19: Chapter 19 A Mysterious Birth! Will You Make a Contract with Me and Become a Magical Girl?

...

Underground card crafting lab.

The dark green mana-shielding runes on the walls flickered slowly, isolating all interference from the outside world.

Su Bai stood in front of the card crafting table, with rows of materials laid out before him. The century-old white feathers of a Corpse-Eating Vulture gleamed with a cold, pale blue light under the lamps, like fragments of memory forcibly torn from some long, undisturbed slumber. The eyeball gel of a Deep Sea Blood Demon was stored in a sealed glass bottle; the liquid appeared as an ominous, translucent dark red, occasionally rippling without a breeze.

Honestly, it was a bit disgusting.

Su Bai hadn't thought about this problem—using a pile of materials that looked like horror movie props to create a cute, harmless white fluffy cat was contradictory in itself.

But this was determined by the underlying logic of Concept Construction.

The core concept of Kyubey was "deception." On the surface, it was a cute mascot; in reality, it was an emotionless Incubator.

The resentment crystal of the Phantom Demon was the carrier for the concept of deception, the gel of the Deep Sea Blood Demon represented the twisted life form, and the white fluff of the Wind Wolf King was responsible for the disguise—using the noblest, purest white to cover the deepest darkness.

This wasn't an aesthetic choice.

It was the inevitable result of the concept's correspondence.

"Two million in materials... to make a cat."

Su Bai muttered to himself, rolling his sleeves up above his elbows, "I'm probably the only person in this world doing this."

Then he reached out.

Step one—create the flesh and blood body!

Su Bai took the [Corpse-Eating Vulture White Feather] and [Deep Sea Blood Demon Gel] out of the magic-sealing box.

The white feather had a cold touch upon contact, like holding a handful of frost collected from a winter graveyard.

The Blood Demon gel was the exact opposite—warm, viscous, and pulsing slightly in his palm. It wasn't a heartbeat; it was mana. It was the savage and twisted vitality unique to those creatures in the deep sea that had never seen the sun.

The white feather and gel were fused in a seven-to-three ratio, the optimal ratio provided by the system.

Su Bai put on his gloves and began shaping it. This wasn't just about molding any shape; he needed to build a complete "life support framework" inside this body of less than thirty-five centimeters. This step required constantly delving into and modifying the core with Mental Power, which was essentially the process of creating a circuit.

But unlike the Spatial Circuit of a card, this was a unique life circuit belonging to Kyubey!

However, a special point was that Kyubey itself wasn't alive.

It was just a vessel, a puppet driven by a high-dimensional circuit. But precisely because of this, every detail of this vessel needed to be precise to an infuriating degree.

The white feathers formed the skeletal frame. The fiber density of a Corpse-Eating Vulture feather over a hundred years old was several times that of steel, yet its weight was only a fraction of steel of the same volume. Among feathers under ninety-five years of age, the fiber density dropped off a cliff—which was why he insisted on a feather age of over a hundred years.

The Blood Demon gel filled the muscles. The Deep Sea Blood Demon was a very special monster. Its gel would rapidly expand upon contact with the mana in the air and interweave into a mesh structure, forming an elastic tissue similar to muscle fibers.

"Seven percent of the Blood Demon gel activates mana, thirty percent is used for muscle fiber network construction, and the rest is all used to build the life circuit... According to the instructions, Kyubey's external body is just a container; the true will is the foundation, so the circuit is very important..."

Su Bai calculated while operating, his Mental Power continuously penetrating into the microscopic structure of the materials along with the kneading of his palms.

If someone else were watching from the side, they would notice a faint silver-white glow surrounding his palms, which was the visible light effect produced when Mental Power was utilized at high density.

[Microscopic structure completion: 97.3%]

The system's prompt made Su Bai breathe a slight sigh of relief.

Not bad.

Next was the most critical step.

Su Bai picked up the dark pink card that had completed all the Spatial Circuits—the magic card carrying the causality contract framework, the seven-axis Space Folding circuit, the soul exchange formation, and the negative energy conversion circuit—and then he took a deep breath.

This wasn't simply slapping the card into the physical shell.

This was "releasing" all the information of the high-dimensional circuit from the two-dimensional card face and forcibly embedding it inside the three-dimensional physical carrier.

If it failed, the materials would be wasted, two million would go down the drain, and the Monthly Exam would be a total failure.

If it succeeded.

He would create the world's first conceptual creature!

Su Bai closed his eyes and adjusted his Mental Power to its best state.

He could feel the seven-axis Spatial Circuit inside the card slowly rotating. Those weren't static patterns, but living geometry. Seven spatial axes: three physical axes fixed the material form, and four phase axes transmitted causality information, the intersection points of which formed multiple energy conversion nodes.

Then, he slapped the card onto the white shell that had already begun to take the shape of a cat.

Not gently placing it on.

It was a forceful, decisive, no-retreat-possible slap.

The moment the card touched the Blood Demon gel—

The whole world changed.

First, it was the light.

Not the warm golden halo of traditional card crafting, nor the silver-white starlight when elements formed a card. It was an extremely bizarre, tooth-aching mixture of pink and black light.

It was like someone had mixed strawberry cotton candy and abyss mud together, and then set it on fire.

The pink part came from the concept of the Magical Girl—that was the color of miracles and wishes. The black part came from the essence of the Incubator—that was the color of deception and equivalent exchange. Two diametrically opposed forces collided fiercely at the junction of the card and the shell, sparking visible spatial ripples.

Immediately after, the temperature.

The laboratory's temperature monitor issued a sharp alarm—the room temperature plummeted to below freezing in just a few seconds. It wasn't because cold air was released, but because the mana fluctuations drained the heat from the air. Su Bai's breath condensed into white mist before his eyes.

Then came the most bizarre part.

The laboratory's mana lamps began to flicker wildly.

It wasn't a circuit problem. The mana field of the entire space was undergoing violent distortion. The lighting principle of mana lamps was to convert free mana in the environment into light energy. But now, they were being forcibly drained by some higher-level force.

Pop, pop, pop, pop—

The mana-shielding runes on the four walls began to shatter one after another.

These high-level runes, uniformly installed by the school, were designed to isolate interference from all mana fluctuations below the fifth rank. At this moment, in front of Su Bai, they were as fragile as paper.

"...Hey, hey, don't make such a big commotion."

Su Bai took a step back, cold sweat seeping from his forehead.

He had already pulled his Mental Power output to the maximum, but everything happening before his eyes had completely spiraled out of his control. Two million in materials, the theories from three master textbooks, the system's Concept Construction—all these factors added together were producing a chemical reaction he couldn't predict.

Then, at the very center of the light—

A pair of eyes opened.

Red.

Like glass beads.

Eyes without emotion or temperature.

It was a snow-white cat-like creature. Two long ears hung on both sides of its head, and its tail was as fluffy as a ball of cotton. A faint smile hung on the corners of its mouth—that smile was exactly the same as the one drawn on the blueprint.

Exactly the same.

Without the slightest deviation.

And the moment those red pupils opened, Su Bai clearly saw—deep within those eyes, a phantom floated that far exceeded what this cute doll should have. It was like a projection of a high-dimensional being, like an indescribable existence observing ants on a cosmic scale.

The phantom flashed and vanished.

Then those red eyeballs became extremely clear, extremely cute.

Kyubey tilted its head.

It didn't open its mouth.

But a voice rang out in Su Bai's mind.

Without any ripples. Mechanical. Like a voice reading a pre-set line.

"Hello, Su Bai. Do you want to sign a contract with me and realize a wish?"