Chapter 80

Flame, having accepted the deal, lifted her head slightly to look at Eight.

“─So? What do I have to do?”

“It’s simple. You just need to lend me a spirit.”

“Spirit?”

As if it was nothing, Flame quickly fetched a spirit that had been hiding in a corner.

─Meow, Myeong-!? Flame, are you… selling your friends!?

“But ordinary people can’t see spirits. That’s…”

“Oh, I can see them, so it’s fine.”

Touchy-feely vibes here.

Eight said this while taking the spirit from Flame’s hands. The spirit, caught in his grasp, squirmed and began to scream.

─W-what are you trying to do!?

“Just a little experiment.”

─A light experiment…?

“It’s fine. If you die, I can bring you back.”

─That’s not reassuring at all…!

Little did the spirit know that right in front of it stood the culprit who had driven out the Fairy Queen and closed off the Spirit Realm, it was certain that its future was dim.

After all, even he had called himself an evil scientist. There’s no way someone who introduces themselves that way could be a decent person. Not to mention, didn’t that person seem quite gentlemanly and reasonable?

That meant that this so-called evil scientist was villainous in his own way. Realizing this, the spirit trembled in fear.

And before long…

The spirit realized that what it had been thinking was indeed true.

* * *

We returned to City E with Flame.

That is to say, to the Evilus Corporation where my laboratory was located.

Flame hesitated as she looked at the bustling building, and when she heard it was the headquarters of an Evil Organization, she chuckled in disbelief.

“I mean, what kind of villain organization operates so openly…?”

I could relate to that. What kind of villain organization builds a skyscraper right in the middle of the city… But since I didn’t have a proper answer, I let out a ha ha laugh and walked into the lab with her.

Seeming a bit uncomfortable, maybe because she was afraid of being spotted as a magical girl entering a villain organization, Flame was much more withdrawn than the confident persona she had shown at home.

Fortunately, that timid appearance vanished as soon as we arrived at the lab, where no one was watching.

“Flame? So now…”

“Harea. That’s my name.”

“Uh?”

“Don’t say my magical girl name here. What if someone hears it?”

“Oh, right. Harea.”

Learning her real name, I acted as if it was no big deal, but next to me, Ayle looked a bit displeased as she stared back and forth between Harea and me.

Then, suddenly, she tugged at my sleeve and shouted.

“I’m Sang Yuni!”

“……?”

“Ah, um… So, Harea is Ha Rare, so I’m uh, Sang Unique… Ah, no…”

I ignored Ayle’s incomprehensible joke and immediately activated the gate I had used when conducting experiments with Arima.

A portal, wriggling in a way that defied description, was generated, and as the spirit saw this, it shrieked again and tried to escape Harea’s arms.

─Meow! Flame! We’ll die! We’ll die if we go in there!

“Shut up, you little parasite. He said he’ll revive you even if you die.”

─You believe that nonsense!? You’re not in your right mind!

“Uh, yeah. I’m not in my right mind. So, that’s why I’m doing magical girl stuff.”

─Help me!

With the spirit flailing wildly, Harea, looking annoyed, handed the spirit over to me.

I attached various mechanical devices to the spirit’s body and then hurled it right into the portal with a whoosh.

Soon after, a flood of information from the mechanical devices attached to the spirit began to pour in.

“Ah- can you hear me?”

─Meow? What’s this…?

“You seem to be hearing just fine. What’s it like over there?”

The monitor began displaying the image of Flame’s spirit swimming in the Spirit Realm. Having returned to its homeland after such a long time, the Myeong Spirit swam around but then tilted its head, feeling that something was off.

─Is this… really the Spirit Realm?

“Indeed. This is the Spirit Realm.”

─No, something feels wrong…

The spirit murmured, glancing around while taking a deep breath. Being someone who had studied spirits, I recognized that this was the spirits’ way of feeding.

