Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 9 - Chapter 7

The Three Sisters Raising Project restart

Gazing ahead, they saw a wasteland spread before them. Not even a single weed grew in the barren ground, and dust scattered through the wind. When they looked to the right, it was the same, and to the left, identical. Looking up, she saw the sun was glaring bright, and when she turned back, her two younger sisters were there. Sorami’s mouth was half-open, eyes squinted as she stared into the distance. Sachiko was curled up, holding her head.

Uluru would have curled up and held her head, too, if she could. But as much as she wanted to throw herself to the ground and deem this whole endeavor impossible, that it had to be a dream or illusion or group hysteria…as the eldest sister in a position of responsibility, Uluru had to face the facts.

That was why Uluru gave the order.

“Line up!”

Sachiko lifted her head from between her arms, and Sorami shot Uluru a skeptical look. “Sis, now isn’t the time.”

“No, this is precisely the time! And that’s why we need to calm down and conduct ourselves as usual!”

Sorami nodded reluctantly, and Sachiko slowly got to her feet. The two of them lined up. Tensing her gut, Uluru yelled in a loud voice that rang out across the wasteland. “Roll call!”

“…One.”

“Twooo.”

Uluru sucked in a big breath, then blew it out. “Let’s go over the details.”

“Okaaay.”

“We accompanied Lady Puk Puck to the new department.”

“Yep.”

If it seemed it would prove useful, she would become their sponsor and support them. Otherwise, she would say farewell and put an end to it there. Under those conditions, a certain department had applied for support from Puk Puck.

There were a lot of people who sought backing from a great magical girl like Puk Puck. If you responded to every single one of them, there would be no end to it, but if it was a project worth putting her money and name on, that was something else.

The “Mock Battle Simulator Development Project” created by the newly established IT Department had grabbed hold of Puk Puck’s heartstrings, and after giving a look over the documents they’d sent over, she wanted to see for herself what sort of thing this actually was.

If Puk Puck was going out, then that meant a job for the three sisters who were her elite guard. Puk Puck was entrancingly glamorous when she was in excursion mode, changed into a beautiful rococo-style outfit like she’d stepped out of a Fragonard painting. Still the sisters fulfilled their duty as her guards, coming to the workplace where the head of the IT Department would be waiting.

The room looked like a messy little office, nothing worthy of receiving Puk Puck. The only illumination was the dim interior lighting—no windows—dust dancing under the glow. Uluru was privately indignant. How rude! she thought, but Puk Puck seemed quite happy.

“I’ve never been to a place like this. What an interesting world.”

Even if it just looked like a messy office, if Puk Puck said so, then it surely was interesting.

The magical girl sitting in the office chair stood and spread her arms. “Welcome, welcome to my world.”

Her combination of glasses, lab coat, a revealing swimsuit, hair that was hardly even brushed, and a cube puzzle hanging from her neck was totally incoherent, and looking at her gave you a vague sense of unease. It was no use complaining about magical-girl costumes, but it really was rude as a reception to Puk Puck, wasn’t it? Puk Puck got dressed up to go out, so shouldn’t the one receiving her at least do her hair properly? Uluru thought, but when she turned to her superior, Puk Puck still looked happy.

“Hello, Keeky.”

“Nice to meet you, Great Puk Puck.”

The magical girl Keek rolled up the sleeves of her white lab coat to expose her right hand and exchanged a handshake with Puk Puck. Puk Puck beamed, drawing a smile from Keek as well.

Upon being prompted, Puk Puck sat down on a sofa that had one arm broken, with springs sticking out of it. The three sisters stood behind her in a line. Sachiko tapped the floor with her toe a few times. She probably wanted to sit. Uluru elbowed Sachiko and cleared her throat.

“So then, about the plan I’m trying to—”

The door opened. It was on the opposite side from the door they’d come in. Everyone turned to look at once.

There was a girl wearing a striped, long-sleeved T-shirt, a spiked, leather hair decoration, rough leather pumps, bone-patterned tights, and to finish it off, she held a scary-looking guitar reminiscent of an ax. She greater resembled some punk rocker than a magical girl. Whoever she was, she was certainly a ruffian.

Sorami and Sachiko moved so fast, you wouldn’t believe they were usually slow and lazy, moving to guard either side of Puk Puck and entering battle readiness. Standing in front of her master, Uluru drew the gun from her back and was about to raise it like a club, but Puk Puck restrained her with her right hand. “It looks like she’s not a bad girl.”

“That’s right! I’m everyone’s idol, Tot Pop!”

Keek sighed with deep and sincere irritation. “I didn’t invite you.”

“That’s not true. We promised we’d hang out together today, right?”

