Old Blue
The slicing came out of nowhere, and she dodged right to left to evade them, passing a magical girl in a mask to twist and break her neck. Without slowing down, Old Blue leaped over a broken steel girder and looked over to the wall on her left side. As the other parts of the building were made into wreckage and ruin, this one area alone maintained its shape as a wall. It was surrounding the courtyard, and there was magic cast on it. Destroying it would be difficult. The courtyard was beyond here.
Ratsumukana-honome-no-kami was on a rampage. There was also the report that a magical girl who looked like Frederica had entered. They had yet to conquer the courtyard. There wasn’t much good news.
Without looking toward the mercenary magical girls who were being cut to pieces by the Lightnings, Old Blue continued to run from the wall to the ceiling, and then to the floor, gradually slowing down, to come to a stop on a point by the wall that surrounded the courtyard.
She heard complaints from the Lightnings behind her, but she ignored them. Snow White didn’t interject with any questions. She was a companion who made things incredibly easy.
Old Blue’s eyes could capture the true nature of things. There was a route there that was invisible to the eye. She removed some rubble from the base of the wall to expose the floor. It was under here.
There was a magic sigil underground, from which a route extended. It was a system made of a strengthening device coated by a barrier. This made the whole courtyard a very convenient space for Halna and her subordinates.
Normally, someone aside from the caster trying to remove a barrier would require extremely complex removal spells and multiple casters. It would mean expending lots of time and effort, which was not something you would do in the middle of a battlefield.
But Old Blue was not a mage. She would use no such roundabout means to remove it. If she used her magic to see to the true nature of the barrier, she would easily be able to destroy it, just like striking a single acupuncture point to kill someone.
Stripping off the floor revealed that a complicated graphic was carved into it. This was the magic sigil. She reached out, then immediately drew her hand back. There was a magic obstacle in the way. But it was not invincible. With her penetrating eyes, she would read the route and pinpoint where to strike.
Old Blue took a step back and pointed at the floor.
“All units, attack this sigil—”
The Lightnings fired lightning bolts before she even finished her command.
✦ ✦ ✦
Halna Midi Meren
When she felt pain in the fingertip of her right hand, she immediately looked at it. Her magic sigil was emitting bluish-white sparks.
She looked outside. The students who were fighting with a group of Lightnings were being pushed back. They were slowing down, too. It looked like they were getting weaker.
Oh no…!
She swiftly checked and saw there was something wrong with the courtyard system. Halna pointed, ceasing the magic sigil’s functions. The students’ strengthened abilities would gradually return to normal. But if she were to foolishly continue operating now, then the energy she had sucked up from the ruins could well go out of control.
The discovery had been a coincidence.
One day, it had been growing all alone in the courtyard. A mysterious plant, like a root or like a shoot. She’d looked it up in every field guide, but it hadn’t been in any of them. Halna had not immediately reported it but had investigated it first.
She may have prioritized investigation over report because she’d had the feeling that this could be something. The plant had incredible energy in it. Halna had thought this plant was most likely connected to the ruins. It was carrying energy from the ruins aboveground, to Halna.
The amount of energy was incredible. There were any number of ways to make use of it. Halna canceled her reports. In order to hide the existence of the root, she had built in the courtyard a research facility that looked like a storage shed. Inside, she made use of the energy brought by the root, and she had researched the possibilities of homunculi.
It was the providence of heaven that Halna had found this root, and that she was the one in charge of managing this facility. Heaven was telling her to carry out a mission.
Regardless, she had to find what had caused this disaster. She could see no change in the Lightnings. No matter how excellent the casters, it should take three days to find the key parts and eliminate the defense mechanism of her system. Even just getting through the triple-layered pass system would take an incredible amount of time. And if you tried destroying it with rough methods, the mini-barrier would get in the way.
The courtyard system had not been completely lost. But it was damaged.
Malfunctions were always possible. Even if the skill of the caster would certainly reduce them, you couldn’t make them zero. Even if they happened at the very worst moment, that was no reason to give up.
What to do? What should she do? What did she have to do now? She considered.
She could not hand over the ruins and the artifact to the thieves. That was too great a power. Someone with true concern for the Magical Kingdom’s situation should use it. In other words, Halna. If she had a vast amount of power, then she could do even greater-scale fusions and bring happiness to magical girls and great benefit to the Magical Kingdom.
At the very least, she needed to revise her plan of not letting enemies into the courtyard. Trying to hold them back there would be unsustainable, no matter what.