Purple-black magic dispersed through the air, the stench of blood and rot growing stronger, and the Ravager’s screeches echoed through the nest. The Spider’s figure gradually beca shrouded by a magical smokescreen, and that once-clear silhouette twisted under the gazes of the two Magical Girls, accompanied by a tooth-grinding, sinew-stretching sound.
The shadow grew taller from its forr human size, rging with the spider Ravager beneath it. Once the smoke cleared, standing before the two was no longer the man from earlier, but a monstrous creature with an upright torso, wrapped entirely in an exoskeleton.
This creature was roughly the sa height as that white spider from before. One could still vaguely make out its original appearance, though it was unclear what relation it had to the Spider. But after transforming, it had further mutated, becoming even more terrifying.
Gazing at Veronica, who was trapped in the web of flesh and blood along with her Magical Armor, the creature raised its head slightly, opened its mandibles, and let out a screech that sounded eerily like a laugh.
However, during those few seconds in which he transford, Veronica wasn’t just standing still.
Almost the mont the purple-black magic exploded, the Heartstone beneath her neck and her eyes both began to glow. Brilliant blue light surged from the flesh around her. Then, in the instant she locked eyes with the Ravager, she burst through the bindings around her.
Suppressing the sharp pain that struck her head at the sa ti, Veronica propelled herself forward with her Magical Armor and shouted, “Deng Zhan, now!”
The enemy had chosen to beco a Ravager—there was nothing left to say. All that remained was a fight to the death.
Dark brown magic flowed down with her words. The glowing nail gun crackled as it fired, launching a barrage toward the creature on the ground.
“Eeek—”
The Ravager responded to the Magical Girls’ attack with a screech of its own. Purple-black magic surged upward from the surroundings, and the two Magical Girls were instantly locked in battle with it.
After a brief flurry of blasts and impacts, the two Magical Girls withdrew from the magic smokescreen and landed on the ground.
“D*mn—hard!” Deng Zhan shook her hand with a pained look. “Its shell is even tougher than a chrysalis shell! Is the Molting stage really this strong?”
“…No.” Veronica replied coldly, “That thing’s not Molted.”
“Eh?” Deng Zhan tilted her head in surprise. “Then it’s a chrysalis?”
“It’s not a chrysalis either.”
Veronica released the Masterpiece Blade she was gripping. Threads rewove themselves into a new weapon—this ti, a greatsword-like weapon appeared in her hands. “Strictly speaking, this kind of creature should be called a ‘Shell-Breaker,’ or a ‘Half-Molted.’”
“That’s such a weird halfway na…” Deng Zhan mumbled.
“A true Molted is sothing only Flower-tier can handle.”
Gripping her greatsword tightly, Veronica lowered her stance and dropped her voice. “If that really was a fully Molted, you wouldn’t have even lived long enough to see .”
“For real?” Deng Zhan looked genuinely shocked. “I thought Bud-tier could already go toe-to-toe with a Molted. I an, usually a strong Leaf-tier can solo a chrysalis, right?”
“Ravager evolution stages are based on their life cycles—not directly aligned with Magical Girl blooming stages.”
Veronica sighed. “How are you a Bud-tier and still don’t know that? What’s your current Badge ID?”
“White…”
Deng Zhan answered awkwardly, mumbling, “I just advanced to Bud-tier earlier this year, but I failed the Badge ID test in March…”
Veronica gave her a helpless glance and was just about to speak when threads of flesh suddenly burst out of the smokescreen, shooting straight toward them.
The expressions of the two Magical Girls turned serious. They leapt in opposite directions, dodging the incoming strike.
But to their surprise, the thread shot toward them lacked power. After missing its mark, it flew a short distance further, then struck the wall of the nest and exploded with a wet “splat” into a bloody ss.
Almost simultaneously, the entire nest echoed with that sa “splat” sound—over and over, nonstop.
Hearing the sound, Veronica paused briefly, then suddenly seed to realize sothing. She shouted toward Deng Zhan, “Barrier!”
