After get off work, I become a magical girl

——"I want to be one."

Xia Liang suddenly spoke.

After the previous questioning, she got used to the discomfort of suddenly flying up, stood up, and was now walking to the edge of the rooftop.

In fact, she had already made her choice when she said goodbye to her "friends" and chose to follow her inner guidance.

She glanced at Lin Xiaolu, raised her hand, grabbed her earlobe, rubbed it for a while and then let go. There were two shiny objects in her hand. Then she waved her hand and threw the things directly to the ground.

She took out her cell phone again, tapped through the address book, selected a dozen names at once, brought up the editing interface, and after pausing for a moment, she resolutely clicked "Delete".

"I have decided that if everything you said is true, then all these things don't matter and it's okay to throw them away."

Putting down her phone, she smiled, her eyes flickering with hope, her shoulder-length black hair fluttering in the wind on the rooftop:

"But anyway, I want to be a magical girl!"

Chapter 16: Ghost Story Investigation

2023-04-30

At noon three days later, in Lin Yun’s office.

After finishing his morning work and having no other tasks, Lin Yun had a rare quiet lunch break. He could sit at his desk and use the limited time to scan the information on the computer screen.

Five days had passed since the night Lin Xiaolu was in danger. In addition to working and teaching a few new magical girls, he also started searching the Internet for various news in the past two days, mainly news related to crippled beasts and magical girls in Fangting City.

It wasn't that he wanted to use such an inefficient method, but the investigation feedback from the Strategy Bureau was not smooth. It was even more accurate to say that even the Fangting City Strategy Bureau itself seemed to know nothing about the reasons why magical girls and beasts had disappeared in the past two years.

According to the archive files provided by Hong Siyu, there have been 132 cases of magic-related crimes and attacks in Fangting City in the past two years. Among them, 129 were committed by magicians, 125 of which have been solved by the Strategy Bureau and the suspects have been arrested; 3 were attacks by beasts, all of which occurred in the half month after Lin Xiaolu became a magic girl.

In other words, in the previous two years, the number of appearances of the remnant beast was 0.

It was not that it rarely appeared as Lin Yun originally thought, but that there was absolutely no record of sightings.

Correspondingly, the archives of Fangting City's Strategy Bureau show that no employee of the Bureau has ever had contact with the sower "Nini", and they have no idea whether this sower has ever been to Fangting City.

No one knows whether this "Nini" deliberately did not come or encountered some accident on the way here.

What's more troublesome is that without the sower, the Strategy Bureau even lost the way to communicate with the magical kingdom.

The Magic Kingdom has always been superior to the material world. The Strategy Bureau nominally has the right to contact the magical girls and assist them in their work, but in reality it has no right to restrict or manage the magical girls.

Except for those large central cities, the governments of ordinary small and medium-sized cities have no capital to communicate and negotiate with the magical kingdom.

Ultimately, when facing magical girls, the Strategy Bureau is merely a logistical service agency that provides them with post-battle services and appropriately protects the privacy and security of their data.

What they can do is to manage the various behaviors of ordinary magic practitioners in the city, namely magicians, recruit suitable magicians, and arrest magician criminals. As for magical girls, they have no right to interfere.

The power to reward, punish and manage the actions of magical girls, whether they are meritorious or illegal, lies only with the state.

Under such unequal and high-pressure rules, the Fangting City Strategy Bureau could only try to contact the Strategy Bureaus of other cities, and try to contact the country through the sowers of other cities to inquire when the new sower of their own city would arrive.

The first three times, the answer was "soon to take office". After three times, the state no longer had any response.

As a result, the two sides fell into a strange stalemate. The national side ignored Fangting City’s questions about the new seeders, and Fangting City’s Special Policy Bureau did not dare to ask more.

Fortunately, in the past two years, the remaining beasts disappeared for unknown reasons, so this huge city was able to get by in anxiety and hesitation.

——Until Moko came to this city.

It sounds like this puts new suspicions on Moko.

But based on Lin Yun's own judgment, this possibility is very low.

This was not blind faith on his part, but because he knew a deeper secret: in the magical kingdom, goblins were absolutely loyal to the royal court.

