“Mom! I want to become a Magical Girl and defeat those terrifying monsters!”
The boy watched the beautiful girls on the TV, mimicking their movements as they waved their magical rods.
“Silly child, only girls can become Magical Girls.”
The woman gently touched her swollen belly. “If this one turns out to be a girl… then she can become a Magical Girl and earn a lot of money.”
“Why…”
The boy pressed the channel button in disappointment, switching to a cartoon channel.
Porcelain Moon stared at everything before her, feeling disbelief.
“Is this my past…”
It was like being underwater in the deep sea, the scene blurry and indistinct. Porcelain Moon struggled to breathe, stretching out her hand to grasp anything she could.
She caught hold of a strip-like object. Focusing her eyes, she realized it was a small pinwheel.
“Brother, is this the gift you gave me?”
“Yes.”
The boy smiled and handed the delicate pinwheel to the girl.
“You’re my favorite brother!”
The little girl clutched the colorful pinwheel tightly and blew on it.
The multicolored pinwheel fluttered in the wind, stirring Porcelain Moon’s thoughts.
Suddenly, the edges of the pinwheel began to burn.
When Porcelain Moon snapped back to reality, the wildfire had already spread throughout the entire world.
The dreamscape began to collapse, flames consuming everything…
Raindrops started falling from the sky like tears, but before they touched the ground, they vaporized.
“Cough, cough… Zhizhou, take sister and run!”
“Mom!”
The woman was pinned under a massive stone, unable to move.
“Promise me… protect your sister…”
The boy swallowed his tears and grabbed his sister’s hand, running outward…
“No!!!”
The girl’s voice echoed through the sky.
Porcelain Moon reached out, trying to pull her mother free.
At that moment, the ground began to collapse, and Porcelain Moon fell into the pitch-black Void.
Her consciousness, like everything else falling around her, gradually slipped away.
“Is this your past?”
A girl’s voice rang in her ear.
Like a drowning man grasping at a life-saving straw, Porcelain Moon’s consciousness felt as though it was pulled out of the unfathomable abyss by a pair of strong hands.
Her awareness returned to her body, and the dream stabilized.
The purple-black thoughts of the Extradimensional Beast were blocked by a brick wall, and Porcelain Moon felt a great relief.
“It would have been better if you could become stronger, right? You must have thought that then. How lucky you are that Heaven gave you such an opportunity to take revenge on the beasts.”
The voice came from behind Porcelain Moon.
She turned around but saw nothing.
“In my domain, you won’t find me.”
The mischievous voice sounded again behind her.
“Who are you?” Porcelain Moon asked.
“Who am I? Dear Miss Porcelain Moon, that’s not important. What’s important is…”
Porcelain Moon felt a hand rest on her back.
“Who are you really? Are you Porcelain Moon? Or Luo Zhizhou? Or… her?!”
“How do you know everything about me?”
Porcelain Moon tried to gather magic, but nothing happened.
“Hehehe, in the Dream Realm, you cannot resist me. I know all your secrets because in the Dream Realm, no one can hide their memories. The outside world cannot interfere here; this is a paradise that belongs only to ‘us’.”
“I don’t think so…”
Porcelain Moon spun around, grabbing the mysterious girl’s hand, trying to bind her.
But when she turned, she only saw a shadow, which then dissipated.
“You’ll understand someday…”
The voice echoed in the small space surrounded by a few walls.
“Senior Porcelain Moon!!!!!”
Chen Lisi’s voice pierced through the wall surrounding her mind, shattering the dream in an instant.
“What?”
Porcelain Moon returned to reality and saw Chen Lisi staring at her in terror — or rather, at what was behind her…
“It’s awake! That Kingdom-Class Aberrant Beast, the Earth Dragon!”
The cave trembled as countless rocks fell.
Porcelain Moon turned to see a huge black figure slowly crawling out of the ground.
“Take this, a magic cannon!”
Chen Lisi formed a firing rail made of magic energy and then raised her hands. A powerful magical energy condensed before her into a glowing red spherical orb.
She aimed the muzzle at the Earth Dragon and fired.
