Chapter 131 : What If

A certain novel that a boy happened to find in a used bookstore during his middle school years.

The tears of the girl drawn on the cover of that novel looked so pitiful that the boy picked up and purchased the novel being sold in a bundle at the used bookstore.

The novel he finally got to read.

From the moment he turned the first page, the boy couldn’t hide his bewilderment.

“What kind of story is this.”

A fate of destruction that came without any precursor.

A world ruined by human greed from the beginning.

Fujimoto’s magical girl research facility.

The rebellion of abused and sacrificed magical girls.

The relationship between magical girls and ordinary people broken to the point where coexistence is difficult.

<Magical Girl HAZARD>

The three goddesses overseeing the game led humanity further down the path of destruction by exploiting information imbalance and unreasonable curses. In this endlessly desolate and unreasonable world, there was no hope or growth to be found to move forward.

Nations being one-sidedly massacred by demons.

Magical girls using ordinary people who distrusted and suspected them.

The realm of humans gradually shrinking no matter how much they struggled.

Trials that could only be defeated at the cost of magical girls’ lives.

A desolate and precarious world that anyone could see was bound to break down.

A cold story that seemed to sneer at magical girls who could no longer produce their own starlight, saying ‘That’s the limit of humans.’

A tragedy for the sake of tragedy.

A tragedy where everything was destined to rush towards destruction from the very beginning.

A cynical view that considers dreams and hope to be things only naive children believe in.

The heart contained in this story was too nihilistic.

The protagonist Yuki’s efforts were always laughed at.

The girl who shouted hope and love that should originally warm people’s hearts was an object of ridicule and mockery throughout the story. A trash can for the author’s gloomy and disgusting emotions and a show of misfortune displayed to readers.

-No matter how hard you try, nothing changes.

-Are you still saying such things?

-Face reality.

People in the midst of destruction who took looting and murder for granted due to a suddenly arrived fate.

-There’s no one farming anymore anyway, so the survivors should share what’s left.

-We have to obey to escape from the demons… we have to accept that a few people die as scapegoats.

-Neither soldiers nor police, no one can protect us.

-Please spare me!

-If I had known this would happen, I wouldn’t have…!

When the first trial, the lion of darkness, descended on Japan, the apostle of [War] came down to the land with the most magical girls and ordered them to fight and kill each other.

The land where the most magical girls lived turned into a place where the most frenzied battles took place.

When the second trial, the venomous sea serpent, descended on the European coast, they realized for the first time that human weapons were ineffective against demons.

The sea was completely polluted by the poison of the sea serpent that had churned the sea for a very long time, and Europe turned into a cold land of death.

When the third trial, the steel boar, attacked Russia and China, magical girls intoxicated with plunder used starlight to show off their power and dominate people.

Countries collapsed, and the remaining people either lived in hiding while protecting miserable villages, or accepted a new order while submitting to magical girls.

When the fourth trial, horses that eat human flesh, and the fifth trial, birds that spread plague, passed.

Only a very small number of magical girls remained.

A world of humans with barely any dust left.

What appeared before the magical girls who rose to protect it was the dragon of destruction.

The true trial.

The will of stars flying through the sky, taking away everyone’s souls.

Unable to defeat the final dragon in the end, the world that unfolded before Yuki’s eyes, who survived with the supernatural ability of [Resurrection], was only darkness.

Dark

Cold

Chilling

A world of darkness where all ordinary humans had died and the apostles were silent.

Despair.

“…”

There were only stairs leading to the empty throne of nothingness that descended over the place where the dragon of destruction had passed after harvesting all souls. As she climbed the stairs stretching up to the distant sky, the protagonist Yuki pondered.

Trudge

Trudge

Her stupid brain couldn’t understand any of this at all.

‘Where did it go wrong?’

Just half a year.

The invasion of demons that started in the summer of 2012, and the destruction that came with the cold winter.

‘Fujimoto? Magical girls? People?’

Something was wrong with this world.

She fled from the tyranny of [War] that descended on Shinjuku.

