Chapter 6: The Crushing Reality

After fleeing home from that encounter, the witch’s pride once again burned fiercely within her.

Though her circumstances had become rather dire, she, Kazami Jin, was still a hidden threat capable of causing headaches for any faction.

Yet now, she had been reduced to nothing more than a human comfort doll for two magical girls?!

No! This could not stand!

Not anymore!

Endurance was for survival, but humiliation without a bottom line was not!

She would resist!

She would make these two arrogant bullies understand that even a weak, pathetic witch possessed a temper!

As the saying went, a true hero, living between heaven and earth, could not long remain subjugated and despondent!

A plan quietly began to form in her mind: to flee!

Fighting them was an impossibility, and the mere thought of her identity being exposed sent shivers down her spine.

However, the world was vast; as long as she hid far enough and well enough, she might just shake off these two plagues.

She refused to believe that the newly established ‘Star Guardians’ would conduct a nationwide, carpet-bombing search for a former witch as insignificant and magically feeble as herself.

Yes, this was the way!

While they were still locked in their fierce battle, Kazami Jin made her move.

She swiftly packed a lightweight backpack, taking only a small amount of cash, a change of clothes, and her pathetically meager magical power.

She avoided train stations and long-distance bus terminals, knowing they were too easily traceable.

Her destination was the old industrial district on the city’s outskirts—an undeveloped area with sparse surveillance—where she planned to lie low for a few days before finding a way to make a clean getaway.

The night was deep, the moonlight veiled by thin clouds, with only scattered streetlights casting faint, yellowish halos.

Jin, clad in dark athletic wear, flitted through the empty streets and alleyways like a ghost.

Having escaped the ‘clutches’ of the two magical girls, the night air itself seemed to carry the scent of freedom.

Soon, she would reach her planned temporary hideout, needing only to pass through the abandoned factory district ahead.

However, just as she neared the edge of the factory grounds, an anomalous energy fluctuation, like a stone dropped into a tranquil lake, instantly piqued her alarm.

This fluctuation felt chilling, chaotic, imbued with a malice that sought to devour all… its intensity far surpassed any small Shadow Beast she had ever encountered!

‘It’s a large Shadow Beast!’ she realized, her mind racing.

‘Perhaps even an elite one!’

Instinctively, she held her breath, taking cover behind a crumbling brick wall before cautiously peering out.

The sight before her stole her breath away.

In the open ground of the abandoned factory, two familiar figures were being assailed by a monstrous creature, vast as a mountain and twisted like countless shadowy tentacles coalesced into being!

It was none other than Xia Yue and Lin Wan!

The oppressive aura emanating from the Shadow Beast sent a chill through Jin’s limbs; merely observing from afar, she felt her very magical core tremble.

It was a terrifying entity capable of effortlessly annihilating a small army!

But what shook her to her core even more was the presence of Xia Yue and Lin Wan.

How had they come here too?

Facing such a terrifying being, their faces betrayed not a hint of fear.

Even their usual expressions had vanished, leaving behind only an absolute calm, or perhaps… an unnerving indifference.

Xia Yue still wore her school uniform skirt, yet the aura surrounding her had abruptly turned as sharp and biting as an arctic gale.

She didn’t even wield any obvious weapon; she simply raised a hand.

The very next instant, countless moisture particles in the air instantly condensed, not into ice swords, but into an invisible storm of ice crystals, fine as ox hairs yet shimmering with deadly cold light.

As if alive, it silently enveloped the colossal Shadow Beast!

Wherever it passed, even the air seemed to freeze.

The Shadow Beast’s tentacles, powerful enough to shatter reinforced concrete, instantly became coated in thick ice upon contact with the storm, their movements growing sluggish and rigid.

Then, with a series of subtle ‘crackling’ sounds, they shattered into countless shards of ice and vanished.

There was no earth-shattering roar, only a chilling, absolute zero-like stillness and demise.

Simultaneously, Lin Wan moved with such blinding speed that she was reduced to a mere afterimage trailing electric light.

She didn’t even use an energy gun; instead, her fists, wreathed in dazzling golden electrical serpents, appeared as if by teleportation at the Shadow Beast’s core.

With a short, sharp ‘Zzzzt—!’ of crackling energy, a bolt of lightning, condensed to its absolute extreme, pierced through the Shadow Beast’s core—a nucleus composed of pure shadow energy—like a chisel.

The colossal Shadow Beast’s body instantly stiffened, all its movements halting.

The shadows that formed its being began to collapse and disintegrate from within, like ice and snow cast into the scorching sun.

Before it could even utter a dying lament, it dissolved completely into nothingness amidst silently dissipating black mist and flickering electrical arcs.

From the moment Jin first saw them to the complete purification of the Shadow Beast, the entire process likely spanned no more than ten seconds.

Kazami Jin’s limbs felt icy, her mind a complete blank.

She had known magical girls were powerful, but she had never imagined… this kind of power.

This wasn’t a battle; it was an annihilation, an erasure!

An absolute disparity in the very hierarchy of power!

‘So, her previous unharmed state… was entirely because they had merely been toying with her like a child?’

Just as her mind filled with overwhelming dread and a complete subversion of her understanding, leaving her on the verge of collapsing to the ground, the two figures in the factory clearing seemed to sense something.

Almost simultaneously, they turned their heads, their gazes landing with pinpoint accuracy on the crumbling wall where Jin was hidden.

Jin’s heart instantly leaped into her throat.

Xia Yue and Lin Wan walked slowly towards her, their forms untouched by even a speck of battle dust.

Lin Wan was the first to speak, her usual sweet smile absent, replaced by a cold, scrutinizing gaze.

Her eyes, like searchlights, swept over the backpack behind Jin and her dark, practical athletic wear, her tone laced with undisguised inquiry: