Apocalypse, then transforming into a magical girl

Chapter 202 One sentence got Xia Zhaozhao to help me rummage through the trash.

The lion clapped its hands, drawing everyone's attention.

"Here you are."

She raised her chin and gestured towards a building across the street.

"That's the monster's lair."

Looking up, Xiao Lü saw a ground-floor west-facing unit of a building, through which she could see a lot of piled-up clutter.

"Occasionally, you can actually get something good from it."

"I originally wanted to kill it, but after thinking about it, I decided to leave it as is and let it help collect things around here."

"The lion said."

"—I have to remind you of something."

"Most of the mentally ill people who have fused with malformed fetuses are extremely dangerous."

"Oh, it's okay."

The lion responded nonchalantly.

Then, she lifted the wolf beside her up and waved it at everyone.

"Ta-da! With my little sister here, no problem is a problem!"

"Sister, put me down—" the wolf made a faint protesting sound.

"Besides, my intuition is quite sharp."

Lion put his sister down, patted his chest triumphantly, and made Little Green politely look away.

"As long as my spiritual intuition doesn't give me a warning, it means that my decision—well, generally speaking, is unlikely to cause any very serious problems!"

—How does this guy manage to say something so uncertain with such confidence?

Xiao Lü felt a wave of helplessness. And what the hell was this "spiritual warning"? When did mystical elements get mixed into this worldview?

"Then... should we just go there?"

Suppressing her urge to complain, Xiao Lü decided to get straight to the point.

"Oh, no no no."

The lion shook its index finger, rejecting the suggestion.

"We need to lure it out first. Otherwise, once you go into its den, that guy will pester you and it'll be quite troublesome."

As she spoke, she walked straight to the trunk of the Wuling Hongguang, opened it with a "bang," and dragged out a crumpled cardboard box.

Then, he casually patted the cardboard box, making a sound.

"Thump, thump-thump, thump-————"

"If we do it this way, that guy will definitely be attracted," she said.

"Wait a minute," Xia Zhaozhao leaned over and asked cautiously, "Let's make this clear first, what does this monster look like?"

"Looks—"

The lion tilted its head, seemingly trying to recall something.

"It should be similar to a centaur, right?"

She paused, then added, "I haven't been here in a long time either. It seems like it hasn't been able to find anything good lately."

"A centaur?"

Xia Zhaozhao's eyes lit up, clearly showing curiosity about this mythical creature-like monster.

Little Green too.

Since the apocalypse, most of the aggregates I've seen have been quite bizarre, but I've never seen one that looks so classical.

"Yes, centaurs. The only difference is that their lower bodies aren't horses, they're maggots."

"This is practically a ghost!" Xia Zhaozhao roared.

"Here it comes."

The lion, however, seemed not to hear and simply raised its chin in one direction.

As the sound of the cardboard box being knocked over appeared, the monster actually did appear nearby.

The thing was completely black, its head had been completely melted away, and no human outline could be seen. Its upper body was still wearing a fairly common old-fashioned floral jacket, which wrapped around its deformed body and was already tattered.

Its lower body was indeed a huge mass of maggots, with a slippery black tail trailing behind it, wriggling and undulating.

The maggots' surface was covered with something that looked like shed keratin or scales, sticking up unhealthily, like a carp with its scales popped out.

"To be honest, how did you connect this thing with centaurs?"

Xia Zhaozhao's tone was full of disdain.

However, while I might find it distasteful, I wouldn't say I'd feel nauseous.

After all, having gone through so many battles, their mental fortitude was far greater than before. They could now remain unfazed by monsters that were purely visually offensive.

Of course, it's absolutely impossible to like someone.

Seeing that Xiao Lü and Xia Zhaozhao were still vigilantly in a fighting stance, the wolf reached out and gently patted their shoulders, signaling them to relax.

"Just watch your sister's performance~" Lion flattened the cardboard box in her hand and spun it away gracefully like a frisbee.

The cardboard box traced a crooked arc in the air before landing on an open ground some distance away.

The maggot's gaze was instantly drawn to the cardboard box frisbee. It paused for a moment, then turned around without hesitation and crawled toward the cardboard box, arching its way through.

Throughout the entire process, they completely ignored the magical girls and their Wuling Hongguang minivans, which were only a dozen meters away.

'

"If we don't count Sasha," Little Green said, looking at the scene with a hint of disbelief, "this is the first time I've ever seen a monster that doesn't attack people on its own initiative."

