Luoyou half her body leaned out the window.
She actually sensed it too—a certain ‘scent’ permeating the air, both familiar and strange.
It wasn’t a physical smell that could be detected by the nose, but rather a perception of the atmosphere.
People often say, “I smell a hint of danger.”
What Luoyou was sensing now was something similar.
“What is it that feels so familiar… what exactly…?”
Luoyou lightly bit her thumbnail but couldn’t recall it.
It seemed that contact with this feeling had become too distant, as if it was right before her eyes, yet impossible to grasp.
But there was no denying this scent—
“Truly unpleasant.”
Luoyou frowned deeply.
Ignoring it was not an option.
She wanted to intervene but didn’t know where to begin.
What exactly had happened?
Ten days earlier—
Jiehai Borderfront
Trenches, fixed positions, troops, and weapons of strange appearance.
And a great number of magical girls.
Generally speaking, one district of the Jiehai Borderfront would be assigned about seven to eight magical girls, but the number gathered here far exceeded that.
Eighty-four in total.
Among them was An Yu, one of the ten seats.
“The Magic Alliance suddenly summoned us all here. What’s going on?”
“The area I was originally responsible for is also under pressure to defend.”
“Something serious must have happened.”
“An Yu-senpai, do you know anything?”
Among the crowd, a magical girl familiar with An Yu, Chaoyang, tried to pry information from her.
An Yu had heard bits and pieces and spoke without reservation: “It seems the Jiehai Borderfront’s garrison troops have something to inform us.”
“Garrison troops? Is it some personnel reshuffling?”
“Not sure.”
An Yu glanced around; magical girls from the nearby provinces had all been summoned.
Many she could name personally—frontline magical girls with abundant combat experience.
To call together so many magical girls, it must be serious.
Soon, a middle-aged man in a dark green military uniform with half-white hair, around fifty or sixty years old, stepped onto the podium.
“Ahem, thank you all for taking the time to respond to the call. I’ll get straight to the point.”
Upon seeing the half-white-haired man, most magical girls’ expressions changed.
Even the usually composed and knowledgeable An Yu widened her eyes in surprise.
The overall commander of Jiehai Borderfront himself was here to personally deliver an oral notice?!
He oversaw nearly one hundred districts of the Jiehai Borderfront, with more than 980,000 people under command, managing all military operations inside the Borderfront.
Even An Yu had rarely seen him.
The commander on stage wore a stern expression as he said, “Currently, three Mochizuki-class super-large star rings have successively gone offline—Districts 11, 19, and 36. During this period, these three districts of the Jiehai Borderfront will be unable to detect dimensional beast invasions!”
“Mochizuki-class super-large star rings offline?!”
Without the super-large star rings, the Jiehai Borderfront’s defense was essentially nullified—rendered meaningless.
A Jiehai Borderfront with super-large star rings was truly the Jiehai Borderfront.
Without them, it was merely a training ground—useless.
After all, dimensional beasts operated in other dimensions; without the super-large star rings to force them out, no matter how many planes, cannons, or magical girls were deployed, who would they fight?
Might as well be fighting air.
If so, wouldn’t it revert to the previous state where there was nothing to defend?
“Why did the super-large star rings go offline… I won’t ask about the cause, since that’s not our concern.”
An Yu stepped out among the magical girls.
“Without the super-large star rings, we can’t even confront dimensional beasts. I believe the reason you’ve gathered us here is because you have a countermeasure, right?”
The commander on stage pushed up his glasses.
“No, it’s necessary you know the cause. That is also part of the solution.”
“…It can’t be corruption causing equipment failure, can it?”
An Yu asked.
“Unfortunately, if that were the case, it would have been easier,” the commander said with a troubled look, then turned his head toward the back of the room.
“The technical aspects will be explained by him.”
The commander stepped aside, and a researcher in a white coat came up to the microphone.
“I’m Zhao Haiping, one of the lead researchers of the Mochizuki-class super-large star rings. I’m sorry to say that we’re still conducting comprehensive diagnostics on the technical malfunction. What we currently know is that the core component of the Mochizuki-class, the ‘Singularity Core,’ has failed and is no longer operational.”
“Since I have permission, I’ll be frank. The Singularity Core of the Mochizuki-class contains a substance extracted from Jiehai—it can be understood as a kind of ‘energy.’ Every so often, we extract this substance from Jiehai to replenish the Singularity Core.”
“However, after investigating the faulty Singularity Core, we found that Jiehai has undergone unknown changes. The composition of this energy changed in subtle ways, causing the Singularity Core to rapidly age and reach the point of being scrapped.”