Of course, due suspicion is essential, so these days he often continues to put pressure on Moko in the identity of Delphinium, trying to extort some information from it.

The conclusion was that there was no gain, and Mo Ke couldn't say anything.

In desperation, Lin Yun retained his last suspicion and left a tracking spell on it to monitor its general movements so as not to waste his efforts on such a thing.

In fact, he was more inclined to believe that it was Mo Ke's arrival that broke a certain balance in Fangting City.

But this hidden balance is completely beneath the surface, and more investigation is needed to see the full picture.

The Strategy Bureau can only provide limited help, and Hong Si and other cities cannot respond to the request for help from the Magic Kingdom. Right now, he is the only one who can deal with all this.

He had to prepare for the worst possible scenario: the magical kingdom would not send any support.

This is also the reason why he agreed to recruit Xia Liang.

As for why he made such a judgment, it was a reason that had nothing to do with the current events.

In the end, it turned out like this. He was alone in front of the computer, flipping through the news, trying hard to search for various clues. Many news reports that the Strategy Bureau could not determine whether were related to the magic side, but his rich experience could make a judgment.

The good news is, he actually has some ideas.

At first he tried to search for some clues within the past two years, but his results were scant, he only discovered an increase in the number of missing persons; he had no choice but to expand the scope to five years, ten years, and even the photos reported in the news were old enough to show Anya, but he still found nothing except making himself feel worse.

After hitting a wall this time, Lin Yun finally chose a method he didn't originally want to use: urban legend search.

This method was not created by him, but came from another magical girl companion in Fangting City when he was young - Su Shengzi.

Su Shengzi is keen on collecting urban legends and ghost stories, and after some research, he integrated them. Through a lot of practical experience, he proposed a theory that sounds extremely ridiculous but has some truth: more than 70% of urban legends that are said to be "seen with one's own eyes" are originated from crippled beasts.

The reason why this theory is nonsense is that there is no rigorous statistics behind it. It is just something Su Shengzi came up with while drinking afternoon tea at home one afternoon.

The reason why it makes some sense is that this theory coincides with the logic of the evolution of the remnant beasts: after the remnant beasts evolve to the "pupa" stage, they need to "build a nest" in order to store sufficient magic power and nutrition to start the next stage of evolution.

After building a nest, the pupa-level remnant beast will use a certain area as a base, distorting the time and space of the entire area to form its own nest, which is also its own "pupa". After that, it will hunt with its own nest as the center.

At the pupa stage, the remnants are no longer as brainless as they were at the egg stage, acting only on instinct, but have wisdom similar to that of wild beasts. They begin to act more secretly, hiding from the tracking of the magic girl and the Strategy Bureau, and fulfilling their own food needs.

The power of the pupa-level remnant beasts and the abundant food in the nest will also attract many lower-level remnant beasts to parasitize them. However, these low-level remnant beasts and the pupa-level beasts are often not in a vassal relationship. If they are seen by the pupa-level remnant beasts, they will simply be swallowed up as snacks.

The diet of the remaining beasts is all-encompassing, which naturally includes other remaining beasts.

Because of this, the behavioral logic of the remaining beasts in the pupae stage can easily lead to urban legends in the urban areas where they are located.

If it is a city where magical girls are normally stationed, relying on normal information exchange with the outside world and long-term carpet patrols by a large number of magical girls, it is almost impossible for pupa-level remnant beasts to hide in the city.

Their pupae are the outer shells that protect themselves, and also the cages that lock themselves. Once their nests are discovered, they basically have nowhere to escape and can only wait for a large group of magical girls to come and beat them up, or fight a desperate battle with the elite magical girls who have been summoned.

However, Fangting City is different.

Lin Yun now suspects that there may be some pupa-level beasts hiding in Fangting City, and that they are related to the current series of strange phenomena.

The long absence of magical girls is enough to provide time for the birth of pupa-level remnant beasts. The huge Fangting City also provides a hiding space. In addition, the fact that "remnant beast attacks have disappeared" can also be explained by the existence of pupa-level remnant beasts. This suspicion is not unreasonable.