“No, we didn’t. I said I couldn’t because I have to speak with someone important today.”

“So didn’t that mean, in other words, you had plans to speak with someone important, but since you got an invitation from Tot, you figured you’d prioritize that?”

“Of course not! Just how badly can you twist someone’s words to suit your own interests?! Get out!”

“Now, now,” Puk Puck cut in. “Tot, your name was? She didn’t come here to do anything bad, right? And I’d feel bad if you got mad at her. Let’s all have a nice chat together.”

“Okeydoke!” The magical girl who had introduced herself as Tot Pop slid into the room without gaining the permission of Keek, the master of this room, or apologizing to the most important person present, Puk Puck, and before you knew it, she’d plunked herself down on the spinny chair there, leaning her ax-like guitar beside her.

“What do I do?” Sachiko’s expression seemed to say, while Sorami had a look that asked “What should we do about this?” as they both turned to Uluru, who helplessly glanced over at Puk Puck. Their beautiful and charming master pointed a smile as gentle as a lamb at the intruder. “What an amazing girl you are.”

“Is Tot that amazing?”

“You’re not,” said Keek. “Forgive me. She messes things up whenever she comes by, so it’s best to kick her out.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay.” Puk Puck showed absolutely no sign of anxiety. In fact, sounding quite relaxed, she asked, “Could the three of you leave for a bit?”

Uluru, Sorami, and Sachiko, upon receiving this order, were bewildered.

“Huh…? But then…”

“No problem. We’ll just be talking, so you don’t hafta worry.”

“But…”

“Keeky, do you have something like a waiting room?” Puk Puck asked.

“If a storage room works, then over there.” Keek snapped her fingers, and in a place where there had been a wall, a pixelated pattern appeared and then dispersed, leaving behind a wooden door.

“Yep, that’s fine. Wait there, okay, guys?”

Not given the time to argue, they were shoved into the storage room, the door closing after them. From behind the closing door came Keek’s grumpy voice: “Are you seriously not making her leave?” followed by Puk Puck: “I’m sure it’ll be more fun to have three chatting than just two,” and then the door closed. After that, they didn’t hear so much as a pin drop.

“Will things be okay…?” Sachiko tilted her head with concern.

“Well, if Lady Puk Puck says it’ll be okay, then I’m sure it will.” Sorami’s guarantee was totally baseless.

“Nothing about this is okay!!” Uluru yelled. As she swung her arm up, her fist hit some books stacked on the table. The mountain of tomes collapsed. There was the rustling of pages, dust scattering, the sounds of coughing, and a building irritation. Unsurprisingly for a storage space, the place was cluttered. In comparison, the other room, which Uluru had judged to be too messy for hosting Puk Puck, was a fine reception area.

“This room’s pretty awful, huh?”

“Yep, sure is dusty.”

“We don’t know how long they’re gonna be talking next door, so why don’t we kinda tidy up a bit so it’s a bit more comfortable?”

“Hey, Sorami, now isn’t the time to be doing something like that,” said Uluru.

“C’mon, you help out, too, sis.”

“Let’s make it so we can sit down, at least.”

“Good grief! Honestly, it’s always like this…”

They couldn’t even tell how big this room was. Their view was blocked by various kinds of machinery piled up to the ceiling, plus documents and paper stacks and boxes of wood or cardboard and other miscellaneous items, and they couldn’t even see where the walls were. Add three magical girls, and it was packed full—they could stand, but they couldn’t sit, so in order to make a place for the three of them to take a seat, they engaged in the Sisyphean task of moving things that were stacked on top of one thing to stacked on top of another thing. The two girls picked up things and put them down—Sorami lazily, Sachiko glumly.

Uluru did the same in quite a huff. Moving even one item would scatter dust, and she felt ready to choke. She was holding her right sleeve under her nose, picking up and lowering things with her left hand, when the gun on her back caught on the corner of a table. Annoyed, she smacked the table corner to yank the gun away, and the inertia knocked the machinery piled atop the table down onto the floor. It kicked up more dust, and then there was the click of a switch flipping.

And now, presently, the three sisters were smack-dab in the middle of a wasteland.

“To sum things up…”

“Uh-huh.”

“Uluru hit some kind of switch, and then we got flung out here?”

“Don’t make it sound like it’s Uluru’s fault!” Uluru protested.

“I mean, it is your fault, Uluru.”

“It’s the fault of whoever carelessly left something like that lying around!”

“Um… So then…” Sachiko looked around the area uneasily. “…Where are we…?”

“I wonder. It kinda doesn’t look like Japan.”

“It doesn’t matter where we are,” Uluru said firmly. “We’re just going to move forward. We’ll find someone. And then we go back. If bandits or brigands or some such show up, then we’ll deal with them—we’re magical girls.”

