Generally speaking, a single Royal-Class Magic Beast is slightly stronger than a Full Bloom-Class Magical Girl.
The most common method the Magic Department uses to deal with them is a rather shameless “group beatdown” tactic.
When the number of Full Bloom-Class Magical Girls does not offer an advantage over a Demon Emperor, the battle becomes incredibly tense, and a winner is rarely decided in a short time.
For human society, which has already endured one Magic Creature Crisis and remains socially fragile, such a conflict would undoubtedly be a heavy blow.
Even if the battle were won, what remained would likely be nothing but ruins.
This was a consequence the Magic Department could not accept.
‘No wonder Mom made that choice…’
As Luo Shuangyue observed her mother, her mother naturally sensed the gaze coming from afar. Looking up, White Night immediately revealed a brilliant smile.
She waved toward Luo Shuangyue’s doll.
Having received her mother’s invitation, Luo Shuangyue naturally did not suffer from stage fright.
In any case, her presence here was merely a small doll; it wouldn’t matter if it were destroyed.
Flapping her wings to fly into the empty zone, Luo Shuangyue felt a massive amount of energy nearby that she could absorb.
These energies were even actively rushing toward her doll.
Luo Shuangyue quickly picked up speed.
It would be bad if she were ensnared by this energy.
Her consciousness could only control such a tiny doll; if this energy piled on all at once, the doll would become impossible to manipulate.
Fortunately, she was fast enough that the energy failed to catch her before she reached White Night’s side.
Upon seeing Luo Shuangyue reach White Night, the energy gave up the pursuit and began to intertwine with itself, seemingly attempting to condense into something massive.
However, it wouldn’t take shape for a while, leaving plenty of time for Luo Shuangyue and White Night to talk.
“Come let Mommy give you a hug! Mmm, you feel so soft. As expected of my cutest and most amazing eldest daughter.” Pulling the doll into her arms, White Night happily pinched its cheeks, showing none of the maturity one might expect from a powerhouse carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders.
“Shuangyue, you’ve become so cute. I told you being a girl is better than being a boy.”
Luo Shuangyue was not at all surprised by her mother’s eccentricities; she never expected her mother to be serious.
After all, this was the legendary woman who would steal cake from her own underage children and then laugh while the girl cried.
Luo Shuangyue helplessly used the doll’s chubby little hands to protect her cheeks.
Keeping a straight face, she questioned her mother, “Mom, aren’t you going to explain yourself?”
“Explain what?”
“What do you mean ‘what’! Everything! Explain everything!”
Luo Shuangyue had far too many questions.
She didn’t know which were important and which weren’t, so she decided to let White Night explain at her own pace.
“Where exactly is this place? What is the deal with these monsters? And what is going on with Dad…”
“Too many questions, Shuangyue.”
“You don’t expect me to guess, do you?” Luo Shuangyue looked at her grinning mother and felt her fist tighten.
Why was she still smiling at a time like this? Didn’t her mother feel even a bit worried? She was literally surrounded by monsters!
“I’d like to, but the time we have left really isn’t enough for me to play the ‘riddle master’ anymore.”
White Night shifted Luo Shuangyue’s doll to hold it against her chest.
She sat on the ground and began to speak slowly, using a tone one might use for a bedtime story.
“You should have seen those people in Die’s world, right?”
“Those… Magical Girls?” Luo Shuangyue asked hesitantly.
As for who Die was, she could guess; that was likely her father’s name.
“Yes. Tell me your theory first.”
“My guess is simple. They are the Magical Girls who died, just without their memories… but what I don’t understand is why they appeared there.”
The heroes of the human world had gone to another world to become the Demon Kings who would destroy it.
How did that happen? Luo Shuangyue had considered many possibilities, but she couldn’t find a logical explanation.
“Because their souls are strong enough to wield that immense power,” White Night provided a very practical reason.
Power cannot be used simply because one possesses it.
An overwhelming power paired with a weak soul only causes that power to lose its intended effect.
Only a powerful soul paired with powerful strength can achieve perfection.
“They are swords, thrust toward that world, swords meant to turn that world into a wasteland.”
“But… why?”
“This is a war—a war that has lasted for many years. The two sides of the war are our world and their world,” White Night said something truly incredible in a very flat tone.
Luo Shuangyue was stunned.
After spending a few minutes barely grasping the meaning behind her mother’s words, her first reaction was: ‘Mom, you aren’t making fun of me again, are you?’
Our world and their world?
Huh?
And where was the war? She hadn’t seen life from another world appear in their world. Weren’t the things causing destruction all just Demons?
“What, you don’t believe me?”
“It’s not that I doubt you, Mom, it’s just that I…” Luo Shuangyue waved her hands in White Night’s arms, trying to explain the thoughts in her head.
She believed White Night wouldn’t lie to her at this moment, but she truly couldn’t understand the situation.
Two worlds were at war, yet her mother and father were the strongest beings of these two worlds—so why were they helping each other?
That didn’t make sense!
“Are you curious why I sent you to save your father?”
