Chapter 54: Goodbye, Blue Sky

I turned off the TV, which was endlessly spewing nonsense no different from the noise of a tuning screen, and carelessly stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette.

Opening the window, I let out the faint smell of magic herb smoke that lingered in the room.

‘I want to smell her scent soon.’

‘I want to stroke her brown hair.’

‘I want to covet those lips.’

Yujin had gone out alone, saying it was a day for just paperwork, and with nothing to do, I had spent the whole day lying listlessly on the sofa, feeling my energy drain.

But I wasn’t drowsy.

Before, I would spend my days endlessly burning magic herbs, letting the images and sounds of the TV, which I’d turned on for background noise, just flow by without a second thought.

No, it would be more accurate to say I felt nothing at all.

Days where I would just meaninglessly let time slip by, intoxicated by a sense of drowsiness and flotation.

Those days have long been forgotten.

In contrast, the me of now is so vibrant that I can feel boredom with my entire body in the brilliant colors Yujin has brought me, and so refreshed that I can even appreciate the ecstasy of death.

It’s okay even if Yujin is gone for half a day.

Probably.

“She’s late…”

In the end, Yujin didn’t return even after dinnertime, so I went outside.

Sometimes her work runs long, and she comes back at night.

If she’s continuously late, I’ll have to consider going to look for her, but…

The late sunset of early summer.

The sun has just set, a good time for hunting.

I’ll just kill one person, soak in the afterglow of pleasure for a few minutes, then quickly go back and wait for Yujin again.

After she returns, I’ll spend another peaceful night intoxicated by the ecstasy of a kiss.

Ignoring the ghost’s persistent suggestions to go hunt monsters today, I opened a void passage.

The screams, death rattles, and cries of the dead, which sound like a cool breeze, are pleasant to hear.

It’s a perfect, just like any other, good evening.

I came to a place reasonably far away.

A back alley on the outskirts of a small city’s downtown area.

Unlike the main street, most shops close around sunset and foot traffic becomes sparse, but it’s a place where you might find one or two fearless people moving about late.

As I wandered around, there weren’t many people passing by, but for some reason, people in police uniforms seemed to be a bit more frequent than usual, so I moved cautiously between the shadows of buildings.

After searching for a while, I found a good target.

It would be more accurate to say I finally found one because the area was so deserted.

A young woman.

Alone, and seemingly unremarkable.

Dressed casually in black short hair and a backpack.

Whatever her circumstances are, it’s none of my business.

What pitch will she scream in? How desperately will she struggle?

Or will she just tremble quietly and meet her death without knowing why?

Only such things have meaning.

…From that death, can I predict a little of Ahn Yujin’s death?

“Haa…”

A sweet ecstasy swirled in the cigarette smoke I exhaled.

I should shake off thoughts like these.

Yujin’s death, there’s no way I’d feel good seeing that.

The thought of killing her is, even just imagining it…

“Ah, damn it.”

“Sanguine Obsidia!”

It would have been nice if there was only one person, but a strange intruder intervened.

A magical girl with a familiar face appeared as I approached the woman.

“Surrender. If you surrender now, at least I promise you humane treatment.”

‘I should have killed her quickly without any useless thoughts.’

‘If I had killed her quickly and escaped through etheralization, I would have already been home.’

The woman, hearing some plausible words like

“It’s okay now that I’m here, please run away,” ran far away, and the magical girl stood between her and me.

She’s already run far behind that alley, what am I going to do?

I flicked the magic herb away with my fingers and met her eyes.

It’s dark, but a face I’ve seen many times, blue hair, blue dress.

“Glacia Azure.”

To think I’d run into this one of all people.

Should I call it good luck, bad luck, or just a simple coincidence?

Well, I’ve stirred up more than one or two places, and it’s not like I’ve only met a magical girl once or twice, so it wouldn’t be strange to meet Glacia Azure three or four times.

But it’s annoying how she keeps getting in my way.

“Should I kill her?”

“Go ahead and try, if you can!”

Clang-

I drew my rapier and deflected the incoming icicles.

A sharp and fast attack containing more magical power than when we last met.

But, even if she’s grown, she’s not at a level where she can beat me one-on-one.

‘I have to take her down quickly.’

‘Yujin might be back home by now.’

‘If this drags on, reinforcements will come.’

Reinforcements…?

Reinforcements, huh.

It feels like a thorn in my mouth.

There’s a sense of unease.

“You remember what happened last time, right?”

‘Last time’ probably doesn’t mean the time Glacia Azure and Rosa Alisa saved Ahn Yujin and Lee Seoa.

She wouldn’t know my identity.

Then it must be the day this one led three magical girls and the police to attack me.

“Yeah, is that arm that got cut off okay? How’s that kid whose neck was cut?”

“Yeah, yeah.

Thanks to your concern, it’s fine. I’ve thought about a lot of things since that day. How I can catch you, how I can defeat you.”

She talks a lot.

She doesn’t even respond to my provocative taunts and just keeps rambling on about herself.

