Chapter 94

Chapter 94: It Smells Sweet

Chapter 94: It Smells Sweet - Magical Girl Wants to Retire - Penguin Squad

Chapter 94

Chapter 94: It Smells Sweet

To decapitate an A-rank Abyssal One in a single blow. To put how incredible that is into perspective, no currently active S-rank magical girl, myself included, could pull off a feat like that.

Then if you ask whether she could do it...

'...She could.'

That damned woman probably could. She had slaughtered three S-rank Abyssal Ones as if they were nothing; against an A-rank? One of her techniques would kill it instantly. I had never personally seen her fight, but that was what Tokkaengi had said.

She had said that, apart from the final battle before she disappeared, she had never once fought at full strength while working as a magical girl on Earth.

Since the Queen was said to have hunted this prey... the Queen was either that woman herself or an Abyssal One with at least the same insane physical power. In terms of rank, she had already surpassed S-rank. SS-rank? Or perhaps SSS-rank? She would be around that level.

Of course, those ranks did not officially exist. They were classifications made up simply to indicate danger. People sometimes used them jokingly when talking about 'Abyssal Ones with power beyond S-rank that exist only in one's imagination.'

But what am I supposed to do about this? It seems something like that actually exists.

'Could someone become an Abyssal One just by being sucked into the Abyss...?'

If Tokkaengi had been here, I could have seriously debated it. What a mascot, even worse than someone else's wand. Typical Tokkaengi.

[I have analyzed it.]

'What kind of weapon was it?'

[It appears to be a sword.]

'Right. Trusting you was my mistake.'

Look at that clean cut. Even I can tell it was made by a sword. The question is what kind of sword did it, and how.

'...Does the sword emit sword aura? There are magical girls who can do that.'

There was an S-rank magical girl like that... what rank was she again? She went around claiming there was nothing her sword couldn't cut, but even she couldn't sever an A-rank Abyssal One's neck in a single stroke. With her ultimate move, she might manage a B-rank, but even that probably wouldn't be clean.

[Still... judging by the angle of the cut, it does not appear to have been made by a giant sword or sword aura. Sword aura usually manifests in a straight line, which would make the cut surface strange. Nor is it the angle produced when someone holds and swings a sword.]

'...Really?'

[Yes. If you look closely, the angle is subtly skewed. If it was a sword... it would have to be a sword that flies around of its own will... or perhaps a flexible sword.]

'Hmm... You really are useful after all.'

[I heard all of that.]

The Queen... I still had not identified her, but if I met her, she would be the greatest enemy I had ever faced.

And if the Queen was that woman... Han Serin...

-Clench.

'...I'm going back. I have to go back.'

I would not consider any other possibility.

I had not come here to die, nor had I come to bury my bones in the Abyss.

I would definitely return—alive.

To Earth.

* * *

Deep within the Heart Queen's 'Garden.' Of the fifty-two chairs gathered there, every one was occupied by an armored knight—except for one.

<Report.>

The knight seated in the highest position, like every other being in the Garden, rested her severed head on her lap, while the long blond hair spilling out from beneath her helmet trailed down beneath the chair.

The knight who appeared to hold the next-highest position spoke on behalf of the others and handed the paper to the knight called Jaquir. She glanced over it indifferently, then spoke.

<S-sorry! The contractors' resistance was fiercer than expected...>

<Please, just this once...!>

<...!>

-Fssst!

It was an obviously abnormal law—to execute them before judging their crimes—but no one pointed that out.

Because it was the first rule of the Garden laid down by the queen who ruled this place.

<No!!>

The invitations awarded to knights who had built up enough experience were privileges they could use when they encountered someone they deemed worthy. Whenever someone entered the Garden, all the knights still inside were automatically notified.

The summoned knights' role was to 'entertain' the 'guest' and bring them before Her Majesty. After that, there were only two possibilities: they would become a knight, or they would be annihilated.

Redgrave had been a knight recognized in his own right, so Jaquir remembered that he possessed an invitation.

Failing to return did not necessarily mean that he had met his end at the hands of an opponent worthy of recognition.

The contractors bound to mascots, who had fought the Abyss across countless dimensions for a long time, often prepared devious tactics to stop it. Through sheer bad luck, they might have been attacked simultaneously by dozens or hundreds of contractors and thus failed to recognize their opponent. That was a perfectly natural reason for an invitation not to be used.

The Garden was not hungry enough to accept such worthless trash.

-Trickle, trickle.

When Jaquir finished speaking, the Heart 7 soldiers began carrying baskets to the knights and handing them over one by one.

The card soldiers stood in stark contrast to the knights, who were unmistakably knights. Their ranks were sky-high among the soldiers, but before the knights, the numbers on the cards meant nothing.

Inside the baskets was something shaped like roses, colored black, brown, and white. A sweet fragrance drifted gently from the baskets, so anyone from Earth would have understood at once what it was.

But this was the Abyss, and the knights were Abyssal Ones. In the Abyss, sweet foods like this were extraordinarily rare and precious.

That did not mean the knights were being paid with mere sweet snacks. As Jaquir had said, this was their queen's 'grace.'

Some knights hurriedly took everything out right there and stuffed it into their mouths, while others, perhaps intending to eat in a safe place, left the room with their baskets still closed.

And as if to prove that it was not a simple snack, dark-red energy flowed from the knight who had stuffed it all into the knight's mouth at once, then was absorbed back into the knight's body.

In the Abyss, a world ruled by survival of the fittest, the Garden was truly a heaven-blessed place.

They did not have to worry about being attacked by another Abyssal One, losing everything they owned, and being reduced to prey. Nor did they have to fear betrayal by their comrades, thanks to the presence of an absolute ruler. As long as they followed the rules, they were provided with power, weapons, food, subordinates, and all the other things they had to risk their lives to protect every day elsewhere in the Abyss.

Its only drawback was that they never knew when the absolute ruler's whims might strike, but that was only natural in the Abyss.

It was a place where hundreds or thousands of Abyssal Ones could disappear overnight because of the whims of a few beings with absolute power... No, the Abyss was a place where that was happening in real time.

If anything, the Garden's absolute ruler was highly capricious, but apparently, however difficult her actions were to understand, she did not particularly harm those who followed the rules she had established. It was no wonder the Garden had rapidly expanded its influence and become one of the largest factions in the Abyss.

* * *

-Murmur-murmur.

-Crackle!

The card soldiers' festival was not much different from what I had imagined: the sort of festival one might commonly see on Earth, with everyone grilling meat, eating, and enjoying themselves with their comrades.

Those bastards were enjoying themselves so thoroughly that I almost wondered whether this was really allowed in the Abyss.

Even seeing it with my own eyes, I still could not understand how they managed to eat meat with card bodies, but what could I do? This was the Abyss, and those things were Abyssal Ones.

'I need to pick a target soon. Someone with a fairly high rank, who could disappear without anyone noticing for a long time.'

<Yes, sir!!!>

'...! There must be something going on. Momo, listen carefully.'

[I am already recording.]

-Thump-thump.

This was new information. The Heart soldier who had said that was rank 6. If he called those who had gone to the meeting his seniors, they had to be higher-ranking soldiers, which meant they were expected to return from visiting the knights empty-handed. If I listened carefully, I might even be able to hear something about the knights.

And not long afterward, about six Heart 7 soldiers came into view, returning with listless steps. Then, carried on the wind blowing from the direction they had come, the scent that entered my nose was...

...................Chocolate?

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