Zhou Huanan led the way at the base’s entrance, with Scarlet Magical Girl, still blindfolded, following closely behind.
The elevator started its descent, carrying them to the third basement level.
Upon reaching Magical Girl Black Iris’s designated room, a space Dr. Zhuge had prepared for their discussion, Zhou Huanan informed Scarlet Magical Girl that she could now remove her blindfold.
Scarlet Magical Girl, her patience worn thin, impatiently tore off the blindfold, her eyes blazing with an imposing fire. Zhou Huanan, observing her spirited demeanor, nodded in approval.
He was about to articulate his purpose, but Scarlet Magical Girl preempted him.
“Hmph? Just a mere nobody. Where’s your Captain 19? Tell him to come see me.”
Zhou Huanan: “…”
“I am 19.” Captain 19 adjusted his mindset, explaining in a chilling tone.
“Oh? Demoted? Congratulations!”
A look of malicious delight spread across Scarlet Magical Girl’s face as she wielded her sharp, cutting words like a weapon.
Captain 19 heard this but paid it no mind.
He sensed Scarlet Magical Girl’s palpable tension since her arrival, understanding it as the predictable resistance of a human confronted with their own disadvantage. Such defiance, he knew, would soon dissipate.
Captain 19 silently pressed a button on his phone. Behind him was a large glass curtain wall; the opaque smart glass, once activated by a surge of electricity, shimmered into transparency, revealing the tableau beyond.
Scarlet Magical Girl, seeing the room suddenly brighten, cautiously took half a step back.
Just as she was about to ask Captain 19 what he intended, she saw her: trapped behind the glass curtain wall.
Suspended in the center of a temporal magic array was Magical Girl Black Iris, Century Gold’s vice-captain.
She looked just like the figurines Scarlet Magical Girl had seen of her online, with two black buns coiled on her head, and neat air bangs that were only long at the edges. Her dragon-like golden slit pupils slowly opened, everything about her exuding immense majesty.
However, Black Iris’s current attire was hardly suitable for public viewing.
She wore only a single item: a halter-style top, its colors mimicking her black and gold cheongsam gown. It seemed to cover the entirety of the coiled girl’s delicate body, yet simultaneously revealed a hint of everything, her long, slender legs utterly exposed, a sight that would undoubtedly drive countless leg-fetishists into raptures.
Even though she was confined within a grand and luxurious magic array…
Yet, simply meeting her gaze.
Magical Girl Scarlet Magical Girl felt her resolve shatter. She knew, with chilling certainty, that she could never hope to defeat the individual (Black Iris) before her.
Even through the glass, a crushing pressure, akin to the deepest ocean currents, bore down on her, making Scarlet Magical Girl feel as if she were sinking deeper and deeper into an oceanic trench, on the verge of suffocating.
It wasn’t until Black Iris mercifully fluttered her golden, slit pupils.
Only then did Scarlet Magical Girl manage to gasp for air, her body drenched in sweat as if she’d been pulled from water, grateful to be alive again.
But the girl’s nightmare was far from over.
“Hiss…”
“Excellent, the taste of your fear just now was truly exquisite.”
Magical Girl Scarlet Magical Girl had initially intended to force a smile, to casually dismiss Banjao’s capture of a Magical Girl as insignificant.
But then, a prolonged serpentine hiss abruptly sounded behind her ear, and her earlobe brushed against a cold, forked tongue. Most ordinary individuals would have instinctively recoiled, leaping back in fright.
Yet Magical Girl Scarlet Magical Girl could not move.
Her entire body felt as if every joint had been seized, locking her in place.
Scarlet Magical Girl’s heart hammered with frantic anxiety; she struggled to reach for her weapon, but as she cast her gaze downwards to ascertain the cause of her paralysis…
She was horrified to discover she was being embraced by something—a twisted, green-scaled limb.
Without a reaction, without a single premonition, she had been seized from behind by an unseen enemy.
The same opponent who could hold her like this could just as easily twist off her neck.
And it exuded a familiar scent.
‘It was the Magma Demon!’
Scarlet Magical Girl’s eyelids twitched with terror, and she involuntarily recalled that day.
The day she had swung her blade with all her might at the Magma Demon, an attack that should have been the proudest of her career, yet the despair of being unable to penetrate its defenses, and the suffocating sensation of imminent death.
Magical Girl Scarlet Magical Girl trembled uncontrollably, tears spilling from the corners of her eyes, her breathing short and rapid. She dared not make a sound, terrified that any wrong move would result in her death.
She even looked to Captain 19 for help, but he was an enemy, and naturally remained indifferent.
He merely watched, watching the Magical Girl before him held in the embrace of the snake-man Magma Demon.
Watching her shed helpless, weak tears.
‘Tsk.’
Behind his mask, Captain 19 frowned and clicked his tongue.
She was far too different from that child (Grey Moon). He had witnessed Grey Moon’s solo triumph over the Magma Demon that day, and her desperate stand against the tide of monsters in the gymnasium.
He was certain that if Grey Moon stood here in this very moment, she would, even at the cost of her life, undoubtedly turn and deliver a decisive blow to this Magma Demon.
Not like this.
“Don’t… don’t kill me…”
She could only squeeze out a pathetic whimper from her throat, crying as she surrendered to her enemy.
Magical Girl Scarlet Magical Girl had clearly succumbed to utter panic, her composure utterly shattered.
“How uninteresting.”
What the Magma Demon, Mo Jiashi, said was precisely what Captain 19 was thinking. The Magical Girl before them was far too fragile, far too easily defeated.
