“Teacher… is this really okay?” the young girl asked, feigning composure.
“Relax,” Aya Tone assured them, his voice brimming with conviction, “haven’t you seen magical girls? They defeat villains, save the world. By extension, won’t defeating monsters make you stronger?”
‘Calling it a bluff wasn’t quite right, though. After all, that’s precisely how it happened in anime, and Aya Tone himself genuinely believed it. How could it be a bluff?’
“But… why *these* kinds of monsters?! Ahhh!!” The girl’s scream tore through the air, utterly abandoning all pretense of composure.
Teacher Aya, however, remained utterly indifferent, even suppressing a chuckle. It was rather amusing that these three girls, who showed no fear of ghosts, were terrified of these viscous, largely harmless mud monsters.
‘Tsk, tsk, tsk. Quite a novelty, indeed.’
An hour earlier, having been gawked at by so many onlookers, even Lin Ling had felt a blush creep onto her face. Consequently, the four of them had swiftly gathered their belongings and departed from the milk tea shop.
With hearts pounding in exhilaration, the three girls had then rushed headlong towards the next teleportation array. Their teacher had, after all, promised to guide them along the very path he had once traversed.
Though it was another E-grade teleportation array, the experience it offered was vastly different. Unlike the wandering spirits of the Ghost Domain, this particular dungeon spawned creatures known as mud monsters.
Some, of course, jokingly referred to these monsters as ‘rock-type slimes.’ Their abilities truly bore a slight resemblance to slimes, a fact evident in their current predicament.
Unaware of the monsters lurking within the dungeon, the three girls had inadvertently stumbled into an encirclement of mud monsters. Now, their fair-skinned feet were bound by rings of mud, leaving them all suspended upside down in an utterly humiliating position.
To Aya Tone’s disappointment, the anti-gravity skirts so common in anime apparently hadn’t manifested in reality. Thus, the girls’ pristine white underwear was, to Aya Tone, laid bare for all to see.
‘Oh, how lewd.’
‘Wait, no, lewdness is a no-go!’
“Teacher, help!” the three girls cried out instinctively to Aya Tone.
Aya Tone covered his face. “Why don’t you fight back?!”
‘They said those admitted to Dragon Court Academy were all one-in-a-hundred geniuses. So how were his three disciples… so utterly useless?’
‘Magical girls were supposed to be about friendship, about bonds… yet these three hadn’t inherited any of it. They hadn’t even grasped the weaknesses of tentacle monsters, their natural enemies, had they?’
He had brought Lin Ling and the others into the dungeon not just to pass the time and complete his daughter’s task. Most importantly, he wanted to see if the lessons learned from anime held any practical value in reality.
‘Magical girls didn’t adhere to materialism; they were creatures entirely driven by their hearts. Aya Tone himself was just like that—pure consciousness flow! Thus, he was genuinely curious if Lin Ling and the others could ignite a different kind of spark. His initial choice of the Ghost Domain had, after all, been precisely to frighten these three young girls and thereby unleash the power of their hearts. Who would have thought these three wouldn’t be scared of ghosts?’
‘He couldn’t help but exclaim, “Well, I’ll be!”‘
“Fight back! But my magic wand…”
It was then that Aya Tone also noticed the three magic wands, caked in mud, lying quietly in the mire beneath them.
“Hmph…”
‘His fist clenched. It really clenched! He’d seen incompetence before, but never anything quite this level of incompetence. They couldn’t even play with top-tier accounts, could they? Six-gods-tier items, solo-killed by a river crab. Incredible! Deep breaths. Don’t get angry! Don’t get angry!’
“Your magic wands aren’t just freebies from a phone plan, are they?” Having finally calmed the tumult in his heart, Aya Tone found himself at a loss for where to even begin his complaints.
‘A magical girl’s wand was unlike those of other magic-wielding espers; it was a soul-bound artifact. It shared a subtle, almost imperceptible, spiritual connection with its owner, and from a certain perspective, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to call it an extension of the magical girl herself. If your hand accidentally fell to the ground, wouldn’t your brain tell it to pick itself up? And what’s more! Without your magic wands, are you incapable of using magic? Thank you for infuriating me.’
“You girls do your best! I won’t be helping you!”
With that, he conjured a simple shield to prevent the mud and sand outside from encroaching, then once again pulled out his trusty ancestral stool and sat down. After a moment’s thought, however, he decided to block his view entirely; out of sight, out of mind.
‘He feared that another glance might just correct his low blood pressure problem entirely.’
“How could this be…?”
Lin Ling’s face contorted into a grimace. Hanging upside down sent the blood rushing to her head, and within moments, her face flushed crimson. Since their teacher wouldn’t help. She turned her head to Ye Liu, who was similarly bound not far away. “Yezi, can you think of something?”
‘Brain work was too much of a challenge for her.’
Ye Liu ignored her, her face as serene as if she weren’t the one tied up. She murmured to herself, ‘Have we, perhaps, grown too reliant on Teacher? Whether in the Ghost Domain or this current dungeon… Whenever they encountered difficulty, it seemed they had never once considered using their own strength to solve the problem. Strength!’
Ye Liu’s eyes suddenly gleamed.
‘With Teacher by their side, how could she have suddenly forgotten… I! No! We aren’t helpless weaklings!’
“Ling Ling! Fei Fei! Magic Enhancement!”
“What?” Lin Ling, her head throbbing with blood, couldn’t quite process it at first.
Liu Fei, upon hearing this, instantly understood Ye Liu’s intention. She channeled the magic within her body to her legs, forming a layer of pale blue scales on their surface. As her calves surged with power, the mud tentacles wrapped around her legs abruptly shattered.
Unlike their seemingly clumsy demeanor, the mud monsters, devoid of pain, reacted swiftly. Upon realizing their prey had suddenly broken free, several mud-formed tentacles shot towards the two girls like sharpened blades. Suspended in mid-air, the two girls had no point of leverage, leaving them to watch helplessly as the tentacles threatened to pierce their bodies.
“No! Yezi! Fei Fei!”
Just then!
The girls’ vision blurred, and before them, a young girl suddenly appeared, radiating a shimmering pink aura of magic. The tentacles that had been poised to impale them, along with the distant mud monsters, vanished without a trace, leaving only the viscous mud still oozing on the ground.
“Ling Ling?”
The three girls gently landed, and Ye Liu stared in disbelief at the young girl before her, now enveloped in magic.
“How did you do that?”
‘Without a magic wand, yet capable of using body enhancement magic.’
“You mean this?”
Lin Ling turned, gestured to the magic covering her body, and chuckled sheepishly as she scratched her head. “I don’t know either! I just saw you two were in danger, and my body suddenly moved on its own.”
Ye Liu’s brow furrowed slightly, then she seemed to recall something.
‘Could this be the power of bonds, just like in anime?’
Then, with a mischievous glint in her eye, she looked at Liu Fei. “Fei Fei, how about you get tied up again? I want to try something.”
Liu Fei: “…” ‘Are you even human?’
“Haha, just kidding,” Ye Liu waved her hand, then jogged over to the patch of mud where they had just been trapped.
‘As for whether she was truly just joking, no one but her would ever know.’
“Now then, it’s our turn to go on the offensive!”
“Alright!” came the synchronized reply.
Having now understood the mud monsters’ attack methods, their weak assaults proved utterly ineffective against the three girls who had reclaimed their weapons. In a mere matter of minutes, all the mud monsters were eradicated. Faintly glimmering magic crystals in the mud served as the only testament to their former existence.
****