Chapter 54: The War Group Leader’s Grip

“War group leader!”

Luka’s eyes went wide. He couldn’t believe it.

The strongest magical girl in the entire war group, the Canary War Group leader, was right beside him?

In the magical girl military structure, ten-person squads and hundred-person companies didn’t get special titles.

They were usually sorted by letters or numbers, like Squad A or Third Company.

But at the thousand-strong war group level, special titles were used.

The title even replaced the war group leader’s original surname. Every time.

So in the Canary War Group, only one person could be called Canary.

That was the war group leader in front of him, Nore Canary.

Despite his surprise, Luka paused.

He’d noticed that the war group leader had stressed the word “newbie” in her last sentence.

And there was something loaded in how she said it.

What did she mean?

Did she know who he was?

Luka suddenly felt guilty.

After all, the Canary War Group had been tricked and nearly wiped out because of him, a walking disaster caught up in royal intrigue.

It wasn’t what he’d wanted, but the magical girls who’d suffered because of him might not care about that.

He swallowed hard and asked cautiously.

“War group leader, have you… seen me before?”

“Seen you? Heh, no. A nobody frontline officer like me would never get the chance to see you in person.”

Nore narrowed her eyes into slits. She leaned close to Luka’s ear, her lips almost touching his ear canal, and whispered.

“But I do personally look into the name and details of every newbie who joins the war group.”

“And your file, newbie, is especially interesting.”

As she finished, Nore’s fingers, which had been pinching the soft flesh at his waist, began to move slowly toward the center of his body.

Her five fingers slithered across his skin like five serpents, making his scalp tingle and cold sweat pour down his back.

Finally, her palm stopped just below his navel, landing on a spot he hadn’t had in his previous life, one that was very important to the empire’s future.

“You don’t mind me calling you that, do you? ‘Newbie,’ Miss Mazluka Dolonia.”

Nore’s lips curled up. Her palm pressed down slightly.

“Eep!”

Luka’s small body jolted.

His jolt wasn’t from Nore’s magnetic voice and ambiguous breath making his heart flutter.

Nor was it from her palm grabbing his weak spot and using some kind of dark force to make his body go limp and his legs give out.

Though both of those things were terrifying in their own right.

He wasn’t that fragile.

No, it was the indescribable complexity in Nore’s voice when she’d said his name. That was what made his skin crawl.

He couldn’t put it into words, but it definitely wasn’t a purely positive emotion.

It was more like a tangle of disgust and admiration, love and hate.

This was bad.

So the war group leader probably knew about his sensitive status as the crown prince’s consort.

Anyone with half a brain would never believe that a person with such a sensitive identity being thrown into a dangerous mission was a normal, reasonable arrangement.

Add in the suspicious details of this mission and the fact they’d been ambushed, and if she still didn’t notice something was wrong, then her IQ was seriously questionable.

So what attitude would Nore have toward him, the walking disaster who’d indirectly brought down her war group?

He tried putting himself in her shoes.

If he were in Nore’s place, dealing with a jinx like this, even if he didn’t punish the kid with seventy-two masterful cooking techniques, he’d at least squeeze him until he was red and swollen, wouldn’t he?

At that thought, Luka’s eyes twitched. Cold sweat trickled down his back.

He chose his words carefully before speaking.

“War group leader, please listen. There’s a deep reason for all this.”

Luka put his small hand on Nore’s arm, trying to move her motionless hand away. “Could you let go first? Let’s talk this through…”

“Shh!”

Nore pressed a finger to her lips, cutting him off. “This isn’t the time for that. Once we’re safe, I’d be happy to have a long, deep talk with you.”

“For now, keep your focus on the battle ahead.”

She pointed at the Sky Eye Demon in the distance.

Luka followed her gaze, and his eyes widened in surprise.

The Sky Eye Demon in the distance had suddenly become strangely active after seeing Nore appear and the Canary War Group assemble.

Its body, which had been listless from summoning the Stone Statue Demon, gave a violent jolt. Its shriveled eyeball swelled back up.

The Sky Eye Demon seemed greatly encouraged. It stared at Nore like it had spotted rare prey, its greed impossible to hide.

Its eyeball began to vibrate rapidly, sending out countless psychic messages in all directions.

As the messages spread, the Batwing Demons, Stinger Demons, and Eagle Hunter Demons scattered in the distance started to fall into orderly formation.

They abandoned whatever opponents they were facing and flew toward the Sky Eye Demon.

Even stranger, the Stone Statue Demon standing in front of the Sky Eye Demon seemed to receive some kind of order.

It flew under the Sky Eye Demon and, with obvious reluctance, offered its body up to the demon’s tentacles.

The tentacles wrapped around it and stuffed it into the abdomen beneath the huge single eye.

As the Sky Eye Demon’s body squirmed, the Stone Statue Demon’s presence quickly weakened.

After a moment, the Sky Eye Demon’s abdomen convulsed and spat the Stone Statue Demon out.

But now the Stone Statue Demon looked exhausted, its aura feeble, the luster of its stone skin dimmed.

After what the Sky Eye Demon had done to it, its strength had clearly been cut by more than half.

The Sky Eye Demon, on the other hand, had somehow grown much stronger from absorbing something from the Stone Statue Demon.

Its purple pupil suddenly blazed. It shot an incredibly powerful psychic message into the sky.

The psychic force in that message was so strong it materialized into a purple light, crossing tens of kilometers in the blink of an eye before vanishing over the horizon.

Luka stared at the bizarre sight, his scalp tingling. He could feel some unpredictable danger approaching.

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