Chapter 14: The Storm of Damn Lies

“KWAGWAAAAANG~~!”

“What?”

“Kwagwang! That’s what I mean. Kwagwang~~~!”

What kind of nonsense is she spouting now?

Maryjane clicked her tongue at the symphony of bulls**t coming through the radio.

“Making a grand entrance with a ‘Kwagwang!’, I mean. Isn’t that magical-girl-like and cool?”

“Hey, I have a pretty good idea what you’re thinking right now, okay?”

“Great! Then it’s okay to do it, right?”

“Wait, wait wait wait wait! Think about it. Our goal is to have a conversation and negotiate with the Korean Magical Girl Association. Not today. Okay? We haven’t even contacted them, let alone talked.”

She took a deep drag of smoke.

The marijuana tasted bitter today.

No, it was always bitter.

Ever since she started hanging out with this crazy b*tch, everything started tasting bitter.

“First, to have a conversation, we need to contact the Association, set a date, and…”

“Alright! I’ll go have that conversation. That annoying Association or Committee or whatever, I’m gonna blow them all up! Violence is conversation. A magical girl-like maxim!”

“No, magical girls don’t do things like that!”

A moment of silence, and then more nonsense followed.

“Hmm… Then let’s do this. I’ll blow up the corrupt and sinful committee! Judgment is violence. A magical girl-like action!”

“Hey, you crazy… Where are you right now? Huh?”

“In front of the Association building?”

“What?”

She let out a deep sigh along with the smoke.

This kind of person is my colleague.

This kind of…

When she gets like this, she doesn’t listen to a word.

The only thing to do is to manage the situation with minimal damage…

She clutched her ears at the piercing sound blasting from the radio.

A massive explosion.

That crazy b*tch finally did it.

She threw down the radio, from which the sounds of explosions continued unabated.

***

Ttok, ttok, ttok.

The sound of light combat boots echoed, then stopped.

After glancing around the Chairman’s office, she stood before an old man with an impressive, warm-looking beard seated at a long desk, and a woman with light violet hair and a stern expression.

“Republic of Korea Navy Special Officer, Magical Girl Coral Echoes. As of today, I will be joining the Sanguine Obsidia Special Task Force.”

A sharp voice, like that of a soldier.

She saluted in military fashion and greeted them.

“It’s been a while, Chairman, and Association President.”

Then, with a much softer voice, she greeted them again.

A pure white uniform reminiscent of a naval dress uniform, with a white captain’s hat.

Short golden hair and sharp emerald eyes.

“It’s been a long time, good to see you look well, Ms. Coral Echoes.”

Yu Ji-hye, as the Association President, greeted her with a stiff tone and shook her hand.

“…This is, truly surprising. I can’t believe you managed to bring her over.”

“Saying ‘brought her over’ sounds a bit off. Call it a legitimate deal.

Since I went out of my way to procure the latest magical power radar from the US, the Navy, wanting to exclude the influence of magical girls, would have gladly accepted.

Not telling you beforehand was my little prank, ho, ho, ho.”

The man who laughed in a way that suited his appearance—as if he could immediately start working as Santa Claus if he wore a red hat in midwinter—was Kim Cheolryeong.

Minister of Magic, Senior Advisor to the Korean Magical Girl Association, and Chairman of the Korean Magical Girl Association Steering Committee.

In a committee full of yes-men, sycophants, and politicians, he was perhaps the only decent person one could somewhat trust.

Yu Ji-hye thought so, but she never truly trusted him.

Coral Echoes.

A magical girl dispatched from the Magical Girl Association to the Republic of Korea Navy.

According to the initial contract, magical girls do not belong to any state agency, are not subject to any state power, and are not affiliated with any military organization.

…Naturally, those words are not upheld.

The restrictions imposed by the loophole-ridden initial contract have never once been observed.

As far as Yu Ji-hye knew.

The Magical Girl Association is, nominally, a private organization.