“Eh?” Deng Zhan responded with confusion but reflexively pulled out a Favored Rune from her sleeve. A Magical Barrier instantly ford in front of her.
It wasn’t over yet. Veronica also deployed her Magical Armor. The threads wove together once more, forming a hollow protective sh that enveloped both of them.
Then, a thunderous boom shook the entire nest violently.
“What the h*ll is this?” Over the noise, Deng Zhan raised her voice and asked Veronica.
“It’s the nest.”
Veronica stared intently at the space outside her Magical Armor and spat her words through clenched teeth. “That last nest belonged to that big guy turned puppet—this one is its real nest.”
“A nest beyond chrysalis stage—does that an…”
Deng Zhan considered Veronica’s words and looked up alongside her.
After the explosion, the two were now completely inside a different space.
Gone was the Counterasure Bureau’s signature blinding white light and silver walls. The nest had changed entirely. Before them stretched a grotesque, stomach-churning sight.
—It was a damp nest littered with shattered bones and remains.
Everywhere the eye could see, there were corpses. Severed limbs covered the ground. No battlefield, no execution ground could possibly match the horror displayed before them.
The stench here was even more nauseating than in the previous giant Ravager’s nest. It pierced through the Magical Armor’s sh and nearly made Deng Zhan vomit.
Veronica, however, showed no reaction.
Of course, she wasn’t entirely numb—but such feelings weren’t her focus right now.
Looking past the bones that filled the surroundings, Veronica’s gaze locked onto the center of the cavern.
At the center stood another massive fleshy spiderweb, nearly identical to the one before. Countless tumors hung densely from it, like slabs of pork in a slaughterhouse freezer.
And on that spiderweb were several very different figures.
Several girls of varying sizes and clothes—but all cloaked in golden robes—were hanging silently there.
Each of them was tightly bound in fleshy webbing, wrapped like a dumpling, suspended motionless at the center of the web. Only the faint glow of magic around them proved they were still alive.
But it was obvious to any discerning eye—
They wouldn’t last much longer.
The fleshy spider silk binding them looked like a series of tubes, continuously draining magic from their bodies and funneling it into the spiderweb above. Each ti the threads pulsed, the auras of Cat Tail and the others grew even fainter.
The price of their magic being constantly siphoned was that the figures of the Magical Girls had already started to fade, even turning slightly transparent—this ant their True Forms had been damaged.
At this rate, it was only a matter of ti before the Magical Girls of the investigation squad were completely dead.
“Senior Cat Tail…” Deng Zhan saw the scene too and reflexively started to call out, but was stopped by Veronica’s outstretched hand.
“They’re still alive.” Veronica shook her head. “Don’t get distracted—deal with the enemy first.”
“Hoo, I know.” Deng Zhan tried to calm herself down, though her heart was still filled with rage and shock. “It’s treating them like…”
“What it needs is magic. And Magical Girls with a high enough blooming stage can produce it endlessly. With a monster’s non-existent moral boundaries, of course it would do sothing like this.”
Veronica lowered her arm and said gravely, “Be careful. This thing’s abilities don’t stop here. Even if it’s not a full Molted, now that it’s broken past the chrysalis-tier limit, even its nest has changed.”
Though not complete, a “Shell-Breaker”—a Half-Molted—is fundantally different from a chrysalis.
Just as the term suggests, a Ravager evolving from “chrysalis” to “Molted” is like an insect erging from its cocoon into adulthood—a massive leap in life stage.
And as a signature ability of chrysalis-tier Ravagers, their nest undergoes violent change once they begin to ascend toward Molted.
“You an, its nest already has rules?” Deng Zhan asked with a serious expression.
“Eighteen out of ten chances, yeah. Just like our Domains.”
Veronica looked around, searching for traces related to the enemy’s ability. “You’d better activate your Domain now. Otherwise, in this nest that only has its rules, we’ll be at a serious disadvantage.”
So-called “rules” are a special application of soul power.