Uluru tried to draw the gun from her back, but her hand grasped air. “Huh?” She touched her back with her hand, groping. There was nothing in the spot where her gun would normally be. She stroked the spot, then took off her coat and shook it out, but she still couldn’t find the gun. “Uluru’s gun is gone.”

“Whatever, it’s just a toy.”

“Don’t call it just a toy! It’s important!”

“Hey.”

Both Uluru and Sorami glanced over at Sachiko. She wasn’t looking at either of them—her eyes were pointed in a completely different direction. They were wide and unblinking as her legs, arms, and body trembled.

“Huh…?”

Beyond her pointed, shaking hand, something writhed. Slowly, quietly, something human-shaped appeared from within the earth. Uluru looked closely and saw what was moving: human skeletons with no muscle, skin, or organs, or anything at all left except for white bone.

Was it magic? Sachiko let out a tiny cry, and when Sorami tried to rush forward, Uluru called out “Stop!” to restrain her. The group of skeletons started running toward them. Their movements were surprisingly light. They were probably coming to attack. Cupping her hands around her open mouth, Uluru yelled out loud at the animate skeletons, “I cast a magic spell on you! If you move from that spot, you’ll die!”

No matter how much it seemed Uluru was lying, even if she actually was lying, she could make whoever heard her words believe they were the truth. This was her magic. But the skeletons were rattling toward them as if they hadn’t heard anything.

Sorami muttered, “Guess they can’t understand words.”

“…Yeah.”

“So your magic was pointless, huh, sis?”

“Enough of your nastiness! Come on, let’s fight!”

Sorami kicked, Uluru punched, and Sachiko did the same, screaming all the while. Before long, the group of animate skeletons had become a mess of bones, which then scattered into dust and blew off into the wind before vanishing.

The trio stood with their backs together in readiness for a follow-up attack. In the tense atmosphere, an electronic sound rang out, making them all jump. They pulled out their magical phones—Uluru and Sachiko had theirs hanging over their chests while Sorami’s was stashed in her backpack. Their screens lit up, and in the middle of each was displayed a message: You have defeated the group of skeletons. You earned eight magical candies.

“What is this? A game?” wondered Uluru.

“So what could magical candy be…?” Sachiko wondered.

“Give me a break,” Sorami griped. “The heck is going on?”

The three sat in a circle and discussed. They’d been dumped in some strange place. They’d been attacked by a group of skeletons. Their magical phones were doing things on their own. What was going on? Where was this? What should they do? No time was required to discuss these matters—the answer was displayed on their magical phones.

“Um… Magical Girl Raising Project…?” said Sachiko.

“Ohhh, this has gotta be that thing—the mock battle simulator.”

“Weren’t they trying to get money to develop that?” Uluru asked. “So is it finished?”

“Hmm, more like tutorial mode. So this is basically a trial run, right?”

“There’s this option asking if you want to change it to R18 mode—”

Uluru interrupted her immediately. “Sachiko, don’t touch anything weird.”

“This is my first time being stuck inside a video game.”

“Sorami, don’t say anything dirty.”

“Huh? Ummm, there’s nothing dirty about that. What’s so dirty about what I said? Is it not okay for me to say my first time? ’Cause that’s something you normally say, I think.”

“Hey…,” said Sachiko, her voice shaky. “Look at this.”

Over where Sachiko was indicating with a trembling hand was a message: You cannot return to the outside world until you clear the game.

“Ugh, for real? Gimme a break,” groaned Sorami.

“Actually…,” Uluru said, “if we were here forever, Lady Puk Puck would notice, you know. This game has a creator, so there has to be a way to save us…”

“Hey…,” said Sachiko, her voice wavering. “And there’s this…”

Another message appeared: Time flows differently inside the game. Three days inside the game is equivalent to one second outside.

“Sachiko! You keep giving us the worst news!” Sorami wailed.

“I mean, I just found it!”

They were supposed to use the magical candies won from defeating monsters to buy equipment and items, and if they beat the boss, the Great Dragon, the game would end, and they’d be freed. In this world, they’d get hungry, too, despite being magical girls, so they had to periodically consume the rations that were sold at the item shop, or all their parameters would decrease, and eventually, they would starve to death.

The more they read, the more they realized how hopeless the rules were. Sachiko already looked to be at death’s door, and Sorami slowly shook her head and looked up at the sky. Uluru wanted to burst into tears, too. But as the eldest of the three sisters and captain of Lady Puk Puck’s elite guard, she couldn’t show tears or make feeble complaints.

“Okay, then first, we search the town. Come on, get up.”