A flash of light followed by a loud explosion filled the entire nest. The Earth Dragon’s black body was struck, burning a large, scorched hole.
“Hah… hah… Senior Porcelain Moon, I’m amazing, right?”
Chen Lisi panted. That shot was her full power.
But Porcelain Moon had no time to respond.
Rumble, rumble…
Something was burrowing up from below.
Porcelain Moon sensed trouble. “It’s about to attack! Lin Xing, you all, teleport out immediately!”
“Wait, senior, no!”
Chen Lisi shouted, but in a flash of blue light, the three A-class Magical Girls were teleported away.
Porcelain Moon sighed as she watched them disappear.
“Good, the dead weight is finally gone. Now, it’s just the two of us.”
Her Crystalline Light Wings spread, lifting her into the air.
Beneath her, several thick black tentacles as big as train cars lunged at her.
She raised a giant Crystalline Shield to block the tentacle attacks.
The shield, spanning dozens of square meters, shattered into countless spikes that Porcelain Moon controlled, shooting them at the Extradimensional Beast and piercing it.
“Magic Cannon…”
Before the creature could recover, Porcelain Moon opened her palm.
Like Chen Lisi’s magic cannon, a long rectangular firing rail made of white crystals appeared — but much larger.
A massive amount of magic gathered in her palm, forming a long arrow of high-purity magic energy.
In her other hand, she held a long bow, aiming at what she estimated to be the beast’s core location.
She fired the energy arrow.
The arrow was accelerated along multiple rails, reaching supersonic speed.
***
At Mach 2.3, it struck the core of the Kingdom-Class Aberrant Beast Earth Dragon.
The energy sliced through the Earth Dragon’s body like a hot knife through butter, cutting it into two halves.
But just before hitting the core, the arrow deviated by a few meters…
“Damn! Missed the core!”
Repairing.
The power of the magic cannon was so immense it melted the underground nest, causing the vast subterranean space to begin collapsing downward.
As if triggered by a Protective Mechanism, the Earth Dragon’s core was instantly wrapped in a dense layer of black tissue.
Its severed body began to mend itself.
“It looks like we can’t hurt it any further.”
The black tissue emitted a faint red glow and was very dense.
“We have to lure it to the surface.”
Porcelain Moon thought for a moment and looked back.
The cave entrance they came through was already blocked.
“To get out of here, I guess brute force is the only way… Hopefully, no one above gets hurt.”
She was currently 1.5 kilometers underground.
Opening a passage to the surface with an ordinary magic cannon wouldn’t have enough follow-through power.
“There’s only the Super Ion Cannon.”
Compared to the magic cannon, the Super Ion Cannon used energy more efficiently.
But it required a complex process and an enormous amount of magic to activate.
Porcelain Moon took a deep breath and began to construct a Spell Formation from memory.
“Reaction system… acceleration system… focusing system…”
The Super Ion Cannon was essentially a plasma cannon.
It ionized matter through high temperature or strong electric fields, and the resulting plasma was accelerated by an electromagnetic system to extremely high speeds before firing, possessing tremendous energy density and directionality to destroy targets with kinetic and thermal energy.
A massive red Spell Formation took shape, consuming a large portion of Porcelain Moon’s magic.
Behind her, the Earth Dragon was recovering from the earlier attack, preparing for another assault.
“Gotta hurry.”
Porcelain Moon accelerated her energy gathering.
Countless points of light converged at the center of the formation, forming a glowing orb.
Within the high-temperature orb, high-density gas was compressed, ionizing to form plasma gas.
The orb then transformed into a ring, which was accelerated to incredible speed by the electromagnetic field.
Porcelain Moon controlled the Spell Formation like a complex machine, manipulating the intricate circuitry-like patterns.
“Now!”
When the plasma reached a critical threshold, Porcelain Moon activated the formation.
The ring became a beam of light, instantly vaporizing the rock above and blasting a hole dozens of meters wide.
She quickly escaped through the vertical tunnel blasted open by the Super Ion Cannon.
Looking back, several black tentacles were crawling out.
Porcelain Moon knew her plan to lure the beast out had succeeded.