Chapter 44 : Where and What to Become

“Kuhup, huh, hee… heal.”

Alex, who had never lost her composure, healed her completely crushed abdomen with an anxious voice, but she breathed roughly as if she didn’t have the luxury to heal her lungs.

Alex, who staggered to her feet, looked up at the sky and shouted.

“Re-retreat!! Doctor!! Put me back in my new body!! Shit, I’m really going to die at this rate!!”

[I told you not to go, stupid Alex.]

“Stop talking shit and do it quickly!!”

Beep

A fluorescent green hawk flew in from beyond the sky, and fluorescent green light unfolded all over Alex’s body. Then Alex threw the cobalt blue Glass Star that suddenly appeared in her hand to the hawk puppet.

The hawk puppet caught it and tried to fly far away in an instant.

Bang

The magical girl of [Shooting], the 1st platoon leader who had fainted, saw this and fired using her unique weapon but missed.

[Kihihihi, it was dangerous but somehow well…]

And the cobalt blue Glass Star came into my hand with a snap.

<Because the hawk puppet was shot and fell by a White Wing unit member who had regained consciousness, and I caught it with my hand.>

“Sh-shit!! What is this!! What the hell!!”

Alex shouted in dismay as her last desperate means of escape was blocked and her Glass Star was stolen.

[…I don’t know what the principle is, but how about this magical girl of [Beginning]!!]

Doctor’s voice passed by and the ground shook as dozens of puppets appeared from all around and rushed at full speed.

Guwooo!!

Beep

Whoosh

Dozens of puppets all rushed at me from far away.

Alex took out all the bombs she could from her tactical bag with all her might and threw them at the White Wing unit members who were falling or getting up.

“Eat this!!”

“No!!”

Park Saebyeok saw this and cast psychic power toward the bombs in shock, but because it was so sudden, she couldn’t aim properly, and the bombs were thrown accurately toward the White Wing unit members.

Crack

Dozens of 3-meter giant gorillas all rushed in at once, forcibly twisted my hand to recover the Glass Star, and one hawk rushed in at full speed and crashed into my body.

Bang

Bang

Bang

“Kyaa?!”

“Ugh…!”

The area became a dust pit after the explosion engulfed the White Wing unit members, and when the dust cleared, all dozens of puppets were crushed.

Park Saebyeok ran toward her unit members but was confused to see them all fine.

<Because Park Saebyeok used miraculous control to deflect the bombs in the direction the puppets were coming from, and the puppets were all annihilated by them.>

“What the fuck kind of ability is this!!!”

[Deception] Magical Girl’s Unique Skill

Cause and Effect Reversal

Cause and effect are bound together as one and called causality.

It becomes one karma and becomes numerous links connecting all things.

I can untie one of those karmic links and summon a different result that could occur from the same cause to overlay it.

I reconstruct by changing one link that has been observed and become karma.

5 minutes.

If it’s something that happened within just 5 minutes, I can deceive even the observed results of the world connected by causality.

I reverse and overlay causality that disappeared as a momentary dream pushed by the waves of possibility.

For the first time, I felt connected to the world at a moment other than domain declaration.

Why other born 3-star magical girls wielded such powerful forces.

That my understanding of the concept called my [Deception] was fundamentally wrong.

That deceiving someone as a magical girl is not about showing illusions and dreams to persuade but about using the laws themselves.

That even while seeing girls using unreasonable miracles, I alone tried to live in a world of reason, so I couldn’t properly use the ability given to me.

I realized it now.

Tap

Tap

I walked toward Alex, understanding this.

“Hahaha, huhahaha! Do you think I’ll give up like this, fuck!!”

Alex limped and dropped dozens of bombs on me.

<But the bombs she aimed wrong due to the pain felt in her lungs all went over behind me.>

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

Seeing all the bombs miss completely that should have hit even with eyes closed at this distance, Alex screamed.

“Huaaa! Uaaaa!!!”

Terrified by the unreasonable violence of causality, Alex rushed in with explosive curtains wrapped around both hands, squeezing out all her magical power.

<Meanwhile, she fell due to the shock caused by the wound in her internal organs that she hadn’t managed to heal reopening.>

“Ugh! Huh!! Aaagh…!!”

Alex’s pants were soaked with blood from her ruptured organs as she writhed in extreme pain, and as all the pains in her body that she had forgotten due to adrenaline rushed in, she looked at me with eyes full of shock while making deflated breathing sounds.

“Shit… wh-what are you?! Fuck… you’re not doing a fucking thing… why the fuck… is this happening?!”

“…”

“Fuck, say something!!”

I looked at the cobalt blue Glass Star in my hand.

Two large lights.

The dark red third light between them emitted an ominous light like blood vessels throughout the entire Glass Star.

100 people.

The dreams and lives of 100 people are sleeping here.

What might have been another one.

What might have been another Ichika.

What might have been another Dorim.

The fleeting dreams of such girls that were lost.

‘I’ve ended up needing to visit [Death]’s domain.’

Save this world from meaningless fighting from [War]. And persuade [Death] to entrust the souls of girls who had to die unjustly.

If it’s [Death] who didn’t refuse the request of those who came to the land at the northern end carrying the Glass Stars of girls killed by [War] even in the original work.

The souls of girls that should have originally melted into the world’s cycle of reincarnation after death still exist here in some form, because they had to exist somehow while <Magical Girl HAZARD> continued.

‘Mother.’

Thinking of the families who must have been devastated losing these girls, memories of my mother came to mind.

