Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku - Volume 3 - Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

AND ET CETERA

  Shadow Gale

Shadow Gale and Pfle had moved over to the shop in the Evil King’s castle area, and they were sticking firm to their spot. Shadow Gale was modifying a stun gun with her wrench and scissors, while Pfle was watching from her carpet.

Shadow Gale didn’t think Pfle understood what was being done. Knowledge and skills wouldn’t help you comprehend the principles behind magic-based modification. Pfle had to be pretending to watch Shadow Gale work while her mind was actually on something else.

The message from Pfle came immediately after Shadow Gale had discovered Nokko.

Meet up with me at the Evil King’s castle. Hurry. Until we see each other, no further contact needed.

The message was brief. When Pfle sent brief messages, it meant they had to hurry. Shadow Gale retrieved Nokko’s magical phone, but she was forced to leave her charred remains on the spot. She merely pressed her hands together before she left.

She never did find out who had killed Nokko. All that remained with her was the feeling that she had failed to protect her. It took all her strength to carry her heavy legs to the Evil King’s castle, and before long, she was joined by Pfle.

Shadow Gale reported Nokko’s death in a tight, strained voice.

On her magic carpet, Pfle asked, “Really?” to which Shadow Gale emphasized that there was no mistaking it. Pfle received that with an “Oh” and didn’t reveal her thoughts on the matter.

Once they arrived at the shop terrace in the Evil King’s castle, Pfle finally began sharing what she had witnessed.

Pfle had been going after Clantail and the others, following the trail of a chase and a fight. She’d passed the rubble of a building, a massive crater, and then a big hole in the ground. Immediately, Clantail had emerged from it. Pfle had hidden in the shadow of a high-rise to watch her.

Clantail’s lower body had been transformed into a gecko, the same one as during the Great Dragon fight, most likely in order to climb up out of the hole. Pechka had been under her right arm, Lazuline her left, and she’d had a severed head tied to her waist. It was an extremely gruesome sight. Pfle said that Clantail had been completely soaked, dripping water on the ground.

“I was a ways away, but neither Pechka nor Lazuline seemed to be alive—they were both wounded and hadn’t been healed. As for the severed head…I couldn’t see the face from my position, but judging from the hair color and style, as well as the general circumstances, I’m almost certain it was Melville.” In other words, Clantail, Lazuline, and Pechka had most likely clashed with Melville, and only Clantail had survived in the end, Pfle concluded.

Clantail had then turned her lower body into a horse and begun trudging toward town. Pfle had rushed toward the Evil King’s castle, she said, taking care to avoid Clantail’s notice. “I believe she was headed to the wasteland town to bury their bodies. Now then, next.”

Having finished sharing her information with Shadow Gale, Pfle pulled out her magical phone and pressed the HELP button. The wind blowing through the terrace teased her hair and fluttered the edges of her magic carpet. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about it, and yet, something was strange.

A black-and-white hologram appeared above the screen. “What do you need, pon?”

Pfle asked, “Can I take it that the goal of this game has been to gather and punish the magical girls who passed Cranberry’s exams?”

The directness of her statement gave Fal pause for about two seconds. “No, pon.” Then, “If the purpose of gathering the magical girls who passed Cranberry’s exams was punishing them, there would be a number of easier ways to do it, pon. The point of this game was to get them together and test to see if they were really worthy of continuing as magical girls…or that’s what it was supposed to be, pon.”

“Hmph. I see. Then…what about Lazuline? Even after all our memories were restored, she said she’d never heard of the Musician of the Forest, Cranberry.”

“Huh? Hold on. What do you mean, pon?” Fal had no facial expressions, and scattering scales was the only means the hologram had of conveying feeling. But the mascot’s voice had gone shrill. “Lazuline didn’t know the Musician of the Forest, Cranberry, pon?”

“Listen, Fal. Though I’m sure it’s unlikely, just in case, could you check with the master for me?” Pfle was the only one there who was calm. With a hand in her hair, she twirled the ends around her fingers, brought the curls in front of her eye patch, and held them up to the sunlight. Could she see what she was doing? “You didn’t bring Lazuline in because you mistook the current one for the old one, did you?” Pfle spread her fingers again to release the hair, and her curl dropped back down. “If someone familiar with the faces of the participants in question had made the selection, I’m sure no errors would have been made. However, if an outsider who didn’t participate in the exam selected participants simply based on documents that she’d intercepted, I’m sure she would make mistakes of this nature.”

Shadow Gale was surprised. Lazuline hadn’t had any connection to Cranberry? This was new information. Had Pfle figured this out based on the fact that Lazuline was the second magical girl by that name, and the fact that she didn’t know of Cranberry?

“Personally,” Pfle continued, “I do see myself as a victim, though. If the families of the magical girls who died in my exam came and said to me, You monster! Don’t play the victim, then I’d be unable to refute them. And I can understand the concerns about those like us passing Cranberry’s exams and joining the ranks. As an involved party, I’d want to deny such concerns, but objectively speaking, I couldn’t really argue… However. How could you bring in an innocent magical girl with no connection whatsoever to those murderous exams? If you tell me that’s acceptable, then any justice this game might claim to have is false.” Palms up, Pfle faced Fal. “This is cruel, isn’t it? What did Lazuline do? There was no reason to force her to participate in this game—and of course, no reason for her to die, either!”

The volume of scales sparking off Fal’s body increased. Pfle’s tone was increasingly intense. “Is there any point in this game if it lacks justice? No, there is not. Tell that to the master. Tell them to put a swift end to this and release us.”

Fal froze. The scattered scales faded and disappeared. “This is a notice from the master, pon. It has been acknowledged that what happened with Lapis Lazuline was an accident, pon.”

“How wonderful that she’s so gracious about it.”

“But having said that, even the master cannot stop a game in progress, pon. The program will not end unless you fulfill the designated completion requirement, pon.”

“That’s not very convincing.” Pfle was talking, but Shadow Gale was not even trying to follow her meaning. She was just watching.

“The rationale for this game has already collapsed. Whether it will be stopped or not is not something for you to decide.”

Fal didn’t reply, and Pfle continued.

“You dragged in Lazuline, an entirely blameless magical girl, but now you say standard operating procedures prevent you from putting a halt to the game? How very bureaucratic! We’re being forced into participating in a game that should have ended long ago.” Pfle’s voiced echoed in Shadow Gale’s skull. She wanted to hold her head and keel over.

Pfle was trying to use Lazuline as a bargaining chip. When Lazuline had first said she didn’t know Cranberry, Pfle must have become aware of her position in the game. If Pfle had used Fal to tell the master what she was explaining now, then maybe Lazuline wouldn’t have had to die. But even knowing what she did, Pfle hadn’t done anything.

Something was swirling around inside Shadow Gale’s chest. It was black, the color that resulted from mixing the others together. It was muddied. Even Shadow Gale couldn’t see through it.

“I demand…,” Pfle began.

Shadow Gale looked at Pfle’s back. Her long hair hid most of it. Occasionally, a gust of wind swayed her curls, giving Shadow Gale just a glimpse. Her back was not large at all, but she was poised. Her back conveyed her belief that she was in the right.

“…that you put an end to this game right now!”

“That’s not an option for the master anymore, pon. If the Evil King is eliminated, the game will end that instant, pon. Please, defeat the Evil King quickly.”

Pfle turned off her phone, and Fal disappeared. That final exchange had made Shadow Gale’s face twist. One shallow remark pierced deep into her with terrible violence.

If the Evil King is eliminated, the game will end that instant.

“Hold on, please,” said Shadow Gale. “That can’t be right. If the Evil King goes away, the game ends immediately. And the Evil King was one of the magical girls here, the one obstructing the game. She was killing a lot of people, right? And you said Melville’s head was cut off, didn’t you, miss? So then why isn’t the game over?” Shadow Gale sensed that for the first time in a very long time, she had been able to snap back at Pfle. It might have been nothing more than a puppy’s soft nip, but it was probably the first time she had argued with her since they’d gotten their memories back. Even as Shadow Gale recognized the hints of unease lurking in Pfle’s words, she was glad that she’d been able to argue. “Melville did everything, right? Melville was the Evil King?”

“I…did think that Melville was the Evil King,” Pfle replied.

“I mean, she was, right? You said so, didn’t you?”

“I believed that assassinating the other players was something only the Evil King would do.”

“Nobody but the Evil King would have done that,” Shadow Gale said.

“This means that while she was the most likely candidate, she was not, in fact, the Evil King. If she were, then the game would already be over. So therefore, she was not the Evil King but just a player who went around killing the others. I can only speculate as to her motives for such violence, but judging from her costume, I can imagine. Essentially, she wanted a killing match.”

“There’s no way…”

“I won’t entirely discard the possibility that Melville is the Evil King. She may have used her magic to camouflage herself to make Clantail believe she’d cut off her head…but that wouldn’t explain why Nokko was burned to death.” She had left their ranks without a word, and then someone had burned her to cinders. The murder weapon was probably the flamethrower sold in the Evil King’s castle. No other weapon could kill someone like that.

“What we need to do,” said Pfle, “is prepare ourselves for anyone to be the Evil King.”

“What if we get killed before we’re ready?”

“I’ve already taken care of that.” Pfle turned on her magical phone. “Those doll remains and the tiny girl who looked like Rionetta…that was most likely Rionetta’s real body. Do you recall that there was a magical phone lying beside her where she fell? When I checked it, I found multiple travel passes inside. If the owner of that phone was the one managing noncombat items, we can assume it was Pechka’s. Though it if it was Rionetta’s, that would be fine, too. I took the travel passes from that phone, as well as the number of travel passes in circulation since we arrived at the Evil King’s castle. The only passes in circulation are the ones you and I possess.”

“What about Clantail’s?”

“Passes are shared among a party, since they’re used on the party unit. Rionetta or Pechka must have been managing them all.”

“And what about Nokko and Lazuline?” Shadow Gale asked.

“I’ve been managing our party’s passes.”

“And Melville?”

“Judging from the number of passes in circulation right now and the number of passes we hold, she has zero. Being that all that’s left of Melville is a severed head, her body must have been horribly damaged in battle, and her magical phone destroyed along with it.” Pfle summoned up their item list and showed it to Shadow Gale. The number for the travel passes was on the display: an unbelievable 10,000 (10,000). The maximum number for the travel passes was ten thousand, and the number of passes in circulation was also ten thousand, so no more could be purchased. Pfle grinned boldly. “I bought them all. The passes lose effect a day after use, but they’re not depleted if they’re never used. Now no one but us can travel between areas.”

