Chapter 55: The Birth of Calamity

The situation took a sharp downturn.

Just as the magical girls were locked in a standoff with Black Mirror, Liu Tianze’s sudden collapse shattered the stalemate.

In an instant, nearly everyone’s attention was drawn back to him.

Polaris, almost simultaneously with Black Mirror, sensed Liu Tianze’s abnormal state.

Just when she had believed the young man’s condition was stabilizing, a deep, malevolent surge of magic unexpectedly crept up her spine.

She whirled around to see Liu Tianze uncontrollably shove Wen Qiusheng, who was beside him, forcefully to the ground.

Ignoring Ji Lanxin’s cries, he collapsed to his knees, clutching the core in his chest with both hands, his face contorted in agony.

Peering through the gaps between his fingers, Polaris’s face registered astonishment.

The giant, eye-shaped core was convulsing wildly.

Concurrently, a massive influx of magic was converging into it, exacerbating the situation with each passing moment.

Baoyu quickly rushed over to help Wen Qiusheng, who had fallen to the ground, disoriented and bruised.

She had just noticed Wen Qiusheng whispering something to Liu Tianze, their shoulders close, right before Liu Tianze abruptly transformed into this state.

“Are you alright? Tell me, what exactly happened?!”

Shaking his head vigorously after being helped up, Wen Qiusheng disregarded the stinging pain in his back.

Seeing Liu Tianze’s tortured expression, his face also filled with anxiety.

“I… I don’t know either. He was fine just a moment ago. I just casually asked Brother Ze where that incense came from, and then he suddenly became like this… Brother Ze, let me help you!”

Before he could rush to Liu Tianze’s side, a sudden tug from behind his collar yanked him back.

Black Mirror gripped his clothes, pulling hard, and then pushed Wen Qiusheng, who had been intent on reaching Liu Tianze, towards Asherah, who was close behind her.

“Don’t let him get any closer.”

“Hey, what are you doing!”

Ignoring Wen Qiusheng’s reprimand, Black Mirror strode quickly towards Liu Tianze and Ji Lanxin.

She glanced at the girl, whose face was now deathly pale as she struggled to maintain the link, then turned her gaze to Liu Tianze, who seemed to be enduring immense pain.

A flicker of unwillingness to witness such suffering crossed her eyes.

A fracturing sound, audible only to her, now drowned out the heavy rain.

This sound was no hallucination of hers, but tangible proof of some existence steadily perishing.

“Tianze, Tianze, hold my hand, I’m here!”

Completely disregarding the profound exhaustion that surged through her from expending vast amounts of magic, Ji Lanxin maintained her ability’s activation to the best of her power.

Yet, she despairingly realized that Liu Tianze’s responses to her were steadily weakening.

This wasn’t due to any inadequacy in her own abilities, but rather because the subject she sought to link with was growing progressively feebler.

Within him, a sudden, alien, and frigid magical force was aggressively devouring his mind.

If this continued, it wouldn’t be long before Liu Tianze would—

“I won’t give up on you, Tianze, wake up!”

Under Ji Lanxin’s desperate shaking, Liu Tianze responded with a pained struggle.

He propped himself up with one hand on the ground, and copious amounts of viscous black liquid welled from his eye sockets.

“Lanxin, you… you listen to me…”

“Don’t say anything more, Tianze, please, I beg you!”

Feeling the warmth within her spirit draining away, Ji Lanxin could no longer control her emotions.

Large, pea-sized tears continuously spilled from her eyes.

“Lanxin, listen to me carefully. I must tell you, huff… huff…”

He opened his mouth, spitting out a clump of inky black grime, his eyelids so heavy he could barely pry them open.

“I must tell you… about… cough, cough!”

His breathing sounded like a leaking bellows, and with every strained attempt to speak, copious black liquid oozed from the corners of his mouth.

He could no longer string together a few recognizable words.

Seeing Polaris still intending to approach, Black Mirror sharply called out to stop her.

“Polaris, tell your people to take the two of them and leave this place at once.”

As a fellow Corroded, she watched helplessly as the balance within Liu Tianze, which Ji Lanxin had maintained, was utterly shattered for reasons unknown.

The previously suppressed corruption now surged back with overwhelming force, spreading ruthlessly and rapidly throughout his body.

It was like an unforeseen and untreatable malignancy.

Though it was cruel, she had to personally deliver the news of Liu Tianze’s fate to the others.

“He… he’s beyond saving.”

“Don’t talk nonsense! He’ll be fine, Tianze, Tianze, hold on, I’ll save you!”

