Halna Midi Meren
The door to the ruins in the courtyard was almost imperceptible. The entrance to the ruins was perfectly disguised and sealed by high-level casters gathered by the three factions. In order to open it, you would first apply, and after that the documents would circulate at the highest level and you would be made to wait months. All the while, you would lay the groundwork and build consensus, negotiating various things behind closed doors to finally get permission.
Last time, when they had opened it under the pretense of an inspection, fifteen high-level casters and a representative of Master Osk had been dispatched. Despite having gone that far to open it, since the Shufflin they had sent out didn’t come back, the survey team had been unable to proceed from the entrance, and they’d had no choice but to reseal it, spending just as much time and effort as when they had opened it.
Halna’s plan had been to arrange for multiple fused bodies that had the resistance of a homunculus along with a magical girl’s intellect, then make another application, thinking it had to work this time. But that door, which should have been shut tight, had now been illegally opened.
Even while trembling in shock, Halna did what she should do.
“Return to the courtyard. Get that blue magical girl with the long hair…and—”
Before she could order the black Snow White to kill Old Blue, she looked outside. The flagstones had opened all the way. And the magical girl was now gone. The doorknob turned. Halna panicked and turned her head to the entrance of the hut. The knob was going around.
It shouldn’t be possible to open this shed from outside. You had to chant the command word and turn the knob in the correct order. But the enemy had shown they could open the entrance to the ruins. Compared to that, just opening the door of the storage shed should be easy.
There was no time to think.
The knob turned all around. The door opened, and light shone in.
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Old Blue
The inside of the shed was packed with technical books and experimental tools. But the principal was not there. Old Blue went into the room, knelt down, and stroked the floor. Halna had been here just a few seconds ago. Had she used a teleportation spell to go somewhere?
She made a quick escape.
Halna wasn’t the only one there; also present was Snow White, unconscious and detransformed. Old Blue squinted as if overwhelmed by dazzling light. She had planned to take Snow White back with her. But pursuing that too far wouldn’t lead to anything good. It was frustrating, but she was forced to give up on that.
Snow White had been stolen, and Halna, who she had meant to have pay her bill at the end, had gotten away, and nothing was going well. Old Blue stood up and gave instructions from her headset.
“Our business is done. Prepare to retreat.”
After she gave the order, her gaze returned to the center of the room once more.
There, breaking through the floorboards, the end of a root was poking out. It was fatter than the torso of a human. It would be a shock for anyone to see—if the end of a root was this big, then just how large would the main body grow? But to Old Blue, who saw not only its appearance but also its true nature, this was beyond merely shocking.
I see, I see, she said to herself. It made sense now how Halna had been supplying such a large amount of energy. The system of the whole courtyard, the absolute defenses of the storage shed, the variety of magic support—it had all been drawn up from here.
Looking straight at it made her feel dizzy. There was just so much information.
This was a part of the ruins. It had extended this far, aiming for the surface. Halna, the superintendent of the magical-girl class, had noticed it, appropriated it, and abused it. Frederica was after it, too. And Old Blue could not handle it. In other words, it would do quite a lot of harm and no good.
Old Blue’s eyes also read from it how she should dispose of it. Casting a spell, she made a seal with her right hand and placed her left hand on top of the root. From here, she would go through a number of steps to destroy it.
✦ ✦ ✦
Ripple
The school had been thoroughly destroyed to the point where there was no part that had gone unwrecked. Ripple did not try to restrain her restlessness, letting her emotions propel her running.
She remembered that day. She hadn’t been able to let Snow White fight alone. When Snow White had begged her to train her, Ripple had had no choice but to acquiesce, though she’d rebuked her for it. She couldn’t let Snow White challenge outlaws without any strength of her own.
Besides, Ripple wanted to help someone in even a small way; she wanted to be there for them, to give them courage—that was the sort of local magical girl she wanted to be. She felt like her relationship with Top Speed would have eventually become like that, if not for the exam. That was exactly why she thought it was wrong to force that on Snow White. She couldn’t quite rid herself of the doubt that she was trying to force Snow White into taking Top Speed’s place, so she hadn’t been able to really take that step to get closer to her.
As a result, Snow White had come to be called the Magical-Girl Hunter, and what had come of wishing to support her was Ripple being controlled by Frederica and stealing lives, causing trouble for lots of people and sabotaging Snow White without managing to accomplish a single good thing.
The ceiling of the classroom had fallen down, stirring up dust in the corner of the room. The dust got in the way, and she couldn’t see the ceiling anymore.
She knew that Old Blue’s crew was using her. She was fine with that. She had decided that if Pythie Frederica was going to make a move, then she would kill her before she accomplished her goal. Precisely because she had been controlled by Frederica, she knew better than anyone that she had to kill Frederica.
But in the end, she hadn’t even managed that much.
Every time she tried to do something, she wound up getting in Snow White’s way instead.
She thought of Snow White, of Frederica, and of Old Blue. Old Blue’s eyes could see through everything. Ripple expected her to sound like she was all-knowing, but just standing there talking to her made Ripple uneasy. Was Old Blue capable of defeating Frederica? Maybe. Ripple would’ve rather finished Frederica off herself, but she wasn’t going to be greedy. She was in no position to act that way.