But that was far more thrilling than any playful, carefree game. Since magical girls often fly, traveling at high speeds and great heights, the thrill of it all was diminished. As a result, all human entertainment related to speed couldn’t give them the same adrenaline rush an ordinary person gets from a roller coaster.
This time, wakeboarding out on the sea only offered a moderate level of excitement, until Huan Hong, who excelled at flying and possessed great strength, joined in.
She started showing off, having Yin Lin accelerate to 400 kilometers per hour and fling her off, then she let go of the surfboard and released the tow rope.
Huan Hong skipped across the sea’s surface like a stone skipping on water, performing all sorts of incredible stunts that looked utterly amazing, leaving Yin Lin utterly spellbound.
Using that brief moment of momentum, she executed a series of jaw-dropping maneuvers, finally dropping into the water only after her speed had slowed down.
Seeing Yin Lin’s look of admiration and how she pulled Huan Hong aside to ask about her acrobatic performance, Jin Luan began to feel anxious.
So she too had Yin Lin accelerate her to 400 kilometers per hour and performed her own stunt routine.
While skipping across the sea without a surfboard, relying purely on her body, she attempted a front flip, but unfortunately, she failed, tumbling hundreds of meters across the water’s surface, dangerously close to getting injured.
Even for magical girls, this kind of play was far too dangerous.
The three returned to shore to rest and switched to a different activity—beach volleyball.
But how do you play with just three people?
After a quick discussion, they decided on a rotation system: whoever lost would be swapped out.
First up was a match between Huan Hong and Yin Lin, while Jin Luan took a break to recover from the aftermath of her wakeboarding. She sat on a beach chair, sipping a cold drink and admiring the scenery before her.
Yin Lin had just picked up the volleyball when she noticed her own expression seemed off, and then she felt her swimsuit bottoms pinching her skin.
Embarrassed, she used the volleyball to cover her lower half, then reached down to pull the wedged fabric out of the gap.
Beach volleyball, begin!
Yin Lin served, tossing the ball into the air, but her jump barely cleared half a meter, and her swing was too fast—her fingertips grazed the ball, and it bounced off her head.
Huan Hong and Jin Luan both burst out laughing.
Yin Lin was genuinely adorable, sometimes acting mature and composed, other times especially clumsy and clueless.
It wasn’t an act—Song Wuli hadn’t played volleyball in decades, and now all she remembered was that the ball couldn’t touch the ground; she had no idea about anything else.
Moreover, there was a huge difference in height between her true form and her magical girl body, which made it easy to misjudge heights. Playing volleyball was quite a challenge for her.
Seeing her somewhat clumsy performance, Huan Hong and Jin Luan laughed so hard their stomachs hurt.
It was Huan Hong’s turn to serve. She tossed the ball high, jumped perfectly, and struck the volleyball with impeccable form.
Yin Lin’s eyes reacted, but her body didn’t. She failed to catch the cannonball-like volleyball, and it smacked her right in the forehead.
Jin Luan’s radiant smile gradually froze, then turned calm.
Huan Hong, meanwhile, was still laughing, easily scoring 2 points with just 1 more needed.
It was Yin Lin’s turn to serve again. This time, she got the ball over the net, but it was slow and lofted high.
She already had a bad feeling about this, so she backed up a bit, ready to dive for the ball. She remembered from volleyball anime that opponents would strike left and right at this point, forcing the defender to run around, exhausting their stamina, before finally delivering a fast ball that the defender couldn’t react to in time.
So… was Huan Hong going to target left or right this time?
As it turned out, Yin Lin was overthinking it. Against her, no strategy was needed at all.
Huan Hong jumped perfectly again, smashed the ball with her fist, and sent it straight at Yin Lin in the center.
Yin Lin barely managed to receive it, luckily sending the ball back over—again a slow, high lob.
Huan Hong was already waiting at the net, reached over, and punched the ball right back, striking Yin Lin square in the chest. It left a red mark before dropping into the sand beside her.
3:0. Yin Lin lost.
Jin Luan’s expression had turned nearly icy by now. As she stepped up, she first checked on Yin Lin’s condition—red marks on both her forehead and chest. The volleyball had been hit with considerable force.
After Yin Lin walked off the court clutching her sore chest, Jin Luan summoned her magic wand, which had transformed into an uchigatana, from a distance. No one knew what she was planning.
Huan Hong’s smile also gradually faded as she looked at Jin Luan across the net.
“What are you doing? Why the knife?”
Jin Luan was just using the uchigatana to cast a spell, enchanting the volleyball with magic.
The otherwise ordinary volleyball began emanating golden flames.
“Just playing volleyball is too boring. Let’s add some power.”
Jin Luan was dead serious.
“Fine. Your call.”
Huan Hong also grabbed her magic wand, which had transformed into a staff.
It wasn’t that she actually intended to use it as a weapon, but rather to gain spellcasting ability through the wand, since they couldn’t cast spells with their bare hands yet.
Serve. Toss.
The volleyball wreathed in golden flames was already deformed by the hit, leaving only a blurry afterimage as it crossed the net almost instantly.
Huan Hong launched herself like a rocket, kicking up massive amounts of sand with her explosive start. Even Yin Lin, sitting on a beach chair in the distance, got pelted by the spray.
Huan Hong caught the volleyball, but it was heavy—so heavy that her legs sank dozens of centimeters into the sand.
She finally managed to return it, but it went up as a high fly ball.
Oh no!
Jin Luan, of course, was already waiting by the net. She smashed it down with a powerful spike, the volleyball grazing past Huan Hong’s shoulder and slamming into the sand beside her feet with a thunderous impact, carving out a half-meter-deep crater before burying itself in the muck.
Huan Hong wiped off her sweat, her eyes sharpening.
Without a word, she dug the flaming volleyball out of the sand.
With a thought, Huan Hong also used magic—her most familiar technique, burst aura reinforcement.
A faint red glow tinged her eyes, and her hair fluttered as if stirred by an unseen wind.
“What are you two doing? Isn’t this volleyball?”
Yin Lin was getting nervous, not understanding how they’d gotten so serious.
“Shut up.” ×2
Huan Hong served, tossing the ball ten meters high, jumping, and delivering an aerial spike serve.
The volleyball was flattened again, nearly bent into a crescent shape, yet it still didn’t explode.
Jin Luan used instant step to intercept the ball just before it landed far away, sending it high into her own side of the court. But Huan Hong didn’t call a timeout, and with the ball about to hit the ground and no time to reach it, Jin Luan quickly extended her foot and hooked the falling volleyball with her sole. She managed to save it, the ball bouncing back into the air.
This time, Huan Hong didn’t jump. Instead, she gathered power on the ground, waiting for the volleyball to descend, then struck it with all her might, hitting it dead-on.
It too turned into a streak of afterimages, slammed into the net, and tore a massive hole right through it.
Just as it was about to hit Jin Luan, she met it with a massive kick.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t fully absorb it—the force behind that shot was immense, and the ball ricocheted two hundred meters out into the sea.
No one could tell whether the ball had landed in or out of bounds, or who had actually scored the point.
Yin Lin was starting to get scared. So this was what beach volleyball could be? And Huan Hong had actually been holding back the entire match.