The magic Ji Lanxin desperately poured into him was like a single drop of water falling into a vast, unresponsive ocean.

As she forcibly maintained the link, her body gradually began to show signs of contamination by the magic within Liu Tianze.

Large, dark purple blotches emerged on the surface of her pale hands, which were touching Liu Tianze.

With a pained whimper, a streak of black grime also trickled from the corners of her mouth and her nasal cavity.

“Let go. If you keep this up, you’ll be dragged down too.”

Saying this, Black Mirror reached out, intending to pull Ji Lanxin away from Liu Tianze, but found the girl clinging to him with all her might.

Even as festering sores erupted on her arms, she endured the excruciating physical and mental pain, refusing to let go.

“He only has us left, I won’t abandon him, he, he won’t—”

Just as Black Mirror raised her hand, ready to forcefully remove Ji Lanxin, Liu Tianze, whom she held tightly, used his last ounce of strength to tilt his head back and strike Ji Lanxin’s forehead.

In the instant she let out a cry of anguish, he swayed his body, flinging her into Black Mirror’s arms.

Having accomplished this, his almost burnt-out face strained to form a faint curve, and distorted syllables emerged from his throbbing throat.

“Take… her… away…”

Watching Ji Lanxin reach desperately towards him even as she was pulled away, Liu Tianze held his mouth open, subtly shifting his lips.

“————”

His lips had just formed the shape of a word, an unspoken phrase still lingering at the corners of his mouth—

The next instant, his head exploded like glass, yet what shattered wasn’t flesh and bone, but a cloud of inky, shallow mist.

That unheard phrase remained forever within his now non-existent body.

Amidst Ji Lanxin’s hoarse, heart-wrenching screams, the fracturing sound that had echoed in Black Mirror’s ears finally ceased.

Her steps faltered for a moment, then she tightened her grip on Ji Lanxin and continued to run backward.

It wasn’t over yet.

From the moment she had first heard the fracturing, she knew that whatever was inside Liu Tianze had completely devoured his existence, using it as sustenance to break free from the cocoon of that false corporeal cage.

For a Corroded, the weak and useless parts were finally discarded.

At the culmination of those fracturing sounds, that entity had become ‘complete’.

****

A terrifying surge of magical power emanated from the center of the mist, sweeping over everyone present in an instant.

They all seemed to hear the first beat of a heart, robust and vigorous, yet no one rejoiced at the birth of this new life, for it promised only calamity.

The magical girls, all except Polaris, instinctively felt their hearts constrict.

A mere pulse of magic was enough to almost suffocate them.

This was no longer the threat a Submerged-tier Corroded could pose; this was—

“An Erosion-tier.”

Polaris delivered her bitter assessment.

Black Mirror’s earlier suggestion for them to leave had been correct.

An Erosion-tier Corroded, also known as a ‘Calamity of Cities,’ was certainly not an enemy their current team could handle.

As if to celebrate the birth of this disaster, a flash of white light streaked across the sky, followed immediately by a deafening thunderbolt that struck the center of the mist.

The surrounding black fog dispersed outwards like wronged specters, and the scattered electrical arcs, after passing through the black mist, transformed into an eerie purple.

Upon striking several nearby trees, these arcs ignited them with purple flames that refused to be quenched even by the rain.

“Tian…ze…”

After being forcibly severed from the link and witnessing Liu Tianze’s horrific demise before her eyes, Ji Lanxin’s taut nerves finally snapped.

Her vision blurred to black, and an uncontrollable wave of exhaustion swallowed her consciousness, causing her to faint in Black Mirror’s arms.

Her Corroded state lifted accordingly, yet even then, her arms remained a ghastly black and purple.

“Polaris, hurry and take them away; she can’t hold on any longer!”

Ji Lanxin’s body was already contaminated, and her willpower had become exceedingly fragile.

If she remained in this environment, overflowing with Corroded magic, both her mind and body would undoubtedly collapse.

As time passed, Wen Qiusheng also began to experience an intense headache.

He was horrified to discover his body starting to liquefy uncontrollably.

Witnessing his once cheerful and amicable friend suddenly ‘die’ before him had pushed his psychological defenses to their absolute limit.

At this point, even the slightest additional pressure would become the final straw to break his spirit.

Events should not have unfolded this way.

Liu Tianze was beyond any hope of salvation, and Wen Qiusheng and Ji Lanxin were now in grave danger because of it.

The situation had spiraled out of control; it shouldn’t have been like this…

Watching Ji Lanxin, who seemed trapped in an inescapable nightmare, Black Mirror silently clenched her fist.

