Upon hearing the news that Jade Xiang had finished preparing dinner, the two lolis responded in unison.
“Coming!” ×2
After speaking, the two lolis jumped off the bed and came to the dining table, ready to start their meal.
Jade Xiang brought plate after plate of food to the table, and finally, handed a lunch box to Miri Dreamwell.
Miri understood her mother’s intention. She took the lunch box, got up from her chair, and entered the room Hui Feng had just entered.
Inside the room, Miri quietly placed the lunch box beside Hui Feng and then left quietly.
Jade Xiang handed the freshly made strawberry cake to Eve Nightburn, and Miri also returned to the dining table to prepare for dinner.
“Let’s eat.”
After saying this, Jade Xiang picked up her chopsticks and began to eat.
Eve Nightburn, on the other hand, carefully ate the strawberry cake she had received for free.
Wasting food would be a shame.
The sweet cake sweetened Eve Nightburn’s heart. Would her future sufferings also dissipate along with this sweetness?
In a pizzeria somewhere in the city.
A lady pushed the door open, observed her surroundings, and then walked towards the fragrance of a young girl.
“What do you want from me?”
The lady walked to the table opposite the girl and sat down, then picked up a glass of grape juice and took a sip.
“I’ve long admired your reputation, senior. I wonder if you’ve finished recording the new Calamity information?”
After saying this, the girl took out a chip wrapped with a large amount of vines from her pocket.
“What’s this?”
The woman was somewhat curious, but she could more or less guess what it was.
“The Calamity entity that erupted at the shopping mall before was that decapitated bunny doll.”
“So you called me here just to see this?”
The woman replied irritably; she still had a lot of work to do today.
“Of course, I didn’t ask you to come here just to see something so meaningless, senior.”
As she spoke, the girl handed over a french fry dipped in ketchup.
The woman tacitly took the fry and continued to listen to the girl’s speech.
“Let me introduce myself, I’m Stella Rose, codename Micro Light, a Light-attribute Magical Girl. The news about the Worldburn Flame was released by me. I wonder if this is enough to earn your trust, senior?”
“Let’s skip the useless talk. I only want to hear useful information.”
The woman didn’t want to hear anything she could easily guess. She wanted to hear content that was unknown to her.
“Okay, I knew you’d be magnanimous, senior, and unconventional in using talents～”
As she spoke, Stella picked up the pizza cutter and cut off the vines on the chip.
She then took out a 3D projector and inserted the chip into it.
In the next moment, light shot out, and a video began to play.
Stella adjusted the projector to fast-forward to the segment she needed.
When two little girls appeared on the screen, Stella stopped dragging the progress bar.
Stella pointed at the white-haired girl in the picture and analyzed, “This one should be a Magical Girl, judging from her abilities, likely a creation-type Magical Girl.”
Then, Stella pointed at the black-haired girl who was holding the white-haired girl.
“This girl used a lighter to ignite all the corpses in the mall, cutting off the Calamity’s ability to recover power from the blood of the corpses.”
“Although she looks like an ordinary little girl, I hope senior can pay more attention to her.”
Upon hearing Stella’s suggestion, the woman had to seriously focus her gaze on the black-haired girl.
But from what she could see now, the woman couldn’t discern anything remarkable. She wasn’t here to watch some heroic legend.
Stella pointed at the still-playing footage of the girl.
“Honestly, I’m quite curious why someone in a burning building would still bundle themselves up so tightly.”
“Though wearing extra layers in winter isn’t a problem, insisting on so much clothing in a burning building would, for most people, not just cause suffocation, but also lead to fatal heat.”
“Yet, this girl seems completely unaffected.”
Stella pointed out the first abnormality in the footage to the woman.
“Perhaps we could try to explain these doubts with willpower or something similar, which is not problematic in itself, but what happens next, I hope senior can watch closely with wide eyes.”
The woman didn’t say anything and continued to stare at the black-haired girl in the footage.
The girl picked up a bell from the back of the white-haired girl, gave it a shake, and in the next instant, all the flames in the mall disappeared, even the camera itself scrambled to retreat.
At this point in the video, Stella took the chip out of the projector.
“There’s no need to play the rest of the footage and waste time; it’s just about me and several Magical Girls defeating this creature.”
“I believe senior has now spotted the issues I’ve pointed out, right?”
The woman swallowed the piece of pizza in her mouth, pushed up her glasses, and slowly said:
“First, the ability to extinguish flames clearly does not belong to that Magical Girl.”
“Second, with the ringing of the bell, this Calamity suddenly developed an emotion called fear, and what it feared was that black-haired girl.”
“If I’m not mistaken, this Calamity initially had no emotional fluctuations at all.”
“Exactly,” Stella nodded, “so what kind of being can instantly evoke fear in something that originally had no emotions?”
“At least something that can endow it with emotions.”
The woman gave her answer without hesitation.
“That’s what I think too.”
“I believe senior knows that consciousness itself is not that remarkable; when materials are structured in certain ways, consciousness can emerge.”
“In other words, everything in this world can potentially possess consciousness.”
“However, having consciousness doesn’t mean having emotions. Just like maternal and paternal love, these emotions appeared after the largest extinction in biological history; animals that learned to care for their offspring survived, those that didn’t were wiped out.”
The woman understood Stella’s meaning.
“Are you saying this Calamity learned fear in that instant?”
“Exactly, emotions are something that can be learned, eventually turning into habits, and habits into genes, ultimately becoming the emotions we possess today.”
The woman took a sip of black tea, indeed somewhat admiring the teenage girl’s imagination, but understanding entities like Calamities, which are fundamentally unexplainable, requires such talent.
All theories must be founded on philosophy, and at this moment, this young girl had her own set of philosophical insights.
