Good heavens, Lady Magical Girl!
She used zero strategy; it was just pure, overwhelming stats.
Her fists were swift! Explosive! Powerful!
They fought their way from the multipurpose building to the teaching building.
Fang Wei followed behind her, having absolutely no chance to step in.
It felt like a strong sense of déjà vu.
Qi Qiancao was like a young boy who, after starting a new game, wanted to show off his skills in front of his girlfriend.
Her progress through the battle was incredibly efficient.
Hearing the soft, involuntary hums of satisfaction she let out, she was surely feeling smug about the shocked expression on his face.
This actually made it difficult for Fang Wei to understand her.
‘Just what faction of magical girl do you belong to?’
‘The Madoka-type? Then where’s your weapon? Sakura? Nanoha? It doesn’t look like them either. Oh, with this “fist-to-meat” art style, are you sure you’re not a Precure instead of a magical girl?’
Precures, who held the reputation of being the female version of Showa Riders, specialized in a style where magic was just for special effects, while the real damage depended on how hard their fists were.
Therefore, the girls of this series were called “Legendary Warriors.”
Don’t ask if they were legendary or not; just tell me if they were warriors.
Clang—
Another punch blasted a passing Mirror Familiar to pieces.
She didn’t even spare the small Mirror Familiars that had just begun to materialize.
Because Qi Qiancao had the aura of someone who would wipe out an entire family tree, the Mirror Familiars that had initially charged at them no longer dared to show their faces.
The moment they saw the two of them, they turned and ran.
The miserable screams of the Mirror Familiars echoed in the hallway.
Fang Wei covered his ears, pretending not to hear a thing.
“Boyfriend, where are we going to play next?”
In sharp contrast to her actions, after elbowing another Mirror Familiar to the ground, Qi Qiancao stepped through its mirror surface with one foot.
Amidst the Mirror Familiar’s gut-wrenching wails, she turned back and gave him a faint, sweet smile.
This girl was someone who didn’t feel any shame regarding her brutality; instead, she felt proud to be shining so brightly in front of him.
Fang Wei’s heart skipped a beat as well.
In a gentle voice, he said, “Let’s clean up the familiars here first. I saw some ping-pong tables over by the field earlier. We can go there and rest for a while once we’re done.”
“I’m not really that tired, but if Boyfriend is worried about me, taking a little break is okay.”
Qi Qiancao took advantage of the situation while playing coy, and as she spoke, she tried to lean in closer to get some physical affection from Fang Wei.
This time, Fang Wei didn’t give her the chance.
When facing danger, his nerves would instinctively tighten and his focus would sharpen.
He wanted to remind Qi Qiancao to pay attention to her surroundings during battle and not focus entirely on romance to avoid suffering a major loss.
However, Qi Qiancao didn’t care at all.
Ever since she became a magical girl, the Magic Beasts she had dealt with were far too simple.
Even if she encountered what Xiao Yu described as dangerous Magic Beasts, they seemed vulnerable to a single blow in her eyes.
So, while she had been cautious during her first few battles, Qi Qiancao treated later encounters with Magic Beasts like games.
She even fought while entertaining thoughts of whether an angel would descend from the sky to save her.
It was just like the stories she wove in her mind.
Understandably, if Magic Beasts were of this caliber, she looked down even more on the familiars that were as common as stray dogs on the street.
This power was the very reason for her arrogance.
But arrogance is often only a thin line away from letting one’s guard down.
At the very moment Qi Qiancao relaxed her mind, she suddenly noticed a flash of white light in her pupils.
It was a sword-shaped mirror shard that appeared out of thin air within her field of vision, shooting toward her from the end of the hallway.
It was incredibly fast—this was a trap prepared before the two of them even stepped foot here.
One Mirror Familiar served as the bullet, while another familiar fired it.
Because of its sharp shape and extreme speed, Qi Qiancao didn’t even have a chance to block.
A look of stunned confusion flashed across her face as she barely reacted.
However, at the exact moment the confusion on Qi Qiancao’s face turned into terror, a brilliant moonlight reflected in her eyes.
In the next moment, she realized it wasn’t moonlight; it was the flash of a man’s blade.
Fang Wei was even faster.
While pulling the girl into his arms, he swung his blade behind him, shattering the shard that could have pierced through Qi Qiancao’s brain.
Meanwhile, Qi Qiancao’s mind felt like it was exploding.
She stared blankly at the man holding the katana with both hands.
This made her heart flutter even more than the scenes she had imagined countless times in her head last night.
‘My heart feels like it has a life of its own; it’s about to jump out of my chest!’
She knew she hadn’t made the wrong choice.
He really was the protagonist of her romance, the angel who came to save her.
While Qi Qiancao was dazed, Fang Wei blocked the attack and rushed toward the end of the hallway.
“Go to the front!”
He had wanted to say this since the first time he saw Qi Qiancao—this kid must have played too many stat-heavy games because she didn’t even know where the dodge button was.
