lines of shelves packed with books continued off toward the horizon. It was the same in the other direction. Wasteland, grasslands, mountains, a city, a subterranean area, and now for some reason, a library.

Shadow Gale lowered Pfle onto a chair at a table and then sat down across from her. Finally at ease, she looked around. This place had three things in common with the subterranean area: It smelled like mold, it was dreary, and there was no sunlight. The chairs made her butt sore if she sat on them for too long, the long tables seemed like they would break if they took a hit, and the floorboards would probably come loose if you ran on them. They creaked whenever she just walked across. Looking up at the ceiling, she saw panels were nailed onto it at a diagonal, probably an attempt at simulating shoddy repairs. Those same repair sites were lined up perfectly at regular intervals, very much like a video game. This would make it the second time they had come to the library area, but no matter how many times they did, the dust was suffocating.

When they’d first arrived here, Pfle had cried, “Amazing!” and taken a book in hand. But then she had discovered that the books were nothing but covers, just blank paper inside. She’d made certain they were only genuine, pure-white paper, even when soaked in water, dripped with chemicals, held over a candle, or sniffed, and Pfle had not even touched the volumes since.

“Then let’s check some things,” said Pfle. “Boot up the Item Encyclopedia. It’s convenient how it records any items the other parties buy. Check which items are purchasable at this area’s shop.”

A magic carpet. It would fly, just as promised. It could carry at most the weight of an adult man, and the fastest it could go was an adult man’s running speed. This game was big, though each area did differ in size. The largest of the levels, the wasteland, had to be almost two hundred miles from end to end. Ultimately, the magical girls typically got around by running, so a vehicle that could only go as fast as a running man was unnecessary. Aside from Pfle, who had lost her wheelchair, none of the other magical girls would need it.

The holy charms. These were of the same category as the charms sold in the subterranean area. It endowed the one who equipped it with holy elemental defense, which lessened the damage done by demonic monsters, and similarly, also raised the magical girls’ attack power against them. According to the bestiary, monsters like fiends and wraiths spawned in the library area, so these would be important items.

The weapon +7. Of course, it was the evolution of the weapon +5. They were easier to use, sturdier, and more powerful than the +5 weapons. But they were insanely expensive—so expensive you had to beat a hundred normal dragons to buy one. Many of the players had spent almost all the magical candy in their possession to get ahold of one of these.

Shield +7. Some of the girls prioritized purchasing this over the weapon. Aside from those magical girls who had an aptitude for shields—or actually, that was just Clantail—so far, none of them had been equipping them as a matter of course. Why? Because they weren’t beautiful. Large, boorish shields didn’t suit the kitschy, lovable charm of magical girls. Part of being a magical girl was being inefficient at times, even wearing things that got in the way and made it difficult to move, but always being cute nonetheless.

But now they all knew they could no longer afford to hold on to that doctrine. If they wanted to block their enemies’ attacks, the shields worked, and they would help the girls survive.

Pfle scrolled through the Item Encyclopedia. “That’s it for the items purchased at the shop. Next, for the items acquired through R.”

R gave you a random item and cost one hundred candy each time. For such a price, the item acquired was nearly always a map that sold for three candy, and they never seemed to get any other items.

Each time Pfle and Shadow Gale had won rewards for finishing quests and things, they had bought a few R and acquired a number of items that were not maps.

A toothbrush set. A very normal cup and toothbrush, with toothpaste, too.

A rubber bow and arrow. It was just a toy. It would stick to whatever it hit with a thunk.

Rope for mountain climbing. It was a hundred feet long.

“Ha-ha-ha! They’re all just regular items!” Pfle had said, and she was right. All they ever got were items that seemed unlikely to help them finish the game. The maximum number for all these items was low—all they got was a bunch of 1 (1)s. These items were rare, but all qualified as everyday objects. Among the items that other parties had won were a pot, utensils, and a shovel, and from what they could tell from the descriptions, they really were all just mundane goods. There were still a number of blank spots on the R item list, but they were probably just as ordinary.

“But this seems interesting,” Pfle said. The Initial Location Switch Device. It was one of the applications. You could choose one area from all those available for the players to appear at when they logged in to the game. In other words, you could choose which area of the game to start from. It was worth the time saved in running around, at least. Just like the travel passes and the map, it was shared among a party.

