A few minutes later, Luo Shuangyue, who had gotten herself in trouble, sat obediently in a spacious and well-lit office, watching as Miss Luolan earnestly explained the situation in detail to the stern man sitting behind the desk.
After hearing Luolan’s explanation, the director, who appeared to be in his fifties or sixties, nodded and cast a fairly kind look at Luo Shuangyue.
He cleared his throat and said to Luo Shuangyue, “Miss Dark Moth, Number Eight Sister, there’s no need to blame yourself so much. Issues are bound to happen during experiments…”
In short, Luo Shuangyue didn’t need to worry about what had just happened, nor did she have to pay for the damaged wall.
If she wanted to keep conducting experiments, he would arrange an even sturdier and more durable laboratory for her.
Walls and such, for the Magic Department nowadays, were hardly worth mentioning.
They could be restored with magic.
But the experiment Luo Shuangyue was working on was of utmost importance.
If she could really manage to create a Teleportation Gate capable of crossing the Starry Sky, then letting Luo Shuangyue blow up a hundred or even a thousand laboratories would be well worth it.
Director Song Lian could certainly see that much.
Not to mention that Miss Dark Moth was one of the ‘Pioneer’s’ subordinates.
These days, Pioneer had become the Magic Department’s rising star—everyone wanted to curry favor and get more Modification Quotas for their own people.
Naturally, Song Lian was no exception.
“Training Field No.7 is empty these days. You can conduct all your experiments there from now on.” He opened his computer and, after a quick glance, immediately assigned Luo Shuangyue the new experiment site.
Normally, he would have needed to report such matters to Headquarters, and only after getting approval could it be finalized, but there were shortcuts for these things.
He simply bundled the experiment objectives and personnel and sent them through the Emergency Approval Channel to Cecilia.
Within a minute, his application was approved.
If Transhumans were the key to boosting the Magic Department’s frontline combat strength, then Teleportation Gates were, in terms of importance, even greater.
If this plan succeeded—if a usable Teleportation Gate could be created—the Magical Girls’ mobility would see a leap forward!
It was just a training ground, after all, nothing too resource-intensive.
Approve it!
These days, research projects that promise such returns without heavy investment are rarer than rare.
Cecilia would have to be out of her mind to reject Song Lian’s request.
“So… can we go now?” Luo Shuangyue was still a bit embarrassed; after all, she was the one who damaged public property, and she wasn’t thick-skinned enough to pretend nothing had happened.
She certainly didn’t think that damaging the Magic Department’s wall should be considered an honor for them.
“All right. Peach, you go along with Dark Moth and the others. Treat it as protecting them.” Song Lian nodded and spoke to another Magical Girl in the office.
“Understood! Mission guaranteed to be completed.” Miss Peach flashed Song Lian a playful smile.
“So, this month’s allowance—?”
“Don’t joke around, hurry up and go!” The director, face stern, waved his hand helplessly, looking every bit the exasperated father faced with a mischievous daughter.
Following Peach and Luolan out of the office, Luo Shuangyue grew curious about the relationship between Peach and Song Lian.
She didn’t believe there was nothing going on between the two.
That sweet, almost saccharine way Peach spoke just now was enough to make anyone’s scalp tingle.
As expected, Peach answered, “He’s my father.”
So they really were father and daughter—and a very close pair at that, Luo Shuangyue realized with sudden clarity.
But Peach working here… was this some sort of nepotism? The thought flashed through Luo Shuangyue’s mind, but she quickly slapped it away as impolite.
Whether there was nepotism or not had nothing to do with her.
Peach was a First Bloom-Class Magical Girl; serving as a bodyguard at such an important place as the Research Institute didn’t seem out of place at all.
If she was happy, and Song Lian was happy, then apparently Headquarters had no reason to break them up.
On the way to the Experiment Field, Peach confided to Luo Shuangyue about her father, complaining that a few days ago he’d gone a little crazy wanting to undergo Monice’s Transformation Magic, and she had to knock him out and lock him in his bedroom.