And what spirits eat is emotional data. To be exact, it’s the emotional data refined by the Fairy Queen that the world’s enemies and magical girls absorb.

Since that Fairy Queen disappeared after her true identity was revealed, there wouldn’t be any data left for the spirits in the Spirit Realm.

─It’s like… the world has come to a standstill… It’s a rather unpleasant feeling.

“Your deduction is surprisingly accurate, huh? For a spirit, you certainly have keen instincts…”

─Are you ignoring me!? I am the brilliant spirit who ranked at the top of the Spirit Academy—!

I let the spirit’s nonsensical quip slide past while focusing on the observational data displayed on the monitor. Perhaps the spirit lacked the necessary organs to process the data or fell victim to the Fairy Queen’s perception alteration, but it seemed oblivious to what even the monitor displayed or what was sensed through its own senses…

Data never lies.

‘It’s been days since the Fairy Queen left… There’s no way it’s unharmed.’

The world is constantly in flux. Just like how a cozy country mansion can gradually decay into a haunted house, this dimension, free of human management, was bound to revert to its original state.

To a chaotic landscape where nothing exists.

The fact that the spirit failed to perceive such a scene suggested that either the Fairy Queen’s perception alteration ability still lingered, making this dimension appear to be the Spirit Realm, or there was some unseen force maintaining it.

‘─That’s an area I can’t solve myself, though.’

The perception alteration ability is something that even I couldn’t escape. I wouldn’t be able to tell what information was altered by that ability and which wasn’t, no matter how hard I tried.

If we assume that perception alteration is in play, it was highly probable that the information I see would unconsciously get filtered out. In other words, it meant that I was powerless against the perception alteration as well.

However, humans have always been a species that accomplishes what they cannot on their own with tools. If I couldn’t see it, I would just need to use a tool that could.

Beep-beep-!

‘Got it.’

The AI began to identify and organize the discrepancies between the information observed by the spirit and the data collected through the observational device. It seemed that the perception alteration ability didn’t extend to secondarily processed information, for soon after, I began to notice several oddities too.

Upon inputting that data into the computer, bizarre things started to emerge in the monitor that were invisible to the spirit.

In other words, the backspace of the Spirit Realm that the Fairy Queen had desperately tried to hide was now being revealed.

“……This is.”

“Ayle. Close your eyes.”

“Y-yes? Ah, I got it….”

Harea trembled, clutching the monitor with shaking hands. Then, leaning in as if she couldn’t believe it, she peeked closely.

Seeing that she didn’t need to do that, I casually enlarged the parts I thought she’d want to see, and Harea immediately recoiled and began to puke on the floor.

“Ugh, UAAAGH-!”

As her vomit painted the floor red, Ayle jolted awake at the sound of Harea retching.

Once Ayle opened her eyes, she was startled by the sight of the world’s enemies filling the screen. However, unlike Harea, she didn’t react quite as dramatically.

Perhaps Ayle wasn’t familiar with what was inside there, unlike Harea.

“Um… Scientist? What’s that…?”

─Meow? What’s happening? I’m curious too!

Listening to the two responses, I once again operated the computer. Soon after, the same information we were viewing was transmitted to the spirit’s optic nerve.

Then, as the grotesquely melted forms of the world’s enemies, unrecognizable as humans, appeared before the spirit’s eyes—at the moment the spirit recognized their faces, it groaned.

─Aqua? Leaf? W-what on earth happened…?

“What do you mean what happened? The Fairy Queen threw that tremendous power around for the magical girls to use because of that!”

I grimaced slightly as I looked at the screaming magical girls. More accurately, I was looking at the grotesque amalgam of magical girls and world enemies that I wasn’t sure what to call.

─S-save me &@$@!#@

─I just want to die…

The secret the Fairy Queen wanted to keep hidden.

The tragic end that awaited the dead magical girls.

No matter how many world enemies the magical girl defeated, the reason they never truly disappeared lay right here.

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