He told Hong Siyu about this guess, and Hong Siyu also expressed his concern and promised to assist in the search. However, since it was about the remnant beast, he didn't want to just wait for news.

Now, the news can’t provide any information, so I’m afraid I really have to start with urban legends.

He mainly used keywords such as "Fangting City", "urban legend" and "strange talk" to extract information from major forums and media, and has found many strange rumors that seem to be true.

For example, "singing in the sewer", "mirror-reversed abandoned construction site", "flash-lights" and so on, many half-true and half-false supernatural stories made Lin Yun feel chilly even in the middle of the day.

However, these pieces of information lack substantive evidence. If he really wants to find clues, he will probably have to verify them one by one personally to know which one is more credible.

Thinking of this, he was about to move the mouse to switch web pages, but suddenly he felt a vibration in his pocket.

It was a cell phone, and it was "Delphinium's cell phone." He could tell by the position of the pocket.

Looks like I'll have to use the magical girl form again, he thought.

Three days ago, he and Lin Xiaolu found Xia Liang in the electronics street. After successfully turning her into a magical girl, they briefly confirmed Xia Liang's status, left their contact information, and disbanded on the spot.

From then on, every other night, Lin Yun would gather the two of them at the old place to teach them knowledge related to magical girls.

This includes how to train and improve magic power, as well as the common sense that a magical girl should know, but the most important thing is the combat awareness when fighting against the remaining beasts.

What are the common instinctive behaviors of crippled animals, where will their weaknesses usually appear, what moves require caution, etc.

Many of these were the wisdom left by predecessors, and there were also many experiences summarized by Kuei-Chrysanthemum herself, so there should be no problem with the rationality. But according to her idea, after a few days of theoretical teaching, she might need to wait for a chance to fight and practice.

He took out his phone and glanced at the screen, and found that it was indeed a call from Lin Xiaolu. Lin Yun thought about it for a moment, then sighed slightly, turned into Delphinium, and then answered the call:

"Hello? What's the matter?"

"Ah, Delphinium-senpai?"

Unlike the last time when Moko snatched her phone, this time, the voice that Cuiqiao heard was indeed Lin Xiaolu's: "Excuse me, but Moko just found a crippled beast!"

really.

Delphinium was not surprised. This was pretty much what she had expected. It had been several days since the last attack by the beast, and she expected that it was time for the next one to appear.

So she didn't say much, and asked Lin Xiaolu about the location and current situation of the remaining beasts, and then prepared to set off.

However, just as she was about to hang up, she heard a voice outside the door that made her feel breathless.

——"Minister, are you there?"

somebody is coming.

She could tell who the voice came from, without a doubt, it was her subordinate in the same department.

What should I do? Is it too late to cancel the transformation now? It seems too late!

A series of thoughts flashed through Delphinium's mind, and in a flash, while she was thinking about these things, she saw that the door handle of the office had been pressed down.

A young man counted the documents in his hand and pushed the door open, then raised his head and looked inside the room——

All I saw was an empty room.

"Eh? When did the Minister go out?"

He felt a little strange because, if he remembered correctly, he had seen the director of his department walk into the office before.

He stuck his head out and looked to the left and right. After confirming that the office was truly empty, he scratched his head, turned around and left with a strange look on his face.

What he didn't expect was that behind the empty desk, in the space under the desk, there was a petite girl curled up there with an unhappy look on her face, staring at the screen of her mobile phone, with her thumb pressed on the place where she had just hung up the call.

It wasn't until the footsteps at the office door disappeared in the distance that she breathed a sigh of relief: Fortunately, she reacted quickly enough. Not only did she hang up the phone in time, but she also hid under the table.

Otherwise, whether Lin Xiaolu heard the subsequent conversation or someone who entered the office saw Cuiqiao sitting in the office, it would be a very tricky situation.

It seems I need to lock the door before answering the phone next time.

As she thought this, she looked through the gap under the table. After confirming that there was no one at the office door, she canceled her transformation and crawled out from under the table in a somewhat embarrassed manner.

He straightened his clothes and walked out of the office as if nothing had happened. Once he was out of sight of others, he immediately quickened his pace and rushed towards the place where the beast had appeared.