Chapter 38: The Sky Tears Open: Ling Xing’s Folly

“What… what is that?”

The sky had turned a deep, somber grey. A jagged, grey fissure tore across the heavens, devouring the clouds and casting a suffocating shadow over the city.

The crowd, still somewhat subdued after Ling Xing’s declaration, began to stir. They had noticed the anomaly in the sky.

Curious young people and reporters alike turned their cameras skyward, directly capturing this ominous grey scene and broadcasting it across the entire network. Those a little older, however, already wore expressions of terror.

“A Rift!? How is that possible? Weren’t the Rifts already eliminated!?”

A terrified shriek erupted from the crowd. Flee! Anyone with even a shred of experience was instantly struck with overwhelming fear, scrambling desperately to escape.

Where to? Where could they find refuge from the impending disaster? How could they escape the monster’s claws?

The fleeing people had no time to think; they were simply engulfed by fear, running on pure instinct. But without reason, how could human instinct ever compare to monsters that operated solely on it?

Amidst the chaotic throng, a meteor, emitting a foul stench, crashed down from the sky.

With wings that blotted out the sun, it plummeted like a shooting star—a gigantic beetle, monstrously large, the size of a truck, descending from above. Where it landed, the concrete ground fractured into a spiderweb of cracks, forming a deep crater and sending up a shower of fine gravel and dust.

“This, this is a frontline reporter! In D City’s urban area, a Rift has appeared in the Hunter Organization’s Tower Zone! A D-class monster, the Rustblood Beetle, has appeared! A D-class monster, the Rustblood Beetle, has appeared! All nearby residents, please evacuate the area immediately!”

The people scattered. The live streams, originally started out of curiosity, were abruptly shut down en masse amidst the chaos, many abandoning their phones wherever they fell.

Only one young, rookie reporter bravely held her ground, suppressing a sob as she reported frantically.

The next instant, the camera shook with the tremor of the earth. A colossal beetle roared silently, its sharp claws piercing deep into the ground, dragging long furrows as it lunged towards her with overwhelming force.

“Ah————”

A putrid wind blasted her face. She only managed a desperate shriek before vanishing from the camera’s view.

The live broadcast image spun wildly, the camera clattering heavily to the ground, its lens now obscured by a web of cracks.

[????]

[Holy crap, it’s gone?]

[RIP]

A stream of astonished and mournful comments scrolled across the screen. The outcome in the footage was painfully clear; there was no need to watch further to know what had happened.

But…

To the surprise of every viewer, the cracked screen unexpectedly rotated and adjusted itself. Eventually, the image righted itself and refocused.

“Honestly, if you’re not going to run, at least be a little quieter. These monsters have incredibly keen senses, you know.”

A young girl’s cheerful complaint, utterly out of place in the grim environment, broke the silence.

The re-emerged footage showed a petite girl with flowing blue-and-white hair, swaying in the wind, standing defiantly amidst the putrid air. The terrified rookie reporter lay sprawled by the roadside, still shaken, gasping for breath, having been kicked there by the girl.

“Don’t you agree? All this noise must be annoying for you too, huh? Heh heh…”

Ling Xing chuckled, single-handedly conjuring a short sword made of condensed magic. She used its blade to wedge open the colossal beetle’s rock-hard mandible.

This was power from a new crystal, though unlike her own source, Ling Xing’s armament from this crystal wasn’t twin swords, but a short sword and a pistol.

Bang—bang—

Aiming at the colossal beetle, temporarily immobilized with its mandible wedged open, Ling Xing fired two shots directly into its compound eyes.

“Gak————!!!”

The colossal beetle’s howl twisted with excruciating pain, and its anterior mandibles thrashed wildly. Seizing the opportunity, Ling Xing aimed her short sword at a vulnerable spot on its carapace and plunged it forward—

Clink—

It struck, but was repelled. Failing to penetrate, Ling Xing immediately leaped back, narrowly evading the beetle’s furious counterattack. The ground was torn open by the beetle’s strike, forming a deep fissure. The blindly roaring monster crashed forward, violently plowing a trench several meters deep and wide into the sturdy concrete before smashing head-on into a truck.

Then, amidst the groaning and screeching of the truck, it relentlessly rammed the multi-ton behemoth, distorting, twisting, and flipping it over.

“Agh!”

With a sound strikingly similar to a certain pantyhose-dropping captain’s exasperated grunt, Ling Xing took a half-step back. Hane’s Crystal Armament was designed primarily for close-quarters combat against individuals, an assassination-type weapon. Both the short sword and the pistol were geared towards swift, hit-and-run tactics, unsuitable for direct confrontation, and even less so against gigantic, heavily armored monsters like this beetle.

The crystal’s magic allowed for instantaneous teleportation to an unobserved location within dozens of meters, provided the target destination remained unseen. But even this was useless now. There were too many people here, some even recklessly chasing Ling Xing, filming and live-streaming. There was no way to remain unobserved.

She had swapped to Hane’s armament to return the crystal to Chao Wu, but now, at such a critical juncture, it was proving incredibly difficult to utilize effectively. Was this not, in its own way, a form of karmic consequence?

However, Ling Xing felt no regret. A man’s responsibility was to account for their choices – and even now, having become a beautiful girl, that sense of responsibility remained unchanged!

“Alright, hurry and run. Don’t make a sound; it probably won’t chase you.”

Ling Xing waved a small hand at the reporter, who lay collapsed on the ground behind her. Without turning back, she pondered how to solve the problem with the equipment at hand.

But the reporter proved more resilient than Ling Xing expected.

“No… we, we are reporters, frontline reporters. We won’t flee…”

“Eh~”

Ling Xing turned slightly, glancing at the reporter with a hint of surprise. Though clearly terrified and trembling all over, it was true—her eyes showed no sign of retreat.

‘Honestly, without her camera, perhaps Hane’s magic could have met the ‘unobserved’ condition and been activated? Even staying here, she’s just getting in the way. It would be better for her to leave quickly; that way, I’d have fewer people to protect and less to worry about.’ This was the answer quickly reached through rational thought. So, Ling Xing…

She brought two fingers together, lightly brushing her hair in a flippant gesture of farewell.

“Then let’s try to survive together. But fair warning, I’m not even sure I can protect myself, so I probably can’t save you again.”

‘Heh, what rationality?’

‘Was standing here wrestling with a giant beetle considered rational? Clearly, if I just turned and fled, the monster would never catch me. Even if I forced my way into the Tower amidst the chaos, no one inside could stop me. Whatever casualties the monster caused, it would be the fault of the Magical Girl Organization. At most, it would just add a few more entries to the Book of Hatred, another insignificant record among the countless misdeeds of the Magical Girl Organization.’

‘But now, here, there was no fleeing, no breaking in. There was only a fool stubbornly resisting a monster with an anti-personnel weapon that couldn’t even break its defense.’

‘Chao Wu isn’t here, so someone else has to play the fool now.’

Ling Xing twirled the short sword, its light blade spinning deftly between her fingers. Accompanying this small movement, several more colossal shadows, obscuring the sky, descended, crashing heavily to the ground and sending up sprays of fractured rock and dust. Just when she couldn’t even handle one, several more appeared in quick succession. What a truly troublesome situation this was.