Chapter 71: Driven to the Brink of Death

These days, Wakaba had continuously challenged it, making it extremely sensitive to her presence.

Puff!

The ground in front of Wakaba burst open, and the fierce wind pressure scattered the light drizzle around her. This was not the explosion of a shell, but merely the turbulence created when the Naked Fiend rushed over at a speed of over a hundred meters per second.

Wakaba's field of vision was completely dominated by this two-meter-tall Naked Fiend.

Only upon viewing it at such close range did she notice that its originally crimson body had turned as dark and bloody as ink, resembling flowing, viscous blood.

"So strong! Is this thing really already weakened?" Wakaba wondered doubtfully in her heart.

Yet she had no time to ponder further. A streak of black radiance, carrying unparalleled sharpness, magnified within her pupils with absolute clarity.

"I can 'see' it!" Instead of fear, Wakaba felt a surge of joy.

After ten instances of consciousness sublimation, she could finally see her opponent's blade clearly.

Almost instinctively, her body arched backward. The Naked Fiend's blade chased straight after her, and just as it was about to graze the tip of her nose, it abruptly changed direction, slashing downward. Furthermore, far from losing speed, its velocity exploded by a huge margin.

Guided by her spiritual perception, however, Wakaba seemed to have anticipated this moment. Halfway through her backward bend, she decisively rolled to the side.

Though it looked somewhat ungraceful, it resulted in only a soft tearing sound as the opponent's blade merely sliced a small cut on her arm.

She had dodged it!!!

A wave of joy washed over Wakaba: Not only could she see it now, but she had actually managed to dodge it?

She could not explain why she was able to evade it. It felt as simple as watching an apple fall in a straight line; the moment she saw the opponent's blade, she instinctively felt it would head in that exact direction.

In the eyes of others, the opponent's blade defied the laws of inertia, acting completely erratically and unpredictably.

Yet in her eyes, the opponent's blade was not devoid of patterns; rather, it followed an entirely different set of rules.

As for what those rules were, she could not put them into words—she could only faintly sense them.

The moment she dodged that strike, the communication glasses worn by the one hundred and thirty-some magical girls forming the encirclement flashed with a sea of red bug symbols.

For a moment, they forgot to pull their triggers, standing frozen in place at a complete loss.

"She actually dodged it!" Outside the encirclement, Aokura Kichio, who had been watching the scene unfold from a chair, stood up.

She was well aware of how terrifying this Blight Beast's slashes were.

Not only were they fast, but that trajectory of slashing while ignoring inertia was practically a bug in the world's fabric.

Even the core-brain could not analyze it because there was no pattern—let alone calculate it.

This was precisely why the magical girl communicators of the "Aokura Blade" had flashed with bug symbols.

Inside the encirclement:

After rolling a few times, Wakaba's body was covered in mud, and she had not yet managed to climb up from the ground.

The rain curtain above her head split open once more. Before the Naked Fiend's figure even became clear, an overwhelmingly fierce slash descended.

Rip!

The moisture in the air was not pushed aside by the slash; instead, it was cleanly cut through into a straight vertical line, exaggerated to the absolute limit.

Wakaba hurriedly rolled half a turn in the opposite direction, successfully avoiding the area where the slash landed.

Yet just as the Naked Fiend's blade was about to hit the ground, it miraculously bent ninety degrees once again, shifting from a downward chop to a horizontal sweep intended to cut Wakaba in half.

Under the guidance of her spiritual perception, Wakaba anticipated this development once again.

Supporting herself with one hand, she flipped her body backward. Magical power erupted from her palms, propelling her three meters backward like a spring. When she landed, her feet sank into the mud, and she sprawled ungracefully onto the ground.

Just as she was about to get up, the rain curtain in front of her was torn apart once more. Before the black blade even arrived, the sharp sensation of cutting was already upon her.

Thud!

At the very nick of time, Wakaba gave up on getting up and sat flat on the ground.

The horizontal slash missed its target; under normal circumstances, it would have swept right over the top of her head.

Yet in less than a split second, the two-meter-long slender blade maintained its speed, drawing an obtuse-angled fold as it slashed directly toward her neck.

Whoosh!!

Wakaba's left hand jerked sharply. A thin silver wire had somehow already entangled a broken tree stump seven meters away.

The pulling force dragged her to the left, narrowly evading the opponent's blade by a hair's breadth, leaving only a shallow cut on the side of her neck from which bright red blood trickled out.

The slash came again, and she continued her desperate, ungraceful evasion...

She could not counterattack; evasion was her absolute limit.

The magical girls forming the encirclement were utterly shocked.

Dodging once could be attributed to luck; dodging twice could also be luck. But three times, four times... that was no longer luck!

