Chapter 21: Let’s Meet on the Dark Side of the Moon.

There is no honour, no glory, on the battlefield.

Not in wars between people,

And not on the battlefields between people and monsters.

I’m out of breath.

I can’t breathe.

My chest is crushed, and my heart pounds as if it will burst.

It hurts.

It’s hot.

When I open my eyes, my vision is stained with blood,

And painted with the colour of a sky burning redder than blood.

The smell of melting concrete, the smell of boiling earth, the smell of burning people, fills my mouth and nose.

The world shakes, contorts, and finally, focus returns.

What I feel is a sense of floating.

I can’t feel my left side.

It’s like half of my body is floating in mid-air.

I try to look left,

And realize there’s no three-dimensionality.

My left arm has turned to black charcoal.

My left leg is charred crimson, emitting a burning smell.

My left eye is gone.

I bring my trembling right hand to it.

What I touch is skin that feels no sensation, burned, melted, cooled, and hardened,
Sticky, burst liquid, solidified by high heat.

An empty socket.

I looked to my right.

Its surface half-burned, constantly generating signals of excruciating pain,
My relatively intact right arm, right hand, right leg.

From my throat, burned dry to the core, only the sound of escaping air flows.

I couldn’t immediately recognize it as my own voice.

I flail my right arm, desperately searching.

For my lost arm and eyeball.

Crack.

The sound of crumbling.

Not my already crumbled left arm,

But something in a vaguely human shape,

A pitch-black lump of charcoal,

What was a comrade just moments ago,

What was once a magical girl, crumbles.

‘This is a nightmare, this is a nightmare, a nightmare.’

‘This can’t be happening.’

“Get a grip!”

A familiar voice.

A rabbit is perched on my chest, which rises and falls shallowly and irregularly.

Its rainbow-coloured, glittering fur was its pride, but ash has settled on it, and it has lost its luster.

“Eclipse, if you don’t get a grip, you’ll die! You’re the only one left!”

‘What does that mean?’

‘That I’m the only one left?’

Words won’t come out.

I can’t move my tongue and lips freely, so I touch them with my fingers,
And feel a sticky, matted slime.

‘Mirror, show me a mirror.’

‘Let me see, even with my one remaining eye, my lips, half melted and stuck together from burns, and my shrunken tongue.’

‘Only a foolish metallic sound is flowing from my half-closed mouth.’

“Eclipse!”

At the rabbit’s shout, I turn my gaze straight ahead, and a colossal shape comes into view.

A giant armillary sphere floating on the sea.

Nine concentric rings, each easily exceeding a hundred meters in radius, are pierced with black orbs, seemingly symbolising the planets of the solar system,

The nine rings rotate chaotically, circulating mana.

At its centre is something incandescent white,

A sphere shining white, as if a miniature sun.

The monster named Spyra Nicoli, a living catastrophe.

Enemy of humanity, disaster, monster.

I understood what had happened.

The rings, which had been chaotically rotating and firing flames, beams, and rocks, aligned and stopped their movement,

And the next moment, after the nine planetary models aligned in a row,

An intense flash of light that covered my vision.

A brilliance that felt like it would burn my retinas even if I closed my eyes.

I thought I had blocked the flash with magic,

But when I opened my eyes, my left eye and left arm were gone.

Circulating what little mana remained in my disobedient body, I forcibly raised myself.

Truly, as if controlling a doll, I make my body parts move against their will.

I forcibly bend my left leg, its skin melted and knee joint fused, to support my body.

“Haa…haa…haa…”

From my slightly recovered trachea and mouth, a breath that could finally be called a human sound began to emerge.

I tore open my melted, numb lips and left cheek, enveloped them in mana,

And made them function as a mouth.

What I see before me is,

Heated to an unimaginably high temperature,

Spyra Nicoli, its entire body emitting a pale blue light.

And the morning sky, dyed a crimson black, covered in flames and smoke.

Turning my head to the left, what I see is,

The earth, deeply gouged in an arch, long and extending beyond the horizon, its underground structure exposed.

The deeply gouged surface is covered in molten lava, where the remains of buildings, concrete, steel frames, and pipes have melted together and flow,

Its edges are decorated with asphalt that has turned into black glass,

And from those edges, streetlights, buildings, houses, unable to withstand the heat, are swallowed by the conflagration,

Burning the remnants of the city that still maintained some form.

The earth, revealing its gaunt skeleton,

Had been supporting the city above it just moments ago.

Nearly half of the city that, just a moment ago, was called Busan, a city that clearly existed,

Now, not even a trace remains.

As if it never existed in the first place.

Probably, beyond the horizon, other connected areas have disappeared as well.

“You expect me to fight this? This thing…”

Not even a hollow laugh escapes.

Appearing out of nowhere in the East Sea,

A colossal monster that flew towards Busan out of nowhere.

With just its outermost ring,

It shattered the coastal fortress line, completed not long ago, which the government had boasted so much about,

And lifted seawater, creating a bizarre spectacle of crushing two warships in mid-air with water pressure.

It swatted down magical girls like annoying flies with magic activated by rotating a few rings,

And it approached the coast nonchalantly.

