86: Chapter 86 Hey girl, do you want to become a magical girl?

The Scene.

The glass of the main hall's dome shattered the very first second Demon Lord Xuangu appeared.

It wasn't shattered by vibration—when the Tier 9 magical pressure crushed down, the glass's molecular structure simply disintegrated into powder.

The powder rained down from the sky, mixed with the dark purple glimmer of Abyss magic, as if someone had twisted the color filter of the entire world to "Hell Mode."

The crowd exploded into chaos.

Cries and screams. Shoving. People who were trampled couldn't even get up before being submerged by the next wave of the crowd.

The sound of holographic projection towers collapsing. The sound of exhibition booths being overturned. Limited edition beast-bone shoulder armor magnetic pendants rolled all over the floor in the chaos.

A burly man from a mercenary group carried a stranger's child and charged outward.

A girl wearing a Chamber of Commerce uniform was shoved into the fountain pool.

Several bodyguards in the crowd tried to erect defensive barriers, but the magic light shields were crushed by the Tier 9 magical pressure before they could even form.

Zhao Dahai's milk tea dropped to the ground.

He pressed his entire body against the wall of the utility room, the color draining from his chubby face in an instant.

His lips moved. He wanted to speak, but his vocal cords felt like they were being gripped by something.

Lin Xiao activated all her defensive cards. Five of them. An ice crystal shield array capable of blocking attacks below Tier 5 overlapped in several layers around the utility room.

She was trembling. Her hands were shaking. But she didn't stop her movements. One after another. Activate. Overlap. Activate again.

"Dad—my dad is over in the main hall—"

Her voice cracked.

"Chairman Lin—I'll call him—"

Zhao Dahai pulled out his phone; a red signal interruption icon popped up on the dialing interface.

The magic communication base station had been completely disrupted by the Tier 9 magical pressure. He dialed three times, but it was just a busy signal.

Su Bai stood up.

He glanced at the one hundred mass-produced Kyubey Cards on the display table. The dark pink card surfaces shimmered with iridescent light in the aftermath of the Tier 9 magical pressure.

Kyubey squatted on his shoulder, its red glass eyes staring straight at the figure in the sky that blotted out the sun.

[Su Bai. There are three Tier 9 energy signatures nearby. Two Shadow Demons are moving in this direction. Estimated arrival time—eleven seconds.]

"Eleven seconds."

[You have enough time to transform. But both Shadow Demons are Tier 9. Although Time Stop can allow you to escape, it is difficult to protect others—]

"I know."

Su Bai picked Kyubey up from his shoulder and placed it on the display table. His hands weren't shaking, but his back was already soaked with sweat.

Kyubey tilted its head.

[What do you want to do?]

"I'm thinking."

Eleven seconds. No. Ten seconds now.

Just at this moment—

The Demon Lord Xuangu in the sky spoke.

Abyssal language. The syllables sounded like metal sheets scraping against glass. Every time it uttered a syllable, the space around it trembled once.

The magic tides surging from the rift began to split into twelve streams in mid-air, each one aimed at a different direction of the city.

Then, a golden light blasted straight over from the direction of the Sanctuary.

Armored Mage Emperor Lu Chen. Lower Tier 9. Heavy Armored Dharma Emperor.

That golden light was blocked by an invisible barrier less than a hundred meters in front of Demon Lord Xuangu.

It wasn't a defense—it was a hand.

Demon Lord Xuangu simply raised one of its appendages and swatted away the law-infused beam of light he had fired with all his might, just like swatting a fly, sending it flying to another part of the city.

The golden light streaked across the sky, crashing into an abandoned warehouse in the distance. The shockwave from the explosion took a full two or three seconds to reach the plaza.

[The Heavy Armored Dharma Emperor... was swatted away in one hit?]

Someone typed this line in the barrage.

No one responded. Because no one needed to—everyone had seen it.

Armored Mage Emperor Lu Chen couldn't even get close under that single blow.

At the same time, the black mist of Shadow One and Shadow Two seeped out from the direction of the main hall's side door. Two pairs of asymmetrical thirteen pupils lit up in the darkness simultaneously.

[Found it.]

Demon Lord Xuangu in the sky lowered its head. Its vertically split mouth aimed at the ground of the Convention Center plaza.

Deep in its throat, a blindingly bright dark purple ball of light began to condense. The energy index on the barrage jumped to a fixed value that no longer changed—[Measurement Overflow].

Measurement Overflow meant it exceeded the maximum range of the city's defense monitoring system.

The power of that ball of light would likely wipe the entire Convention Center off the map.

Three seconds. Two seconds. One second.

Su Bai reached out and grabbed the Kyubey Card in his pocket. His soul gem lit up on the back of his right hand, and the silver sand in the hourglass began to flow.

However, suddenly, Su Bai's expression shifted, and he ran toward a certain direction.

—In the crowd. A petite figure walked against the flow of people.

Chu Yin didn't run. She stood amidst the overturned holographic projection towers and the scattered Beast God Armament brochures, looked up, and glanced at the massive bone demon in the sky that blotted out the sun.

Then she looked down at the four pink cards in her arms, glowing with iridescent halos.

Her ponytail had been blown apart by the Tier 9 magical pressure. Her hair tie had broken at some point. Loose strands of hair stuck to her face.

Her legs were actually going weak.