Zhao Haiping’s words caused an uproar below.
They hadn’t expected the super-large star ring technology to be so closely tied to Jiehai itself!
“In that case, why are you telling us only now? This should have been detected and resolved early on; now it’s clearly out of control.”
An Yu questioned skeptically.
If this had been caught early and deployments adjusted accordingly, they wouldn’t be in such a crisis now.
“Regrettably, the Mochizuki-class isn’t some small civilian device that can be taken apart for inspection at any time. It’s enormous; we only conduct checks every two years. The last check was half a year ago, and the failure occurred a month ago. The exact cause was discovered two weeks ago. Since then, we’ve been investigating, and only in the past two days did we find that the substance replenishing the Singularity Core is the problem. But by then, it was already too late.”
“Are there no spare Singularity Cores?”
“There are, but only five. Actually, more than these three have gone offline—eight total. Those five spares have already been used to patch up the other five units, but even those won’t last long.”
At this point, An Yu realized the problem was even worse.
“You said three Mochizuki-class units have gone offline so far. That means more units have issues, right?”
“That’s correct,” Zhao Haiping said grimly.
“Currently, 27 districts have switched to the Mochizuki-class. In other words, if a solution isn’t found soon, one-third of the Jiehai Borderfront’s defenses will be rendered useless.”
One-third of the Jiehai Borderfront going offline was catastrophic—countless casualties would be inevitable.
If the ‘Jiehai Tide’ came suddenly, the death toll would be beyond reckoning!
“Why not replace the Mochizuki-class units with the previous Equator-class? Would that work?” someone asked.
“No,” Zhao Haiping replied.
“As I said, the super-large star rings are massive—just the diameter is 10 km. There isn’t enough space to store the more than twenty retired Equator-class units. Most have been dismantled, and reassembling them would take a tremendous amount of time.”
“Then why did you call us here? You’re not just telling us the truth and expecting us to find a solution, are you?”
“Magic power,” Zhao Haiping answered seriously.
“The Singularity Core of the Mochizuki-class has improvements over the Equator-class that allow it to use magic power as an auxiliary energy source.”
“Magic power?”
An Yu frowned.
Magic power was a special force only magical girls could use; many extraordinary spells could be cast through it.
But since magical girls belonged to the Magic Alliance, human governments rarely had access to magic power.
Even though the authorities coveted this power, they had few ways to develop it.
Now, suddenly, humanity could apply magic power to super-large star rings?
An Yu remained skeptical.
“Let me be blunt. To my knowledge, no country in the world has made progress studying magic power, so how can it be applied to the Mochizuki-class?”
Zhao Haiping pushed his glasses up.
“That’s classified information. I’m sorry, but I can’t elaborate.”
“…So you want us to act as ‘generators’ to sustain the Singularity Core’s operation?”
“Yes. Rest assured, this won’t harm your bodies. You only need to inject magic power into the super-large star rings’ Singularity Core. You can think of yourselves as working on an assembly line with no extra burden.”
Having come this far, it seemed there was no other choice.
If they refused, dimensional beasts would launch massive invasions, and countless people would die unjustly.
The original purpose of being magical girls was to protect humanity and resist dimensional beasts.
There was no reason to refuse.
But An Yu still needed one last confirmation.
“Has the Magic Alliance agreed to this?”
“Yes. In fact, it was the Magic Alliance who summoned you here.”
An Yu tried contacting Xingyue but received no reply; the First Seat seemed busy tracking the dragon-class dimensional beast that breached the Borderfront.
She had no choice but to contact Manjusaka and, after a firm reply, put all doubts to rest.
“We will cooperate. But how long will this last before it ends?”
Zhao Haiping was silent for a moment.
“Ideally, at least one month. It may last for several months. We must find a way to reconfigure the energy supply and refill the Singularity Core. Meanwhile, restarting the Equator-class units will be put on the agenda. We can only be patient.”
After this, a massive operation involving hundreds of thousands was launched.
Ten days later, over a hundred magical girls were already involved.
Since frontline magical girls still needed to maintain basic defenses, Jiehai Borderfront began mobilizing inland magical girls to supplement the magic power.
And on the very day Luoyou sensed the abnormal scent—
“Zhao Haiping, you are suspected of leaking classified information. Please come with us.”
“What?! You must be mistaken.”
Zhao Haiping looked at the two soldiers in uniform standing before him.
“…I’m in the middle of something important. This isn’t a good time to take me away.”
“It’s not only you. Other researchers involved in the Mochizuki-class super-large star ring project will also be taken in for investigation. This is an arrest warrant. Please cooperate.”