The committee that controls the Magical Girl Association is composed of bureaucrats, members of parliament, military officials, and various elders whose purpose for being there is unknown.

And the chairman is the minister of a government department called the Ministry of Magic, whose existence is also questionable.

The Magical Girl Association exists in an ambiguous space somewhere between mercenaries, police, and vigilantes.

Therefore, it was somewhat inevitable that Coral Echoes was dispatched to the Navy with the unfounded status of ‘Special Officer,’ treated as an officer.

Her unique magic is strategic command.

Most marine magical beasts are enormous, powerful, evade radar detection through magical means, and sometimes, even transparent ones invisible to the naked eye appear.

And each one of those creatures is a monster capable of tearing a destroyer in half with a single bite.

Even the smaller ones can swallow a small fishing boat whole.

Coral Echoes can accurately detect any magical beast within a radius of up to several hundred kilometers, and visualize that information to share it in real-time.

When she specifies the coordinates, warships fire their cannons.

Instead of wasting expensive missiles, in an era of resurgent anti-magical beast dreadnoughts and big guns, a direct hit possesses enough firepower to easily sink most magical beasts.

She isn’t a publicly famous magical girl, but Yu Ji-hye knew it was no exaggeration to say that her existence was the biggest reason the maritime trade routes of Northeast Asia had been kept safe for the past several years.

The Navy’s position, unable to rely indefinitely on an individual magical girl who wasn’t even a soldier, must have been awkward, but as the Chairman said, several advanced magical power radars could likely replace her role.

While Coral Echoes’ accuracy drops drastically if her detection range is too wide, conversely, narrowing the detection range allows for high-precision detection and tracking.

The most powerful card to capture Sanguine Obsidia, who appears and disappears in an instant, her whereabouts unknown.

Once her location is marked, unless Sanguine Obsidia moves tens of kilometers away at once, there would be no way for her to escape Coral Echoes’ pursuit.

Etherealisation can only allow escape up to a few hundred meters at most.

The moment she attempts to open a so-called ‘portal,’ presumed to allow travel over tens of kilometers, would be her end.

The original plan was to deploy military and police personnel and surveillance networks, gathering real-time information through a city-wide reconnaissance net to capture Sanguine Obsidia,

but her presence alone overturns the entire board.

Yu Ji-hye smiled.

Feeling genuine gratitude towards the Chairman for the first time in her life.

***

And exactly two hours later, she felt not laughter, but only irritation and anger surging within her.

The place was a meeting room on the second floor of the Magical Girl Association Headquarters.

An important meeting of the Korean Magical Girl Association Steering Committee was underway.

‘No, you approved it.’

‘Why are you saying no now? Reduce the plan?’

‘The press conference is the day after tomorrow!’

‘The ambitiously prepared Sanguine Obsidia Special Task Force inauguration press conference!’

‘As you all said, we already advertised it heavily last week. In front of the broadcasting stations!’

‘What? Budget? Military cooperation?’

‘How hard did I work on that proposal? Huh? Just scrap it?’

‘You all listened so intently to the presentation at the last meeting.’

‘Suspicious movements beyond the DMZ?’

‘Ha…’

She continuously wiped her face with her palm covering her eyes.

She felt stinging gazes.

It was annoying.

“So it has come to this, Association President Yu Ji-hye.”

The man sitting across the round table, Chairman Kim Cheolryeong, said to me.

He’s an elderly man with a Santa-like beard so fluffy it makes one wonder if he’s truly Korean.

And after giving Coral Echoes as a surprise gift earlier, he’s also the one who has washed his hands of this matter.

What does he mean, ‘it has come to this’?

He showed me Coral Echoes first precisely because of this.

Giving the medicine before the disease is what the Chairman always does.

Whether he pulled Coral Echoes from the Navy because the government and military had no intention of cooperating properly, whether the timing just happened to coincide, or whether the military became uncooperative because he pulled Coral Echoes from the Navy, I don’t know what the truth is.

