Mingyue squatted on a steel beam of the abandoned warehouse's roof, her scythe resting across her knees as the night wind whipped her skirt.
Nuomi lay on her shoulder, its long ears twitching nervously back and forth. For once, the bell on its tail remained completely silent.
“Mingyue,” Nuomi whispered, “it's still moving.”
“I know.”
Before them lay a heavy industrial waste dump contaminated by Erosion Bodies. Seven low-tier Erosion Bodies crawled slowly among the rust-colored heaps of scrap metal, their carapaces gleaming with a slimy, dark green sheen under the moonlight.
If it were just seven low-tier ones, Mingyue could have cleared them out on her own. The problem was the one crouching right in the middle of them.
That Erosion Body was larger than any she had ever seen. Its body was an irregular amalgamation, its surface constantly swelling and bursting, with dark purple mist seeping out from within each time it ruptured.
Its core was encased in three layers of overlapping shell, the surface etched with dense patterns that seemed to squirm on their own under the moonlight.
A high-tier Erosion Body. She had only ever seen them in the Association's combat briefings.
“The Observation Department said this thing is at least B-rank,” Mingyue said, switching her scythe to her right hand and pressing her left hand against the mana communicator by her ear. “I've already called for backup, but it'll take at least fifteen minutes for the nearest Magical Girl to get here. Until then, we have to hold it off ourselves.”
“Fifteen minutes...” Nuomi's tail curled uneasily. “Can we hold out that long?”
Mingyue didn't answer. They had received an emergency report from the Observation Department while patrolling near their base.
A high concentration of mana had suddenly registered in this abandoned industrial area, and preliminary assessments indicated that a high-tier Erosion Body was gathering low-tier individuals to establish an erosion nest.
If left unchecked, this nest would triple in size within a few days.
With her current mana reserves and Nuomi's condition, her chances of winning against one high-tier and seven low-tier Erosion Bodies alone were only about thirty percent.
The first wave of low-tier Erosion Bodies had already spotted her. Three of them were flanking from the left side of the waste pile, moving faster than ordinary low-tier ones.
Mingyue leapt down from the steel beam, her scythe carving an arc through the moonlight as she sliced the first one diagonally in half.
The second lunged from the side the moment she landed, but she used the scythe's shaft as leverage to flip backward and avoid it. The third slammed down from above mid-flip; she raised her scythe horizontally to block, but the impact shoved her back three meters, her boot soles leaving two white scrape marks on the concrete floor.
Their defense had also increased. These weren't ordinary low-tier ones—they were guardian units enhanced by the high-tier Erosion Body's mana.
“Nuomi!”
“On it!” Nuomi launched itself off her shoulder, swinging both tails simultaneously. The shockwaves from its bells exploded into two rings of golden ripples on the ground. Hit head-on by the shockwaves, fine cracks spread across the carapaces of two low-tier Erosion Bodies.
Seizing the opportunity, Mingyue lunged forward. Spinning her scythe between her hands, she delivered two clean slashes through the cracked shells. Black mist erupted as the two guardian units dissolved into black dust.
Before she could even catch her breath, the fourth and fifth leaped down from the top of the waste pile. The sixth and seventh burrowed out of the ground behind her, completely blocking her escape.
Nuomi's shockwave needed a cooldown period, which was more than enough time for an Erosion Body to close the distance in this fast-paced battle.
The high-tier Erosion Body hadn't moved an inch. Crouching in the very center of the seven guardian units, the purple mist swirling around its core grew thicker. It seemed utterly indifferent to the survival of its guardians, or worse, it was using them to stall her while its main body charged something.
“Mingyue!” Nuomi's voice suddenly spiked. “The mana concentration in its core is rising! Fast!”
The ground began to tremble. Corrugated iron sheets and steel rebar on the waste piles screeched as they ground against each other. The high-tier Erosion Body's shell split down the middle, a dark purple light shining from within.
“It's incubating!” Mingyue forced back an approaching guardian unit with a sweep of her scythe and pressed her left hand to her communicator. “This is Mingyue. Abandoned Industrial Area District Four, a high-tier Erosion Body is about to enter its incubation phase, requesting immediate backup! Repeat, requesting immediate back—”
The response from the communicator wasn't the voice of the Association dispatcher, but harsh white noise. Mana interference. The mist released by the high-tier Erosion Body contained components that jammed mana communications. She couldn't be sure if her distress signal had even gone through.
During the incubation phase, an Erosion Body would release a massive amount of highly concentrated erosion spores. These spores would cling to humans and drain their mana, which was fatal to ordinary people without mana defenses.
“Nuomi,” Mingyue said, tightening her grip on her scythe, her voice dropping low. “Get ready to use that move.”
“But last time you used that, you were bedridden for a week—”
“We have no choice.”
Nuomi's caramel-colored eyes looked at her, its ears twitching before it nodded firmly.
Two guardian units pinched her from both sides simultaneously. She blocked the left attack with the scythe's shaft, spinning around to intercept the right one with the blade. However, the force of the block still tore open a small gash in the web of her hand, and beads of blood began to trickle down the shaft.
The other two were bypassing her attack range to close in from behind, and behind her was nothing but open ground with zero cover.
The crack on the high-tier Erosion Body's shell grew wider and wider. Dark purple light spilled out, and the edges of the glow began to condense into countless tiny spore particles, like polluted snow.
Then she heard a whistling sound, like something slicing through the air at high speed.
A thin beam of silvery-white light shot out from the shadows of the building across the street, piercing cleanly through the core of a guardian unit.
It was a chain. The spike at its tip pinned into the ground, stretching the chain into a glowing silver line across the night sky. Ice crystals rapidly spread from the point of contact on the ground, climbing up the chain and turning it into a silvery-white bridge of ice.
Then, a figure slid down the ice bridge.
Her jet-black hair whipped backward in the night wind, her silvery-white skirt flashing under the moonlight.
She stepped off the chain, emerging from the shadows of the building. She held a slender straight sword in her right hand, while her left palm opened to project a second, fan-shaped barrier of light in the air. It intercepted all the erosion spores drifting toward Mingyue, freezing them instantly into ice dust that showered down upon impact.
Rate on N.U.