It would have required an incredible amount of magical candy in order to monopolize the travel passes. There was no way you could gather that much by diligently hunting monsters and finishing quests. Shadow Gale had been the one to gather that candy. The amount used to buy up all those passes was only a fraction of Shadow Gale’s earnings. She had gathered that much candy through her grinding efforts.

When Masked Wonder’s Miracle Coin had been stolen, Fal had told them that if an event item goes out of circulation, the event will recur. Pfle had zeroed in on that rule. By selling the Dragon Shield won through defeating the Great Dragon, they had revived the dragon to defeat it again. You could easily make a fortune in magical candy by repeating this over and over.

Fighting the normal way, they never would have been able to defeat the Great Dragon with just the two of them, but there was a way to get around that. Pfle had most likely realized it before they’d even fought the dragon. Right in the middle of the fight, Shadow Gale had looked at Melville attacking the dragon from outside the red line and figured it out. If you attacked from outside the red line, you could defeat it safely without ever giving it a chance.

But neither Pfle nor Shadow Gale had any weapons or abilities that would enable them to attack from a distance like Clantail’s spears, Melville’s javelins, Daisy’s beam, the samurai girl’s slash, or Lazuline’s teleportation. Pfle’s high-powered wheelchair with its built-in killer laser had already been destroyed.

Pfle had ordered Shadow Gale to modify the toy bow and arrow they’d acquired through R, and she’d made it into a large, mounting-style firing device. Its ammunition was the Dragon-Killer dagger. As long as it hit, it could kill any dragon in one strike, no matter how massive the beast. If she missed, she just had to return the Dragon-Killer to her magical phone by canceling the item summon.

Pfle had spent some of the magical candy they’d stored up via this method to buy up all of R. With R, the rarer the item, the lower the drop rate, but even the most common item, the map, had a circulation limit. Once the total stock of maps hit the maximum, you would no longer receive a map from a pull. By sheer force of wealth, they had acquired all the R items with their massive abundance of candy.

The items acquired through R were mostly just mundane objects and not the sort that would meet Pfle’s standards, so she zeroed in on something else. Even mundane items could become weapons if Shadow Gale modified them, like the toy bow and arrow she had transformed into the large firing device.

Pfle tossed a plethora of these mundane items out of her magical phone, telling Shadow Gale to go on and modify them.

“This is too much,” said Shadow Gale.

“We’re going to do it anyway. We don’t have that much time left.”

“We do have time, don’t we? I mean, no one can travel now, right?”

“Only for the next two days. Then there will be the premaintenance period event.”

Shadow Gale gasped. For the premaintenance event, all the surviving magical girls would be forcibly summoned to the square. Whether or not they had travel passes, they would be forced to come face-to-face.

“We’re both the noncombat magical girls. If the Evil King is a fighting magical girl, we’ll be unable to strike back, and we’ll die. But if we can equip ourselves now, we’ll have a chance at victory. With your skills, it must work out somehow. First, let’s finish this job.”

For the next two days, Shadow Gale poured all her effort into creating weapons. She wouldn’t call it “being worked like a slave” because Pfle was helping her out and following her directions. She managed to create a number of weapons, not because she’d gotten a helper, but because she was pushed by necessity and pressed for time. She managed this feat in spite of her client tormenting her with the unreasonable demand that she “should have an easier time of this, compared to the ten-legged tank.”

Most of these weapons were based on the stun gun.

The two mini-boss enemies in the Evil King’s castle, the knight and the robot, had filled out the end of the monster encyclopedia. There were no evil-type monsters anywhere, but for some reason, the shop sold a stun gun and a flamethrower, which were especially effective against evil-type monsters.

“At the very end of the game, you get to the shop in the Evil King’s castle, and it’s selling useless joke items? It’s difficult to believe. But if you took these items at face value, you should first consider the kind of enemies a weapon such as a stun gun would be used against. Yes, it’s for use on humans. So if the description says this weapon is especially effective against evil-type enemies, that must mean an evil-type enemy could only be one of us magical girls.” Pfle stated her thoughts and proposed that Shadow Gale should base most of the weapons on the stun gun and flamethrower. The stun gun was a self-defense weapon used to incapacitate opponents, while the flamethrower could only be used for killing. If Shadow Gale had to pick one, she had fewer emotional qualms about using the stun gun.

“Indeed, Mamori. But since I last confirmed the number in circulation, someone else has already bought another flamethrower. The enemy may not necessarily be as kind as you, Mamori, so keep that in mind.”

In the end, Shadow Gale used a flamethrower, too.

As they worked on their project, as Shadow Gale gave Pfle instructions and listened to Pfle’s requests, no unpleasant thoughts floated up in her mind, and she was able to converse naturally with her partner. Maybe they were just so immersed in the work, she didn’t have the time to worry about anything else.

It was the third day since their last login, the day of the premaintenance event. Both Shadow Gale and Pfle were on the Evil King’s castle terrace, quietly waiting for the time to come. Pfle was on her magic carpet, and so was Shadow Gale. Not sitting but kneeling and ready to jump off and go at any time. Pfle was sitting, as per usual.

