She was being hunted down, so she became a magical girl.

Several months ago, somewhere in the downtown area.

"Every time I see these floating islands in the sky, I feel like I'm living in a dream."

A petite magical girl spoke to the sky.

"These ruling magical girls are the most cunning. They put magic on a lump of iron and insist it's an anti-gravity engine. I wonder how much profit they made."

"The fact that magic can appear so openly is completely shattering my worldview."

Another magical girl beside her said:

"After all, the ruling faction doesn't need to guard against all sorts of evil beasts."

"So why do those evil beasts always chase after us and attack us?" the petite magical girl complained.

"Aren't all the evil beasts supposed to be insane? These mindless creatures will attack even the apostles of evil gods without hesitation, so why are they only so clear about their targets in this kind of situation?"

"Stop complaining, this is a good thing." The magical girl who was talking to her sighed.

"It is precisely because the evil beasts have such great hostility towards us magical girls that we have been able to repeatedly lure them away from their settlements."

"These beasts won't kill people on their own initiative, but once provoked, they will go on a rampage and destroy everything around them."

"If we had waited even a moment longer to lure them away, who knows how many more people would have been injured or killed."

"Stop chatting, Shaohua is back."

The magical girl, who had been silent all along and was clearly the backbone of the group, finally spoke.

Just as she said, a blonde magical girl walked from a distance.

"Shaohua, this is the third time you've disobeyed orders this week, isn't it?" the central magical girl said with a forced smile.

"How do you plan to be punished? The same as last time? Or something else?"

Shao Hua silently walked to the girl's side and lowered her head.

"Sorry, Captain."

"I didn't kill that liar."

"...I never intended for you to kill her, but you made a scene and went to find her anyway," the captain said helplessly.

"Just seal it with magic, or you can make a contract with her."

Shaohua shook her head and said:

"I didn't do that."

"You actually stopped?" the petite magical girl interjected. "Anyway, that Miyan was just secretly investigating us. Giving her a warning won't hurt. She's not affiliated with Tianyi Group."

"And she wouldn't know any important information anyway."

"But I told her about us."

Shaohua answered.

—"Then, Miss Shaohua was beaten up by all the magical girls in the team."

"She came back with a bruised and swollen face and cried to me for a long time, which is how I found out the whole story."

Xiao Ling said this.

Clearly, she was describing Shaohua and Miyan's first encounter.

"Miss Shaohua is a wanderer from the wilderness, and she has a natural hostility towards the people of Hezhi City, especially those in the Upper City."

"A lady like Ms. Miyan, who clearly has good upbringing and is cultured, naturally aroused her disgust."

"After she met Lady Mystery, she almost killed her with a single sword strike."

Even though she gave up the fight because of the magical girl under Lady Mystery's command, she still did not get rid of her hostility towards Lady Mystery.

"But later they became very good friends," Xu Ting asked. "You also mentioned in your description that Shao Hua told Mi Yan about the egalitarians, so by then she should have overcome her prejudice."

"Yes, Miss Shaohua planned to find an opportunity to take action in Ms. Miyan's daily life and fake her death as an accident, so she followed her into the charity foundation," Xiaoling said.

"Then, she saw the homeless children in the foundation who were growing up healthily because of Ms. Miyan's good deeds, and saw her past self in them."

Xu Ting said:

"So Senior Shaohua has identified Ms. Miyan as someone she can trust?"

"So Miss Shaohua regarded Ms. Miyan as her mother," Xiaoling said calmly.

"...an O. Henry-esque ending," Xu Ting couldn't help but say.

Xiao Ling continued, "In short, Miss Shaohua accepted Ms. Miyan and had in-depth exchanges with her."

"Unbeknownst to her, she accepted the idea of ​​'saving Hell City' from Lady Mystery and decided to stay in Hell City for a long time, helping the organization train magical girls while cultivating resistance forces for Lady Mystery."

"The wooden sticks and other props were also gifts she gave to Ms. Miyan during this period."

"But later, all the other magical girls were killed by the Heavenly Will Group," Xu Ting said. "Do you know who the magical girl who did it was?"

Xiaoling changed her screensaver to a big red X.

"There were too many people at the time, and Miss Shaohua didn't know who delivered the final blow."

"Tianyi Group mobilized a team of over fifty magical girls to encircle and suppress the enemy. The weakest among them was a magical girl of the two-color ring level, and there were no fewer than five magical girls of the three-color flower level, just like our captain."

Fifty bicolor rings? Five tricolor flowers?

One Ascension-level Slaying Blade and one Ring-Pact-level Polar Day are enough to give Xu Ting a hard time.

Xu Ting felt immense pressure.

"And then what? How did Senior Shaohua escape?"

"This..." Xiaoling hesitated.

After a while, she said:

"I subtly inquired about Miss Shaohua, and she said that she did not escape, but was captured by the Tianyi Group and was almost taken to the Tower of Babel."

Then, she met [pink].

pink?

Xu Ting immediately recalled the ambiguous sentence recorded in the Mysterious Words Diary.

Pink is dangerous, but not dangerous to you. If you see pink, don't panic; pink has no reason to harm you.

"What kind of pink are you talking about...?"

"I don't know, but judging from Miss Shaohua's words and actions, she should be an entity with thinking and action capabilities. Considering the background of Tianyi Group, the true form of the pink one should be a magical girl," Xiaoling said.

Then, Xiaoling's tone became low.

"【Pink】let Miss Shaohua go."

"The people at Tianyi Group were unaware of the secret and assumed that Miss Shaohua had escaped from prison during her arrest."

"After that, Miss Shaohua became disheartened, acted self-destructively, and did a lot of irrational things."

After saying this, her tone became impassioned again:

"But in the end, Miss Shaohua pulled herself together!"

"During this period when she was disheartened, I was following her previous orders to dig up dirt on Tianyi Group."

"Although she was in a daze, she would still read it whenever I wrote a summary article."

Gradually, she regained consciousness.

"Even though I already know so much, why do I still feel so heartbroken when I see these specific tragedies?"

"[Every time I witness a tragedy, I realize the fact that 'magical girls are systematically creating suffering.' I can understand the reasons behind each tragedy, and I can also see the smug faces of those beasts behind the scenes.]"

"[Xiao Ling, I didn't want to care about anything anymore. I'm a coward, and I got scared after witnessing their power.]"

"But even if you're scared, you can't just do nothing, right?"

"【Lady Mystery doesn't even have magic power, yet she still embarked on such a dangerous path. I'm a magical girl with two color rings. Even if I'm an ant in front of them, I'm still just an ant that's easy to handle, right?】"

The last part that Xiaoling repeated was clearly Shaohua's original words.

In the final stage of her life, she rekindled her sense of justice, which had been overwhelmed by fear, and rose again to fight against the Tianyi Group.

She then died at the hands of the very enemies who had terrified her to the point of being unable to care for herself.

"Miss Shaohua told me a lot before she died."

"She wanted to apologize to Lady Mystic, but was worried about drawing the enemy to Lady Mystic."

She deeply regretted not realizing it sooner and wasting sixty-four magical girl contract documents.

"【I, Shaohua, was such a fool.】"

"【Because of fear, her body has started to transform into that of a witch.】"

"These were the last words Miss Shaohua said to me."