“Ugh.
Jiang Lingwei succeeded.
She rubbed her head, standing on a ground covered in molten lava.
“No way, I still can’t get used to this, my head hurts so much….”
“Kekekekekeke.”
“Don’t laugh.”
Waving her hand, the young girl said, “You’re giving me a headache. Let me recover a bit, then you can go on with your evil master plan, okay?”
(This is unbearable… yue… I want to throw up… But this is a mental space… I can’t throw up…)
Holding her neck, Jiang Lingwei, who had appeared in this “world,” carefully felt her “body”—the discomfort coming from her spiritual form.
【Mental Space】
It was a magic developed by the magical girl 【Fulan】.
Among all the companions, she was the first to pay attention to the “heart.”
It’s just that the direction and starting point she cared about were always a bit… odd.
Time shifts back to a certain great battle many years ago.
“Good, good, thank you, magical creation, but before you die, I have to study you with scientific thinking.
“So don’t die yet, wait till I’m done, then talk about dying.”
On the battlefield, Fulan, paying no attention to others, used a knife imbued with magic to slice open the body of a humanoid monster lying on the ground.
“As I thought.”
Nodding, she reached straight in, rummaging around inside the monster’s body.
With her fingers moving constantly, “squelch squelch” sounds came from the flesh, stirring the monster into painful howls, yet it couldn’t move at all.
That thing was still alive.
“Fulan!”
“Clang!”
Jiguang called her name, using her staff to block the attack of a giant red dog standing upright with blade-shaped arms, looking like a stronger version of a kobold from World of Warcraft.
If she hadn’t stepped in at the last second, Fulan would’ve been cut in half.
Why did that circus have to perform here of all places?
Now look, the entire troupe, people and animals, have all turned into monsters.
“Are you done over there?!”
“Bang!”
Seeing the blade strike the staff again, Jiguang grew furious, stomping down with her right foot, leaping up, and smashing the jewel atop her staff into the red dog’s nose.
“Thud!”
“Awoo awoo awoo!”
The blow, brimming with Light magic, knocked the dog’s head back. Not giving it a chance to recover, the pink boots kicked the kobold’s crotch in the next instant.
“Awooo!!!”
Among these magical beasts, the kobold’s combat power was the strongest.
It originally had eight arms. After Jiguang broke off six, it didn’t get weaker—just even more vicious.
Behind Jiguang, a girl with short gray hair and a loose wizard’s robe was still wielding her knife, cutting up the monster that had once been the circus troupe leader, reaching inside and stirring constantly, occasionally yanking out mysterious organs oozing black blood.
Every time she sliced or stirred, the troupe leader monster let out a deep moan.
It looked at Jiguang with its one remaining deformed eye, pleading.
“Don’t look at me.”
But Jiguang ignored it.
Suffering is what you deserve for willingly siding with the Dark Fairy.
Besides, the magical beasts transformed from those little animals were even more troublesome than magi, and Jiguang had no time to care.
Other than this circus leader, the rest were forced into corruption. The magi they turned into had low intelligence; they put up a token fight to satisfy the dark magic, then died content.
“Almost done.” Magical girl 【Fulan】 sped up, tossing aside unneeded organ fragments slick with black blood.
“Hold on a bit longer, Jiguang.”
“Okay!”
On this battlefield, only she and Fulan remained.
Beifeng, Riyang, and Yunxia had gone to try and take the head of the Dark Fairy.
If that thing made it to the zoo, things would be ten times worse than now.
No one else had any fighting strength left; only she and Fulan could still fight.
—Strictly speaking, only the rookie magical girl Jiguang was still battling.
“Get into a ball and roll away from me!”
With magical girl’s filter for foul words, Jiguang couldn’t say anything too crude.
She just blasted a light bullet with her left hand at a pink tentacled monkey in lingerie pouncing on her, while her right staff stabbed through the stinking green giant bear with a gaping mouth on its belly, bursting Light magic within it.
Magical girls with support talents weren’t meant for frontline battle.
She could only buff herself, then grabbed a blue, two-headed corrupted eagle lunging at her with dark magic, gripped with both hands, and tore—
“Keer!” “Screech!”
The eagle’s two heads screamed separately as Jiguang ripped it apart, then evaporated it into dust with Light magic. Black blood splattered all over Jiguang.