The two of them were still and silent as the time passed. All that came into the shop in the Evil King’s castle was the occasional breeze blowing through. The scissors and wrench hanging from Shadow Gale’s belt rattled and swayed, creating the only sounds. The one thing changing was her mounting anxiety.

Their magical phones broke the silence with the message alert noise. Abruptly, their surroundings went dark.

An event is now beginning. Players, please gather in the square in the wasteland town.

They were transferred from the Evil King’s castle, with its stark whiteness and wafting sweet scent, to the wasteland town square, with its plain palette of gray, ocher, brown, and khaki. The transfer was sudden and casual; before Shadow Gale knew it, she was somewhere else. No nausea or rattling of her brain.

The wasteland town plaza was a plaza in name only. It was hushed and desolate.

No, that’s not right. Shadow Gale mentally corrected herself. During the very first event, she would have found all the magical girls gathered together to be a magnificent sight. It would be more accurate to say that the place seemed desolate during events now that their numbers had diminished. Back during the first event, there had been fifteen people, and now there were only three.

—Three people.

Pfle, Shadow Gale, and one more.

Shadow Gale looked around. The square was surrounded by buildings. With fifteen girls here, it had felt small. With three, it was huge. There was no cover. Just a broken-down fountain with a mermaid statue decorating it. The fountain was dry, and instead of water, a thin layer of sandy buildup was inside. Everything about this place was just as it had been the last time. No matter how many times they came here, it was the same. Shadow Gale looked around once more. There was no sign of anyone but the three of them.

She looked at the locator device in her hand. She’d turned a thermometer they’d acquired through R into a “superthermometer” with the added functionality of the map application that told them their party members’ locations. Pfle had teased her about the name she’d given it, calling it tasteless, but its functionality was no joke. It was a fantastic item that could be used to detect the surface temperature of objects and display them on the screen. Pfle had made her build it in a hurry, saying that if worse came to worst and Melville was still alive, they would be in real trouble without it.

According to the superthermometer, there were only three magical girls in the square.

“There’s no one else.” She tried saying it out loud. Nobody replied.

Pfle looked around cautiously and activated her magical phone. It lit up, sparkled, and a holographic image appeared. “Now then, about the event this time. The Miracle Coin contest will recur—”

“Hold on,” Pfle said to Fal.

“What is it, pon?”

“I’ve asked this before, but I want to confirm this with you one more time. There’s no way to avoid the forced transportation to the premaintenance period event, correct?”

“No, pon. The players are forcibly summoned for the premaintenance period event, and all magical girls in the game, no matter who, will be gathered in the plaza, pon. If they don’t reach it in time, they will be forcibly teleported, pon.”

Pfle turned her head ninety degrees to the side and then faced forward again. It seemed she was scanning the area.

“By the way, what are you doing, pon?” asked Fal.

Shadow Gale was on Pfle’s magic carpet, too, just in case the Evil King, who’d been stuck in the wasteland area, had set traps in the square in preparation for the premaintenance period event while Pfle and Shadow Gale had been arming themselves. Shadow Gale was probably the only one of all the girls who would have been able to make explosive or electrical mechanical traps, but anyone could dig a pit.

But it seemed Fal’s question was not just about that, but also about their weapons. It was judging them for the arsenal Shadow Gale had procured. “Hey, hold on… Why has it come to this, pon? Obviously, the stun gun was being sold in the Evil King’s castle with the intention of making the magical girls fight one another in the final stages, pon. And the master also came up with the nasty idea of including a flamethrower so you all wouldn’t object to using the stun gun instead, pon. Why would you use something like that? It’s just what the master wants, pon.”

“None of your business. Shut your trap.” Shadow Gale dropped her magical phone on the ground and stepped on it with her toe to turn it off. Fal’s words were rumbling like an earthquake in her chest, and she felt like the pain would rip her apart. She didn’t want to hear this.

“I’d like to ask one thing,” said Pfle.

Yes. What Shadow Gale wanted to know was something else.

“Are you the Evil King?” she asked the magical girl standing on the opposite side of the fountain.

Today, she was a horse. Under the rays of the sun pouring into the square, Shadow Gale could see her robust musculature and beautiful coat, even at this distance. Her human upper body held a spear in its right hand, while in her left, she held a shield at the ready. Her horse’s tail swiped up to smack her rear.

“No.” Clantail’s reply was short and brief. She shot back an equally short, brief question. “What happened to Nokko?”

“She was killed,” said Pfle. “What happened to Pechka, Lazuline, and Melville?”

“Melville killed Pechka and Lazuline…” Clantail looked down as if in pain. “…And I killed Melville.” She raised her head sharply and glared at Pfle.

Pfle was calm. “You killed Melville? That’s impressive.” Clantail didn’t reply. Pfle continued, her tone casual. “Fal told me that if the Evil King dies, the game will end immediately.”

“…I’ve heard the same thing.”

Shadow Gale recalled how Pfle had tried to use Lazuline as bargaining chip, and pain pricked deep in her heart. Everything she’d forgotten for the two days she’d been working on those weapons in the Evil King’s castle came back to her.

“I killed Melville, so why isn’t the game over?!” Clantail cried out in frustration.

In a voice that was calm but resonant, Pfle replied, “It must be that Melville was not the Evil King.”

“Then it’s one of you two.”