“I suppose it does?” said Shadow Gale. The Initial Location Switch Device seemed to be unspectacular, though useful in its own right. But no, it really wasn’t glamorous. It could save them time, but only once every three days.

Pfle scrolled through the item list to the end, where their reward for completing the unlock mission was displayed.

The Dragon Shield. The Great Dragon’s drop item. Equivalent to a Shield +12.

Shadow Gale recalled how, immediately before challenging the Great Dragon, Pfle had been oddly fixated on the reward. She’d grumbled about wanting to keep all the candy and real money to herself, but had been unable to get the others to agree to that, and ultimately had ended up with only the drop item, while they had split the candy and cash evenly. Shadow Gale knew Pfle—Kanoe Hitokouji. From her view, that was incredibly suspicious. Kanoe would not be so attached to the candy, and neither would she have been all that concerned about a mere million yen.

Most likely, she had truly coveted that drop item and arranged it so that she would naturally receive it. Kanoe was very good at pulling off little tricks like that.

“This item will be key,” said Pfle.

“I’m sure.” It was five plus modifications higher than the shields that could be bought by throwing away every candy in your wallet. Considering how powerful the Great Dragon had been, Shadow Gale wouldn’t be surprised to hear this was the strongest shield in the game.

“Now then, as to our strategy moving forward…”

“First, can I ask a question?” Shadow Gale interjected.

Pfle’s modus operandi was to just do whatever she wanted and then explain everything afterward, partially to brag. If Shadow Gale wanted to ask anything, she had to do it now, or she’d be forced to listen to the whole story once it was over, seasoned with a dose of boasting.

Pfle raised her right eyebrow halfway and offered her right hand, palm up, to say, Go ahead.

“Maybe @Meow-Meow was the traitor, after all…or at the very least, Genopsyko must have thought so.”

“If that were true, Genopsyko wouldn’t have had to die herself.”

“Do you think differently, miss?”

“Regardless of Genopsyko’s intentions…” Pfle placed her magical phone on top of the desk and launched the Item Encyclopedia. After a few swipes, it displayed the Miracle Coin’s item description. The number of this item in circulation was at 1 (1). “It wasn’t @Meow-Meow who stole the Miracle Coin. Her talismans have been burned up, and her magical phone is now unusable. If she’d stolen the coin, then the circulation number would’ve returned to zero.” In other words, that meant that the one who’d killed Masked Wonder was still shamelessly participating in the game.

“Can I ask one more thing?” asked Shadow Gale.

“What is it?”

“Was it necessary to gather so many people in order to defeat the Great Dragon?” Shadow Gale placed her hands in her lap, leaning forward a bit as she looked at Pfle.

Pfle put her right elbow on the table, resting her cheek on her hand as she looked back at Shadow Gale. This was Pfle: calm, collected, and brimming with confidence. Even just after surviving nearly certain death, she was perfectly composed. “Have you forgotten what a terrible struggle that was? It was only by mustering all our forces that we were finally able to defeat it.”

Shadow Gale wouldn’t deny that it had been a desperate struggle. It wouldn’t have surprised her if even more of them had died aside from @Meow-Meow and Genopsyko. But still, she wondered if those numbers had been necessary. Shadow Gale had thought of a way to complete the mission with fewer people, and more safely—though it had been after they’d already beaten the Great Dragon. Pfle would have probably come up with the same idea.

Besides, Pfle’s attitude was strange.

Back in elementary school, Pfle had been hit in the face with a dodgeball, and it had given her a nosebleed. Even then, she’d maintained a calm expression and said, “The rules are that face hits don’t count, right?”

And just the other day, though Pfle had made every preparation to challenge Cherna Mouse, she had lost the duel, and her magical wheelchair to boot. Still, she was calm enough to compliment her opponent (“That magic is amazing.”) as Shadow Gale carried her on her back. Even when Pfle—Kanoe—failed, she would never scramble to save face. She would act as if it hadn’t been a failure, and everyone would be fooled into thinking that she’d never really screwed up.

That battle against the Great Dragon had been a near-failure. They’d accomplished their goal and defeated the dragon, but they had let Genopsyko’s suicide attack happen, and @Meow-Meow had ultimately died for nothing. Pfle didn’t bring it up, but Shadow Gale felt this reaction was different from her usual show of courage, pretension, and stubborn pride. Shadow Gale couldn’t put her feelings into words. But something just felt wrong to her. It was unsettling.