"It definitely can't be Sasha, Sasha is so cute—"

Xia Zhaozhao muttered to herself.

"—Does this have anything to do with cuteness?"

Lion ignored their pointless conversation, instead pulling another cardboard box from the trunk. He then carried it, making strange noises, towards the center of two buildings that were relatively close together.

What happened next gave Xiao Lü a completely new understanding of this woman's physical abilities.

The lion, using the walls on either side as footholds, rose rapidly in a zigzag pattern through the narrow crevice, its missing leg completely invisible.

Finally, she hung the cardboard box on top of an air conditioner unit, a rather difficult spot to get a grip on.

The monster took the bait. It placed the cardboard box on the ground in a conspicuous position and then began to climb up the wall, its target the high cardboard box.

"—To be honest, I feel that even though she hasn't transformed, she's still stronger than you were in your weakling days, maybe twice as strong?"

"Hey, don't use me as a unit of measurement for combat power!" Xia Zhaozhao retorted angrily, looking displeased.

The lion had already slid down the drainpipe in a few steps, a smug smile on its face.

"I'll play with it here. You two, go inside and take a look."

"My gut feeling tells me I might find something good today!"

Xiao Lü was highly skeptical. But since she was already there, she figured she might as well go in and take a look.

However, just to be on the safe side, it's better to leave the wolf here. After all, although this woman is strong, she's not a magical girl anymore. If anything goes wrong, the wolf can handle it.

Xia Zhaozhao and I opened the window on the balcony and flew into the room.

A strong, musty smell, a mixture of rotting wood and cardboard, immediately hit me.

"————It's all garbage."

Little Green looked around and couldn't help but frown.

The room was filled with all sorts of junk, from crushed beverage bottles to yellowed old newspapers, from rotten planks to cardboard boxes, leaving almost no room to step.

"Ugh—if it weren't for the apocalypse, I'd smell stench, not mold," Xia Zhaozhao complained.

"To be honest—I kind of regret letting you, instead of the wolf, follow me in."

"Huh?" Xia Zhaozhao looked quite hurt.

"It didn't mean anything by it," Xiao Lü explained.

"I just think that her telekinesis would make it much easier for her to rummage through things in this environment than for us."

Xia Zhaozhao was annoyed; she was quite good at rummaging through things herself, you know.

"Didn't you say before that you were terrible at puzzle games? —"

"That's puzzle-solving! Scavenge through trash is a basic skill for RPG players; I can collect all the games I'm interested in!"

Ignoring the useless trash, Xia Zhaozhao used her greatsword to rummage through the area and clear out a brown table.

Then, he picked the lock and opened the drawer.

"Don't tell me it's some useless jewelry or something—wait, what?"

Xia Zhaozhao's surprise lasted only a moment, before turning into obvious disappointment.

"Sigh—it's just a photo album."

She tossed the heavy photo album aside with little interest.

Xiao Lü thought about it and realized that she absolutely did not want to touch this thing that had been buried in the garbage dump for who knows how long.

With a thought, two crystal-clear ice chopsticks took shape at her fingertips.

Subsequently, countless tiny ice spikes, invisible to the naked eye, condense on the tips of the chopsticks to increase friction.

— Lion's inexplicable special training seems to have actually come in handy in some strange way.

Carefully using ice chopsticks, I picked up the photo album and turned to the first page.

Then, she froze.

"Holy crap, it's really me!"

"ha?"

The photo shows a short-haired little girl grinning foolishly.

Those eyebrows and eyes, that silly expression, were seven or eight parts similar to Xia Zhaozhao beside him.

Xia Zhaozhao also curiously came over to take a look.

"Huh? How do they look alike? Little Green, are you face-blind? I'm definitely much cuter than her!"

She started pointing at the photos and comparing them to her own face, as if she were nitpicking.

"Look, she has single eyelids, and I have double eyelids. And although our hairstyles are similar, my hair is thicker and smoother than hers, and my eyebrows are prettier too."

"Why are you reacting so strongly?"

Little Green ignored her and turned the page with her ice chopsticks.

Like a silent film, the photo album records the passage of time.

Initially, they were a happy family of five, enjoying each other's company.

A few pages later, one elderly person was missing from the photos.

Later, the young parents also disappeared, leaving only an old man and a little girl who was growing up.

Finally, even the little girl disappeared, leaving only the old man's solitary portrait.

