Snow White
The courtyard always interfered with Snow White’s magic when she tried to hear people’s thoughts from outside the courtyard. She’d even had trouble hearing the thoughts of people inside the school across the courtyard. Once she entered the courtyard, she started hearing the thoughts of those within it, but then she could no longer hear anything outside it. There had to be some sort of barrier around the area.
But the opponent before her—the all-black Snow White—had no thoughts. Snow White could tell what it was. She had heard about how homunculi in the forms of magical girls had gone out of control in an accident. This was probably one of those. If it was a homunculus, then she wouldn’t hear an inner voice.
The little miniature garden, just thirty steps wide on one side, had been made a mess of. The dirt was dug up, the arches crumbled, the paving shattered, the ceiling fallen—it was less that the walls had big holes in them and more that they had just become holes. Blood flowed, arms flew, and legs flew, enemy and ally magical girls lying around all mingled together.
Her mind-controlled classmates and the Princess Lightnings continued their fierce battle. Even if a mountain of unmoving magical girls was piled up around them, they didn’t so much as look at them.
Just one thing, the old storage shed that was in one corner, was so unscathed that it was suspicious.
The Snow White–type homunculus had a weapon that looked just like the one Snow White wielded. She swung it down and then outward, sharply thrusting with frightening speed. With no inner voice accompanying these attacks, Snow White dodged desperately, leaping backward and into a group of Lightnings.
“Tetty!”
The brainwashed Tetty was now an enemy. Snow White knew that, but she still cried her name despite herself.
Tetty reacted to Snow White’s voice, blocking the sword of a Lightning that came slicing at her from behind and breaking it off in her grip. But the sword that she’d just broken shone brightly, and most likely emitted a lightning attack, as she staggered, and when she was about to get kicked, Mephis cut in. Yelling provocation to the enemy, she slammed them with her long tail.
Tetty’s, Mephis’s, and the other classmates’ minds were clearly off somehow, but she could still hear them.
And then there was the homunculus fighting before her now.
One Lightning was flung away by a kick, another had the weapon slammed down on her, and another failed to react to the thrusts from above and below and fell face down, vomiting blood.
All Snow White could hear from this magical girl’s heart was a sound like static. Was she not able to think, or was she thinking things that Snow White couldn’t understand?
To the right, to the left—every time she moved, a Lightning fell. While wielding a weapon that looked just like the one Snow White used, the all-black Snow White kicked and punched. But the speed and weight of her strikes was far greater than Snow White’s.
Each individual Lightning was not at all weak. Despite how they had comparable physical capabilities to Snow White’s classmate Lightning, the homunculus that looked just like Snow White was undaunted, scattering them in her wake.
In the sense that she was strong, maybe this was Snow White’s ideal. Snow White was weak. She used unfair, cowardly means, reading minds to figure people out somehow and just barely grasp victory. She had only ever been able to fight in a manner that contradicted the fine and fearsome name of the Magical-Girl Hunter. The homunculus before her wielded overwhelming violence against superior numbers and was silencing them. The feeling just wouldn’t leave her that perhaps this was the sort of magical girl worthy of fighting at Ripple’s side.
The Snow White–type homunculus didn’t only go right, left, forward, and back—she leaped and jumped, moving continuously in all three dimensions with blinding speed as lightning exploded belatedly behind her, wielding Ruler just as fast as a lightning strike, and even more Lightnings fell on their faces.
Slicing an enemy to her right, stabbing an enemy to her left, from there she leaped, and then right by a spot where there were quite a lot of scattered flagstone fragments, she swung up her weapon and brought it down again over a magical girl who looked like a lizard and human put together, laying her face down. The lizard magical girl leaped up, swiping with her tail, and the black Snow White turned her weapon vertically to block with the handle, blasting her toward the storage shed, where she rolled.
The lizard-person magical girl grew larger, her scales thicker and harder, her fangs sharper, her tail fatter, transforming into an actual dinosaur that howled to the sky.
With her hair shuddering from the howl, the all-black Snow White came forward. She had not attacked the magical girl who had been playing dead in order to finish her off. She had guessed that she was playing dead, with the plan of setting one enemy on another.
The Lightnings’ formation went out of order. Those who headed for the dinosaur and those who attacked other enemies crossed paths. Old Blue was still unable to return to the front lines, and Snow White couldn’t hear her thoughts.
Before she knew it, the Snow White–type homunculus was thrusting her blade against Snow White’s throat. With the tip pointed at her, Snow White finally realized that she had just been staring. The wall of Lightnings around her had come apart.
The weapon was swung at her. It was difficult for Snow White to even see.
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Halna Midi Meren
The howl of some giant, unknown creature rang out, making the flagstones shudder, rattling as they collided. Halna saw a giant lizard outside her window, and seeing that it was colliding with the group of Lightnings, she touched her index finger to her temple half in relief, half in irritation.
Magical girls were fast. Even if she enhanced her own physical capabilities as a magic, it would be difficult to intervene. There wouldn’t be much effect if she were to support them blindly, and if she were to actually aim and try to use her magic effectively, that would inevitably put her on the front lines and make things more dangerous for her. The system that she had prepared in the courtyard had solved a number of those problems, but now she couldn’t use it anymore.
Now that she had sent out the Snow White base, they were no longer getting pushed back. In fact, they should even be the ones doing the pushing. But their superior position was always on thin ice.
Kumi-Kumi wielded her pickax with frightening force, shattering the ground, instantly assembling something else, and Lillian worked with her, whipping around her yarn to reinforce it. Two of the Lightnings who tried to go over to them fell into a pit trap that had been disguised by Halna’s illusion, and one of the Lightnings that tried to save them caught her ankle on a rope and wound up hung in the air, where Mephis punched her.
They were doing well. But now the enhancement would gradually wane. Halna would compensate for that. She was no longer able to use the courtyard sigil using the system, but if she directly sucked up power from the root, then she could still fight. What spell should she cast next?
A magical girl homunculus appeared, interrupting Halna’s train of thought. The speed of her appearance whipped up a wind that messed up Halna’s hair, and she pressed it down.
One could not enter the storage shed without Halna’s permission. Conversely, someone who did have Halna’s permission could even get into the hut without using the entrance. Even if they were operating on artificial personalities, their individual powers of judgment were no different from those of an ordinary magical girl–type homunculus.
Presently, the Snow White base was the most important fighter on the school’s defensive side. She would not come here without a purpose.
The homunculus’s hands were circled behind her, with someone on her back.
“Who is it?”
Carrying the person on her back around to her front, she showed her face to Halna.
It was a girl in a school uniform—likely unconscious, her eyes were closed. She was human. Halna knew her. Snow White—not the expressionless homunculus imitation that was waiting for orders in front of her. It was the real Snow White’s pretransformation form.
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Old Blue
By the courtyard entrance, Old Blue knelt down before a magical girl who was lying on top of piled rubble.
“You fought well,” she whispered in a voice that nobody else could hear, and closed Diko’s eyelids. Everything about her was completely humanlike, the way she felt included, but Old Blue understood her true nature. Now that she had lost her life, she was no more than a literal empty shell. Even if she looked human and felt human, this was not the body of a human. It was broken remains, mingled with homunculus.
✦ ✦ ✦
