Chapter 26: A Calculated Victory

Ding—

Click…

In the unlit corridor, no one knew what transpired within the darkness.

Only the crisp clang of blades meeting could be heard, followed by a faint… click, the sound of a sword cracking.

This, by all accounts, should have been the inevitable outcome.

Yet, Ling Xing, barely holding on, could not possibly have parried the attack with her battered Japanese blade.

The moment their blades met, the enchanted shortsword would shatter her broken katana, then, with undiminished force, cleave off Ling Xing’s head.

“……”

“……”

In the profound darkness, no one uttered a sound.

There was neither pursuit nor counter-strike.

No struggle of combat ensued, nor the soft shuffle of shifting feet.

Only silence prevailed, a stillness so profound it suggested everything had already concluded.

The silence persisted, until…

Until the lights, once more illuminating the corridor, unveiled the swift outcome of their clash.

“…Er… ah…?”

A faint groan escaped the petite girl’s lips.

A fleeting flicker of confusion, then bewilderment, crossed her small face, finally coalescing into an expression of utter disbelief.

—She had parried it.

Her assured strike, meant to be decisive, had failed to advance an inch.

The blade, indeed, could not have withstood that blow, so what had blocked it…

“Truly, I must thank you for your gift.”

Ling Xing’s left hand covered the back of her neck.

The ring on her left hand, the very one Hane had left behind, the one imbued with Hane’s own magic for tracking…

It had, with uncanny precision, perfectly blocked the blade Hane herself had wielded.

In the utterly sightless darkness, Ling Xing had precisely used that small ring to deflect the sword strike delivered after a teleportation.

—Yet, this alone was not enough to decide the victor.

Even if she had deciphered all of the girl’s overt schemes, relying on a desperate, unconventional move to block that single strike would not alter the outcome.

The girl could easily have continued with a flurry of strikes; Ling Xing could not possibly parry a storm of two shortswords with a tiny ring.

But there was no flurry.

No storm, no entanglement, no pursuit.

The victory had been decided the instant that strike was parried.

“Ah… ah… I… I actually…”

The girl’s voice was laced with anguish and a faint tremor.

She struggled to lift her hand, but in the end, managed only a slight twitch of her fingertips.

Not only did she fail to move much, but the shortsword in her hand slipped from her grasp, falling with a dull thud.

—Embedded deeply in her chest was a broken blade.

That blade had not shattered from a clash of swords, but rather, at the very moment Ling Xing blocked the girl’s attack… it had been thrust from behind.

It had pierced through the girl’s chest and abdomen, subsequently fragmenting from the impact.

With one hand, Ling Xing had precisely received the attack, as if anticipating the girl’s movements, while with the other, she had thrust a counter-attack blindly behind her.

In that fleeting moment of clashing blades in the dark, the victor had been decided for both.

Throughout the entire exchange, Ling Xing had not even turned her head, never once glancing at the girl who had teleported behind her to launch the assault.

“…I truly… did something foolish… didn’t I?”

She had believed herself to have calculated everything, to know everything, to control everything.

Yet, the outcome was a crushing defeat.

Using the ring to pinpoint Ling Xing’s location, and upon realizing Ling Xing had infiltrated the tower, there hadn’t been enough time to dispatch troops for rescue.

Confident that she alone could end the battle, the girl had not moved with the main force. Instead, she had projected her consciousness into the ring, relying solely on her abilities to teleport directly to its vicinity.

She had feigned a prepared ambush, hoping to make the two hesitant and wary of potential further traps, intending to end the fight with a surprise attack while they were caught in uncertainty.

Then, she had used a minor trick to control the surrounding electrical appliances and manipulate the lighting, creating the ideal conditions for her abilities to set up a fatal blow.

And then… it had all failed.

The guileless Chao Wu had thought nothing of it, completely disregarding any potential ambushes as she charged straight into the cold storage, making contact with the untransferred machinery.

Ling Xing, the intended target, had thought much, perhaps too much… so much so that she had reversed the situation, surpassing the girl’s expectations and taking advantage of her acting alone, separate from the main force, to eliminate her.

“Well, for a Magical Girl, that wasn’t half bad.”

She returned the earlier assessment in full.

Ling Xing, wounded all over, ran a fingertip over the bloody mark on her neck.

“However, as a combatant, this level is still far from that of an elite!”

Wiping away a trace of blood, Ling Xing smoothed her fingers through her hair, offering a lighthearted farewell to the girl with a cheerful smile.

“……”

The girl offered no reply; instead, the electronic door before them responded.

[Welcome, Magical Girl, Chao Wu.]

As the girl suffered severe injuries, her controlled trick naturally lost its effect.

The cold storage door slowly creaked open, and white frost billowed out, bringing with it a biting gust of wind.

Amidst the frigid blast, Chao Wu, her face pale from the low temperature of the cold storage, her body trembling and shivering, appeared on the other side of the door, an expression of tearful excitement on her face.

“Ling Xing! That’s wonderful, I knew you could do it, you’re Ling Xing after all!”

Wiping away the icy beads that had formed at the corners of her eyes, Chao Wu smiled.

Smiling, she picked up the rifle at her feet and aimed it at Ling Xing.

Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat——————————

The gunfire roared, and bullets whizzed past Ling Xing’s disheveled hair.

The purple-haired girl, Hane, who had silently mustered her last strength for one final struggle, one last sneak attack, was struck by the bullets.

Dozens of rounds of relentless fire stripped the girl of her remaining strength, causing her petite form to lose all balance and collapse heavily to the ground, losing consciousness.

Only after an entire magazine had been emptied, and repeatedly pulling the trigger produced nothing but the click of an empty chamber, did Chao Wu lower her rifle.

“Stubborn fool… Ling Xing, I fully understand the machine’s function and principles now, but it’s immovable. Without the organization of power supply and a low-temperature environment here, it simply won’t operate. What should we do?”

“It’s fine; that thing is so huge and heavy, I never intended to transport it back anyway.”

“Eh…? Then, how are we supposed to…”

…negotiate with the young lady, to make her comply?

Before the words could fully escape her lips, Chao Wu realized something, and thus, did not continue speaking.

Her gaze shifted to the unconscious girl on the ground, then to Ling Xing, their lines of sight almost intersecting.

“From the very beginning… you had it all planned?”

“More or less. Luring someone out to fight alone is always simpler than confronting a perfectly coordinated, experienced duo simultaneously, wouldn’t you agree?”

Ling Xing had known about the trick with the ring from the very beginning.

Therefore, her target had never been the machine itself.

Instead, it was Hane, the assassin and attendant, who would be forced to rush to rescue the machine, likely becoming separated from her team and the young lady, thereby turning it into a solo confrontation.

Although Hane’s abilities and combat intensity had nearly overwhelmed Ling Xing, forcing her into a sweaty, on-the-spot improvisation, the outcome was an overwhelming victory for Ling Xing.

Hane, who had believed herself to have calculated everything, remained oblivious that even her very appearance had been part of Ling Xing’s meticulously laid plans.

Now, she was paying the price for her blind confidence.

The cost of calculating against a senior is indeed steep!

“Just carry her away; it’s time we did something befitting a dark organization. Let’s arrange a little kidnapping and blackmail drama for our dear young lady, a tale of sisterly affection, shall we—”