Chapter 26: The Bone Wings Awaken

Jiang Ciqiu staggered her way to the underground passage.

She had imagined making a heroic landing, but the moment her feet touched the ground, a violent wave of dizziness hit her. Her legs gave out, and she dropped flat onto the cold concrete.

“Cough, cough… Tch. That last reassembly nearly killed me… Hm?”

The girl coughed pathetically, wiped her mouth with the dusty back of her hand, and smeared away a streak of blood. Then she raised her head.

Through the blur, two clone combatants in uniforms and sunglasses rushed out from around a corner down the hall. They carried black batons crackling with high-voltage arcs.

“Get lost.”

She didn’t have the strength to shout a warning. Even if she did, if these were cloned life forms made for combat, enhanced through surgery and with an average lifespan under half a year, her warning meant nothing.

After all, erasing targets like these meant she could write a single line in her report to the ethics committee once the operation ended: “During this operation, based on self-defense principles, X hostile clone combatants were killed.”

But her body was weak, and her magic flowed slower than usual. The flame at her fingertip ignited half a beat late.

The baton struck Hongxia’s head first. Only a second later did the two combatants burn to ash in the delayed heat.

“Hisss, that hurts…” Jiang Ciqiu held her bleeding forehead. Blood slid down her cheek. “No. They can’t hold out much longer. I need to find someone…”

She reached instinctively for the communicator by her ear to call for backup, but her fingers only found warm, sticky liquid.

Seeing the blood staining her glove red, she belatedly remembered. When she dodged that one-million-degree fireball earlier, her communicator had been destroyed.

The girl braced her upper body against the corridor wall. The ceiling and floor stretching ahead had already doubled in her vision.

Whether from a veteran’s experience or a broader strategic view, she should retreat in her current condition.

But right now, aside from the sick ringing left by years of combat, the only thing in Jiang Ciqiu’s ears was the drumbeat roar inside her chest.

The heart on the verge of collapse was ordering this body to keep moving forward.

“If you don’t go forward, you’ll regret it until you die, meow~”

The black cat slipped out from the shadows behind her at some point. It walked past the two piles of ash that had been living people, tail held high, and vanished around the corridor corner.

“Wait!”

Boom!!

An earth-shaking roar came from above, sounding like Meteor Blue. Then came the disaster beast’s booming “Zetton”.

Bits of metal and lime fell from the ceiling. The red-haired magical girl didn’t bother brushing them off. She followed her body’s instinct and crept forward along the wall.

One step. Two steps. Three steps.

Another burst of sound came from above. The piercing noise darkened Jiang Ciqiu’s vision further.

She bit her tongue hard. The taste of blood and the pain pulled her consciousness back a little.

“Why haven’t I… reached…?”

One step. Two steps. Three steps. Four steps.

Through her fading senses, she could hear something sharp cutting through the air. There were also shouts, like a man and woman furiously arguing.

Jiang Ciqiu gritted her teeth and stumbled toward the source. It was a monitoring room with its door locked tight.

She weakly placed her left hand on the door. A few seconds later, with a blinding red light, the metal melted into molten iron.

The two people fighting fiercely inside stopped at the same time and stared at the entrance. The red magical girl looked like she might collapse at any moment.

“Hmph. I knew it. You savage, you’re with the magical girls.” Gulasie rolled her eyes, her tone full of disdain.

“Magical girl Hongxia!?”

Lin Xia, on the other side, felt like lightning had struck him the moment he saw her.

The idol he believed could protect everything was now in such a miserable state. Even though he had been focused on fighting, he nearly stumbled and fell.

“…f*ck.”

It took Hongxia a few seconds to recognize the two people before her. She cursed under her breath.

She had thought there were trapped citizens waiting for rescue, making her heroic heart pound. Instead, it was two freaks?

And the one on the right, with eight spider legs on his back, was that little dragon guy she’d run into that night!

“I don’t like being outnumbered, so I’ll be going first!” Gulasie sneered. “Anyway, you’ll be seeing that big one up there again soon.”

“Goodbye, captain of the magical girls. And you…”

Gulasie turned and gave a long look at the gray monster that had stepped in front of Hongxia the moment she entered.

Lin Xia immediately turned both hands into bone blades and raised a wary guard.

“Such free mimicry, such a powerful biological weapon. I never thought you’d deliver yourself to me, [Prototype].“

The monster called “Prototype” seemed to mutter, “What Prototype? Does your organization have such bad naming sense?” But Jiang Ciqiu couldn’t hear the rest.

Through the ringing in her ears, she saw the slender monster vanish in a twist of space. Then the ceiling shook again. The building above finally collapsed under the destruction of two people and one beast.

Countless concrete chunks and steel rebar rained down. The little dragon man she had met once before shielded her beneath him.

The eight terrifying bone claws on the monster’s back quickly wove together and transformed. They spread into dark, ominous bone wings and wrapped him and Jiang Ciqiu inside, like a cage of white bone.

He let out an agonized howl. It was not a sound a human could make. It wasn’t shrill or grief-stricken either. It was like spikes stabbing her eardrums.

With the howl, the monster suddenly spread his bone wings. The massive force blew away all the debris and wreckage. The bones stretched out fully. In the girl’s eyes, roaring at the sky, he looked like a fallen angel waking from an ancient book.

“…Ugh. Give me a clean death.”

Those were the last words magical girl Hongxia said before losing consciousness completely. She stared at the terrifying bone wings that blotted out the sky.

Red particles of light scattered from her body. It was the sign that a magical girl was about to release her transformation.

Beneath the scale shell, Lin Xia could feel his predatory urge and curiosity expanding rapidly. The latter was growing even faster.

A few more seconds, and he would see the true form of Hongxia, one of the pillars of his spirit.

Would she be a girl around his age? Or would she really be a mature woman pushing thirty, like the rumors said?

“Captain!!”

“Old bastard, where the hell did you go! Answer me!!”

Desperate, almost tearful shouts from young girls cut off his guess. In the same instant Lin Xia snapped back to his senses, he smelled two other living magical girls.

It was Meteor Blue and Flash Gold. Her teammates had found their way here.

If they saw him like this, it wouldn’t just trigger an unnecessary fight. It might also drag the unconscious Hongxia into danger.

Lin Xia gritted his teeth. He gave one last reluctant look at the red-haired girl in his arms, her face still hidden by light particles, then turned and vanished into the swirling dust.

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