Chapter 15: So, Tentacles Are a Magical Girl’s Lifelong Enemy

“Manager Qian!”

Before Lin Yu could even process the horror-movie scene before him, Ye Yeying shoved him behind her. At the same time, through the team communicator, she fired off a sharp question to Manager Qian on the surface. Her voice held no panic—only a fury barely restrained by icy control.

“Estimated contamination count exceeds one hundred. A Class B nest has already formed. The mission report is completely inconsistent with reality. I need an explanation.”

The earpiece crackled with Manager Qian’s frantic voice, loud enough that even Lin Yu could faintly hear it.

“What?! A Class B nest? Impossible! The order clearly said Class D! I personally verified it! Wait—hold on… this commission was from the Municipal Emergency Management Bureau… damn it, it’s Zhao Liwei again!”

His words spilled out in curses.

“That bastard! To save his department’s budget he lumped multiple contamination sites into a single Class D order and shoved it onto us! Damn it, damn it, damn it! I knew he wasn’t reliable! But I was in such a rush to give Xiaoyu some training, I didn’t double-check the client name!”

It’s him…

Lin Yu instantly recalled the name Manager Qian had mentioned before—Zhao Liwei, the client rep who, for the sake of KPIs and budgets, had no qualms about throwing frontline “magical girls” into deadly danger.

Damn bureaucracy!

“I need reinforcements. Immediately.”
Ye Yeying’s tone was absolute. “Team Two, Zone C. They should be nearby.”

“No good!” Manager Qian’s voice dropped to despair.
“Team Two just took an urgent order from Xin Nong United—a mutated test field. Even if they rushed to Station B7, it’d take at least forty minutes! Xiaoying, you… you’ll have to break out on your own!”

Forty minutes?! Lin Yu’s heart nearly stopped. Forget forty—at this rate, they might not last four.

“You—” Ye Yeying began, but there was no time.

With a piercing shriek, over a hundred “Primordial” contaminants surged toward them from every direction like a bursting dam.

“Stay close to me!”

Ignoring Manager Qian’s shouting, Ye Yeying charged straight into the densest cluster. The muzzle of her standard-issue psionic handgun spat deadly blue fire.

This was no training exercise.

Her movements among the horde were like a black swan dancing on knife-edges. Every sidestep, every slide, was measured to the millimeter, narrowly evading pale, grasping arms.

Her gun flashed faster than a phantom.

Bang!
A single round blew apart the head of the monster directly ahead. Without even looking, her wrist flicked and the muzzle swung left.

Bang! Bang!
Two quick shots—two flankers dropped.

Precise. Efficient. A killing machine cutting a bloody path through the swarm.

“Move! Don’t just stand there!” she snapped.

“R-right!”

Lin Yu jolted awake and stumbled after her, firing wildly. His shots were less killing than keep-away, a desperate bid to slow the encroaching tide.

But there were simply too many. For every one that fell, three or four crawled over its corpse. Their dead-black eyes burned with nothing but hunger and hatred.

For the first time, sweat beaded Ye Yeying’s brow. Her breath came hard, her complexion pale from the enormous drain on her psionic reserves.

“No… there are too many. We’ll be worn down…” she muttered, swapping magazines in a blur.

Her focus was all forward. That single lapse left her blind to the threat behind.

Trailing her was still a rookie who couldn’t keep up.

“Grrrhhh—”

One “Primordial” she had winged earlier, feigning death, lunged from the shadows at their flank!
Its pale arms opened like a Venus flytrap—straight for the smaller figure.

Lin Yu, lagging behind, was exposed.

“Senpai!”

He barely cried out before it struck. He felt no pain—just a crushing coldness as an overwhelming force yanked him into the air.

“Uhh—ahh—”

A strangled cry escaped as his gun clattered into the foul water below.

Then hell arrived.

The roars filled his ears—wet, squelching noises as mucus-slick bodies rubbed and pressed together. The sound alone made his scalp crawl.

Worse came the whispering—countless voices murmuring curses straight into his skull. Chaotic, fragmented, dripping with madness, they scraped his sanity raw.

The stench followed: rot, rust, alien slime, suffocating and sharp enough to burn his lungs. His stomach heaved.

And then—touch.

Slimy, cold, serpent-thick arms wrapped around him from every direction. Covered in sucker-like growths, each squirm tugged at his flesh as if to rip it off alive. The clammy sensation seeped through the thin stockings of his phase-spirit body, raising gooseflesh everywhere.

Though the phase body was ideal for channeling psionics, company tech had locked it into the fragile form of a girl. Lin Yu had no choice but to endure the horror with painfully sharp human senses.

“Uhh—ahhh—”

The thickest arm coiled brutally around his slender waist, squeezing until he could barely breathe. His magical girl frame felt ready to snap.

“N-no… stop…”

His consciousness dimmed, but instinct forced a humiliating cry of terror.

The probing fingers teased, parasitic, draining his strength. This wasn’t mere violence—this was defilement.

Through that contact, an invasive flood of despairing images poured into his mind:
crowds of hollow commuters, patients wasting away in hospitals, broken corpses on endless battlefields.

Memories not his own, corrupting like a virus.

No… don’t… let go… it’s disgusting… cold… my head… it’ll burst… someone… save me…

His green eyes dulled, gray haze seeping in as the corruption swallowed him.

He remembered the lectures:
Contaminants are monsters from subspace fractures, born of intelligent minds. Keep distance during purification. Once caught, ordinary people are consumed instantly. Even psionic magical girls are at risk. Records show dozens forced into retirement… or worse.

So this… is the contamination’s mental corrosion…

“Rookie!!!”

A thunderous roar ripped him back from the brink.

Ye Yeying.

Through the writhing limbs he glimpsed her sapphire eyes—blazing with wrath. For the first time her icy mask cracked, revealing guilt, fury, and killing intent.

“Bakayaro!”

Her junior—clumsy, noisy, but hers to protect—was being consumed before her eyes. For an A-rank ace, nothing could be more insulting.

“Manager Qian!”

Her voice cut like a drawn blade, filled with absolute resolve.
“No choice. I’m using it!”

The comms nearly shattered with Manager Qian’s scream.
“Xiaoying, you’re insane?! Forcibly releasing your Concept Armament without backup?! Your soul-anchor strain will exceed limits! Stop! Your mental stability was already at warning level this month!”

“My rookie is about to die.”

Ye Yeying stated the fact flatly. The weight of her tone left Manager Qian silent.

“Charge all damages to Zhao Liwei of the Emergency Management Bureau. Take it from his budget. Every last coin.”

She ignored the protests, closed her eyes, and rose into the air.

Her black officer’s uniform burst into brilliant blue psionic flame, dazzling as a star-field.

Spreading her arms like a queen accepting coronation, she chanted in a voice both sacred and cold:

“By the name of contract, grant me the punishment of origin.
This body is the vessel, bearing eternal silence and void.”

“Release! — [Obsidian Arms]”