In this vast wasteland that stretched out into the horizon, they might run out of strength before they found a town, but the pride and willpower of Puk Puck’s elite guard demanded they did everything they could before they finally fell. And so with such tragic but grim determination, they faced the task of finding the first town. As it happened, by looking into the distance from the top of the ruined high-rises that dotted the landscape, they found it rather easily. In the town, there were people walking around dressed in the style of Europe in the Middle Ages, or something of that flavor. Even when three people who were clearly magical girls walked into town, they didn’t seem to draw any attention.

“Looks like they’re what they call NPCs,” said Sorami.

“What are enpeesees? Uluru doesn’t know about video games, so explain it so Uluru can understand, too.”

“It means non-player character. The characters the computer controls.”

“The people who tell you stuff like, ‘You gotta equip your weapons, dude!’ Or, like, ‘This is such-and-such village,’ right?”

“These look a little better than your usual stock characters.”

When they tried talking to the NPCs, they responded properly, in a humanlike manner. If you asked questions, like the name of the town, the location of facilities, the goal of the adventure, or about monsters and such, the characters would respond based on what they knew, and they spoke in different ways depending on their appearances, too. Surprisingly, if Sachiko and Sorami said things like “The sky is about to fall” or “The earth is going to break open,” they’d get annoyed, but if Uluru said the same thing, they’d believe it entirely and look frightened. It seemed they were human enough that Uluru’s magic to make people believe her lies would work on them.

“That makes me wonder—why are they using Japanese if this is supposed to be like the European Middle Ages?” asked Sorami.

“Let’s not talk about that,” Uluru replied.

They got the town residents to tell them where the shop was, then headed over. Aside from rations and special passes, the shop also sold weapons. When they got to see a weapon called “Rifle,” it was just about identical to Uluru’s gun.

“They have it! Uluru’s gun!” Uluru cried.

“Ummm, to get the goods, you pay the shop with magical candy… Oh, shoot. We can’t buy back your gun with the candy we have now, sis,” said Sorami.

“It’s not buying it back! Don’t say it like Uluru pawned it!”

They couldn’t trick the owner of the shop with magic to get the weapon for cheap. It seemed to be made so that they had to make a payment of a fixed sum of magical candy, or they wouldn’t get the item, no matter what.

“Anyway, we have to buy weapons,” said Uluru.

“Yeah,” Sorami agreed. “That’s a good strategy.”

The “strategy for this type of game” that Sorami described wasn’t that complicated. First, they’d save up magical candy, then buy weapons, and with those new weapons, they’d aim for new areas.

Just as Uluru’s weapon, the Rifle, could only be equipped by Uluru, there were established character weapons for Sorami and Sachiko, too. When they got to see what the weapons were, both of them sighed.

“My weapon is nunchaku made from smartphones tied together with string…,” grumbled Sorami. “What even is that aesthetic? Couldn’t they have come up with something a little better?”

“Mine’s just a knife…,” said Sachiko. “It feels like they couldn’t really think of anything, so they went with whatever, y’know? I’ve only ever used a knife in training, though.”

At the shop, they bought rations, then wandered around the wasteland in search of someplace where the skeletons would appear. Once they found some, they defeated every one of them. The skeletons looked scary, but mere animations were no match for the three sisters. Even Sachiko, who was often scolded for her passivity in combat training, gleefully kicked, punched, and tossed the skeletons around, rendering them into mere piles of bones.

“You’re real cheery, sis,” Sorami said to her. “I thought you hated fighting.”

“I just haven’t really had the opportunity to hit an opponent that’s okay for me to hit.”

“I feel like you said something real scary…”

Uluru and Sorami both knew that at times like these, the one who would pull the craziest stunts when she was backed into a corner was Sachiko. Or rather, just about anyone who served Puk Puck would know that. It wasn’t bad for Sachiko to have something she could vent a bit of stress on.

Once they had used up their rations, the sisters returned to town, where they restocked their inventory and then headed out into the wastelands once again. Each time they repeated this, they got more efficient about it. They made notes of the skeleton spawn points and visited those locations directly to decrease their use of recovery items, slowly starting to cover a broader area.

At last—at long last—they’d saved up enough candy to buy a set of new weapons.

With the Rifle Uluru had so badly wanted now in her hands, the group ventured out into the wasteland. Uluru swiftly drew her gun from her back and readied it.

There was a dry sound and a little burst on the ground about twenty yards ahead.

“Huh?”

All three of them made sounds simultaneously.

Thick smoke rose from the mouth of the gun, the stench of it further emphasizing its presence. It had seemed it was based off Uluru’s gun, but the particulars were slightly different. On the gun barrel there was an engraving in katakana that read, Rifle.