“Neither of us is the Evil King. In other words, Clantail, you have to be the Evil King.”

The argument across the fountain and the fifty-foot-wide gap between them stopped for a moment. Clantail raised a leg and stamped the ground with a hoof. The kick was hard enough to shake the whole square and leave a deep impression on the ground. “I’m not the Evil King.”

“That’s just what the Evil King would say,” Pfle countered.

“Why were all the travel passes sold out? I couldn’t buy any.”

“Because I bought them all. We couldn’t have the Evil King coming into our area.”

“How did you get so much candy? You’d need fifty thousand to buy up all the travel passes.”

“Our plentiful stores of candy are a result of legitimate in-game efforts.”

“Because you’re the Evil King?”

“That hardly warrants an accusation.”

Clantail jumped. Her horse legs bent to build power, and then she leaped. A kick of her hoof, and the head of the mermaid statue adorning the fountain was shooting toward them. Shadow Gale blocked the head with the Dragon Shield, but Clantail was already looming in front of them.

Shadow Gale and Pfle split to the left and right. As she jumped to the side, Shadow Gale swung at Clantail with her wrench in an attempt to hold her back, but Clantail smacked upward with her shield and knocked it away behind Shadow Gale. Shadow Gale’s hand tingled. When Clantail followed her shield blow with a hoof, Shadow Gale somehow managed to block it with her own Dragon Shield. Even though her equipment was +12, the impact lifted her off the ground. Fortunately, her shield hand was not numbed.

From behind Clantail, Pfle thrust out a stun gun weapon. This one had been modified using a bamboo stick. It had far greater reach than the original stun gun, and it was flexible, too. Clantail slipped past the difficult-to-avoid attack by transforming her lower body into a snake and whipping her tail to hit Pfle behind her. Pfle blocked the tail-strike with her shield, but couldn’t absorb the full impact. She fell from her carpet and tumbled along the ground.

The difference in skill between combat and noncombat magical girls, as Pfle had put it, was clear to them. Even in a two-on-one fight, Clantail was insanely strong.

Clantail’s lower body transformed into a yellowish-brown creature with a tawny pattern and long legs—so long that she blocked out the sun. A giraffe. She raised up her spear. Shadow Gale was about to use her shield to block, but then a shiver of fear ran up her spine. The tip of Clantail’s spear rose up, sparkling, reflecting the sunlight from high in the heavens. Shadow Gale looked up, tossed away her shield on the hunch that this wasn’t going to work, and jumped to the side.

Clantail’s spear swung down, and as it did, she transformed from a giraffe into a tiger to increase the speed and power of her strike. Her spear sliced deep into the earth, making the ground shake. Even though it had to be just a weapon +7, with Clantail swinging it, even Shadow Gale’s Shield +12 couldn’t block it entirely. The wall that was the difference between their combat capabilities loomed grimly over Shadow Gale.

Clantail then spun around to slash her spear horizontally at Pfle, who had climbed onto her magic carpet again and was pressing in on Clantail from behind. Pfle lowered the height of her carpet and flattened herself down to evade the strike. It sliced off some of her hair, and her golden curls floated away and scattered.

For the first time, Clantail’s back was to Shadow Gale. Clantail’s back was broad and respectable. It seemed reliable somehow, in a different manner from Pfle’s. Seeing her back, something inside Shadow Gale’s heart whispered. Could a back that had shouldered the underhanded role of the Evil King be so dignified? Was Clantail really the Evil King?

Shadow Gale shook off the whispers and threw the net. This was an electromagnetic mesh that could cover a wide area. She’d made it by combining a rope from R with a stun gun. If she flung this at Clantail from behind, even she would have a hard time avoiding it.

She caught her target in the net, and before Clantail had even a moment to struggle, she was electrocuted. The stun gun could knock out a magical girl in one zap. Clantail’s knees hit the ground, and her head slumped. Shadow Gale was letting her guard down, thinking the fight was over, when the butt of Clantail’s spear came toward her.

Clantail was thrusting back without looking behind, and the handle of her spear skimmed Shadow Gale’s arm. It wasn’t a direct hit, but it split open the flesh of her right arm in a spurt of blood. An awful sound came from her bone. Shadow Gale screamed and clutched her wounded arm. Clantail turned around.

Clantail’s eyes were burning with anger. On her chest, a necklace flashed. It was a charm sold at one of the shops…the earth charm. It conferred resistance to lightning-elemental attacks.

Shadow Gale understood why the electrical net hadn’t worked. Clantail would just have had to peek at the item encyclopedia to know that someone had bought a large number of stun guns. So all she had to do was equip herself with the accessory that would give her resistance to electricity. That was the earth charm Clantail was wearing.

Faster than Clantail could swing down her spear, Pfle attacked Clantail from behind, and Clantail turned around to block with her shield. They both went in to swing at each other and dodge their respective hits.

Shadow Gale’s heart was still whispering. Did you see Clantail’s eyes just now? That wasn’t just anger. There was sadness there, too. That wasn’t the look of someone who fights knowing she’s the Evil King.

Shadow Gale countered the voice inside her. There were only three people left: herself, Pfle, and Clantail. The Evil King had to be Clantail.