Shadow Gale thought, Pfle had been expecting something, hadn’t she? Even if what had happened to @Meow-Meow and Genopsyko was not the result of Pfle’s actions, she’d still gathered all of the magical girls together, anticipating that someone would take action, and created an ideal situation for that to happen.

Pfle had said that in order to find the culprit, she would examine their characters. If one of them caused an incident, it would be important information for her. Pfle had lured that person into action—telling them to just give it a shot—in pursuit of that major piece of intelligence.

She’d done exactly the same thing once already, when she’d revealed in front of the whole crowd that Masked Wonder had been murdered. That wasn’t an announcement that should be made right in the middle of such chaos, was it? Wouldn’t it have been better to wait until they’d all calmed down? She’d chosen that moment to drop the bomb, knowing that it would rile them up—or rather, so she could see their reactions when they were riled up.

If Shadow Gale was right, then Pfle was part of the reason @Meow-Meow had died.

Only a villain would think of causing an uproar in order to see everyone’s reactions. Or even if you did think it, you wouldn’t go and carry it out. But Pfle was a villain. Shadow Gale believed she was capable of it.

Once again, Shadow Gale scrutinized Pfle. She was the same as ever, and Shadow Gale couldn’t read her face.

Seemingly indifferent to Shadow Gale’s inner thoughts, Pfle suddenly opened her mouth. “I’ve come up with an idea.”

“What is it?”

“Let’s disband our party.”

Shadow Gale’s hands nearly slid off her lap. She tensed them and peered at Pfle. Pfle was resting her cheek on her hand, smiling in enjoyment.

  Pechka

The next level, closed to them for so long, was the library area. It didn’t make any sense at all that the level following the damp subterranean area would be a moisture-abhorring library. Though there hadn’t been any rhyme or reason to the order of the areas so far: wasteland, grasslands, mountains, city, and then underground.

Violence was unsuited to libraries. They were founded on a desire for knowledge, wisdom, or other vocabulary associated with learning. It seemed obvious to Pechka that fighting, the antithesis of those values, would be inappropriate in such a place. You could say that even running down the hallways was a seed of violence.

Clantail and the library area did not get along at all. The place smelled old, moldy, and dusty, and the briefest scuffle sent thick clouds of dust into the air. The place was run-down, too. Dilapidated. Running around with a deer body made it too easy to kick through the floor, so ever since they’d come into the library, she’d transformed into smaller animals in order to fight. At first, she’d gone with a deer or a pony, but then, once she’d figured out that four-legged creatures weren’t good for fighting within a confined space, she’d generally been taking the form of a largish ape. You’d think an ape would be more humanlike than a four-legged animal, but still, a beast is a beast, and the humanness of it just made Clantail especially frightening. She really is cutest as a deer or a pony, thought Pechka.

The library area had some unique features that hadn’t been present in the previous area. One had to do with the monsters’ traits, while the other was a feature of the area itself.

Nonako Miyokata’s dragon charged, sending black mist flying in all directions. A devil took the shape of a lion to attack Pechka, who jerked up her Shield +7. After she blocked three strikes, she rushed over to sit down in a chair. When the lion saw Pechka in the chair, it stopped attacking. Clantail took advantage of this moment to thrust her spear straight through a bookshelf toward it. The lion somehow managed to dodge, and Clantail’s spear tore open its shoulder instead. But when the great ape forming Clantail’s lower body attacked with another spear, the lion couldn’t dodge, and she skewered its torso. It spasmed a few times and disintegrated. Rionetta stretched her arm joints to their limits to slice apart a devil flying through the air, and when the scattered remains of the wraith Nonako’s dragon had attacked attempted to rematerialize, Nonako herself stabbed it with her streamer-trailing ritual staff to finish it off.

The library area featured a great variety of monsters—or so they had been led to believe at first, but when they checked the monster encyclopedia, they found that was not the case. There were only three types of monsters in the library area. The reason they had misunderstood was because these enemies could change shape. The base form of one of these monsters looked like a pitch-black angel cut and kneaded from darkness itself. They were called “demons” and “devils,” and they transformed into a variety of different animals: lions, leopards, hippos, and elephants, too, and even the dragons they’d fought underground before. Their animal forms were not that threatening in and of themselves. Even Pechka could knock down an angry beast if she put her mind to it. Magical girls were faster, stronger, and tougher than wild animals.