There was a clap on Uluru’s shoulder, and when she turned around, Sorami stood there, looking tired. “Sis…let’s turn ourselves in. We’ve gotta make the crime a little lighter, at least.”

“Why?! For what?! How?!”

“A real rifle is kinda a no-go, yeah? It’s illegal in this country, after all.”

“This is a video game! We’re in a game, so it’s okay! It’s normal to fire a gun in a game, right?!”

“Ah, the skeletons are coming!”

“Come on!” said Uluru. “Enough with your babbling and let’s fight!”

Uluru had always longed for a real gun. She would grind her teeth and think, If only this weren’t a toy cork gun, I could do a much better job as Puk Puck’s guard. Now, she had that real gun—its firm weight, the smell of gun smoke—a fearsome weapon that could destroy her target with a simple pull of the trigger.

Among the group of skeletons was a red skeleton that stood out particularly.

“What’s that?” Sorami wondered. “A rare monster?”

“What’s a rare monster?”

“It means a monster that’s stronger than normal. They give you tons of experience and drop lots of gold…or in this game, candies and rare items and stuff.”

Seemed like this was an enemy worth defeating. Uluru fixed her aim on the red skeleton and pulled the trigger, sending a bullet flying through the air. Her second bullet flew off in some other direction while the third hit the ground. The recoil was too strong and she couldn’t fire continuously; before she had time to be surprised, the group of skeletons were right up ahead, and now that they were this close, it was faster to just hit them with the gun than to shoot bullets. She used her new weapon to strike the skeletons. When she hit, they cracked, and when she swung, they went to pieces. Uluru was semi-satisfied by the strength of her weapon as the battle came to a close.

And then Sorami muttered, “Sis…your aim was totally off, huh?”

“Shut up.”

“You were actually aiming for the red guy, weren’t you?”

“I said shut up. The recoil on this gun is way too strong.”

Leaving aside Uluru’s firing accuracy—she was made to swear that she would never shoot when Sorami and Sachiko were in front of her—they had confirmed the strength of their weapons. The smartphone nunchaku and knife were actually pretty powerful, too. We can work with this, Uluru thought as they circled around the border of the new area they’d already discovered, and at the checkpoint they’d found, they pulled out their pass and stepped into the new area: the mountain region. Unlike the wasteland, the paths had ups and downs and twists and turns, so they couldn’t quite secure themselves a direct route. Furthermore, there were new monsters—not skeletons, but muscle-bound men over six feet tall with jagged, uneven fangs and sharp horns. That’s right: These were creatures like the oni from old legends.

Equipped in battered leather armor, spears, and hammers, even just based on looks alone, they seemed stronger than the skeletons.

“But you know—compared to trained magical girls like us, skeletons and oni are no different,” said Uluru.

“Who are you trying to convince there, sis?”

“Ah, they’re here!”

Baring their fangs in naked rage, five oni rushed at the trio. They fought back. One minute later, all three girls were scrambling around the mountains trying to escape.

“The heck?! Why are they so strong?!” Uluru wailed.

“Putting those things right after the skeletons—this game is so broken!” Sorami agreed.

When Uluru swung her gun at the oni, they blocked her strike without difficulty, while if Sorami tried to block an attack with her smartphones, she wound up flying through the air. Even when Uluru tried to deceive them, they wouldn’t listen at all.

“Sometimes ogres will speak oni, y’know,” said Sorami. “Sis, say something in oni language.”

“Do you think I can speak oni?!”

Each and every oni was as fast as a magical girl and even stronger. Now the group of oni was behind them, chasing them and howling. The girls were gradually getting away, but on the other hand, that meant even a magical girl’s legs were only fast enough to barely escape these creatures.

“My magical phone says ogres are a lot stronger than skeletons.”

“Yeah, that’s putting it lightly!”

While running from the oni, they encountered different oni, and ran some more, and encountered more, and ran again, and in the end, they got chased by a massive group of more than fifty oni, until they somehow managed to make it back to the town. Perhaps because it was, as Sorami described, a “video game trope,” the oni didn’t come and attack them in the town.

The trio went into the tavern, putting their heads together to discuss. They couldn’t beat the oni at this rate. Maybe they should buy the new equipment being sold in the mountain town, but if they couldn’t defeat the oni, they couldn’t save up any candy, either.

Despite their misgivings, the trio understood what they could do in order to stock up on candy. They returned to the earlier area and started grinding for candy by fighting the skeletons. The red skeletons that spawned occasionally dropped the most candy. As usual, Uluru never hit with her gun, but slowly, bit by bit, they saved up their candy.

