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

The night rain pattered down, tearing the neon lights into countless shreds.

The girl with red eyes leaned against the rooftop railing, gazing silently into the distance.

The cold wind lifted the ends of her hair, gently caressed it, and then sent it back to her waist; raindrops hit her skin, but could only slip off by a hair's breadth.

"Why don't you, the one who has lost their color, take shelter from the rain?"

Gray Crow came out of the house and questioned Xu Ting.

"practise."

Xu Ting pressed down her wind-blown hair and replied.

"Using magic to guide raindrops away from the body can both hone precision and improve the efficiency of magic shields."

Gray Crow walked up to Xu Ting and said, "Then I'll give it a try too."

She deployed a magical shield, pushing the raindrops away and creating a conspicuous vacuum.

The two stood in silence for a while before Gray Raven slowly spoke:

"Huanguang told me that she made you angry during the operation."

Is that true?

Xu Ting thought for a while before he understood which matter Gray Crow was referring to.

"No, I just didn't expect her values ​​regarding life to be so...unique."

"I feel the same way," said Gray Raven.

"Huanguang is a typical 'subsidized orphan.' No one taught her how to properly view life and death. It was too late when Master Miyan took her under his wing. Hopefully, she will change in the future."

Subsidizing orphans is a common practice in Hezhi City.

Because the government of Her City strictly prohibits synthetic human technology, they can only enact a birth subsidy law to maintain Her City's population base.

This creates an opportunity for some scoundrels who will have children to fraudulently obtain subsidies and then raise the child at the lowest possible cost.

The most pitiful group of children are abandoned and left to wander the streets in gangs, most of whom do not survive to adulthood.

Xu Ting speculated that she herself was most likely one of them.

Xu Ting was lucky enough to meet her sister and be adopted by an orphanage, but Huan Guang was clearly less fortunate than Xu Ting.

"I understand," Xu Ting replied. "My father also had a similar background."

"No wonder people in the underworld say that the Losers are ruthless, aggressive, and always choose the highest-paying but most dangerous missions," Gray Raven remarked.

She felt that the person who lost their color did this because they didn't care about life and death.

But she was wrong.

In Xu Ting's memory, her older sister solemnly gave her her "first lesson" about life and death when she was six years old.

"Everyone's life is important, but your life and the lives of those you cherish are the most precious."

"Your birth is a miracle of transforming lifeless matter into vibrant life. Protect it and don't let the efforts of those who love you go to waste."

After that, Xu Ting always took life and death very seriously.

She would kill her enemies without hesitation, not because she didn't care about their lives, but because she had to respect her own.

Similarly, she would grieve for the half of the people who sacrificed themselves in today's mission, because she was the one who proposed the plan and should be held responsible for their deaths.

As for why she repeatedly chooses high-risk missions and acts in a near-self-destructive manner—

She simply believed that her own life was more precious than the lives of her loved ones.

"Tomorrow we'll be going head-to-head with Tianyi Group. What are your thoughts?"

Xu Ting didn't want to continue the conversation and instead asked Gray Crow a question.

"Aside from praying that Lady Luck is on our side, we don't have any other ideas."

Gray Crow looked at Xu Ting's face, smiled, and said:

"Perhaps the goddess is already on our side."

Otherwise, we wouldn't have met you.

"We originally planned to use a wooden stick to break through the access control system. If we had done that, even with the magic of the Illusionary Light, our infiltration would only have been called an 'intrusion'."

"With you cracking the access control system, we can infiltrate without alerting the Tianyi Group's security forces, greatly increasing our chances of success."

The prophet prepared a total of five wooden sticks, one large and four small.

The large wooden sticks are like time bombs to destroy drone swarms, while the small wooden sticks are life-saving tools to deal with emergencies.

Xu Ting and Huan Guang each took a small wooden stick, while the rest were kept by Hui Ya.

In their luckiest fantasy, they could achieve their goal with just a large wooden stick that acts as a time bomb.

But Xu Ting didn't believe it could go so smoothly.

"I will fight wearing a mask tomorrow," Xu Ting said.

"In extreme cases, the invisibility magic cannot be maintained. A mask can at least prevent facial information from being exposed, so you can wear it as well."

The gray crow shook its head:

"My face has already been exposed to Tianyi Group, but Huanguang hasn't. I will make suggestions to her."

She didn't speak again, quietly listening to the never-ending symphony of gunfire in Hezhi City.

......

On the day of the mission, the sun shone brightly and the sky was cloudless.

The factory storing the drone swarm is located on the outskirts of Hezhi City, where the high-rise buildings in the central and upper districts generously provide ample sunlight, giving it a unique environment unlike the dimness and crampedness common in the lower district.

At this moment, the Tianyi Group's stronghold in the lower city has been subjected to numerous attacks.

Those arrogant and self-governing forces actually kept their promise to Miyan and sent troops to attack those strongholds.

The wealth that Tianyi Group had stored in the lower city had long been coveted by many, and now that they had the opportunity to "plunder" it, those forces fought quite hard.

Therefore, Tianyi Group's mobile armed forces are already exhausted.

Xu Ting, Huan Guang, and Hui Ya, the three girls, stealthily arrived at the side door of the factory, waiting for the deputy factory manager to activate the access control system.

After Tianyi Group placed the drones inside the factory, all external interactions with the factory were prohibited. The only way for Xu Ting and his group to infiltrate the factory was to find an inside accomplice.

One of my innate magic spells, Eye of Fear, is activated.

The door opened slowly, then closed quickly.

The three of them quickly crawled inside.

Everything is going smoothly so far, and there has been no attack upon entry.

After scanning the surroundings with the magic ball, Xu Ting nodded to the other two, signaling them to continue.

Because the magic ball releases magic power, making it easy to be tracked, the task of scanning fell to Xu Ting, whose magic fluctuations were concealed by crows.

Gray Raven, who is also a magical girl, does not have a contracted beast, and Yan Yuling does not seem to have one either.

This puzzled Xu Ting, who asked if crow-contracted beasts were very rare.

This gave the crow an opportunity to boast, and it quickly started bragging, claiming that "it is your honor to be chosen by the great contracted beast Black Phoenix," leaving Xu Ting speechless.

Detected by the magic ball, they successfully evaded the patrolling robots and guards, and ventured deeper into the factory.

Then we encountered our first major hurdle.

The factory’s inner and outer areas are separated by a laser corridor that continuously emits high-energy lasers.

Magical girls' magical shields are more resistant to kinetic energy attacks but less resistant to lasers; the three girls' levels are not high enough to allow them to withstand lasers head-on.

The three exchanged a glance, and then Gray Raven led the way into the room.

The laser passed right through the gray raven's body, leaving it completely unharmed.

As they walked down the corridor, Huan Guang smiled and winked at Xu Ting, as if to say, "See how powerful my innate magic is?"

Xu Ting made a special gesture to her.

It means—

"The detection of the magic ball has been interrupted ahead; our target is here."