The issue was not that they could transform into beasts, but that they were also fast, strong, and tough enough to be able to match magical girls in a fight while also transforming at will to adapt to the situation. Only with the holy charm, which increased elemental attack and defense; expensive equipment with the +7 modifier; and some cooperation were they finally able to get the upper hand against these foes.

The names “demon” and “devil” indicated two distinct monster types, but they couldn’t be differentiated at a glance. They dropped the same number of candies and had the same ability to shape-shift, too. The first one to notice the distinguishing feature was Nonako Miyokata.

“Ohhh! If you look closely, you see their hairstyles are différent!”

The demons’ hair flipped inward. The devils’ hair flipped outward. Their entire bodies were black, so it wasn’t really “hair” so much as “the hairlike part,” though. There was hard-to-differentiate, and then there was this.

Aside from the demons and devils, there were also wraiths. These were hazy in form, like black mist, and upon closer inspection, one could pick out a faint feminine shape. Punches and kicks would only go through them ineffectively. They could pass right through everything, not just the girls’ attacks: floor, ceiling, tables, and bookshelves. But in spite of this, their attacks were solid and painful when they attacked. These enemies were unfair, attacking without letting their opponents strike back—or they would have been, without the holy charms.

Equipping a holy charm enabled physical contact with the wraiths, making it possible to damage them. Sound and light could also hurt them, but no one in their group had any moves like that, so they used an uncomplicated method of attack.

With the holy charms, they could leave the wraiths to Nonako’s pet dragon, since they weren’t that strong, while the magical girls would go for the devils and demons. Pechka focused on defense. This became their basic strategy in the library area.

The most notable feature of the library area was that it had safe spots. To be precise, no one sitting on the chairs within the building would be attacked by enemies. If you sat down on a chair when things got dangerous, the monsters would stop their onslaught. For a magical girl who wasn’t all that good at fighting, it was a welcome option. Checking to see if there was a chair in the area before each fight as they explored became habitual not only to Pechka, but to all of them.

It was also nice that, unlike in the other areas so far, they could have a calm meal here. As long as they sat politely in chairs, they could relax and devote themselves to eating.

Pechka got the pot out and filled it with a stack of stones and rocks from the subterranean area and rested her palms on them for five minutes to transform them into a delicious meal. The menu for today was hashed beef.

“Like, that thing, t’sais. That demon. It was just like Clantail, how it transforms and stuff,” Nonako said, still chewing. That was not an observation Pechka would ever give voice to, even if she was thinking it. When she silently looked over at Clantail, she saw the other girl wordlessly spooning food into her mouth. Currently, Clantail was a girl’s upper body attached to the body of an ape where the neck would be. She was frighteningly tall, even more so than when she was part horse. She came off as that much more intimidating.

Generally, when they were eating, the smell circulated at the same height as the food. With Clantail towering above the rest of them, it disturbed the aromatic current where she sat, and somehow this bothered Pechka. She couldn’t help but be concerned about the smell of the food she’d made.

“When I first saw you, Clantail, I thought, ‘Oh! I have to make that my bébé.’ I was even disappointed when I found out you were a magical girl. It’s the same with that demon, t’sais?”

It was pretty rude to be saying she was just like a demon, wasn’t it? And Rionetta didn’t scold Nonako for it, either. She was enthusiastically devouring her hashed beef.

Apprehensively, Pechka looked at Clantail. She couldn’t see any emotional reaction. The ape, lacking any part equivalent to a horse’s tail, just sat solidly with its hands on its knees. Clantail had set two chairs side by side and placed her large ape rear on both, but they still looked like they might collapse at any moment.

“The demons can transform into animaux, so I thought it could be my friend, but no. These monstres are a disappointment.”

Beside Nonako, her dragon was scarfing down its hashed beef atop a line of three chairs. Entirely focused on its food, it showed no concern at all for the implication that if its master had been able to make friends with a demon, the dragon would have been doomed to dismissal.

Like the dragon, Clantail, having been treated much like a monster, showed no sign of anger or upset, and wordlessly finished her hashed beef before she laid down her spoon and pressed her hands together. “Thank you for the food.”