Five days after returning to the previous area, finally, they had stocked up on enough candy to be able to buy a new set of weapons. Once again, they went into the mountain area, and they headed for the town cautiously to avoid encountering any oni, until finally, at last, they were able to buy new weapons: the Rifle +1, the Smartphone Nunchaku +1, and the Knife +1.

It had taken time. It had taken effort. They’d taken detours. So that made it emotional. The three of them tried to order wine at the tavern, but they didn’t have enough candy, so they ordered water and quietly had a toast. Now, their counterattack would begin.

One hour later, the three of them were scrambling around the mountain path trying to escape.

“Why?!” Uluru cried. “It wasn’t that we couldn’t win because our weapons were too weak?!”

“No, they’re clearly that much stronger,” said Sorami.

“There’s no way… It’s impossible…,” Sachiko moaned.

After being chased by nearly a hundred oni, the three of them discussed at the tavern. In every way the oni were too strong. This was supposed to be a game to train magical girls, but at this rate, it’d be game over before they ever completed their training.

“Are we…too weak?” Sorami wondered.

“There’s no way the elite guard of the honorable Puk Puck would be weak! The enemy is absurdly strong!”

“Maybe…they’re enemies…we don’t have to fight?”

Sachiko’s suggestion made Sorami clap her hands. “Ohhh, that could be it. Games are like that sometimes, y’know?”

“Ummm, I don’t really get it, but that means we should avoid fighting, right?” said Uluru.

The three of them stopped operating as warriors, instead acting entirely as scouts, or reconnaissance soldiers, or something in that vein. They didn’t fight the oni directly. They avoided detection, finding their foes first, waiting for them to pass as they made progress—albeit slowly.

By doing this, they were now able to avoid fighting oni. However, more struggles awaited. Unlike in the wasteland, in order to get from the mountains to the next area, there were lots of tasks involving coming and going to the same locations, like to go find the app “Translator Buddy” or to go on some errand, or to use that app to decipher ancient writing to solve a puzzle, encountering oni all along the way; and Sachiko’s face got paler and paler. Uluru tossed the puzzle-solving off to Sorami completely and focused on supporting Sachiko. No matter how much praise she showered Sachiko with—“You’re amazing; you’re great; if not for you, we’d all be in trouble”—it did nothing to improve Sachiko’s pallor.

They sneaked their way through the mountains at a snail’s pace for two weeks in total, and around the time Uluru thought Sachiko’s nerves had to be at their limit, finally, they opened the path onward. The trio entered a new region: the cave area.

Finally, no more running from oni every day. As Uluru was feeling relieved, what appeared before them were fifty feet long, with a hundred-foot wingspans, scaled thickly to repel bullets, sharp-fanged with strong jaws that would shatter rocks, and breathing scorching flame: dragons.

They just went into a brief fight, ready to flee, and that was enough to make them understand painfully well exactly how strong the enemy was. They turned and ran, coming out from the cave entrance, and feeling heat, she looked to the side and saw the earth there was scorched, smoke hanging over it.

“If you leave the cave, the monsters won’t follow you, but the area outside the cave is constantly being targeted by satellites, and lasers will snipe you…is what it says,” said Sachiko.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!”

The three magical girls went back into the cave and ran around, trying to escape from the dragons. Sachiko was slow and almost got caught in a dragon’s claws. Uluru cried out, “Sachiko!”

Uluru body-slammed her from the side, shoving her away, and the dragon’s claws swiped through air. But though Sachiko had avoided getting hit, the wind pressure of the slice alone nearly sent her flying. She would have been more than just injured if that thing had touched her.

Uluru did one spin in a forward roll and instantly rose to her feet again to avoid the dragon’s follow-up attack. Sachiko set her hand on the ground to get up as well. A click sounded, and the spot where Sachiko had placed her hand sank down. Before they could even be surprised, there was an explosion, blasting Sachiko away.

“Sachiko!”

Flung by the explosion, Sachiko accelerated, rolling over the ground. And ahead of her were sharp rocks.

“Sis, watch out!” Sorami rushed to her, thrusting out both hands to shove the rolling Sachiko to the side. Sachiko’s roll turned at a ninety-degree angle, and she avoided the sharp boulders to tumble off a cliff.

“S-Sachikooooooo!”

While somehow managing to rescue Sachiko, who passed out at the bottom of the cliff, they encountered more dragons, and Uluru hoisted Sachiko over her back and started running. Scorched by flames, dodging claws and fangs, wondering, Was there anything like this in the mountain area?! and scrambling, they fled into the village.

“What was that…?” Uluru asked.

“I don’t know…,” said Sorami.

“I wanna go hooome…,” Sachiko wailed.

The oni were strong enough that the trio could manage somehow so long as they fought like their lives depended on it. But those same tactics wouldn’t work on something as strong as a dragon—the girls would just be killed. Uluru was not going to fight that.

