“That’s the Aberrant Beast Core!” the assistant exclaimed in surprise.
“The core of a Kingdom-Class Aberrant Beast itself possesses immense destructive power.”
“In fact, it is more accurate to say that the core is the true body of the Aberrant Beast,” Chen Hanjun said, drawing from his years of research on Aberrant Beasts.
All units, prepare your defenses!” he ordered his subordinates.
Elsewhere.
“Damn it! That direction… is toward Command Headquarters!”
The tip of the Triangular Purple Geometric Object was converging energy.
“Lin Xing!!!” Porcelain Moon shouted loudly.
“I… I’m here!” The blue-haired girl pushed her way out from the crowd.
“How far can you teleport at most?”
“Five kilometers,” Lin Xing answered.
“Good. Teleport me to the battlefield position!”
“No! Senior Porcelain Moon, you’re not fully recovered yet! It’s too dangerous to go up there now!”
At that moment, the communicator beeped: “S-Class Magical Girl Porcelain Moon, proceed immediately to the designated assembly point and stand by! Prepare to counter the impact!”
Po…
She took a deep breath and then said firmly, “I am a soldier.”
“Obedience to orders is my duty. I cannot disobey military commands. Miss Lin Xing, please cooperate.” Porcelain Moon’s voice was stern, and Lin Xing could see a certain resolve shining in her eyes.
“Understood… I’ll cast the spell immediately.” Lin Xing reluctantly began to form the Teleportation Barrier. She touched Porcelain Moon, preparing to teleport.
“Senior Porcelain Moon, please take good care of yourself!” she whispered near Porcelain Moon’s ear before the blue light enveloped her. As the glow dimmed, Porcelain Moon vanished without a trace.
***
What does teleportation feel like? Porcelain Moon couldn’t quite explain it. Suddenly, she felt the world spin wildly, losing all sense of balance.
The sky and the earth twisted and merged, and the scenery before her eyes became an enigmatic abstraction, like an abstract painting created by an artist.
Porcelain Moon had read descriptions of four-dimensional space in scientific journals — countless overlapping details forming a complex nested structure.
At this moment, she found herself within such a space.
A thin blue line was guiding her toward an unknown destination. She could hardly say where she was headed, and that line seemed to possess a strange continuity.
It morphed into a blue plane, then stretched into a blue cube, constantly changing.
Even its color was difficult to describe given the properties of this space… Time also shifted unevenly.
Porcelain Moon could feel how the speed of her thought process varied with spatial changes, as well as the differences in tactile signal transmission through her neural network between her left and right hands. It was a wondrous sensation.
The human sensory system struggles to process such vast and complex information, yet Porcelain Moon noticed a massive object.
She couldn’t discern its exact distance or shape, but as she tried to focus on it, new structures appeared in the space—different from those before.
These structures seemed orderly, unlike the other chaotic objects around her, though she couldn’t explain why.
This strange journey lasted tens of seconds before an unknown force dragged her out of the twisted spacetime.
She arrived at the center of the battlefield. The Aberrant Beast Core of the Earth Dragon stood just hundreds of meters before her.
She quickly retreated, flying toward the Defensive Position given by Command Headquarters. The purple triangular object was aimed directly at her.
Conventional weapons could not penetrate its shield, nor could other Magical Girls’ spells affect it.
At this moment, it was gathering energy, preparing to unleash a devastating strike.
Porcelain Moon landed on a platform. Behind her, just five kilometers away beyond several hills, lay Command Headquarters.
With the firepower of a Kingdom-Class Aberrant Beast, those hills were no obstacle.
The troops responded swiftly. Perhaps foreseeing this, the Engineering Corps quickly deployed an Artificial Defensive Field along the path of the Aberrant Beast Core’s firepower.
This equipment had been newly introduced in recent years, developed through research on Magical Girls’ Magic Barriers.
Three layers of defensive fields were arranged along the firepower’s trajectory. Porcelain Moon stood behind these defensive positions, serving as the last line of defense.
“Porcelain Moon, can you withstand an attack of this magnitude in your current state?” Ma Xinyin asked anxiously.
“If I can’t hold it off, then we’re all finished. Has Command Headquarters completed evacuation?”
“No, half the personnel haven’t withdrawn yet, and the Aberrant Beast’s energy is about to reach its threshold.”
“Then I must hold my ground here.”
After a pause, the other side said, “Porcelain Moon, don’t overexert yourself.”
***
At that moment, the Earth Dragon’s Aberrant Beast Core launched its attack.
A particle beam with an energy level of two thousand terawatts struck toward Porcelain Moon, accompanied by a fierce wave of heat.
“I know.”
The particle beam hit the first layer of the defensive field. A semi-transparent barrier appeared under the particle beam’s pressure.
Due to the Gravity Lens Effect, the barrier looked like a delicate, colorful bubble—fragile and translucent.
The purple particle beam continued striking the anti-gravity field, twisting the defensive position inward.