“It was délicieux! You’re amazing, Pechka!”

“This is the reason I can keep a stiff upper lip through all these stinky, sweaty battles,” said Rionetta.

Pechka smiled shyly in response to her party’s praise, tugging on the decorative feather on her hat. No matter how many times these compliments raised her spirits, she couldn’t get used to it.

Their meal ended, and when they were about to head out for more grinding, their magical phones rang with an alert.

An event is now occurring. Players, please gather in the wasteland town square.

Pechka felt oddly chipper. Rionetta’s sharp tongue had stopped just short of causing a serious fight, Nonako was cheerful, and Clantail didn’t seem to be annoyed. That may only have been because she didn’t have any hooves to tap to express her irritation, but Pechka doubted it.

It had been a shock when Genopsyko Yumenoshima took @Meow-Meow down with her in the Great Dragon’s cavern. But considering the reasons it had happened and reaching a conclusion had lessened the impact.

Pechka had heard that earlier, Genopsyko had come to Detec Bell’s party and left them a note hinting at the existence of a traitor. Next, Genopsyko had taken @Meow-Meow down with her to be burned up in the dragon’s flames. Logically, her motives would point to @Meow-Meow being the traitor and Genopsyko punishing her for it, right?

They were being forced to play a game where one wrong move would spell their deaths. That fact had not changed. But Pechka felt less anxious in spite of this because the one recognized to be the traitor had been eliminated, the monsters in the library weren’t that strong and dropped relatively large sums of candy, and it seemed that the next level would be the location of the final battle. They’d discovered a message in the library area that read, The Evil King’s castle is next. Since it was called the Evil King’s castle, their ultimate foe had to be there. And if the Evil King was there, it would be the final level—since the goal of this game was to beat him.

It made Pechka feel better to know that their objective was close. Having a goal in sight enabled her to enjoy the marathon more than she would if she were unsure how far they had left to run.

The premaintenance event in the wasteland town square was not a cruel and unusual one—such as Whoever has the fewest magical candies dies—but rather a light, peaceful, typical one: It was a rock-paper-scissors tournament among all the girls, and the winner would receive a thousand magical candy. No matter who you were, a thousand was nothing to sneeze at. You’d have to defeat ten demons to gather up that much.

“I’m sure you’ve all noticed, but from this area on, the items sold in shops will all be expensive, pon. You often won’t have enough candy for the items you want, pon. Furthermore, some items will have only one or two in circulation, so there won’t be many, pon. Please try to earn a little more candy to acquire the items you want ahead of the other players, pon,” Fal said all at once, before taking a big breath. “Though I think it would be best if you could decide who gets which items through peaceful conversation, pon.”

At the end of a fierce and even contest with Lazuline, Pfle won the rock-paper-scissors tournament.

“It sounds as if there will be a shop in the Evil King’s castle as well, hmm?” said Rionetta.

“Oui, and it’ll be selling some pretty expensive items, too.”

“Let’s leave one of Clantail’s spears as a +5, then. If there are weapons with even more plus modifications on sale in the next area, it will be a major financial loss.”

“Oui, oui.”

“Um,” said Pechka, “once the next area is unlocked, it might be best to look for the town as soon as possible, huh?”

“Indeed,” Rionetta agreed. “You’ve heard what Fal said? Whoever buys items first is victorious, it seems.”

As Pechka discussed the upcoming area with her party, she glanced around at the other groups. Shadow Gale was rushing out of the square, while Pfle, sitting on a magic carpet, watched her go. It seemed that the two of them were going to be working separately. At some point, Melville had disappeared. Was she acting solo?

Detec Bell called out to Pfle, and the two of them clustered together with Lapis Lazuline and Nokko, discussing something. Since @Meow-Meow and Genopsyko were dead, Nokko was without a party, and it looked like she’d be joining up with them. Pechka wasn’t in a position to be worried about anyone else, but she’d been concerned about Nokko, so she was relieved that another party would take her in.

Nokko was the kind of girl you wanted to protect when you looked at her. The effect was so strong that even Pechka felt that way toward her. Nokko was all alone, fidgeting, and needy…or so it seemed. If there was another group that would take her in, that was for the best. Pechka breathed a sigh of relief.