“Who said the oni were strong only ’cause you don’t have to fight them…?” Uluru moaned.

“Gee, sis, you sure like pinning the blame on someone else…,” Sorami shot back.

“I wanna go hooooome…,” Sachiko sobbed.

What kind of magical girls had the creators assumed would play this game? If a newbie magical girl were to play it, wouldn’t it just end without her being able to do anything? Uluru couldn’t understand.

“There’s got to be something… Some way out…”

“Anyway, let’s try checking out the shop…?” Sorami suggested.

So first, they figured they’d look at the shop and found there were new products on sale. Aside from things like weapons, rations, recovery medicine, and the passes, they were selling some mystery item called R.

“What’s this?” Uluru wondered.

“Ummm…looks like it’s kind of like a lottery. It says an item’ll come up at random,” Sorami answered.

“Random, huh?”

“Okay, then you try it, Sachiko. If we get a good item out of this, then we’ll be able to move forward, right?”

“Yeah… Okay.” Paying one hundred candy from their area-clear bonus, Sachiko pulled a slip of paper from the lottery box. When she handed it to the shopkeeper, they exchanged it for a food ration.

“A hundred candy for a ration…?”

“I mean, it’s kinda like a participation trophy, y’know? Like how the downtown lotteries’ll give you tissues.”

“So then if we pull more, we’ll win something good, right? Okay, Sachiko, draw another.”

If Sachiko drew a good item, Uluru would praise her real hard for it. Or so she figured, but Sachiko ended up drawing food rations four times in a row—putting the trio in the red, naturally.

“Hey, Sorami,” said Uluru. “What’s going on?”

“Look, I dunno what the win rate is like. It’s common enough with gacha games that you can draw a thousand times and still never get a winner.”

“There isn’t some trick to that box, is there?”

“Oh, maybe there is.”

“Go try checking it out. You can do that with your magic, can’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah, sure.”

Sorami approached her R box and covered the hole where you stuck your hand in, then suddenly looked up. With a startled expression like she’d realized something, she looked up at the sky for about thirty seconds, and Uluru reached out to her, about to demand, “Just what on earth are you doing?! How long does this even take?”

But Sorami swept aside Uluru’s outstretched hand with her own right hand and nodded. “I get it.”

“You get what? What’s inside the box?”

“No, not that box. The inside of this game is basically a closed space, right? So then I can use my magic on it. I just realized.”

Sorami’s magic was that she would know what was in a present without pulling off the ribbon. Any closed space—be it a box or a disk or a hut or an apartment—she could determine every single thing about its contents. Even if they were trapped inside this game, precisely because they were trapped, she could learn everything about it.

Sachiko laid her hands on Sorami’s shoulders and shook her. The color had returned to her once half-dead expression. Her eyes were shining with hope. Uluru surely had a similar look on her face. “So then that means you understand this game perfectly now!”

“Hey, sis, stop shaking me.”

“Yes! Yes, yes, yessss!” Sachiko cried. “This isn’t just having a strategy guide—it’s like playing the game with a cheat code. So then we’ve basically already won, right? Let’s go home right away!”

“It’s not gonna work like that, though…” Sorami was somber, her expression glum. “I guess it’d be faster for you to see it, rather than explaining. It’s real close if we run. Now follow me.” With that, Sorami immediately took off running.

Uluru and Sachiko exchanged a look, then chased right after her. Sorami was inherently lazy by nature and hated doing any work. That also meant she never pointlessly expended energy. So if she was running, there was a good reason for it.

Magical-girl legs are fast. And with their combat training, the three sisters were leagues faster than average for their kind. With their legs and Sorami’s directions, it took them about ten minutes, avoiding dragons twice, and beyond them was waiting, open-mouthed, what Sorami described as “the classic cave you see in a lot of games and stuff.”

“Follow in my footsteps. There are traps, so watch out.”

Walking after Sorami, who went right in, they went through crossroads, three-way intersections, and more minute branches, then a hidden door to a hidden hallway. They figured out the treasure chest code in one shot, and then using the key they got from it, they opened a door, and beyond that was something incredible.

“What…is that…?”

“That’s the Great Dragon. The thing we have to beat.”

The inside was bigger than Puk Puck’s castle. The square room was about three to five miles squared—maybe even bigger. The fifty-yard-high ceiling was full of mist to the point that you couldn’t see the top. The giant creature sprawled out in the center of the room was just like the dragons you’d see in picture books or manga or video games. Measured from nose to tail, it would probably measure closer to two miles long. And if it spread its wings, it would surely be even bigger.

