87: Chapter 87 Transformation, Magical Girl!

Chu Yin knelt on the ground.

Kyubey's red eyes lit up. Deep within those pupils, which resembled glass beads, a ring of extremely fine, silver-white Causality Contract patterns lit up.

The patterns rotated, nested, and accelerated—then, at a certain moment, Chu Yin felt something gently touch her soul.

It was not a physical touch.

It was a deeper kind of touch, like one that was asking, "Are you sure?"

Then Kyubey spoke. Its voice resonated directly deep within her brain, completely devoid of emotion.

"Then."

"What is your wish?"

Chu Yin raised her head.

In the sky, the dark purple orb of light in Demon Lord Xuangu's mouth had already expanded to its critical point. The black mist of Shadow One and Shadow Two seeped out from the direction of the side gate, and a dozen or so asymmetrical pupils shone within the mist. The twelve torrents of the Demon Tide were already aimed at twelve directions of the city.

Three seconds.

Perhaps two.

Chu Yin took a deep breath. Then she heard her own voice squeeze out from her throat. Hoarse. Trembling. But every word was floating upward.

"I want—"

She paused.

"I want the power to quell this disaster."

Kyubey tilted its head.

"Is that all?"

"That is all."

"Understood."

Kyubey's red eyes rotated one notch. That forever-smiling mouth opened—not physically, but conceptually. It was a kind of "unlocking" that was closer to the level of fundamental laws.

"Wish accepted."

"Causality Contract finalized."

"Deck—all permissions unlocked."

A soul gem appeared, drifting into view, and Chu Yin felt light explode from her chest.

It was not a metaphor; it truly exploded. Pink light gushed out from her chest, like a star being ignited and waking up within her ribcage. At the same time, the four cards scattered on the ground stood up simultaneously.

Floating.

Rotating.

Burning.

The first card—"Causality Stripping: soul gem Reinforcement"—activated automatically. Chu Yin heard her heart stop beating. Her soul was completely stripped, compressed, and reinforced. Her body suddenly became light. The sensation of pain vanished. Fear vanished. In their place was a cold, absolute clarity that did not belong to a human.

The second card—"Unlimited Blade Works: Sayaka's Rhapsody"—activated automatically.

Magic power exploded within Chu Yin.

Then, swords appeared in the sky.

Not one. Not a hundred. They were magical swords that emerged simultaneously from the void, dense and covering the entire sky. The sword tips pointed downward, and the blades shimmered with a deep blue magical glow. On the body of every sword was carved a string of constantly changing causality runes.

One. A thousand. Ten thousand. Thirty thousand.

Looking up from the ground, the sky had turned into an ocean of blades.

"—What?"

Nearby, everyone looked up at the sky. Such a sudden turn of events was simply beyond everyone's expectations!

No one knew who had stepped forward at this moment, no one knew what was happening, and even the live-stream comments fell completely silent.

Zhao Dahai's milk tea cup slipped from his hand and shattered into eight pieces on the ground. He had his mouth agape, and his chubby face wore an expression of "What am I looking at?"

The sixth defense card Lin Xiao was activating fell to the ground. She forgot to pick it up.

Armored Mage Emperor Lu Chen crawled out from the ruins of the warehouse. He looked up. His vision as a Tier 9 Low-level Heavy Armored Dharma Emperor widened like copper bells when he saw that sea of swords.

"Tier 7—no, a Tier 1 card—to be able to construct something of this scale—this is not a projection! They are physical entities! Every single one is a physical entity!!"

In the sky, a young girl appeared.

She wore a dark red magical triangular hat tilted on her head, with the tip drooping softly to the side of her ear, and the soul gem brooch pinned to the brim was glowing faintly. Underneath the hat were twin tails that had been forced into place, tied with pink ribbons—she had just been on the battlefield, her hair half-loose, with stray strands sticking to her face.

When this young girl stood in the sky... everyone who was still fleeing couldn't help but pause.

What?

This appearance...

A Magical Girl?

Why would a Magical Girl appear here!

While everyone was astonished, Chu Yin's eyes lit up.

She pointed her right hand forward.

She didn't shout the name of the move. It wasn't because she didn't want to—it was because she suddenly discovered her mouth had started moving on its own.

"Go."

Thirty thousand magical swords flipped simultaneously. The sword tips aimed in the same direction.

Then—

A volley.

It wasn't a rainstorm; rainstorms have gaps. It was a tsunami, a wall! It was an entire wall made of blades, a torrent of metal that spanned the sky over half the city!

Thirty thousand swords slammed into Demon Lord Xuangu in the same second.

Clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang, clang—

It wasn't the sound of metal striking metal. It was the sound of magical blades shattering against Tier 9 bone armor. The first row of swords shattered. The second row of swords shattered too. But the third, fourth, and fifth rows followed right after, slamming into it. If they shattered, they were replaced with new ones. If they broke, they were replaced with new ones.

The sea of swords had no end—her magic power was now directly connected to the soul gem, and the fuel for the soul gem was—

Despair, anger!

It was all the emotions—the ones from having knelt on the ground crying for five whole minutes, the ones accumulated over a decade, crushed to the bottom by the Tier 9 demon pressure and then rebounded.

"You—this—"

Demon Lord Xuangu spoke a sentence in a language other than Abyssal for the first time.

Because it had been smashed backward.

The thirty-meter-tall bone demon had been forced to take a step back by a girl wearing a kendo uniform who had just been kneeling on the ground crying, all by being smashed with tens of thousands of swords. Then came the second step. The third step.

The crowd went crazy!

"It pushed back a Tier 9!!!!"

"Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap, she did it!!"

"Ten Thousand Swords Volley!! This is the real Ten Thousand Swords Volley!!"

"A Tier 1 card pushed back a Tier 9 Demon Lord!!"

"A god!! She is a god!!!!"

"Chu Yin!!!! Chu Yin!!!!"

"Magical Girl is awesome—!!!!"

The crowd's screams changed from "Run!" to another word.

But Su Bai's expression did not change.

He stood at the edge of the square, staring at the sea of swords in the sky that was constantly shattering and reforming. Kyubey squatted on his shoulder.

"Su Bai. Deep-layer structural damage is ineffective."

"...I know."

Hundreds of swords slammed into the bone demon every second. Every sword was shattering. The cracks on the bone armor were accumulating—but the rate of accumulation was too slow. Very slow. So slow that every crack that had just split open was repaired by Abyssal magic in the next second.

"Physical-level attacks are ineffective against Xuangu." Kyubey's voice was as calm as if it were broadcasting a weather report. "His phylactery is not in this spatial dimension. As long as the phylactery is not destroyed, the bone armor can regenerate infinitely. Current attack efficiency—zero."

Su Bai did not speak.

He saw that Chu Yin was also watching.

Her finger was still pointing forward. The swords were still flying. But the light in her eyes was dimming at a speed visible to the naked eye.

She realized it.

It couldn't be pushed back.

No matter how many swords, no matter how dense the volley, no matter how many cracks were smashed out—those bone armors were constantly repairing. No, not just repairing. They were growing. The more cracks, the thicker the bone armor became. The Demon Lord was adapting. Evolving. It was using the sea of swords itself as nutrients to proliferate its defensive layer.

"How—"

Chu Yin's lips were trembling.

"How could it be—"

Demon Lord Xuangu stopped its backward steps. Its vertically split mouth twisted into an arc. That arc looked especially hideous on its bony face—because it was a smile.

"Is that all?"