Although the photo album was yellowed and moldy, it was carefully locked in a drawer, clearly indicating that it had once been the owner's most cherished treasure.

Xia Zhaozhao had no interest in this at all; she was already engrossed in archaeological digging in the other side of the garbage heap with her greatsword.

While rummaging through the trash, he complained, "That guy Lion—he said there would definitely be good stuff, but this is just a complete garbage dump."

Xiao Lü used ice chopsticks to pick up a slightly brighter red piece of paper from the pile of waste paper. There were still traces of tape tearing on the edges of the paper.

,

After reading the contents, she fell silent.

A community notice accused the owner of piling up clutter and affecting public hygiene in the house. The wording was quite harsh, even reminding Xiao Lü of Luo Binwang's manifesto against Wu Zetian.

However, the old man didn't care at all. He even tore up the paper that denounced him and hoarded it in his treasure trove like a trophy.

The information in the notice gave Xiao Lü a clearer idea of ​​the family's story.

A paranoid elderly man living alone, suffering from hoarding disorder, was subjected to several forced cleanups by the community to no avail.

The family members in the photo album who gradually disappeared, whether they left or passed away, all lost contact with him.

But this had nothing to do with her. Xiao Lü silently put the red paper back in its place, and just stood aside, watching Xia Zhaozhao still futilely searching through the garbage.

Just as Xia Zhaozhao's patience was about to run out and she was about to explode with anger, Xiao Lü finally spoke up to stop her.

She mechanically offered Xia Zhaozhao a few words of comfort, and then, carrying a resentful Xia Zhaozhao, flew off the balcony.

"There's absolutely nothing there!"

As soon as she left the room, Xia Zhaozhao started complaining angrily. She wanted to give Lion a good dressing down.

However, as soon as they landed, they witnessed the end of a battle.

The wolf was suspended in mid-air, and beneath her feet, two stones had flattened a swarm of fish fighting a maggot-like deformity.

"That's just a weakling aggregation; this monster can't even beat it. It's utterly pathetic."

The lion, appearing out of nowhere, began to vividly recount everything that had just happened:

How the maggot-infested man struggled to climb to the fourth floor, and how he was ambushed by a small fish—if the wolf hadn't intervened, it probably would have been swallowed whole, box and all.

"By the way, after all this time, have you two found anything good?"

The lion asked with an expectant look on its face.

There's nothing there!

Xia Zhaozhao finally found an outlet for her resentment and roared it out, word by word.

"? Did my intuition fail me?"

The lion looked completely innocent.

However, amidst this chaos, a thought flashed through Xiao Lü's mind.

A thought that came out of absolutely no reason.

"Wait, Zhao Zhao."

"ha?"

"You should deactivate your transformation first."

"ha???"

Xia Zhaozhao's face clearly said, "What nonsense are you talking about?", but she still trusted Xiao Lü much more than that scumbag woman, Shi.

She silently lowered her trust level by one level in her mind, and then transformed back into the short-haired girl in a black T-shirt and shorts that she hadn't seen in a long time.

"Huh? Did you grow a little taller after turning back?"

Lion curiously approached, his gaze sweeping over Xia Zhaozhao without any restraint.

"Unfortunately, it was still completely unexpected, absolutely, absolutely—"

"Where are you looking?!"

Xia Zhaozhao was so angry that she almost turned back into a slasher on the spot.

But at that moment, she realized something was wrong.

The maggot-like person who had just been tidying up cardboard boxes on the ground stopped what they were doing and just stared at her.

Although the thing had no facial features, Xia Zhaozhao clearly felt a strong emotional fluctuation.

It was a mixture of confusion, familiarity, and a touch of timid uncertainty.

"—Huh?"

Not only her, but the lion, the wolf, and Little Green also noticed this strange change.

Xiao Lü simply stepped forward, reached out, and started haphazardly rubbing Xia Zhaozhao's head.

Then, he ruffled her originally neat short hair, making it as messy as the little girl in the photo album.

Then, something even stranger happened.

A pure joy welled up in the hearts of everyone present.

The feeling was indescribable.

Just like————

Like a lost puppy I had when I was a child. One afternoon, when everyone thought it was gone, it suddenly appeared at the door, dragging an injured leg, wagging its tail at you.

At that moment, the surrounding scenery also changed.

The previous apocalyptic visions faded away as if erased by an eraser.

Instead, a completely different scene unfolded.

A scene that doesn't belong to this era.

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