“Oh, watch out not to enter the room,” cautioned Sorami. “’Cause if you take even a step in, it’ll breathe fire. It has an instant death effect, so if it hits you, you’re done for.”

“Um…do you use some kind of special item to defeat it?” Uluru asked.

“Nope, you fight it straight with your own skills.”

“What if you equip strong weapons and armor?”

“The game’s in tutorial mode, so modifications only go up to +3. Against that thing, it’s a difference of about one-ply versus three-ply.”

Dragging Sachiko (who had collapsed on the spot) out of the cave, the girls headed to the town Sorami guided them to, paid magical candy at the tavern to order three wines, and took a seat. Uluru punched the table as hard as she could. The wine sloshed hard enough that it nearly spilled. “This is bullshit!”

“Yeah…,” Sorami agreed. “Such bullshit. You’re totally right this time, sis. Like, a hundred percent.”

Sachiko downed her wine without a word, emptying her glass in one go, then face-planted on the table. The other customers and staff briefly shot the trio weird looks before averting their gaze.

“Isn’t there some kind of cheat? Like a secret trick?”

“It’s made simple ’cause it’s in tutorial mode. If we try messing around with it from the inside, it’s totally possible for the game to just break, us included. I wouldn’t try it.”

Sachiko silently picked up Uluru’s wine, drank it dry in one go, and laid facedown again. Uluru glanced over at her but couldn’t be bothered to try being of any comfort. Instead, she decided to leave her alone. “There isn’t anything like leveling up?”

“This game doesn’t have character levels.”

“We can’t get a critical hit and land a one-hit KO?”

“There’s a one in a million chance that we deal any damage, and another one in a million chance it’ll result in an instant kill. I don’t wanna try that. We’d probably get fried and die before we could touch it.”

“What if there’s some super-strong support NPC out there somewhere?”

“Not a chance. A training simulator wouldn’t need that kind of backup in the first place, right?”

“But Uluru’s gotta get back!”

“Well, I’ve gotta get back, too!” The table shook with a bang. Looking over, Uluru saw Sorami’s glass was also empty. Furthermore, Sachiko had the empty wine bottle in her right hand and was banging the butt of it against the table. Her face was red, her eyes glassy.

“Sachiko… Hey, leave this one for us!” said Uluru. “…Wait, does this wine work on magical girls, too?”

“Sis, this is a training simulator for magical girls—of course alcohol’s gonna work on us.”

There was a rustling as Sachiko spread some papers out on the table. They were the contracts needed to activate her magic. Anyone who signed one would temporarily gain incredible luck but immediately be met with incredible misfortune and wind up dead.

“Let’s use these.” She didn’t merely look drunk; she sounded drunk, too.

“You serious? Come on—if we use them, we’ll die.”

“Hmph.” Sachiko snorted, looking all around. “We should just use them on the monsters.”

“No way the monsters would choose to sign the contracts for us.”

Sachiko thrust her index finger at Uluru. “You’re good at lying, right? So you wheedle them however with your magic, spout some bluff, like if you beat the dragon, you can get a lot of money, or if you beat the dragon, the world’ll be saved, and then gather up the oni to fight the Great Dragon.”

Sorami put her hands up and carefully attempted to calm Sachiko. “Uh, but, sis. No matter how Uluru tries to lie to them, if they don’t understand what she says…”

“What d’you think the translation app is for?! Figure it out already!”

Sachiko smacked the table with the wine bottle, and Uluru and Sorami looked at each other with a collective “Oh!”

Uluru used the translation app to trick the oni: “Defeat the dragon and you’ll get one hundred percent of the profits. Just sign these contracts first.” Once the oni did that, the trio guided them to the cave area. The hordes of oni were mowed down by the dragon’s tail and burned up by the flames, but one still managed to survive. Sachiko’s magic granted the remaining oni’s attack exceptional luck, and the dragon was defeated.

Once the sisters had safely returned from the game, three magical girls welcomed them. Puk Puck and Tot Pop were pleasantly chatting with each other: “We’re all friends now, right?” “Yep!” Keek, meanwhile, was off to the side, slumped in her chair and shaking her head. “The deadline…,” she mumbled. “The deadline is coming…” The three sisters were now beyond caring what had transpired here.

“You three cleared the game, right? Then Keeky wants you to please do this survey,” Puk Puck asked them.

The trio furiously wrote down their gripes with the game, giving it solid ones across the board. Their reviews were scathing: Raise R’s success rate! Lower the difficulty level! The NPCs are annoying! Fuck this shitty game! I feel sorry for anyone who’s forced to play this thing. Whoever made this is evil. The creator should feel bad about themselves! Once finished, all three of them breathed sighs.

Word has it that ever since that day, none of the sisters ever played another video game.