She cried after confirming her father’s death in the burning house.

She heard about the magical girl of [Death] among refugees.

‘This can’t be happening.’

The domain of [Death] that reached Korea, China, and Russia.

The declaration that those who are not magical girls cannot be revived.

[Bombing] trying to plunder refugees who had fled all the way to Russia.

The sense of duty as the magical girl of [Flame] belatedly realized in the midst of it all.

[Magical girls exist to protect everyone!]

But this world did not listen to the voice of just one girl.

They only fought together when a big demon invaded where they lived, and after the fight, they had no hesitation in looting each other and killing each other.

Even so, Yuki struggled.

She tried to gather people, persuade magical girls, and save lives that were scattering like sand.

As if mocking Yuki’s struggles, humanity was futilely annihilated by the final trial.

Destruction.

‘Something is wrong with this world.’

The beginning of this story was wrong.

Thud

The stairs that finally came to an end.

Yuki who climbed up to the sky.

“…”

Yuki, who had climbed onto the throne of nothingness, picked up a shining fragment from the floor.

Power of the world.

A fragment of the world created by combining the huge will possessed by the powerful first humans and primordial chaos. From within it, the voices of the three goddesses who had uttered words of curse every time the trial came faintly echoed.

-We can… return… finally… the end of humanity.

-In chaos… all shall become one.

-You foolish fragments left by the first daughter… live a meaningless eternity at the edge of the star.

As soon as Yuki picked it up, she could tell.

This was a fragment of the huge goddess once worshipped by humans.

Though it was only a very small part, this fragment could make herself a goddess for a short time.

“With this, maybe…!”

But no matter how many times she tried, it was impossible.

The shed left behind by the evil gods after disappearing somewhere was too feeble.

It was impossible to revive the ordinary people who had died in vain, or to eliminate the demons that had filled the places where humans once lived.

“…”

A half-god.

One who can only distort the rules of the world slightly, and only watch the empty world.

“It’s a lie…”

Yuki sat powerlessly on the throne of nothingness and looked at the Earth that had already been destroyed and emptied.

And she closed her eyes.

This story was destined for this ending from the start.

Endlessly consuming, endlessly dying, endlessly misaligning.

A story written to mock people’s struggles in life.

A story of gods who mock ignorant people without telling them their fate.

“This is… wrong.”

A story that left only a few lines of harsh criticism on the internet, calling it misfortune porn made to fit the trend by mixing magical girls and tragedy.

When the protagonist girl in the story completely despaired and closed her eyes.

The boy who had been cheering for the girl while reading the story also closed his eyes.

“…”

No.

The boy opened the book again.

[We’ll surely become happy!]

[Magical girls exist to protect everyone!]

[I want to protect people!]

-Starlight grows stronger through people’s dreams.

‘I wish someone had told her…!’

-Humans are truly foolish and weak.

The boy endlessly imagined in his head, going back to the beginning of the lines of people and gods mocking the girl’s fierce struggle.

“Something is wrong with this story.”

Cheering every time the girl moved forward, refuting the structure of the entire story that had been twisted with all its might to draw the ending of destruction, and thinking about the cause of all tragedies.

What if there were more magical girls left who could defeat the trial demons

What if there was room left for people and magical girls to coexist peacefully

What if they could inform the correct way for magical girls to grow before the magical girl of [War] appeared.

What if they could tell magical girls about dreams earlier than the prologue.

What if.

What if…

Even if he was a child who couldn’t accept the ending of the story, even if nothing would change no matter how much he imagined solutions to the already determined story.

“What if it had progressed like this.”

The boy read the story over and over again, dreaming of the ‘what ifs’ of <Magical Girl HAZARD> more than anyone else.

A habit of reading <Magical Girl HAZARD> over and over again, started with a rebellious spirit against the hopeless ending.

It was the boy’s timid rebellion against the adult who wrote a story denying hope.

And because of that timid rebellion, the boy couldn’t help but love this world.

The boy’s habit that began with the despair of the girl in the story.

It approached as two warm hands extended to that girl in the distant future.