But with Pfle, Lazuline, Detec Bell, and Nokko all together, didn’t that mean Shadow Gale was not just off doing something else, but rather entirely out of the party? It seemed that there’d been some reorganization going on while Pechka’s attention had been elsewhere.

She shifted her gaze back to her own group. Rionetta and Nonako Miyokata were talking, and Clantail was nodding. Theirs was the only party that had remained the same since the start of the game. Pechka felt her logic was selfish, but the death of someone she had hardly spoken with would be totally different from the death of one of the party members she’d been working with to complete the game. Though she’d gotten off on the wrong foot with them, they were all her friends now, and they were important to her. She didn’t want Clantail, Rionetta, or Nonako Miyokata to die.

Pechka pressed her thumb into her palm and squeezed it tight.

  Nokko

Returning from the game to real life, Noriko resumed her daily routine. Though it was the same three-day span, it didn’t feel like it at all.

Noriko came home from school and immediately dropped her backpack there before she went straight to the hospital. She could have gone from school to the hospital, but if she were still wearing her backpack, her mother would look unhappy. It was more efficient to leave her backpack at home, get her mother a change of clothes, some basic items, money, and other necessities, and take those to the hospital with her. On her way there, if Noriko saw gloomy people on the street or at the hospital, she would use her magic on them.

Fundamentally speaking, in order for a magical girl to use her power, she would have to be transformed. In other words, you couldn’t use magic as a part of your day-to-day routine. But Noriko knew how to make practical use of magic in her daily life. Most likely, this method was only available to her right now.

Nokko looked about ten years old, and Noriko’s real age was also ten years old. Not only were the two close in age, Nokko also looked a lot like Noriko. Of course, they weren’t exactly the same. To make it work, she obviously had to wear her normal clothes, change her hairstyle, dye it black, and use little tricks with accessories and her facial expressions. What’s more, if she fervently believed that she was Nokko Nonohara, she could use Nokko’s magic to transmit that belief to everyone around her. All of this made it possible to go about her day transformed into a magical girl so that she could use her powers easily, even in class or while walking home. Noriko was still growing, so she didn’t know how long she could keep doing this, but still, she’d use it as long as she was able.

Using magic on a daily basis meant that her powers got much more of a workout than most. It was basically like training. The essence of a magical girl’s powers stays the same for her whole life, but in a general way, she could become more proficient with practice. She could activate her abilities faster, and they’d become more effective and have greater range; the area of effect would broaden, and she’d become able to do things that had been impossible for her previously.

You couldn’t rest on your laurels after becoming a magical girl. That was just the beginning. Nokko was grateful to that older girl who had once told her that, though she had long since joined the roster of the dead. Her words lived on within Nokko. Using magic repeatedly as a part of her daily life was part of her training.

Nokko had heard of cases where a girl’s magic would grow suddenly, stimulated by powerful emotion, but though some might yearn for a life like something out of a shounen manga, it was beyond her reach to realize that. Striving for growth through diligent, daily effort, little by little, like building up a stack of rocks, suited Nokko better.

As might be expected from a medical facility that boasted the status of best in the prefecture, this hospital really was large. It didn’t have just food stands on its premises, but also convenience stores. Not only did it have things like barbershops and full-scale restaurants, Noriko had been shocked to find out it even had a store for consumer electronics, a bookstore, and a Western-style candy shop. She’d eaten cake with her mother on the hospital terrace once, some type with a name so long she couldn’t remember it. It had been written in French, too.

She greeted the doctors, nurses, and patients with smiles, occasionally using her magic, until she knocked on the door to her mother’s hospital room. When her mother replied, “Come in,” Noriko opened it. Her mother’s examination was done by this time, and she was back in her room, about fifteen pages into her paperback.

Noriko told her mother about her day at school, making it sound as fun as she could, and took out an apple, swiftly peeling it. Noriko had taken over the house chores two and a half years ago, so this task was simple for her.

“Listen, Noriko,” said her mother.

“What?”

“If you ever have any problems, tell me about it, all right?”

The hand holding the knife reflexively stopped. Noriko looked back at her mother. She’d recovered quite a bit, compared to when she’d been sickest, and her cheeks were beginning to fill out again. But she was still worse than at the start of her illness, and it made her eyes seem especially large. They were looking intently at Noriko.

