First Blood

(Sun Yao)

“ROAR——!”

Facing the enraged tiger’s roar, I patted my skirt and stood up, taunting it in a frivolous tone that didn’t suit my usual self at all.

“Alright, alright~ Long-horned big cat, how many times are you going to roar? It only makes you look incompetent. I heard you monsters have high intelligence, but I don’t see a trace of it in you. Did you take this form for nothing?”

I even found my own tone annoying.

Because my whole body was wrapped in a magic membrane, my clothes hadn’t been soaked by the water from the burst fire hydrant. My long hair and skirt remained light and soft, and not a single water stain was left on me—my skin felt perfectly dry.

“Sailuno, judging by your arrogant tone, have you figured out a way to deal with our opponent?”

I couldn’t answer Miss Yang Yan’s question just yet because the tiger monster was about to “press its advantage.” Those tiger claws were bigger than my head. If I took two more direct hits, this membrane would likely shatter completely. After all, I hadn’t let that last blow land on purpose. I had no intention of being struck again.

“Ha!”

It charged at me and raised its massive arm, but I cast a magic membrane over its body first. Then, as if it had stepped onto frictionless ice, it slipped and stumbled, crashing headfirst into the plaza tiles and “kowtowing” right in front of me.

“Is that… friction disappearing?” Miss Yang Yan was astonished as she witnessed the scene through the drone.

“Mm! I think… I’ve finally figured out the correct use of this magic!”

Golden lightning flashed in the tiger monster’s mouth as it tried to blast through the membrane covering it. However, I already knew it would try that. The gushing lightning passed through the membrane without hindrance, blasting a charred crater into the plaza, but the membrane itself remained unscathed.

While the tiger monster was baffled, the membrane on its body expanded into a bubble prison. This time, it had no way to escape.

Miss Yang Yan saw this and made a guess. “You let that lightning pass through your membrane so the structure wasn’t destroyed by the energy?”

“The result is similar, but not quite.”

“What do you mean?”

“My magic doesn’t just create bubbles… it delineates a space where I set the rules.”

“A space?”

“The inside of the bubble.”

“And what does ‘setting rules’ mean?”

“The bubble’s rules depend on my perception. Because I perceive it as a transparent bubble, light can pass through. Similarly, because I initially thought, ‘you can breathe and move even with the membrane on,’ the bubble didn’t block air or friction. After Ziye’s reminder, I realized that friction shouldn’t necessarily exist there. So, in the end, that monster ended up like this.”

The tiger monster was still struggling helplessly inside the bubble, looking somewhat ridiculous as it slid around without any grip.

“…What are you planning to do now?”

I still had no direct attack methods, but by using this control over what enters and exits the space, I could try something else. The weapon I chose was… water.

Since the fire hydrant had burst earlier, it had been creating a constant artificial rain. The water that touched the bubble entered it but couldn’t come out, forming countless floating droplets in the zero-gravity environment of the bubble.

“Are you planning to drown it?”

“Yeah. Even after understanding the nature of my magic, I can’t attack it directly. This is the only method I can think of right now.”

The tiger monster inside the bubble covered its mouth and nose, frantically dodging the increasing water droplets as it realized its fate. Its lungs filling with water… that had to be a painful way to go.

Miss Yang Yan offered a suggestion. “Sailuno, if you extract the air now, it will suffocate in a vacuum, or have its internal organs and fluids pulled out.”

“I can’t do that. Not to mention where the force to expel the air would come from, my magic isn’t that easy to control.”

“Uncontrollable?”

“It’s a bit difficult to explain. My magic creates a space based on ‘what I believe’ rather than simply ‘what I wish.’ Although it sounds similar, they’re two different concepts. Do you understand?”

“…Magic is a ‘reality that belongs only to oneself.’ It’s never easy to make others fully comprehend one’s own magic, especially something as complex as yours. Leave the detailed analysis to the Association.”

Miss Yang Yan seemed to give up on trying to understand the metaphysics of it.

In simple terms, my magic involves setting “entry and exit rules” in my mind and then applying those rules to the bubble. If I set air to “exit only,” I might suffocate the monster, but I might also suffocate myself—because those are the rules I believe in, so they apply equally to everything inside the bubble. These rules can’t be changed on a whim. Once I accepted the tiger monster’s lightning blast as “light” that should pass through the bubble, it became difficult to block it later without making the bubble pitch black.

I can’t set overly detailed, subjective rules. Especially critical elements like air and light can’t be easily blocked, since I’m relying on the bubble membrane for my own defense as well.

“Gulp… ugh—”

By now, the bubble was about forty percent full of floating water droplets. The tiger monster couldn’t avoid inhaling the deadly liquid. Finally, it couldn’t hold on and coughed, but the violent breathing only let more liquid pour into its lungs. Its hands clawed frantically at the air with no support. The long steel needles regrowing on its back shot out continuously, but they were too weak to break the bubble from the inside.

I hadn’t “allowed” those steel needles to exit the bubble. Fortunately, the beast had little strength left, or it might have forced its way out.

The process lasted several minutes. Finally, the tiger monster curled up in agony and stopped moving. All I did was watch it drown.

Thump—thump—thump—

My heartbeat pounded against my eardrums.

“Did I win?”

“The monster has lost its life signs. You won, Sailuno.”

“Phew…”

My first victory. And it was an overwhelming triumph, leaving the enemy powerless to fight back. Maybe I really did have a talent for this. But such a brutal method of fighting didn’t exactly align with my ideal aesthetic of a magical girl.

I dispelled the bubble. The tiger monster’s massive corpse fell onto the plaza, its face twisted in agony. I had actually defeated such a terrifying, hideous monster. Still, it had taken quite a bit of time. If it were Miluno…

No, even other magical girls with standard attack magic could probably have finished the fight faster. For example, Miss Yang Yan’s fire phosphorus magic. As the saying goes, “fluffy things are weak to fire.” This tiger monster would probably have been blown to ashes in one encounter. Why would she need to painstakingly devise a strategy like I did, even taking a hit just to break a fire hydrant?

Even though I won, the lack of lethal power in my magic hadn’t changed. Future battles still looked grim.

“So, can I go home now?”

The alert was over. There was nothing left for me to do. Afterward, the Association would handle the corpse and repair the building. Allowing magical girls to fight without restraint was one of the founding principles of the Association, after all.

But Miss Yang Yan’s voice in the earpiece stopped me.

“Wait, Sailuno! If possible, I’d like you to come to the medical facility. As your new mentor, I think we should meet and talk about the applications of your magic.”

An invitation from Miss Yang Yan.

Miss Yin Lu had left it to me to decide when to reveal my identity, but hiding it from Miss Yang Yan weighed on my conscience. Maybe I should take this opportunity…

“Of course. Actually… there’s something I want to tell you, too.”

I agreed.