Grip

I looked at Alex lying down, feeling a new weight on my shoulders. And I declared in a small voice so only Alex could hear.

“…I swear.”

“Wh-what…?”

“By my past life name … and my current alias, magical girl of [Deception].”

[Deception] Magical Girl’s Unique Skill

Dream World

Perception Acceleration

“You cannot be revived in any domain.”

Crunch

I didn’t turn my eyes away from the moment Alex died, feeling her head being crushed in the eternally extended perception of time.

The pain, despair, fear, resignation… and a very slight comfort etched on her slowly crumbling face.

The world full of explosive sounds of the girl who had stolen and killed the dreams of countless magical girls ended here.

The voice of the one called Doctor, which had been heard throughout the fight, also stopped being heard at some point, so Seoul Plaza was again filled with silence.

“…”

“Is it… over?”

Park Saebyeok, who had returned after healing the fallen White Wing unit members, completely removed her tattered black T-shirt and limped over here.

Clink

Her dog tags made a sound as they bounced against her body, with muscles clearly defined.

‘Captain Korea…’

It was dazzling due to the pink energy rising like smoke from her starkly visible wounds.

‘She used healing magic on her unit members but is enduring with natural healing ability for herself.’

I nodded, not having the energy to answer.

“I see, but there’s still the bomb…”

17:29

17:28

17:27

Even after completely eliminating Alex and the one called Doctor falling silent, the bomb’s clock was mercilessly ticking away.

I tried touching it a few times with cause and effect reversal, but I couldn’t touch the causality engraved on the bomb because it had continued from days ago.

[The bridge areas have been cleared and citizens are evacuating!]

Zzzzt

Dorim’s avatar appeared and looked around the situation.

Alex’s corpse, White Wing unit members who had fainted or collapsed from exhaustion, me and Park Saebyeok standing.

[…You won.]

“But the bomb still hasn’t been resolved.”

“What should we do with a bomb that will blow up a 5 kilometer radius in 17 minutes…?”

“Throw it in the Han River?”

[The Han River is about 1 kilometer wide, so it’s dangerous.]

“High-powered bombs are more dangerous when detonated underwater.”

“Moving it by helicopter… would kill the pilot…”

[We can’t even launch one because of the hawk and pigeon puppets still roaming nearby airspace.]

“Carrying it to Incheon sea with psychic power?”

[Even calculating the shortest distance, we’d need to go at least 60 kilometers for there to be no damage.]

From my experience moving things here and there in Japan for the past two years, preparing for the apocalypse, it was impossible to fly at 240 kilometers per hour even at maximum speed.

“Would it be difficult to evacuate as much as possible within the damage radius?”

I saw reporters gradually approaching to cover us after confirming safety and soldiers rushing in to grasp the situation.

[It’s impossible, the 5 kilometer radius includes Jongno, Seongbuk, Dongdaemun, Seodaemun, Yongsan, Mapo.]

“Damn it… if we could just get rid of that…!”

It was bleak.

Park Saebyeok was anxiously biting her lower lip, and Kang Dorim was quietly looking at the bomb, thinking of something.

“Captain Park Saebyeok!! What’s the situation!!”

“Miss Kang Eunseol! Is Seoul safe now?!”

“[Beginning]!? Is it true that [Beginning] is preparing for domain declaration!?”

Rumble

Click

Click

The group of reporters who instantly surrounded us and asked questions flinched upon seeing Alex’s corpse but continued to pour out questions regardless.

“Shut up!! The operation situation isn’t over yet, so stay quietly in the shelter!!”

Park Saebyeok shouted with her eyes glowing pink, and the reporters retreated hesitantly at her momentum.

Dorim’s murmur echoed in the quietened scene.

[Maybe… it could be resolved if we go just 30 kilometers.]

“How?!”

Kang Dorim quietly looked up at the sky.

[If we detonate it 30 kilometers up in the sky, there will be almost no damage… if it’s similar in nature to the bombs the magical girl of bombing was throwing, there won’t be damage from electromagnetic pulse either.]

“I’ll do it! If I just stop the domain declaration, I can definitely do it!”

If I just stop the domain declaration I’m currently doing and focus all my magical power on psychic power… a speed of 120km/h would be doable.

But Kang Dorim shook her head.

[We don’t know when they’ll attack again, so we have to do it now if we don’t do it now, Eun… unnie just keep doing what you were doing.]

“Then what are you going to do!”

Park Saebyeok shouted in frustration.

[I can go anywhere if there are radio waves.]

Zzzzt!

With ash-gray noise incomparably larger than before, Kang Dorim’s main body, not her avatar, was standing in front of the bomb.

“My cyberbrain swimming doesn’t use magical power to move to places with radio waves, I can easily move one bomb.”

“…Dorim, you?”

“Hm?”

“If you do that, will you really be okay?”

“…”

A female reporter who had hesitated due to our serious atmosphere asked tremblingly.

“Se-Seoul is… is it really okay…?”

15:46

15:45

15:44

Checking the gradually decreasing timer, the reporters intuitively felt that something was wrong, that this situation wouldn’t end just with the terrorist’s death.

Seeing this, Kang Dorim spoke in front of the public for the first time with a bright smile.

“Of course! Magical girls exist to protect everyone!”

Whoosh!

“Dorim!!”

“Kang Dorim!!”

Despite my and Park Saebyeok’s cries, Kang Dorim flew into the sky holding the bomb, leaving a trail of ash-gray energy.