The existence of Magical Girls was profoundly predicated on their ideals; thus, since that fateful battle, the fear of the Magma Demon had become an indelible mark, etched deep into Scarlet Magical Girl’s very bones.
Now, tasting the Magma Demon’s aura once more, Scarlet Magical Girl’s body reacted with the conditioned reflex of Pavlov’s dog, her subconscious mind reduced to nothing but cowering and pleading for mercy before her master.
“Not kill you?”
Mo Jiashi’s sneer was malicious, his arm, which had been coiled around Scarlet Magical Girl’s abdomen, began to snake upwards. Scarlet Magical Girl watched in terror as that hand, covered in tiny green scales, caressed her cheek, eliciting a pathetic shriek.
Then, the serpent’s scaled forearm coiled around her neck.
“Tell me, why shouldn’t I kill you?”
“I… I’m useful, I know Magical Girl Grey Moon, she… no, don’t…”
Scarlet Magical Girl pleaded in terror, but Mo Jiashi still tightened his grip on her neck from behind.
Mo Jiashi slowly straightened, his stature increasing, pulling Scarlet Magical Girl upwards. To maintain any semblance of breath, she was forced onto the tips of her combat boots.
Gradually, only her tiptoes could touch the ground, and the Magical Girl, her face flushed and streaked with tears, whimpered desperate pleas.
She desperately sought to make the Magma Demon behind her cease his brutal assault.
But the girl remained oblivious; her mournful cries only served to heighten her tormentor’s cruel pleasure.
Mo Jiashi, his serpentine eyes gleaming with a wicked smile, lifted Magical Girl Scarlet Magical Girl completely into the air. Despite Scarlet Magical Girl’s desperate struggles, he choked her until she was half-dead before finally releasing his arm, allowing her to fall, splashing into the water below.
Captain 19 witnessed a truly rare sight.
If a camera could capture this moment and sell it to the perverts on the internet, it would likely fetch an excellent price.
Alas.
The protagonist was inadequate.
If the protagonist Magical Girl could be replaced with the pure and aloof Grey Moon, that photograph would be an absolute masterpiece. But, unfortunately, she could not be replaced.
This lack of a suitable subject even extinguished Captain 19’s interest in pulling out his phone to take a picture.
Magical Girl Scarlet Magical Girl was, to him, as insignificant as a roadside weed.
Captain 19’s gaze was filled with pity.
Inside the room, Mo Jiashi gazed at his handiwork with satisfaction, then kicked Scarlet Magical Girl, telling her to stop playing dead.
“Now you can speak. What do you know about Grey Moon?”
“I… I know everything…”
Scarlet Magical Girl sat crying on the metal floor. She clutched the sticker photo she had taken not long ago in her shorts, but did not pull it out. It wasn’t because she had an unyielding resolve to die rather than betray the one she loved.
It was fear.
Fear that if Banjao and his group discovered Grey Moon’s true identity, then Scarlet Magical Girl, having lost her value, might as well die.
“I know Magical Girl Grey Moon attends Sakura High School!”
Captain 19’s eyebrows shot up in sudden astonishment at this revelation.
What?
Magical Girl Grey Moon was his schoolmate?!
Captain 19 immediately began to scour his memories, searching for any matching faces within the school. Liu Li, being a girl, naturally came to mind.
He swiftly dismissed the thought, however.
Although he felt Liu Li and Grey Moon were similar in some ways, their outward expressions were too different.
He dismissed that option.
Captain 19 mused that truly few girls in the school possessed a temperament akin to Grey Moon’s, and each comparison felt inherently flawed…
When Captain 19 came back to his senses.
He saw Scarlet Magical Girl, still weeping, still relentlessly begging for mercy, all but prostrating herself before her new monster ‘father’.
“Really, really, really, I really, really only know this much!”
“I’ll slowly figure out Grey Moon’s true identity!”
“Please give me another chance!”
Mo Jiashi disdainfully kicked away Scarlet Magical Girl, who had attempted to cling to his leg, then sneered, his gaze sweeping over Captain 19 and Black Iris.
He was mocking them.
“Human miracles?”
“Magical Girls??”
“Hiss… don’t tell me that Grey Moon is also about this level, and you Banjao only exaggerated her to cover up your incompetence.”
Mo Jiashi flashed a smug, sneering grin, shaking his head in slow, deliberate motions. Before departing, he instructed Captain 19 to elaborate on the plan, then turned and exited the room.
Captain 19 acknowledged the order, then squatted down in front of the fragile Magical Girl, meeting her gaze.
By now, Scarlet Magical Girl was in complete disarray.
Captain 19, recognizing Scarlet Magical Girl’s profound distress, found himself compelled to explain the plan in a tone softened with a touch of gentleness. He briefly introduced the temporal magic array trapping Black Iris, where time flowed at only one percent of the outside world’s speed.
Neither action nor thought could proceed normally inside. He casually mentioned Black Iris’s impending execution, and that the now-vacant magic array would be repurposed as a trap for Grey Moon.
Executed?
Scarlet Magical Girl shuddered at the chilling word, then realized with a jolt that it referred not to her, but to Black Iris, trapped behind the glass curtain wall.
She gazed up at the Magical Girl facing execution, a desperate hope flickering within her: to see, to ascertain that she wasn’t the sole individual so utterly terrified of death.
Alas, she was disappointed.
Scarlet Magical Girl’s pupils contracted to pinpricks as she watched Black Iris. Even within the one-percent time flow, below Black Iris’s golden eyes, her lips moved at a normal, discernible pace, mouthing words to her.
Scarlet Magical Girl silently repeated the words.
She realized Black Iris wasn’t mouthing ‘Help me.’
Instead.
‘[Justice]’