It was fine for dealing with those brainless Magic Beasts, but these Mirror Familiars possessed high intelligence.
Last time, they had even managed to lure him into a small room for a group fight.
Underestimating them would certainly lead to trouble.
Sure enough, that shard hadn’t been fired from Qi Qiancao’s front, but from the rear.
However, there were Mirror Familiars on both sides of the hallway, and the reflections had misled her.
Fortunately, Fang Wei had seen the red Fallen Value right before the shot, allowing him to act first.
These thoughts flashed through his brain instantly as he made follow-up judgments.
Within half a breath, the battle-hardened Fang Wei had already rushed in front of the enemy.
Using the reflections on the mirror surfaces to look behind him, he saw that Qi Qiancao had also snapped out of her daze and was charging forward without hesitation.
She was like a projected bullet, a pink comet smashing into the end of the hallway, pulverizing the Mirror Familiar that had caused the trouble with a single punch!
‘Not bad. She’s a total newbie with poor combat awareness, but her stats still carry her.’
In comparison, Fang Wei was much slower.
For reasons yet unknown, the Mirror Familiars today were exceptionally tough.
If the ones from last time were ordinary glass, these were like bulletproof glass.
However, they were all the same.
The katana struck the surface, sending sparks flying as the 2-meter-tall Mirror Familiar died instantly.
Fang Wei was actually quite annoyed, so he didn’t even spare the small Mirror Familiars that were materializing, cutting through them like vegetables and sending them all on their way.
Once he finished cleaning up this side and prepared to go back to regroup with Qi Qiancao, he suddenly noticed a slight sense of abnormality.
He turned his head, but the previously engaged Qi Qiancao and the familiars had all disappeared, leaving only an empty hallway.
‘I can’t be this unlucky, can I?’
Fang Wei muttered to himself, following the sense of abnormality to kick open a nearby classroom door.
Using the tip of his katana to pry open a bookshelf, he found a filthy young girl crouching on the floor, holding her head with both hands.
[Fallen Value: 64%]
It showed as white; she was human.
“Ah!”
She was startled by the sound of the cabinet door opening and screamed, trying to run outside.
However, she bumped into Fang Wei’s leg and fell straight to the ground, curling up like a caterpillar.
The girl’s hair was a mess, and her clothes showed signs of being torn.
There were scratches and bruises on her neck and arms.
They looked like the palm prints of a humanoid creature.
“Please let me go, please let me go, please let me go…”
Her pleas for mercy were as fast as a chanted prayer.
Fang Wei tapped her with the tip of his shoe and shouted, “Calm down, I’m a living person.”
“Ah! Huh?”
She finally dared to open her eyes and look, but she immediately began wailing again, terrified by the katana in Fang Wei’s hand.
“Uh, look, the truth is, I’m here to kill ghosts.”
Fang Wei made up a random excuse.
Looking at the current situation, he had accidentally entered a Magic Beast Barrier.
A Magic Beast Barrier was, as the name implied, a four-dimensional space where Magic Beasts lived.
It was a place for them to rest and recuperate, and they would also use the Magic Beast Barrier to capture humans.
It was roughly similar to the Witch Barriers in Madoka, though not quite as abstract.
Most of the time, ordinary people who entered wouldn’t even realize they had stepped into another world.
Of course, Fang Wei was an intelligence-specialized official, belonging to the mental type, which was why he had such a strong sense of abnormality and dissonance.
“An… An Exorcist? Then run quickly! No, wait, take me with you! My roommates and I were on our way back to school, and we suddenly walked here uncontrollably… There are so many monsters here!”
This girl looked like she had been tormented quite a bit inside the barrier, but she hadn’t become nourishment for the Magic Beasts yet, so she probably hadn’t been in here for too long.
However, because of her fear, her speech was completely disorganized.
Fang Wei had no choice but to grab her by the scruff of her neck and lift her up.
“Don’t be afraid. You just accidentally wandered into the Boss Room. We can leave once we finish off the boss.”
Hearing this, the girl bent over and grabbed the hem of his clothes, crying without tears.
“Let’s go quickly. The people in the mirrors have been chasing me. They’re so scary…”
“It’s fine. In a little while, I’ll be the one chasing them.”
Fang Wei shouldered his katana.
He felt the familiars here were a bit too smart; they even knew how to drag him into a barrier to separate him from Qi Qiancao so they could defeat them one by one.
Although he was a bit worried about Qi Qiancao, being anxious wouldn’t help.
Once pulled into a barrier, the only way to leave was to deal with the Magic Beast’s true body.
So before that, Fang Wei could only slightly change his strategy and grind some experience for his Dream Nail.
‘Hehe, you naturally evil familiar brats, I’m going to—’
***
“Boyfriend…?”
In the real world, Qi Qiancao looked around blankly.
The angel who had just saved her once again… had disappeared.
In the hallway, the Mirror Magic Beasts and their familiars let out mocking laughs.