Very weak. A Tier 7 sword cultivator was just a slightly larger bug in front of a Tier 9 Demon Lord.

She knew this. Her master had told her personally—three hours ago, Sword Saint Lu Changsheng had said that her card was at best for collection.

At that time, her mind was full of the luster of the iridescent spirit-patterned paper, and she hadn't listened at all.

Now she heard it.

She also heard the thumping of her heart, which felt like it was about to burst out of her chest. She heard the cries and screams of the crowd frantically fleeing behind her.

She heard the humming of the dark purple ball of light in the sky as it condensed, a sound that made her teeth ache.

She heard Su Bai call her name as he rushed out from the side door.

"Chu Yin—!"

She turned her head back.

There were many people in the plaza. Everywhere, people were running, screaming, and falling. But she found Su Bai at a glance.

That guy was running toward her, his face showing an anxiety she had never seen before.

"Ah..."

However, Chu Yin looked down at her own hands.

Her fingers were shaking, and as a result, because she was too scared, the four cards Su Bai had crafted for her had already fallen to the ground. Because they were for collection, she had wanted to show them off at the exhibition after she had stored them, but she hadn't expected them to fall to the ground.

She bent down to pick up those four cards, her knees shaking as she bent over.

She knelt down when she picked up the third one.

It wasn't because she was forced down by the magical pressure. It was because her legs had gone weak on their own. Because she suddenly realized one thing—she couldn't do anything.

Sword Saint Lu Changsheng had been beaten until his bones were broken and tendons snapped, Armored Mage Emperor Lu Chen had been swatted away in one hit, Li Qingyue was trapped in the Canglan Strait, and three Tier 9s were pressing down on the sky above the city.

And she, a Tier 7, had even had her cards crushed by the opponent's aura.

This was the gap.

The higher the tier, the more one realized the difference between Tier 9 and other tiers.

This was a gap that her dozen years of hard training, six sword certification exam certificates, and the title of the top person in the Jinghai Kendo Association's youth group couldn't fill even a tiny bit, even when added together.

Chu Yin knelt on the ground. Tears fell plop, plop onto the collar of her dust-covered kendo uniform.

She remembered how she had knelt on the street, crying and saying she wanted to become a Magical Girl. Although it was embarrassing back then, at least there was hope.

Now, even hope had been extinguished along with that red light that had been snuffed out just now.

The barrage on the holographic screen was scrolling like crazy. Countless "marking," "mourning," "it's over," and "Jinghai is going to be destroyed."

Then someone typed a line on the screen: [Can no one save us?]

No one answered. Because no one could answer.

Armored Mage Emperor Lu Chen, who was responsible for guarding the city, had just crawled out of the ruins, covered in debris from head to toe.

Li Qingyue of the Canglan Strait couldn't even maintain a stable space jump, and Qi Yuan was so anxious that he typed countless messages in the Sanctuary channel—but no one replied.

Deputy Commander Xiao Hongyan was still in seclusion refining a Tier 9 Kyubey Card; at this moment, she might not even know the situation outside, because the Abyss had moved too fast!

No one could save them.

The dark purple ball of light in Demon Lord Xuangu's mouth had expanded to a size sufficient to cover the entire Convention Center plaza.

The four characters "Measurement Overflow" jumped to a fixed value on the live broadcast screen.

Chu Yin closed her eyes.

How embarrassing, she thought.

The first time, she had tried to rob Su Bai on the street and was one-shot, kneeling on the ground crying. The second time, she wanted to muster the courage to rush up and act like a hero, but she ended up kneeling before she could even activate the fourth card.

Her master was right. She was just crazy. Spending tens of millions to buy four Tier 1 cards, thinking she could become a Magical Girl.

Then—a Kyubey suddenly appeared on the ground.

Chu Yin was stunned for a moment. She didn't seem to have bought a Kyubey Card? No, wait, when Su Bai gave them to her, he had included one. Those four cards were a deck, and Kyubey was a core component... but how did this thing activate on its own?

Come to think of it, what role did Kyubey play among Magical Girls?

Dark pink light overflowed from the edges of the card. It was like a small, gentle heart beating.

The light was completely not on the same order of magnitude as the dark purple torrent of destruction in the sky.

But when that pink light spread out, the Tier 9 magical pressure was actually pushed back by a small circle.

Chu Yin looked down. A snow-white cat-like creature poked its head out of the card.

Long ears, a fluffy tail like cotton, red glass eyes, a smile. That smile showed no emotion—it was just a smile that existed because the expression of "smiling" was set as the default value.

Kyubey tilted its head.

It didn't speak. But that calm, mechanical voice resounded in Chu Yin's mind.

[Oh, young maiden.]

There were no other sounds in the entire venue. The footsteps of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing, the screams, the explosions of collapsing holographic projection towers—all of them grew distant in that instant. It was as if they were separated by a thick layer of glass.

[Do you wish to become a Magical Girl?]

Chu Yin opened her mouth. Her throat was blocked by the incantation she hadn't finished singing earlier. It was blocked by the true self she hadn't dared to tell anyone about for over a decade. It was blocked by all the grievances from crying on the street to kneeling in front of the Tier 9 monster today.

A tear fell onto Kyubey's snow-white fur.

Her lips moved for a long time. The voice she finally squeezed out was terribly hoarse. But every word was floating upward.

"...I do."

Kyubey's red eyes lit up.