Chapter 2: Magical Girl of the Crescent Moon (2)

Dim red lights glowed softly across the space, illuminating the massive monitors on the front wall, all broadcasting live feeds from across the Far East.

From the barren Gobi Desert to both ends of the Great Wall, from Tiananmen Square and Sinuiju Station to the banks of the Taedong River in Pyongyang, where the Juche Tower stood tall.

From the wetlands near the Amur River and the outer harbor of Vladivostok, to Kamchatka’s dense forests and the snow-covered landscapes of Hokkaido.

Not to mention the skylines of Tokyo, Osaka, Busan, Seoul, Shanghai, Nagoya, and Taipei.

Even the most remote and desolate corners of the world—places devoid of a single trace of human presence—were being broadcast.

Everything was streamed onto the monitors.

Just like the vice director, agents of the Bureau dressed in ash-gray uniforms checked their designated screens for any signs of anomalies.

Each agent was responsible for anywhere from hundreds to thousands of screens.

For the peace of humanity.

For the stability of the world.

A massive workforce was deployed to monitor the entire Far East.

There were well over a hundred personnel.

So many, in fact, that the vast control room, too large to take in at a glance, was packed wall to wall with people.

All for surveillance.

I sat at the very centre of the control room, a spot with a perfect vantage point over both the monitors and the agents.

I clasped my hands together and brought them calmly before my face.

Everything begins now.

This is when the protagonist of this story, The Magical Girl of the Scales, first makes her appearance.

‘What… what are you doing…?’

And begins to hate me.

Ianna and the protagonist’s first meeting was a disaster.

The death of another magical girl dispatched to the scene was blamed entirely on Ianna, leaving deep resentment between them.

In truth, it was closer to the protagonist harbouring one-sided hatred toward Ianna.

Because things went wrong from the very first step, their relationship spiralled toward catastrophe.

To reduce the number of magical girls, the Bureau began eliminating the “previous generation.”

Starting with artificially created magical girls whose skulls lacked control chips, then targeting those injured in holy wars and recovering across the Far East.

All under the noble pretence of “protecting the world,” they were forced to sacrifice themselves.

And eventually—

The protagonist’s anger and hatred reached a boiling point, leading her to enact a girl’s rebellion.

In an instant, she seized control of the Bureau’s heart and erased Ianna’s body without a trace.

Ian-na never realized it until the end.

That she had already lost all reason, and was no more than a lifeless puppet.

…It was a rather bleak relationship.

If I wanted to twist the narrative, I had to maintain a good relationship with the protagonist.

She had the greatest potential and could already wield two Lemegeton.

She wasn’t someone I wanted to oppose.

Gaining her hatred would serve me no good.

It was a situation where I had to humble myself and tread carefully.

BEEEEEEP—

A sharp alarm pierced the air.

The seated agents immediately began assessing the situation.

It wasn’t a rare occurrence.

This was business as usual for them.

They’d been through this so many times, no one panicked.

The dim red glow was quickly replaced by a deep yellow hue.

A yellow alert had been issued.

There were four alert levels in the control room.

White alert meant all clear.

Blue alert signaled the need for caution.

Yellow alert warned of imminent danger.

Red alert called for full mobilization and immediate elimination of the threat.

Blue alerts were the most common, followed by yellow.

White alerts were essentially no alerts at all.

As long as the red light remained dim, it was effectively a white alert.

Once a yellow alert was issued, things became serious.

‘Unknown Entities’ would start devouring sentient beings.

Their power scaled with size, and size was proportional to the dimensional rift’s magnitude.

A red alert would mobilize all magical girls.

It meant the dimension had fully torn open and a swarm of enemies was emerging.

In such cases, magical girls risked their lives to stop the spread and seal the rift.

Anyway—

This was a yellow alert.

The monitor in the far-left corner where an agent sat began flashing yellow, the alarm growing louder.

“Please check the screen.”

The central monitor now displayed a small marshland, scattered with abandoned logs.

“…Beta Aether concentration in Zone 79 is increasing. A dimensional rift is expected within 20 minutes.”

Beta Aether.

An energy particle that appeared whenever Unknown Entities, the natural enemies of all sentient beings, emerged.

When a dimensional rift started to form, Beta Aether was the first thing to flow in.

“…”

I stayed silent.

Not out of panic or indecision.

“Director.”

My aide looked at me with a worried expression when I didn’t respond.

“…Zone 79, near Chumikan in the Russian Federation. Who’s the nearest magical girl?”

“Spes Unit 3 in Yakutsk.”

I wasn’t the one giving the orders.

A broad-shouldered man seated near me spoke instead.

With his neatly slicked-back hair and well-fitted suit, he looked every bit the gentleman.

His voice, mannerisms, and demeanor all exuded refinement.

“Dispatch Spes 3.”

“…Vice Director, Spes Unit 3 has not yet fully recovered.”

“I see.”

Yakutsk, in the Russian Far East Federal District, housed a temporary deployment facility.

That was where the magical girl Spes Unit 3 was stationed.

As her name suggests, she wasn’t a naturally awakened magical girl.

She was an artificial girl, a product of the world’s most advanced biotechnology, developed without concern for ethics or morals.

Only her brain and spinal cord were human.

All other organs, limbs, muscles, bones—every part of her was synthetic.

“Beta Aether concentration is continuing to rise. It’s surpassed 27.4%… Estimated time until entity emergence is within five minutes.”

“This is escalating. We don’t have time to hesitate. Deploy Spes Unit 3.”

The Beta Aether percentage displayed on the screen’s left continued to climb.

Naturally, the higher the local Beta Aether concentration, the greater the risk.

A high percentage meant a large rift had opened.

Which meant a powerful enemy was likely to appear.

“…Vice Director, the concentration has already surpassed 31.2%. A Medium-Class Unknown Entity is expected. As a first-generation artificial girl, Spes 3 cannot handle a medium-class threat.”

The Vice Director frowned, clearly troubled, then turned to me.

“What do you think, Director? We must deploy the magical girl and cast the Veil before the entity emerges. If we hesitate any longer, we risk another disaster like Beirut.”

He was shifting the responsibility to me.

What the Vice Director wanted was for Spes Unit 3—a now obsolete, weak magical girl—to die for sure.

He wanted to begin eliminating the useless ones.

It was part of a covert initiative known only to a few within the Bureau: “Pest Control.”

The Vice Director was undeniably a villain—brilliant and capable—tasked with purging magical girls across the Far East.

And to me, someone determined to survive, he was an enemy that had to be taken down.