Even as she argued with herself, in her heart, she was smoldering. It was suspicion. She couldn’t rid herself of her misgivings, and she couldn’t stop thinking about Cranberry’s exam. It would be easy enough for Pfle to deceive her. She would lure Shadow Gale in, and the two of them would defeat Clantail together. Once that was done, Pfle would finish Shadow Gale off, now that her job was over, and Pfle would be the last girl standing.

“Mamoriii!” Pfle’s yell snapped her back to reality. Clantail was pushing Pfle back. Pfle had pulled out the flamethrower, and it was gushing flames, but Clantail blocked with her shield and swiped them aside with her spear, deftly avoiding any direct hits. Shadow Gale picked up her wrench and approached Clantail, but Clantail wouldn’t have that, transforming into an alligator to whip her tail at Shadow Gale and keep her at bay.

But now her upper body was positioned lower to the ground. Pfle hopped casually down from her carpet. For just a moment, Clantail froze. Pfle hadn’t stood once, up until this point. She had either been riding her wheelchair or the magic carpet, or Shadow Gale had been carrying her. Shadow Gale knew—Pfle could walk normally. She just avoided revealing that to others as much as possible. And then, at times like these, she could catch people off guard by suddenly standing up.

Now that Clantail had given her an opening, Pfle took full advantage. Bounding off the ground, she grabbed Clantail’s shield hand. Clantail jerked her shield from side to side to throw Pfle off and flung her away together with the shield. Pfle spun in the air and landed gently on all fours.

A greasy sweat was breaking out on Clantail’s forehead. Her left hand, the one that had been holding the shield, was now shaking. Her little and ring fingers were broken, pointing in the wrong directions. Pfle had fought in just the same way back then, too. She would pretend that she couldn’t walk to deceive the weak, and when the time came, she would hop up and attack. Her opponents would be stunned, and Pfle would injure them, just as she had done with Clantail.

Yes, Cranberry’s exam. It was just like back then. Something black was swirling around inside Shadow Gale. It was hot, muddy, and slowly increasing in volume.

Was the Evil King really Clantail?

Wasn’t it Pfle who was the Evil King?

Just now, Pfle had judged based on process of elimination that since neither Shadow Gale nor Pfle were the Evil King, then it had to be Clantail. But how could Pfle say for certain that Shadow Gale wasn’t the Evil King? Maybe she had slipped and revealed her position as the Evil King. It Pfle herself were the Evil King, she would know Shadow Gale was not—that was self-explanatory.

Pfle blasted some more flames, and Clantail transformed into a leopard to nimbly evade them. Her dodge took her right to where the Dragon Shield lay, where Shadow Gale had dropped it. Clantail swiftly scooped it up and held it with her intact pointer and middle fingers and thumb.

This was part of their strategy, too. Before the battle had begun, Shadow Gale had deliberately thrown away her magical phone. Doing this meant Shadow Gale could no longer de-summon items and return them to her magical phone, creating a situation where it was possible for her items to be stolen. And the Dragon Shield, with its +12 modification, was an item worth stealing.

Pfle pulled a remote control out of her sleeve and pressed it. Flames spewed out from the inside of the Dragon Shield. Clantail screamed voicelessly, throwing away the shield and writhing in pain. Her lower body transformed into a massive, translucent jellyfish, which wrapped around her flaming upper body. Shadow Gale had heard before that a jellyfish’s body was mostly made up of water. Clantail sizzled, and steam was rising from her body as she put out the flames, but she was still horribly burned. She curled up, moaning.

Shadow Gale had seen this exact same thing many times before during Cranberry’s exam. Pfle’s plots, traps, and trickery had done in countless magical girls, leaving their bodies sprawled on the ground.

And in this game, she had been the same. Pfle had announced Masked Wonder’s murder in the square and arranged for all the girls to face the Great Dragon at once just to see their reactions, and in both cases, that had caused an outbreak of chaos. But even when people died, Pfle had no regrets.

Only Pfle had known when Nokko ran off. It was odd, and Shadow Gale didn’t even really know why she had died. Might Pfle have been able to kill Nokko? Most people wouldn’t be able to. But Pfle…

Shadow Gale picked up her wrench in her left hand and surged forward. The black, muddy stream in her heart was at a rolling boil, whirling around and around in circles. She had to do it. This was her only chance. The more the current rushed around, the faster it got, the hotter it got, the bigger it got, the muddier and blacker it got. Shadow Gale charged toward Pfle and swung the wrench at her face.

Pfle had been focused on Clantail’s writhing, and she would never have dreamed that she would be attacked from the side. She didn’t avoid or block the strike, and Shadow Gale got a solid hit. She felt it connect. The sound, the sensation of breaking bones, all of it was telling her inside her heart that she had done it right. Pfle soared away and landed on her back on the road that led from the square, rolling and sliding along the ground until she finally reached a stop.

Shadow Gale was watching Pfle. She’d been watching her steadily, right up until the moment she’d swung that wrench into her face. If Pfle was the Evil King, then she would have to react somehow. She might be angry or upset, or she could be trying to deceive Shadow Gale. Shadow Gale had to get to the bottom of this. Come on, how will you react? You won’t deceive me anymore.

Pfle lay face-up on the ground. Her fingers twitched twice, then stopped. In Shadow Gale’s heart, the black torrent transformed into swirling exultation.

