After get off work, I become a magical girl

However, after a brief moment of confusion, she quickly put this emotion behind her, because she knew that now was not the time to think about this problem.

She knew very well what her current task was. Rather than studying why this crippled beast did not produce any response, the first priority was to investigate the current situation of the Strategy Bureau.

For example, why did the Strategy Bureau not react at all when they encountered the attack of the remnant beasts? Even if they could not defeat them, they could escape or seek refuge. They should have notified the local magical girls to come and defeat the remnant beasts.

This question did not bother Delphinium for long, because when she took out her mobile phone and tried to ask the team in Baian City, the symbol displayed on the top of the screen gave the answer.

——[No signal].

Delphinium was not surprised, but rather relieved, because she had a better understanding of the situation: the signal here was blocked and the message could not be transmitted.

She didn't know whether the Bureau of Strategy in Bai'an City had any special means of external communication, but she thought it was unlikely.

In other words, from the moment of the attack, the headquarters of the Strategy Bureau, which was located underground and was originally a safe fortress, turned into a huge closed cage, locking up the employees of the Strategy Bureau and the crippled beasts together.

What is the current situation of the Bai'an City Special Policy Bureau?

Apart from this office where someone was killed, where did all the other employees go?

How many people are still alive? Are there any other remnants of the beast here?

Delphinium She needs to find out these issues first.

After putting away the magic wand in her hand, she laid the dead employee of the Strategy Bureau flat on the ground, closed his eyes, and left the office. She continued to search the first floor of the Strategy Bureau, but no matter how hard she searched, she could not find a room with people.

The sound of her footsteps echoed in the empty corridor, and the bright lights shone directly on the tiles on the ground, reflecting white dots. These white dots formed a line, as if leading to an endless place, as if the space here had also become a maze with no end.

In the underground space where there is no distinction between day and night, no one can tell the difference between day and night. The dead silence all around seems to swallow up even time.

Delphinium began to feel that the atmosphere here was a bit dull. Even though the surrounding environment was bright and open, it was difficult to erase the ubiquitous sense of disharmony. Most of the offices were like what she saw when she came here, with doors wide open and various furnishings scattered around, but no living things were seen.

This is very wrong.

Delphinium thought to herself.

Even if there was an attack by brutal beasts, there was no reason for the situation inside the Strategy Bureau to become as weird as it is now.

She could understand why the place was so quiet and deserted. After all, most people would choose to flee when faced with an attack from brutal beasts. In this regard, the employees of the Strategy Bureau were no different from ordinary people.

However, if things were really that simple, the Yi Ce Bureau should not be in the current situation.

The two biggest inconsistencies are: the buildings are too well preserved, and there are not enough corpses.

It wasn't that Kuija deliberately cursed the Yi Ce Bureau, but in fact, the crippled beast she had killed should have been wreaking havoc in the Yi Ce Bureau for quite some time.

The office where the crippled beast was located was hundreds of meters away from the lobby of the Strategy Bureau. With such a long distance, it was impossible for the crippled beast not to cause destruction and killing.

As a life form that is naturally full of violent instincts, the logic of a brutal beast's actions is often to kill any living thing, and destroy everything around it if there is no living thing.

Even the brutal beasts transformed from the evil followers of Black Cinders Dawn that appeared in Fangting City before could not restrain their instincts, and their action logic would be completely brutalized.

It doesn't make sense for such a life form to advance hundreds of meters and still completely suppress its instincts without causing any destruction.

Maybe that beast is really too special?

Delphinium guessed so, but she still couldn't convince herself.

If the situation at the beginning was beyond Delphinium's expectations, then the current situation has gone beyond her imagination, and the whole picture has begun to become confusing.

With many doubts and puzzles in mind, but these puzzles were not answered in the investigation, Cuiqiao finally walked out of the office area and returned to the first floor lobby of the Strategy Bureau.

Just like when she came, the hall was still empty. The huge spherical ceiling was inlaid with rows of lights, and the blazing white light was much brighter than the corridors in the office area.

Looking at the glass gates that extended in all directions outside the hall and imagining the usual prosperous scene here, Delphinium paused for a moment and shook her head.

She decided to check out the other floors.

She walked into the elevator next to the lobby and stood in the elevator car to observe for a while. She found that the elevator here only went down. The top floor was [-1F], and the other floors went down in sequence. Considering that this was an underground building, there was no problem with this arrangement. Delphinium didn't think much about it and clicked the [-2F] button.

Soon, the elevator door slowly closed, and a breeze blew in the car. Amidst bursts of roars, the elevator slowly descended, stopped after a moment, and displayed the information [-2F].

Nothing unexpected happened during the period, which surprised Delphinium.

Watching the elevator door slowly open with an expressionless face, Delphinium walked out of the elevator door and looked around the so-called underground second floor, trying to observe the general outline at the first possible moment.

However, when she saw the surrounding furnishings clearly, the scene before her made her brain buzz.

Because she didn't see any underground second floor. In front of her, it was still the bright hall of the underground first floor.

Is it that the elevator is not moving?

With such doubts in mind, Cuiqiao turned around and walked into the elevator car, looking at the screen above. However, the screen that said [-2F] in his memory had changed and showed [-1F].

Did I press the wrong button? Did I read it wrong?

Delphinium raised her head and tried to find the button in her memory, and when she did so, she realized how naive her previous thoughts were.

In fact, let alone the [-2F] button, she couldn't even find any other numbers.

[-1F]

[-1F]

[-1F]

[-1F]

[-1F]

All the buttons I saw had the same number written on them.