Cannons, naval guns, magic, missiles,

Nothing could slow it down.

Nothing could tie it down.

Like a machine performing a predetermined action, paying not the slightest attention to the wreckage of turrets and pillboxes, the burned corpses, and the fragments of destroyers,

It reached the coast,

And the nine rings aligned.

Then, a flash erupted.

The beam emitted from the central sphere amplified as it passed through the rings and planetary models,

Finally becoming a colossal pillar of light that would burn the entire city.

“It’s not even funny…”

And I am the only one left alive in this place.

Dozens of magical girls who answered the summons,

Thousands of soldiers,

Tens of thousands of people who couldn’t evacuate in time.

All of them vanished without even leaving ashes behind.

“You should have killed me too.”

I survived alone for the absurd reason of having barely avoided a direct hit.

Why me.

I was the one who gathered all the dead and dragged them to the battlefield.

It was the government and the Magical Girl Association that abandoned us and pushed us into this hellish scene,

But I was the one who decided to stand here,

And I was the one who brought the others.

‘If only I had run away.’

“Eclipse.”

“…I’m sorry.”

The rabbit glares at me.

‘You always scolded me whenever I tried to blame myself.’

‘I promised not to talk about dying in front of you.’

‘Still, I’m glad we’re together until the end, partner.’

But he avoided my hand trying to pet him and said with a voice full of firm resolve.

“I have something to say. Because you can do it, because you can succeed, I’m saying this.”

‘Be quiet. Don’t say the rest.’

‘I’d rather die now than that.’

“You have to do it now.”

Then he pointed to my body.

A body barely able to stand.

My legs creak and tremble ceaselessly,

Black ash scatters from my left shoulder where my arm is gone, and blood seeps through the gaps.

My one remaining eye repeatedly loses and regains focus,

And each time, the ashen figure of the rabbit appears and fades in my vision.

A life that will soon be extinguished.

Even if that colossal monster, cooling its overheated body, doesn’t pay attention, I will surely die in a few minutes.

‘So leave me alone.’

‘With this small body,’

‘And even that half-burned, what can I do?’

“I want you to live. Just as you always have.”

The rainbow-colored radiance returns to the rabbit’s body.

“Gig, stop it.”

As always, he never listens to me.

“I want you to be happy. Even though you haven’t been until now.”

His body gradually becomes transparent.

“Don’t do it. Stop. Don’t force life on me anymore.”

An irresistible torrent of mana and life engulfs my body.

“We’re not parting. I’m not dying. I’m going to live as one with you.”

‘I want to die. Everyone who forced responsibility on me is dead now.’

‘Don’t forcibly extend my miserable life.’

‘Don’t make me their gravekeeper.’

How a magical girl becomes stronger.

Not by mastering skills, becoming accustomed to combat, or strengthening the body and mind,

But by becoming stronger in a fundamental sense.

‘If only one could become stronger through the power of the heart alone.’

Scenes of awakening and becoming stronger through trivial triggers like a comrade getting hurt, overcoming a difficulty, or feeling strong emotions,

Are stories that only appear in old magical girl comics for young girls.

In reality, even if comrades die, even if faced with an unbeatable enemy, even if the entire city burns to ashes,

Sudden, strong power is not granted.

What is needed is resolve.

To accept the fact that one must give up one’s life and soul, place them on the scales, and pay them as a price for power.

To make the decision to devour one’s partner.

But I couldn’t make the decision,

And my partner climbed onto the scales himself.

Perfect fusion with a spirit.

Risking one’s soul shattering and dying,

Unleashing the mascot’s true power and absorbing that power, spirit and all, to become one.

And my partner, Gig, gave his everything to me.

“Goodbye, friend. Be happy.”

‘I have to say something. I have to say goodbye. I have to say thank you.’

Tears mixed with blood and ash stream from my one remaining eye.

And so, the rabbit, becoming transparent and dissolving into the air, naturally entered and merged with me.

I feel my body, my soul, completely transformed.

I can no longer return to being human.

I didn’t become a magical girl through transformation,

I feel that this magical girl body is my true form.

Sensation returns to my lost left arm.

Like a lingering ember, a left arm the color of cinders, like firewood pulled from ashes.

It’s a temporary prosthetic made of mana, but if I can wield a sword, that’s enough.

I draw my sword.

My Spirit Weapon, appearing from thin air,

Has lost its pure white radiance,

And now possesses the colour of a dark flame, like the solar flares of a sun obscured by a total eclipse, with ash flickering within.

‘The colour doesn’t matter.’

‘As long as I can kill that thing.’

I grip the sword and look up.

The burning sky,

The boiling sea,

The molten earth,

And floating above it,

The monster, having radiated its residual heat, has begun to rotate its rings again.

I draw upon my mana.

My body, not yet fully adapted to the spirit’s power, screams,

My skin splits, burns, and red scars are etched into the cracks, as excruciating pain courses through me.

I’ve already felt the pain of my whole body burning once.

So, it doesn’t hurt at all.

Flames erupt from the sword held in both hands, and I raise it towards the monster.

I, I cannot die now.

So I will destroy you, kill you.

Though there’s nothing left to protect anymore.