Shadow Gale couldn’t believe that Clantail was the Evil King. And she didn’t understand how Pfle could have trusted Shadow Gale so blindly. Every single thing she had done had been suspicious. Her claim that she would make judgments based on character had just been an excuse for her to ignore Melville, hadn’t it? After all, the Evil King would be glad to have such a capable individual going around killing off the others on her own.

Shadow Gale looked at her left hand. Gripping the wrench, it was trembling.

She looked at Pfle. She wasn’t even twitching now. Chills shot down Shadow Gale’s spine. It couldn’t be. With one hit?

What am I doing?

I’ve killed Pfle? Killed her? Why? Why would I?

She recalled her parents saying that they’d named her Mamori so that she would protect her young mistress. Her knees weakened. She couldn’t stand. She’d killed Kanoe. She’d killed Kanoe. But…it wasn’t over. The game wasn’t over yet.

Strength drained from her legs, Shadow Gale was on her way to the ground when something came in from behind to support her. It was a hand grabbing her collar to lift her up.

“You’re…the Evil King, huh?” It was Clantail. She still had some burns, but the majority of them had healed. Her left hand, the one holding Shadow Gale, didn’t seem to be wounded, either. She’d clearly used a recovery medicine.

“The Evil King…?” Shadow Gale wanted to deny it, but the words wouldn’t come out. It wasn’t that she was scared of Clantail. She was terrified of herself for having been so driven by her suspicions that she had struck Pfle down. Tears began to spill out from her eyes as if they’d burst through a dam.

Clantail’s right hand adjusted its grip on her spear. “Lazuline and Pechka saved me… I can’t die.” That meant, I can’t die; I’m sorry, but I’m going to kill you. Clantail was announcing that she would end Shadow Gale’s life. Pfle was dead, and only Clantail and Shadow Gale were left, so the Evil King had to be Clantail now.

The wrench slipped from Shadow Gale’s hand. Her hand felt weak. The weapon felt disgusting to her. She could still feel the sensation of Pfle’s skull breaking.

Everything rapidly faded inside her. She didn’t care anymore what happened.

“I’ve got it!” A very familiar voice called out, and Shadow Gale winced in shock. Clantail was stunned, too. Both of them looked over to the road where Pfle had landed to see the owner of the voice pushing her upper body off the ground. “I get it. I’ve figured it out. What frightening magic.”

Pfle sat up entirely, observing Shadow Gale and Clantail. Pfle’s nose had been severely crushed, and her face was soaked in blood. Her face—which was especially beautiful, even for a magical girl—was entirely ruined. But there was still light in her eyes. Perhaps the strength in them overwhelmed Clantail, as she retreated half a step.

“When I considered who might be the Evil King,” Pfle said, “I excluded the possibility that it was you, Mamori. I was confident about that judgment, but not entirely certain. I figured I wouldn’t really mind if you were the Evil King. Even if it was you, things would work out as long as I conducted myself in such a way as to put you at an advantage. It didn’t matter to me if you were the Evil King or a player. As long as you survived, that was enough for me. If you were the Evil King, I would have cooperated with you in killing the other players.”

Clantail let go of Shadow Gale, who hit the ground on her bottom and moaned in pain.

With no apparent concern, Pfle continued. “But…then something strange happened. At some point, I came to think that perhaps I shouldn’t be trusting you, Mamori. Before then, I’d been willing to go along with anything as long as you were with me. So what kind of situation would make me feel like I couldn’t trust you anymore? Although I found this baffling, I continued to be suspicious of you…until just now, when you knocked me down. You hit me, I flew back, I rolled along the ground, and then all the doubts building in my heart faded away.”

Shadow Gale put her hands on the ground and inched back farther. She didn’t understand what Pfle was saying. She couldn’t understand. But she couldn’t stop crying, regardless.

Slowly, Pfle stood. “It’s strange, isn’t it? I was suspicious of you to begin with, and then you hit me hard enough to knock me away. You’d expect that to convince me that you were the enemy, but that blow dispelled my misgivings. Clearly, there was something wrong with my head. What had caused this? As I looked up at the sky, I thought about it. Now that the strange suspicion was gone, I could think again. Yes. It was the square. My suspicions went away because I was out of the plaza.”

Pfle stepped from the road into the square. “It’s just as I thought. When I enter this area, my heart clouds. I feel suspicious, and my mind becomes dull. Something is preventing me from questioning the situation. It’s making me avert my eyes from things that I normally would’ve considered. And these effects aren’t just limited to myself. It’s affecting everyone in this place. Mamori, trust Clantail. She’s not the Evil King.”

Once more, Shadow Gale heard whispering in her heart. Don’t listen to what she’s saying. She’s a master of trickery. If you listen to her, you’ll lose.

“Mamori! Don’t get distracted!” Blood was pouring and gushing from Pfle’s crushed nose like a waterfall. But her voice still carried from the road into the square, striking into Shadow Gale’s chest, too. The whispers scattered and dispersed, and the black torrent instantly evaporated.

“Both of you, come over here! And under no condition do you let your guard down!” Pfle stood in front of the fountain. She and Clantail looked at each other and then nodded together. Shadow Gale raised the Dragon Shield and a stun gun while Clantail transformed her lower body into a tiger. Both of them headed toward either side of the fountain.