The medium forming the anti-gravity field suffered severe collisions and gradually lost its original effectiveness.
When the barrier bent inward to a critical point, the defensive position tore apart, and the first line of defense collapsed.
“Hu…” Porcelain Moon felt the tension mounting and began to deploy her Magic Barrier.
It had been a long time since she had felt this.
The sensation of death…
The second layer of defense also began to bend inward under attack, soon tearing apart.
But the assault did not weaken.
“Again… like this…”
Was Porcelain Moon afraid of death? She didn’t know. She had faced death several times before and survived by sheer luck.
Soldiers took pride in sacrifice, but as a Magical Girl, sacrifice was something to avoid.
She had seen with her own eyes many young Magical Girls in the prime of their youth killed by Aberrant Beasts—the youngest only about ten years old.
If not for their Magical Girl identity, they would never have had to face such a cruel battlefield.
Yet, even so, they remained innocent, believing the world would grant them the crown and paradise they deserved, but reality only gave them cold death.
The third layer of the defensive position came under fire from the particle beam that had pierced through the second layer. The originally smooth barrier was struck unevenly by scattered particles.
“Heh… Bai Lingyi, now I’m just like you.”
Indeed, it was because of this that she now detested this profession so deeply. Yet, that innocent spirit lingered stubbornly in her mind.
“Are you afraid of death?” Porcelain Moon once asked a Magical Girl much younger than herself.
The girl responded, “I’m not scared! Because I’m strong! I can fly high, and no Aberrant Beast can catch me.” Porcelain Moon asked again, “Then why did you become a Magical Girl?”
The girl said, “Because that way, everyone will look up to me. My parents will praise me for being amazing, and after missions, I get to eat lots of delicious food!” Porcelain Moon was speechless.
“Bai Lingyi…” Porcelain Moon’s mind conjured her face, and she bit her teeth.
The third layer of the defensive position was weakening; the attack was about to break through!
“You stupid idiot! Fool! Damn you, damn you!”
Porcelain Moon expanded her pure white Magic Barrier while manifesting a shining Crystalline Shield on her hand.
When her emotions reached a peak, the defensive field shattered. The purple particle beam instantly struck her Magic Barrier.
Porcelain Moon felt an immense pressure crushing her chest, making it hard to breathe. She lowered her stance to avoid being knocked down by the impact.
Like the defensive positions before it, her Magic Barrier bent under the particle beam’s force.
“Cough…”
Porcelain Moon was covered by dazzling light, unable to open her eyes.
Sweat dripped from her forehead as the high temperature burned everything around. Her long hair was whipped about by the heatwave.
“Bai Lingyi, if I can’t hold on, I’ll come see you… cough cough…” Porcelain Moon increased her mana input, channeling all her magic into the Magic Barrier.
The originally pure white barrier gradually turned red under the particle beam’s impact.
“The attack… isn’t over yet?”
For a brief moment, Porcelain Moon felt as if her body was pierced through and her soul ascending to heaven. If that were the case, it would be a kind of release.
Crystalline Shield.
But reality dragged her back from the brink. Her Magic Barrier was breached. The particle beam, carrying terrifying kinetic energy, struck her crystalline shield directly.
The physical impact nearly knocked Porcelain Moon flying.
The particle beam collided with the sharp Crystalline Shield’s edge, scattering particles that surrounded her, enveloping her in a cocoon of high-energy particles.
Hot… that was all she could feel. Her soles were burning, her hands were burning, her back was burning, and her face…
She felt like she was inside a furnace, consumed by flames.
The Crystalline Shield began to melt.
From the smooth interior surface of the shield, she saw her own face—a tear streamed from her eyes due to the scorching air.
Her blue pupils trembled in pain, and her mouth opened wide as she struggled to breathe…
Whether illusion or not, the pain-distorted face in the mirror slowly calmed, as beautiful as ever. The figure smiled and opened her arms, as if to bring Porcelain Moon to a new world.
“Bai Lingyi… cough cough… your face really is unlucky…”
Porcelain Moon knelt halfway, relying on the ground’s support to barely maintain her balance.
Her white stockings burned where they touched the scalding floor, exposing her pale thighs, which soon became red and swollen from burns.
“Am I… going to die?”
Porcelain Moon’s consciousness began to fade…
Suddenly, the attack stopped.
In that instant, the world before Porcelain Moon’s eyes was reduced to two colors: white and black, like a madman’s ink painting, ink violently splattered on pristine paper without pattern or order.
The heat.
Even stronger than before, it rushed toward her, and Porcelain Moon completely lost consciousness.
A Dongfeng-11 tactical nuclear warhead equipped with a small neutron warhead struck the Earth Dragon’s Aberrant Beast Core.
The high-energy neutron flux, combined with the accompanying medium-killing particles, utterly annihilated the Kingdom-Class Aberrant Beast Core.
Everything was over.