They could not comprehend how she, clearly a magical girl in the Awakening Stage just like them—at most a Second-Stage magical girl—could hold out for so long against a semi-mature Blight Beast.

Magical girl ranks, much like those of Blight Beasts, were divided during the Awakening Stage into the First, Second, and Third Stages.

Breaking through each tier required absorbing one hundred Blight Beast core crystals of the corresponding level.

"Young Master, that person is incredible. Merely at the Second Awakening Stage, she has managed to hold out against the Naked Fiend for so long. If we were to recruit him into our ranks—" Aokura Reiko choked back the rest of her words midway.

For she noticed the stern gaze cast by her master.

Drawing upon years of experience serving by her master's side, she keenly sensed that her master was in a foul mood.

Staring fixedly at the battle within the encirclement with a cold gaze, Aokura Kichio spoke clearly, "Aoi, patch into my neural link and activate auxiliary calculation mode."

"Executing code 000AX1. Core-brain—Aoi connecting..."

A series of electronic chimes echoed in Aokura Kichio's mind.

Her entire aura underwent a sudden transformation, suffused with a faint oppressive pressure.

In particular, a vast amount of data scrolled across the electronic prosthetic lenses of her eyes as her consciousness gradually merged with the core-brain—Aoi.

Had Wakaba known this, she would have been utterly astounded.

"Core-brain" was a designation exclusive to core-level quantum computers. In other words, this person actually carried a core-brain around with her.

She had to remember that when she originally destroyed Ansen Pharmaceuticals, the core-brain belonging to that corporation occupied several entire rooms in volume.

Yet Aokura Kichio's core-brain could actually be shrunk down to the scale of an implantable prosthesis—it was simply unheard of.

Once Aokura Kichio linked with the core-brain, the bug symbols on the communicators worn by the one hundred and thirty-some magical girls in the encirclement vanished.

While a core-brain could not "comprehend" scenes that defied the fundamental principles of the world, a human brain could.

Aokura Kichio eliminated the anomalous data and issued attack commands to all the magical girls in the encirclement.

The one hundred and thirty-some magical girls froze for a moment, hesitation flashing across their faces. But remembering something immediately afterward, a trace of fear surfaced in their eyes, and one by one, they pulled the triggers of their SPG-A spear-launching cannons toward Wakaba's position.

Bang, bang, bang... !

The terrifying impact noise of the recoils resonated one after another. Fierce artillery fire pierced through the rain curtain, boring dense channels through the mist pervading the mountain forest like termites gnawing at wood.

Rumble... !

Explosions engulfed the area where Wakaba and the Blight Beast were located. The resulting fireball expanded to nearly ten meters across; though quickly extinguished by the rainwater, the generated shockwave sent soil, wood debris, and muddy water flying half a meter high across a radius of over a dozen meters.

As for the mud and rocks kicked up from the center of the explosion, they blossomed like a massive wave within the mountain forest, forcefully blowing open a cavity in the misty rain curtain.

Aokura Kichio had issued a continuous attack order.

Just two seconds after the first round of bombardment concluded, having reloaded their shells, the next wave of artillery fire roared out.

Aoo-roo-roo—!

The howling of the Naked Fiend echoed from within.

This time, it failed to dodge in time as it had previously.

Benefiting from Wakaba's formidable evasion capabilities, it had been restricted to a narrow zone and was struck alongside Wakaba by the salvo of artillery fire.

Powerful as it was, its legs were blown off, after which it was swallowed by the subsequent wave of bombardment... and finally perished amidst its own roars.

After the fifth round of artillery fire ceased, a full three minutes passed before the smoke, dust, and water mist dissipated.

An eight-meter-wide crater came into view before everyone. The crater was deep, and the scorched earth inside was searingly hot, causing the rainwater falling upon it to hiss.

The Naked Fiend's body had been blown into over a dozen pieces. One of those pieces was its skull, the top of which had been blasted open, revealing a blood-red core crystal.

The two-meter-long slender samurai sword it wielded lay at the bottom of the crater, its severed hand still attached to the hilt.

As for Wakaba, she had been obliterated without a trace; not a single piece of clothing or recognizable chunk of flesh remained. She was dead beyond all doubt.

Upon witnessing this, Aokura Kichio nodded with satisfaction and said to Aokura Reiko beside her, "Go bring me the core crystal."

"Understood, Young Master." Aokura Reiko nodded, leaping seven meters in a single bound as she sprinted toward the crater.

At a moment when no one was paying attention:

Deep within the crater, the flesh and blood of the Naked Fiend began to slowly wriggle under the influence of an unspeakable force.

The creation of a clone had begun...