“There’s sand piled up here,” said Pfle. “We’re going to clear it all away. Be ready—we could be attacked at any moment.” They obeyed her. All three of them scooped the sand out from the fountain until it was empty.

“Here, look. Do you see anything odd here?” Pfle asked. They had exposed the bottom of the fountain. And indeed, there was an unnatural crack there, a circular fissure about three feet in diameter. “Break it open!”

Clantail raised her front legs and swung them down. Since the middle was already cracked, the bottom of the fountain split easily, and fragments of stone fell away. There was a space underneath.

Shadow Gale slowly leaned over, peering into the space. Under the fountain was a hole about seven feet squared, and inside it was a girl in a maid outfit holding her right wrist, trembling.

  Nokko

In this game, you will take on the role of the Evil King.

That was what was written in the message sent to Nokko’s magical phone. Her win condition was the death of all other players.

If you watched the entire chain of incidents Cranberry had caused from above, Nokko would have clearly been classified as an aggressor, not a victim. She had once been a member of a group of magical girls whose leader had been a Cranberry sympathizer. Nokko had received compensation many times in exchange for cooperating with exams. Her role had been to induce action in the more reluctant magical girls. She would approach the participants, pretending to be a normal person, and transmit anger, hatred, and other feelings to them to speed up the exam.

She hadn’t been in a position to know everything about the exams. But still, she’d had a general grasp on what she was doing. While she’d known it wasn’t a good thing, she’d continued to cooperate because she wanted the money. Ever since Nokko’s father had vanished, her family had needed money. Normally, you couldn’t make any money being a magical girl. So she had no choice but to earn it through abnormal means.

When Nokko’s group leader had been exposed as Cranberry’s coconspirator, she had been brought to justice, and Nokko had lost her source of income. But the authorities of the Magical Kingdom had not touched Nokko. Her leader might have covered for her. Though she’d felt bad, she had been relieved.

But the master of Magical Girl Raising Project knew what Nokko had done. The master had come to her, telling her that either they would expose everything, or she could participate in this game. She had to pick one.

Nokko’s old leader was still missing, and Nokko couldn’t go off and leave her mother. She didn’t have any options.

But when the time came to actually start the game, Nokko joined the others in playing it. All the others had gotten themselves worked up about how they could end the game if they just defeated the Evil King, but Nokko hadn’t been given that information. Her win condition was different from that of all the others.

The game progressed, and she never told anyone who she was. When she had found out that death in the game meant death in the real world, she’d sunk into a deep despair. Would these forced games of kill-or-be-killed never end?

Nokko thought about just confessing instead. If she alone were to die, then all the others would be saved. But she couldn’t do it. Her mother’s face rose in her mind. And while she was busy waffling, the other magical girls were dying. Not in accidents like Magical Daisy. Someone was killing them.

A number of the magical girls participating in this game were those Nokko had seen during Cranberry’s exams. Nokko had more information than the others, so slowly, she came to understand what the master was trying to do. Those who had been involved with Cranberry were being checked to see if they were the right material. Nokko, who had been a part of Cranberry’s plots, was being given one last chance.

She had no choice but to take that chance and run with it.

Whenever she had the chance to encounter other magical girls during events and such, Nokko spread the seeds of discord. She encouraged the conflict between Rionetta and Nonako. She urged on Melville, made Pechka more frightened, and made Shadow Gale suspicious of Pfle. But she conducted herself with the utmost caution so that she would never become the target of their hatred and anger.

Even with their memories gone, the magical girls who had gone through the exams still had darkness and wounds in their hearts. Nokko’s magic worked well on people like that.

When Nokko had heard that Melville’s crimes had been exposed, she’d figured that as the Evil King, she could end this soon without doing a thing. Using @Meow-Meow’s body and a flamethrower, she had faked her own death. She’d burned up the corpse while intoning, I’m sorry, I’m sorry like a spell, and then cut off her own hand, sobbing with pain and shock, and incinerated that, too.

After that, she had just waited until the premaintenance period event. She’d used the shovel to make a space under the fountain to hide and then transmitted feelings to the magical girls who gathered there. She’d turned their attention away from her so that they wouldn’t notice her hiding spot while she spread negative feelings of suspicion, hate, and anger. She would induce them to kill one another, and in the survivor, she would induce a deep, deep despair to make her kill herself.

In order to be the last one, Nokko had no other choice. But now she’d failed, and she’d ruined her last chance. The three magical girls outside the hole were looking down at Nokko.

The three magical girls were standing with the sun at their backs. Nokko couldn’t detect in their expressions any sense of superiority as the victors or joy at having finished the game. As they gazed down at Nokko, Shadow Gale, Clantail, and even Pfle seemed somehow sad.

No. Not yet. There was still one more thing she could do. She had one chance left.

Hands shaking, Nokko brought out a magical phone and threw it away. She’d abandoned her own magical phone, so the one she was using was @Meow-Meow’s. She’d acquired it from digging up her grave.

She took the shovel in her left hand. The shovel’s sharp tip had helped her dig many holes, and it had also helped her with splitting open the bottom of the fountain. This shovel, the one that Clantail had given her, had not chipped once, right to the end.

Nokko smiled at the trio. She couldn’t stop herself from shaking, no matter what, but still, she tried to give them a brave smile. “I’m not going to resist. But…will you make a deal with me?”