“Yeah. If anything happened, I’d tell you. If there was anything.” Implicitly, Noriko was saying, Nothing is wrong.

Her mother was just staring at her.

Noriko thought back on all she’d done since she’d come into the room. Had she been different from usual? Could anything about her have made her mother worry? She might have been acting a little too bubbly. Maybe that ended up being suspicious.

She examined herself and zealously called to mind enjoyable things, transmitting those feelings to her mother in an attempt to dispel her concerns. As long as she had fun things, as long as she had happy things, she would be okay. She didn’t want to make her mother worry about her.

She cheerfully bade her mother farewell and then walked down the hallway, the taps of her feet on the linoleum sounding as she thought. Clearly, she was in a dangerous situation right now. But she couldn’t tell her mother about any of it. She wouldn’t make her worry any more.

Noriko got the feeling that she understood the reason why the master had added this maintenance period—the three days in a row when they would be returned to reality. By forcing them to alternate between their normal lives and the game, the master was trying to make them more attached to life. They couldn’t just forget their normal lives as the days in the game rolled by and then go off and sacrifice themselves heroically or something. They couldn’t help but recall how they valued their lives and the people close to them.

But even so, Genopsyko had died and taken @Meow-Meow down with her. Noriko couldn’t understand what she had been trying to do. And considering what she’d first seen of Genopsyko’s character and disposition, it didn’t feel right. Would she have chosen to die like that?

Nokko’s magic acted on people’s hearts. She had always worked with people’s emotional cores, paying very close attention to what made them unique, always observing and analyzing everyone around her. Even in the game, she had continued to do that.

The surface personality that Genopsyko had shown them had been the cheerful and fun nerdy type. From what Noriko could tell, she’d kept hidden a seed of arrogance; she was laid-back, possibly to the point of being irresponsible, and careless. Being absolutely safe within her suit, she had said things that seemed somewhat egotistical to Nokko. She was safe, so she wasn’t all that fussed about crisis, and that had been what had led to her injury.

This wasn’t the portrait of a person who would push up her visor and leap straight into certain death. Genopsyko’s personality was defined by her safety. Her idiosyncrasies were built on the fact that she was absolutely untouchable.

Had the samurai girl changed her personality when she cut her up, even though her visor was down, and destroyed that security? Noriko reflected on her own circumstances.

She’d once been part of a family of three. She’d believed that come what may, they’d all stand together in life. But then her mother had fallen ill, and her father had run off. Thinking back on the person she’d been before her father had left, she felt like she’d changed a lot. Perhaps the shock of that battle had changed Genopsyko’s personality, taking her from laid-back magical girl to a hysterical one who would willingly die and take someone with her.

Noriko couldn’t say that @Meow-Meow hadn’t been suspicious at all. She’d been acting as if she had known something. Perhaps that was part of the reason for Genopsyko’s suicide attack. Now that both of them were dead, though, nobody would know.

All of Nokko’s party members from the beginning of the game had been lost, and she’d ended up all alone, but fortunately, Detec Bell and Lapis Lazuline had welcomed her into their party. Because of their nature and position as heroines, magical girls would always extend a helping hand to those in need, even when they themselves were in trouble. Nokko was good at looking needy, and in actuality, that image had not been inaccurate since this game had begun.

Most likely, Detec Bell and Lapis Lazuline had invited her to their party purely out of the goodness of their hearts. But Nokko would do well to remain cautious around Pfle. She’d fed them the cliché line that everyone says when they split up with someone after a fight—Shadow Gale and I had a difference of opinion, so we parted ways—but she hadn’t appeared to really mean it. When @Meow-Meow had died, and when Cherna Mouse had died, and when that samurai magical girl had died, too, Pfle had taken control of the group and assumed a leadership position. Nokko couldn’t let her guard down with Pfle.

Even coming out of the game world and going from Nokko back to being Noriko Nonohara, she was still needy. She was in trouble—financial trouble. When she returned home and checked her bank account, she found a fresh hundred-thousand-yen deposit there. The reward for defeating the dragon in the area unlock quest, divided evenly between the ten of them, came to that amount. Apparently, @Meow-Meow had not been counted, since she’d died before their strategy had begun.

The hundred thousand made her glad. Very glad. It was heartening, but it wasn’t enough. She needed more money.