A ball of light floated above her hand; she wiped her face with it to cleanse the foul blood, narrowed her eyes, and pointed her staff coldly at the remaining corrupted animals.
“Awooo!”
The animals howled, launching another wave of attacks, while the magical girl stood her ground.
“I understand!”
At that moment, Fulan called out joyfully, finally granting the troupe leader mercy.
She held the leader’s brain and said to Jiguang:
“The source of magic power is consciousness.”
Even with her magical attire’s self-purifying function, it could barely conceal her sorry state.
After being corrupted, the circus leader was nearly three meters tall. Only after a fierce battle did Fulan pin it down and cut it open.
To pull out the “parts” inside, the petite Fulan nearly had to crawl inside herself.
She was covered head to toe in blood, bits of mangled flesh clinging to her.
She looked nothing like a magical girl.
During all this, the other magi and monsters had to be dealt with by Jiguang alone.
As they spoke, the troupe leader’s corpse began to rapidly decompose, including the brain in Fulan’s hand; within seconds, nothing was left but a puddle of pure black mud that would soon return to nature as nutrients.
That was why Fulan insisted on gutting it alive. Not just to inflict more suffering—inside these monsters, many parts had fused into a magic-matter state, and often dissolved upon death.
Rarely could you salvage even an arm or a carapace.
“Bang!” “Awoo!” “Die!” “Quack!” “Buzz!”
Battle noises clattered behind her as Fulan stared at the black mud running through her fingers:
“These days, I’ve dissected a lot of magical beasts and magi.”
“They all share one trait: things they don’t need quickly degenerate.”
“For some it’s the stomach, others the intestines, or the gallbladder, even the heart.”
“But only the brain—no matter the magical beast or magi, after death you can still extract a relatively complete brain.”
Fulan reached out, grabbed the red dog head Jiguang had ripped off, and used her knife to cut open the last-breathing red dog still trying to bite her.
“See, this one still kept its brain.”
“So what?”
Jiguang was running out of steam. “Fulan! If you’re done, come help!”
“Oh, oh.”
She agreed, tossing away the now-dead dog head,
And with a casual flick, tossed the knife aside as well.
That knife was just something she’d picked up, used it with Light magic, nothing more. Then she pulled out her magic equipment.
Strictly speaking, it was a card.
“Let’s see…” Like a fortune-telling witch, Fulan held the card up to her face: “Ah, it’s the Emperor. Not bad luck.”
Her fingers loosened, and the card flew free, turning into specks of golden light that formed a giant figure clad in gold, wielding a flaming greatsword, which charged into the monsters.
Every swing of the golden giant felled swathes of foes, easing Jiguang’s burden in an instant.
“Jiguang, you asked ‘so what’, right?”
Watching her magic equipment fight, Fulan nodded and said,
“I mean, all magic—its true source is consciousness.”
“Even magical beasts need a consciousness to wield magic.”
She pointed to where the circus leader had just lain:
“See, after I took its brain, you can’t feel its magic anymore, can you?”
Jiguang fired a massive beam of light to clear the battlefield and shouted a question:
“Isn’t that just because it’s dead?”
“Eh?”
Fulan was stunned.
In the end, while the process was a bit convoluted, Fulan’s conclusion was correct. The old man always said, the “heart” of a magical girl is most important.
But the old man was a fairy of the magical world, so while he could say that, he never knew the principle behind it.
Fulan was the first to summarize this as a scientific theory.
Thus, she created a magic called 【Mental Space】.
But, aside from herself and Jiang Lingwei—whose magic was exceptionally pure—no one else could use it.
However, those who could use Mental Space could pull others in, or enter someone else’s mental space.
The main effect of this magic is like traveling into another world—not really reading the other’s memories, but able to clear away some mental hazards.
There are plenty of enemies who can launch mental attacks, and what could be a better cure than diving in and beating the enemy up inside their mind?
Shachong’s heart could still be saved, yet even after her companions dragged it out, she reverted instantly to her original state.
Jiang Lingwei couldn’t expect her to recover at once and start shouting things like “I will never coexist with darkness!” with full spirit, but there should have been some reaction at least.
Since that didn’t work, she had no choice but to use her last resort.
To see for herself!