A series of buttons for the underground first floor were densely packed on the control panel. Only this one number could be found in the entire elevator car, as if it was silently sneering at Delphinium.

Standing there and looking at the control panel for a while, Jade Bird said nothing, moved his legs, jumped out of the elevator, and ran towards the staircase entrance on the side.

She used great strength to pull open the door of the stairwell and threw it aside. What came into view was a stairwell that led to both the upper and lower floors. Without thinking too much, she ran downstairs directly. When she reached the platform on the next floor, she suddenly opened the door of the stairwell and rushed into the space outside the door.

——The first thing that caught my eye was the hall.

The first floor lobby of the Strategy Bureau remained unchanged.

The empty hall, the bright white lights, the buzzing sound of electricity, everything was exactly the same as the space when she came here, without any change.

Delphinium had no expression on her face and continued running.

This time, her target was the main door of the hall - the glass gate through which she came.

After passing through the gate, what she saw was still the white passage she came from, as if she had finally arrived at a new space, but Delphinium's mood did not improve at all. She still ran forward with an expressionless face.

She had a vague feeling that things would not be that simple.

In fact, this was indeed the case. As she returned along the same path and returned to the space from which she should have come, what she saw was not what she expected at all.

What she saw was still the glass door.

A sandblasted glass door that dimly revealed the light from behind but obscured the view behind it. It was exactly the same as the one she had seen when she came here.

Delphinium looked at it for a while without showing any panic, and just continued to move forward. After passing through the glass gate, she raised her head and looked at the space behind the door again.

Of course, this time, what she saw did not surprise her.

This is still the hall of the Strategy Bureau.

Chapter 118 Lair

2023-04-30

At this moment, Delphinium finally understood what the sense of disharmony that she had been feeling was all along.

The faint sense of crisis that had been lingering in her heart since she entered the Strategy Bureau; the sense of alienation brought by the surrounding scenery; and a faint but familiar feeling of nausea. These senses mixed together and formed a sense of disharmony in her heart, sending her a warning and reminding her that something was wrong here.

After seeing this scene, Delphinium already had a vague answer in its mind as to what this space was.

However, in order to confirm this answer completely, she needed to do one more thing - go back to the office where the mutilated beast had been discovered.

With this thought in mind, Delphinium was unwilling to delay any longer and immediately mobilized her magic power to support her body to float up and fly in the direction of her memory.

She sped along the corridor, the scenery in the corridor flashed quickly in her peripheral vision, just like what she had seen before, without any change. But she had the answer in her mind, and she was no longer confused about it.

Ignoring possible interference along the way, Delphinium flew straight to the office where it had just discovered the crippled beast, then reached forward with one hand and pushed the door open.

When the office door opened, all she saw was an extremely ordinary office.

There were no corpses, no bloodstains, no ashes left by the remains of animals, only the same bright white light as in the other rooms, and various office supplies randomly placed there.

All traces disappeared, and all the clues that had been discovered before disappeared, as if they had never existed from the beginning.

However, seeing this scene, a gleam of light suddenly flashed in Delphinium's eyes.

There was no other reason than this; this was the answer she wanted.

"I see."

Speaking softly, looking at the situation in front of him, Delphinium did not take another step inside, but made a judgment with an extremely certain tone: "This is indeed the 'nest'."

The "nest" she mentioned is the iconic ability of the pupa-level beast.

As a symbol of the stage of the pupa-stage remnant beast, the common form of the "nest" is a distorted space that originally existed in reality, forming a layered and nested space maze.

The scene inside the "nest" is not created out of thin air, but is the product of intercepting and imitating the surrounding space based on its location, and then copying, proliferating and distorting all of it.

If the nest of a crippled beast is located in the desolate wilderness outside the city, then the form of its nest is an endless wasteland; if the nest is located in a lake, then the form of its nest is an endless ocean with no direction and can never reach the surface of the water.

Delphinium has seen such examples more than once, the most recent one even happening a few months ago.

At that time, Cui Jing discovered a pupa-stage remnant beast in the underground of Fangting City. The place where the remnant beast built its nest was the sewer of Fangting City, so the form of its nest was a series of overlapping and intertwined sewer pipes like an ant nest.

At that time, Delphinium was just like now. It stepped into the nest of the remaining beast while tracking down clues of the remaining beast, and was thus sucked into the maze.

Starting from this premise, Cuiqiao can give a reasonable explanation for everything she discovered after entering the Bureau of Strategy - because this is not the real Bureau of Strategy at all, but a nest of remnant beasts that has been simulated to look like the Bureau of Strategy.

The spatial composition of this nest is to copy and extend the space on the first floor of the Bai'an City Strategy Bureau, and splice together countless spaces similar to the "first floor" to finally form a complete nest.

Delphinium was not trapped in a strange bureau from which she could not get out, but there were countless "first levels of strange bureaus" around her. Although these "first levels" had exactly the same spatial structure and copied the appearance of all inanimate objects, they were unable to copy living things.

Therefore, there would naturally be no corpses or bloodstains in this office, because the "first floor" where the victims were killed was not the same space as where Delphinium was.

Delphinium came here to confirm this.

However, as she solved the mystery, another problem emerged before her.

That is, this pupa-level remnant beast is definitely unusual. If it were an ordinary pupa-level remnant beast, it would definitely not be able to do such a thing.

The "nests" of ordinary remnant beasts only imitate the basic elements of the surrounding space. Similar to the camouflage of a chameleon, the purpose is to hide its nest and make it less obvious, so the nest of the remnant beast is often just a crude imitation of the original space around it.