Glacia has already laid down her specialty, ice walls, all around and is hiding, just talking.

As if she’s trying to buy time.

She only threw icicles once at the beginning.

I haven’t met her enough times to say I know her fighting style, and it’s only been a few minutes since this fight started, but I feel a sense of unease in her movements.

The head of the Magical Girl Association said a long time ago that they created a special task force for fallen magical girls and would use all means to capture Sanguine Obsidia.

There was also a report recently that they applied the special task force organization to stop the simultaneous terrorist attacks by demons.

It was something I heard on the TV news that I usually let go in one ear and out the other, but it stuck in my memory.

I thought it was an exaggerated report and part of so-called media play, but what if it was serious.

And what if today is that day?

It’s a serious problem.

The word ‘reinforcements’ might not mean just one or two people, but the entire Magical Girl Association.

‘I’ll kill her.’

There’s no reason to listen to Glacia’s personal history any further.

I’ll kill her quickly within a few minutes.

To drag out Glacia, who has already surrounded me with ice walls as if to trap me in an igloo and is hiding behind them, I’ll have to break the ice walls first.

If I gather my magic, shoot it to break the walls, then kick off the ground with my enhanced legs and thrust my blade,

[Obsidia!]

Beeeeeeeep-

“…Ah?”

It hurts.

My ears are ringing.

I’m dizzy.

My vision, covered in asphalt, is shaking dizzily.

My voice won’t come out.

I feel an excruciating pain as if my whole body is crumbling.

When I try to move my fingers, I can feel the scattered dust of broken asphalt.

I feel the cold of the road on my arms, my legs, my face.

When I push off the ground to raise my upper body, broken asphalt pavement and the dirt beneath it crumble down.

The lingering scent of burning violet magic power scatters like smoke.

I was unconscious for only a few seconds.

I woke up to the pain of the black mass in my chest pulsating.

What happened?

A powerful magical energy suddenly felt from the void, a purple circular magic circle floating in the air, and a magic bombardment striking down from it like a thunderbolt.

I realized I had been directly hit by a mass of magic that struck suddenly and without any warning, and Spooky was belatedly reciting the details.

‘If you knew, you should have told me beforehand.’

‘He probably realized it late too, so it couldn’t be helped.’

‘Anyway, he’s no help in battle.’

“Kahak… heu…”

I spat out the blood seeping from my torn gums and managed to stand up, using my thin sword as a cane.

My wrist, my arm, my leg are trembling.

But this makes it certain.

There’s someone attacking from afar, and someone who encountered me first, in this case Glacia, is buying time while reinforcements arrive.

I haven’t been watching the news lately and have been living without paying any attention to the Magical Girl Association, but to think they had a trap like this prepared.

They probably have a magical girl stationed in each of the neighborhoods I frequent, and if even one of them gets caught, everyone gathers there.

I’ll have to consider the possibility that a radius of several hundred meters is within their encirclement, making it impossible to escape with etheralization.

Unless I know where I was sniped from and can’t use etheralization consecutively, I have to be careful.

Then the choice to make right now is obvious.

The same one I chose from the beginning, the death of Glacia Azure.

Yeah, I’ll just kill her.

After killing her, I’ll cause confusion and escape.

Even if all my thoughts about the Magical Girl Association’s trap are just excessive imagination, there’s no harm in killing her.

In that case, I’ll just kill her and slowly go back as usual.

“Die.”

Anger makes my heart beat, the tumor’s pulse throb,

And from the throbbing tumor, magic power spews out, and my staggering body regains its strength.

I carve the blood clot I vomited from my mouth with a blade as thin as paper but sharp, and attach it to the ends of dozens of pitch-black chains made of magic power, and launch them at Glacia.

Along the left wall, along the concrete floor, between the gaps of the buildings,

The chains advance like snakes stalking their prey with a clattering sound.

“Glacial Wall!”

A spell that creates an ice wall.

The same spell she used before, but the density is different.

Several ice walls, many times thicker, appeared and blocked the chain blades flying towards Glacia,

The chains that rushed in from all sides at the same time were all blocked,

“Ice Queen’s Wrath.”

Crack,

The ice walls,

The fragments of the glacier Glacia had laid out all around, crumpled, shattered, clumped together, and compressed,

Becoming sharp, and even sharper honed, pure white daggers.

It feels as if the air itself has frozen.

More than a hundred pure white daggers aiming at me from all directions, their points directed at me.

I don’t know the details, but each dagger holds more magic power than Glacia’s ice wall.

Blades aimed at me from the front, from behind, from above,

And Glacia Azure, still hiding behind the ice wall, thoroughly defended as if not allowing any counterattack.

On the other hand, my body is not in good shape.

The damage from the sudden bombardment was greater than I thought.

My arms and legs are trembling slightly.

This is a bit dangerous.

It seems she plans to end this within a few minutes, before support arrives.

I was trying to save it because using spells multiple times would be too much of a burden, but I have no choice.