“The number of military troops that can be mobilized…”

“Realistically, long-term traffic control in the Gangnam area is impossible…”

“The high risk of frontline soldiers dying could lead to accountability issues…”

The committee members, having reversed their stance from yesterday, were spouting nonsense.

It was such a waste of time.

It didn’t really matter to her if the support was reduced.

She had considered reconnaissance by aircraft or drones, and even a human-wave tactic using all available forces, but as long as Coral Echoes was here, enough troops to pose a threat to Sanguine Obsidia and make her feel like hunted prey would be sufficient.

And she did understand, to some extent.

She didn’t know what was in North Korean territory.

The northern part of the Korean Peninsula had been neglected for over 10 years, becoming something akin to a magical beast pasture.

The Demilitarized Zone had transformed into the foremost defense line.

Seeing the recent intensification of magical beast activity and the suspicious movements of the demons controlling them, she thought there might be some unsettling signs near the old DMZ.

Perhaps a C-class magical beast, a disaster-level entity capable of destroying an entire country, had appeared in North Korea.

If there was a possibility of a repeat of the incident that devastated Busan six years ago, well…

In truth, compared to powerful magical beasts, Sanguine Obsidia’s threat level was significantly lower.

The fear of Sanguine Obsidia, aside from the problems caused by her continuously killing magical girls, stemmed more from the fact that a murderer was hiding among them than from the act of ‘killing people’ itself.

‘Even if I try to mobilize the army to catch Sanguine Obsidia and get committee approval,’
‘it means there’s nothing I can do if the Ministry of National Defense refuses, using North Korea as an excuse.’

‘Or perhaps the high-ranking generals think there’s no reason to fuss so much over a single criminal.’

‘They’re probably busy enough dealing with the magical beasts crawling out of the sea.’

‘Recently, other fallen magical girls have mostly been eradicated, so magical girl crime is almost nonexistent,’

‘so if I borrow forces from the Police Special Operations Unit, it should somehow work out.’

‘Though manpower will be tight if we are to surround all predicted areas.’

In any case, for those reasons, the Sanguine Obsidia countermeasures were not the cause of Yu Ji-hye’s irritation and anger.

More accurately, her anger had surged and then subsided with rational thought.

“Just yesterday, another magical girl was murdered! What on earth is our Association doing? Then again, looking at the state of the Magical Girl Association these days…”

What truly enraged her was the mouth of the fat, suit-wearing man spouting nonsense.

It was likely a politically calculated remark, but those words, and the pathetic, thoughtless remarks of the committee members who agreed with him.

Idiots who didn’t even understand why this meeting was called.

Yu Ji-hye felt genuine fury.

‘Argente, that child, and all the other magical girls are not people you can so easily disparage and criticize.’

‘You were the ones who created this system where magical girls bear everything alone and are then discarded.’

‘Even the so-called ‘fallen magical girls’ whom you condemn as criminals.’

‘Do you have any idea how many children died in despair?’

She gathered magical power in both her fists.

She was furious, but she still had her reason.

She didn’t intend to kill anyone.

At least, not right now.

However, she was thinking of making them feel a pain similar to death, just once.

The magic she chose was a lightning strike, its power extremely reduced.

It would only be a few times more painful than a defibrillator applied to bare skin, but it would still hurt quite a bit.

As she thought that, she was about to release her magic,

KWAaaaaaaang—

An explosion roared.

Scattering dust, flying debris and fragments,

The sound of the ground shaking, the sound of a building collapsing.

What appeared amidst the settling dust was, a girl with sky-blue hair, letting out a maniacal laugh.

“The magical girl of anger and love who flew from the other side of the world, Sodapop Ritalin, has arrived! Sinners, I will kill you and send you to hell!”

She declared, brandishing a pitch-black staff adorned with a star-shaped decoration.