Under these circumstances, the animosity between the two sides seemed utterly irrelevant.

Polaris took Ji Lanxin into her arms, not forgetting to ask Black Mirror, “What about you? What will you do? Are you staying behind alone?”

Her reply came with a voice laced with palpable fury.

“I told you to get lost, now!”

Black Mirror’s rage manifested as a fierce gust of air, directly forcing Polaris back several steps.

Evidently, after the situation had escalated beyond her expectations, this wavering Corroded had finally grown angry.

Lightning flashed and thunder roared, the wind howled, and rain lashed down.

The encroaching black mist obscured the sky, as if the world were about to plunge into an apocalyptic catastrophe.

Listening to the sounds behind her gradually fade, Black Mirror retracted her long whip and instead summoned the Crushing Lord.

As if sensing her emotions, the war hammer in her hand began to vibrate softly, emitting a low hum.

“Crack!”

Another white bolt of lightning struck the center of the mist, its sound deafening.

This was immediately followed by an eerie, muffled noise emanating from within the fog, like bone after bone being snapped and crushed.

The cold rain, laden with damp air, assailed her, yet the mist remained entirely unperturbed by the wind.

Only a vaguely defined shadow could be seen trembling slightly within the fog, as if something were being stretched open from the inside—not expanding, but reorganizing.

Within the mist, no trace of ‘Liu Tianze’ could be felt anymore.

The shadow’s movements were slow, as if it were adapting to a new body, or perhaps awaiting observation.

Finally, the mist, which had felt almost ‘viscous’ in its density, dispersed from the area it enveloped.

Black Mirror could at last clearly see it—

It was a human silhouette, yet it had been grotesquely warped into a structure belonging to no known creature.

Its head was elongated and towering, its facial features appearing utterly flattened.

Only a single, enormous eye, glowing with a dead, crimson light, was embedded in its face, comprising the entirety of its visage.

There was no mouth, no nose, no discernible expression.

Yet, when that eye turned towards her, Black Mirror was suddenly seized by a strange illusion.

‘She had been ‘observed’ and ‘recorded’.’

Its body was covered by a layer of black-grey, misty textures—not skin, nor armor, but rather layers of constantly shifting characters, spreading like ink.

Filament-like lines formed sentences she could not comprehend.

From its back, rows of greyish-white wings, thin as rice paper, unfurled and fluttered in the rainy wind.

And on its chest, where the eye-shaped core had once been embedded, several slightly jarring grey-green shoots, imbued with tenacious ‘vitality’, had taken root on its surface.

These grey-green shoots quietly grew upon the remnants of a heart, as if ‘new life’ had sprouted from his pain and regret.

But they would bear no fruit of hope; they would only blossom into flowers that devoured everything.

Black Mirror’s knuckles unconsciously tightened a fraction.

This was an unknown entity, one that even she, as a Corroded, had never encountered.

It was not human, nor was it a Corroded born from the human heart.

It was a materialized punishment, born after memories and emotions had been incinerated.

It was a ‘corpse’ that desecrated the departed.

Therefore, the sense of incongruity she had felt from the moment she first saw Liu Tianze had been correct.

His transformation into a Corroded was not entirely due to his own despair; some external force had been at play, pushing it along.

The incense Ji Lanxin had mentioned—its effects might not be as simple as merely turning someone into a Corroded.

Black Mirror stood her ground, observing the monster before her.

She did not rush to attack, but instead, while watching its movements, she once again took the initiative to try and suppress its actions with her magic, befitting her status as an Epidemic-tier Corroded.

Under the magical suppression, it moved.

There was no prelude, no winding up, and none of the typical body contortions that usually preceded a Corroded’s actions.

It simply raised its right hand.

The palm was not massive, yet it was slender like a withered branch, its joint angles unsettling to the observer.

As its palm slowly unfurled, there—starkly embedded—was an eye, glowing crimson and profound.

Black Mirror instinctively raised her hammer’s handle.

The next second, amidst a field of scarlet, her side was violently struck.

She was flung heavily into the muddy rain, her ears ringing.

‘So fast…!’

Black Mirror quickly pushed herself up, feeling a searing pain pierce from her ribs deep into her lungs.

By the time she registered the attack, a slender beam of light had already pierced through her body.

The monster, meanwhile, remained standing in place, its palm slowly closing.

It showed no fear or hesitation towards her magic, nor was there any hint of probing or warning in its attack.

From the very first moment it saw her, this entity had intended to kill her.