By the time her father woke up, all the Modification Quotas had already been distributed by the research department.
The furious Song Lian took it out on his beloved daughter by docking her allowance for an entire month.
“Tell me, my old man’s in his fifties or sixties—how does he still come up with such wild ideas?” The peach-scented girl spread her hands, sounding bewildered.
Young people burning with passion to serve humanity made sense, but what was a man in his fifties or sixties doing getting involved?
“The director has always been a passionate person; otherwise, he wouldn’t have stayed in this position for so long, right?” Luolan joined in on their little conversation.
It wasn’t easy to keep a senior position in the Magic Department.
There was no room for slackers—if you couldn’t perform, you’d be kicked out immediately.
Even a Blooming-Rank Magical Girl would have to leave in disgrace if she was deemed unworthy, let alone an ordinary person.
That Song Lian, as an ordinary person, had served as director of the Research Institute for so many years, was proof enough of his ability and his passion for magic.
For someone so pure-hearted, seeing, sensing, even using Magic Power in his lifetime was his greatest wish.
“I know Dad’s personality, but you both know the side effects of Transformation Magic, right?” Peach pulled a strange face.
“If he really went through with it, wouldn’t I have to call him Mom?”
This comment left Luo Shuangyue and Luolan momentarily speechless.
Well, from Peach’s point of view, it really was… an odd situation.
“Ahem, let’s not talk about weird things. These days, I’m wishing every day I could swap shifts and go up to the moon! Miss Dark Moth, you just came down from the moon. Can you tell me what it’s like up there now?”
Peach was an exceedingly warm girl. Luo Shuangyue thought this peach-colored girl felt a bit like a budget version of Xia Mo—very Magical Girl-like.
“Fighting Demons every day. When you go out on patrol, you run into a new batch of Demons every hour…” Luo Shuangyue didn’t mind sharing her experiences.
“If our experiment succeeds, shift changes will be much easier in the future.”
Bang!
A black and purple figure crashed heavily into the ground.
“I think if we don’t fix this aspect, this magic might as well be used as a Kill Weapon.”
Once again smashed into a human-shaped crater in the ground, Luo Shuangyue flipped herself up and, seeing the several nearly identical pits around her, said helplessly,
This was already her third day at Magic Department Headquarters.
Her schedule these days was very simple: every morning, she’d drain all of Yi’s Magic Power, then head over to the Experiment Field to research New Magic.
After a few days of effort, she had finally… used her own body to pummel this Training Ground into a mess.
Even though it would return to normal overnight, Luo Shuangyue still felt a bit guilty.
After all, the field wasn’t alive—it couldn’t fix itself, and surely the Magic Department staff had to work late into the night to repair it.
After causing so much trouble, making so many craters, the magic she’d developed turned out to be a little… selfish.
As for Yi’s Starlight Teleportation Gate, Luo Shuangyue was still pondering it—she only had a vague idea so far.
But the new magic she created after obtaining Yi’s Starlight Magic Power and combining it with her own had already taken full form.
This magic was an advanced version of Teleportation Magic.
When diving into the Sea of Magic, she would leave a Mark at her original spot.
The Mark would persist for a while, and within that duration, Luo Shuangyue could activate it to instantly yank herself back to where it was placed.
It was a great life-saving spell, with just one problem: the speed at which she was yanked back was a little too fast, and if she wasn’t careful, she might smash some flowers, grass, or even innocent bystanders.
And Luo Shuangyue’s Teleportation Gate magic was being developed on top of this foundation.
She thought that if she could just leave Marks in two places and activate them, she could achieve something like a Teleportation Gate, right?
So she tried it, but the results were less than ideal.
Marks were single-use, while a Teleportation Gate’s Channel needed to be used repeatedly over a long time.
The amount of Magic Power consumed by the two simply wasn’t on the same level.
If Luo Shuangyue hadn’t been feasting on Yi’s Magic Power these past few days and significantly improved her conversion ratio, she wouldn’t have dared to try at all.