Whether a Magical Girl has reached Bud-tier and awakened her Domain, or a Ravager has broken through the chrysalis-tier limit and touched the Molted stage—as their souls strengthen and their will and spirit begin to manifest, they develop abilities known as rules.
These rules only take effect within a Magical Girl’s Domain or a Ravager’s nest.
Because they co from the soul and will, the abilities granted by rules are bizarre and diverse. But more often than not, they are linked in so way to a Magical Girl’s Magical Armor.
After all, a Magical Armor’s ability stems from the True Form, and the True Form includes the soul. So the formation of Magical Armor and Domain rules are closely intertwined.
Veronica had once seen a Magical Girl whose Magical Armor was a stopwatch. Her Domain rule was the ga “Red Light, Green Light.” That rule activated together with the stopwatch. As long as the stopwatch stopped ticking, everything in the Domain—including the Magical Girl herself—had to freeze in place. Otherwise, any moving limb would begin to rapidly age. If the rule was violated too many tis, the limb could decay into a pile of dust.
As the master of the Domain, the Magical Girl’s greatest advantage was—she knew when the stopwatch would stop. So as long as her stopwatch was ticking normally, she could move freely.
In contrast, enemies who didn’t know when it would stop could only remain motionless, barely daring to breathe, much less move. Naturally, they’d fall into a severe disadvantage when fighting her.
This is the terrifying power of rules—so long as the soul and will aren’t vastly weaker than the enemy’s, within one’s own Domain, the enemy must follow the rule. Otherwise, they’ll pay a dreadful price.
However, when Veronica made her suggestion, Deng Zhan suddenly went silent.
Veronica found this strange and asked, “What’s wrong? You can’t use your Domain?”
“No, it’s not that.” Deng Zhan looked up slightly, replying a bit helplessly, “It’s just… my Domain might not be all that convenient to use here.”
“I understand. I won’t pry into your Domain rules.” Veronica stopped and looked at her. “Just tell what to do and when.”
She could understand a Magical Girl’s reluctance to reveal her Domain rule—after all, the greatest power of a rule lies in the information gap. The less the enemy knows about the rule, the more lethal it becos.
A rule that the enemy knows, no matter how terrible the consequences for breaking it, will lose much of its threat.
However, after hearing her words, Deng Zhan still shook her head. “That’s not the problem. I actually don’t care that much if others know my rule—it’s just…”
“Just?” Veronica raised an eyebrow.
“My Domain rule… even I can’t control it.” Deng Zhan looked embarrassed. “I often end up hurting myself during Domain training, so…”
She didn’t get to finish her sentence—because the Ravager’s attack began once more.
A spider claw sharp like a spear stabbed forth from the darkness, crashing into the barrier of Veronica’s Magical Armor. It didn’t shatter it, but it easily pierced a hole through.
Once the claw stabbed into the interior, several threads of bloody spider silk followed through the hole, lunging straight for Veronica’s head.
Veronica had never dropped her guard, so the mont the attack began, she reacted. She raised her hand and conjured another barrier, blocking the spider silk’s strike.
“Then ti it right—try to affect the enemy in one go.”
Even amid close combat, she still spoke. Then, wielding her Magical Armor transford into a Masterpiece Blade, she swung at the attacking spider claw.
Zzzzzhhht!
A tooth-grating screech rang out. The blade struck the claw, even sending off sparks.
One blow didn’t succeed, but Veronica remained calm, her mind clear as glass. She propelled herself in a rapid sequence of aerial maneuvers, leaping from the claw’s location straight to the Ravager’s upper body.
She aid to activate her Magical Armor and land a high-power strike at close range. Wrapping the Masterpiece around both hands, she turned it into a pair of massive gauntlets.
But just as she was about to throw a punch, she realized—her elbow wouldn’t bend. Not even a little.
She glanced down at her arm and saw that, at so point, spider silk had wrapped around her joint, locking it in place.
—Rule.
That word surfaced again in her mind. But before Veronica could move again, a spider claw ca stabbing up from below.
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