“Right now, I feel like a bricklayer, building walls in the Sea of Magic with Starlight Magic Power.” Luo Shuangyue described her current difficulties to the other two girls in her group.
“The drain is just too much. Look, with almost half my Magic Power, the Teleportation Gate I built only covers this short distance—and it’s not even stable.”
Luo Shuangyue pointed at the Starlight vortexes on both sides of the Training Ground.
Yes, she had actually managed to create a Teleportation Gate, but it consumed so much and the distance was so short—even Yi’s gates were better than this.
Yet Peach, holding a tablet in her arms, showed a screen split into several windows, each containing one of the Headquarters higher-ups keenly following the research and offering Luo Shuangyue all sorts of advice.
“Maybe you don’t need to make the Channel so stable?”—
A girl hidden in darkness spoke, “Right now, all we need is a channel connecting the ground to the moon that Magical Girls can pass through.”
That meant Luo Shuangyue didn’t need to make the channel ultra-safe or stable—she just needed to build it so Magical Girls could travel between Earth and the moon.
Impacts that could kill an ordinary person would feel like nothing to a Magical Girl, so having a slightly dangerous channel wasn’t such a big flaw.
“It’s not that simple. Even if I thin the Channel’s walls as much as possible, I still can’t build one that long.” Luo Shuangyue shook her head.
She’d spent plenty of time watching Yi use Teleportation Gates these days, but such innate magic was just too difficult to learn—like how her own Butterfly Transformation was equally impossible for others to master.
Right now, Luo Shuangyue really wished she had a brain bursting with astonishing wisdom.
“Sigh, if only I could find another way to build a Teleportation Gate.” Luo Shuangyue sighed.
She already had the materials for making a gate, but the blueprint was beyond her ability to draw.
Yi’s magic was a Black Box—no matter how Luo Shuangyue looked at it, she couldn’t understand how that Teleportation Gate worked.
Not just her—the Magic Department’s genius scientists didn’t get it either.
Even Monice admitted defeat.
So, after some not-so-difficult deliberation, Luo Shuangyue felt she’d better give up on this approach.
But as for other options, none had appeared yet…
“Hey, you guys sure are lively over here.” Suddenly, a new voice broke into what should have been a top-secret meeting.
A familiar face appeared in one corner of Luo Shuangyue’s screen.
She studied it for a moment and finally recognized the latecomer’s identity.
Singularity!
Lately, this senior had been rampaging across the Starry Sky, hunting Demons for sport—some Demons never even made it near the Mother Star before being wiped out by Singularity, who finally had somewhere to unleash her energy.
And now that she could access this conference Channel, it meant she had already returned near the Mother Star.
“Senior Singularity.” Luo Shuangyue greeted the approachable elder politely.
But the other Blooming-Rank Magical Girls in the meeting weren’t nearly as polite.
Almost all of them began scolding Singularity for rudely barging into the conference.
Singularity, of course, didn’t care about her companions’ good-natured complaints.
Instead, she happily showed off her spoils.
“I found a new Teleportation Gate made by the Demons—and brought half of it back.”
Singularity’s video feed slowly zoomed out, finally revealing the enormous object behind her.
It was a broken Half Circular Ring, made from Demon flesh and blood.
From the broken edge, countless black threads drifted slowly in the Starry Sky.
The shocking image sent the conference room into stunned silence.
A few seconds later, the Magic Department’s Vice Minister and Saint Angel, Miss Cecilia, who had been silent all this time, slapped her desk and shot to her feet.
“You dare to bring something like this back?!”
What if that Teleportation Gate was still operational? Wouldn’t that be like handing the enemy a map to their home!
“Don’t worry, I’m sure it’s broken—there won’t be a problem.” Singularity looked utterly unrepentant, even flashing a confident smile.
“It’s been trying to repair itself, but I’ve completely suppressed it with gravity.”
So this thing was still alive? And it was still running? Cecilia sucked in a cold breath—Singularity, you maniac…
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