“Mhm.” Luo Shuangyue nodded.
“It’s simple. Both he and I know very well that if this continues, there is only one ending for our worlds: mutual destruction, turning into fragments within the Star Sea together.” The girl with white hair and golden eyes sighed softly.
Both she and the Holy Sovereign knew the outcome if this war continued. It was a future that no one wanted to see.
“But we are only their children. Now that the mothers who birthed and raised us are locked in a frenzy, all we can do is try to mediate and ensure the battle isn’t so catastrophic.”
“So, the Demons aren’t some outside invaders, but…” Luo Shuangyue felt she had guessed a part of the truth, and that truth made her scalp tingle.
If this were true, the problem she faced was severe indeed.
“Not outside invaders? No, they are outside invaders. Shuangyue, did you think our two worlds were together from the start?”
Luo Shuangyue’s words made White Night let out a light chuckle.
Never mind that her relationship with the Holy Sovereign was good enough for them to have children together; in reality, the factions they belonged to were natural enemies. It was a life-or-death struggle.
“Ah? They actively invaded us?” Luo Shuangyue gasped.
Did worlds actually attack and fight one another like this?
The winning side would devour everything of the loser to become stronger, while the loser would disappear into the long river of history… honestly, it sounded quite plausible.
But she was wrong again—or rather, she was focusing too much on logic. Reality was much less logical than she thought.
“No one actively invaded. I prefer to call it… an accidental collision.”
White Night opened her hand in front of Luo Shuangyue.
White Magic Power surged from her palm, turning into two small spheres floating in an ocean.
These two spheres were never meant to cross paths; they shouldn’t have met in their entire lifespans.
Then, a wave crashed in, gently disturbing the original trajectories of these two worlds.
“We were lucky. By the time this Star Sea Wave reached us, it had lost most of its power. it only slightly disturbed the orbits of our worlds. Otherwise…”
As White Night spoke, the two white spheres suddenly accelerated.
A second later, they collided violently, turning into a cluster of broken fragments.
“Once two completely different worlds meet, the most likely outcome is mutual annihilation, becoming world fragments drifting in the Star Sea.”
“That is why I say our luck was good, because the collision of our two worlds was very gentle.”
The two spheres reappeared.
This time, their contact was much softer.
When they first met, it was barely a graze. Later, the contact between them deepened until they reached a state of adhesion.
“The first impact happened several decades ago. I think you’ve already guessed what occurred then, Shuangyue.”
“The first descent of the Demons…”
“Exactly.” White Night nodded.
She pointed at the sphere representing their world.
“Our world once had no concept of Magic Power. But after the collision began, this foreign concept started to invade, causing various mutations. The appearance of Demons and the appearance of Magical Girls were both results of this collision.”
As for where that Magic Power came from… naturally, it leaked over from the other world.
The technology their world had developed was almost useless against the other side’s Magic Power.
The World Consciousness was forced to change its path of development.
After all, changing meant giving up on a previous path, but not changing meant the world would end.
“Then how do you know all this, Mom?”
“It’s simple. I’m very powerful and very smart. I am the Child of the World she chose. In the face of such a massive crisis, who else could she rely on if not me?” White Night giggled. From her tone, she seemed exceptionally proud of her identity.
To be able to say such chuunibyou things in that tone—her mother was exactly the same as always.
“Shuangyue, don’t think of our world as a person. Its consciousness isn’t very clear. Actually, it’s more like a clumsy sloth. It hardly moves at all when nothing is happening.”
White Night didn’t know what other World Consciousnesses looked like, but she knew her own.
After she promoted to a Full Bloom-Class Magical Girl at an unprecedented speed, she felt the other party’s summons and communicated with it.
That communication immediately stripped away any sense of awe White Night had for the high-and-mighty entity.
The thing was like a broken record.
No matter what she asked, it just repeated one sentence: protect the world and don’t let the home be stolen.
And when White Night asked why they had to just sit there and take the hits, the World Consciousness told her it was already trying its best to attack.
From beginning to end, White Night only got those two pieces of information.
Everything else she knew now was thanks to her own hard work.
“She is much stupider than us. She hasn’t realized that if this fight continues, both sides are finished.”
Pointing at the surging black monsters before them, White Night explained irritably, “Behind me is the Grand Gate to our world. If these guys rush out, it will be enough to deal our world a fatal blow.”
The human world currently had no way to withstand such an impact.
Therefore, White Night had to stay here, suppressing these restless monsters with her personal might.
“Then isn’t our world doomed? These monsters can destroy our world if they get out, but Dad’s world doesn’t have a crisis right now.”
“Shuangyue, do you think destroying a world is a simple task?” White Night helplessly tapped Luo Shuangyue’s forehead.
“Huh?”
“Even if all life within a world is wiped out, it doesn’t mean much to the world itself. But since our Magical Girls are born into that world as Demons to cause destruction after they die, what happens when all the life on the other side dies?”
White Night pointed her finger in a circle around the ocean of monsters, her voice carrying a hint of helplessness.
“I’m almost at my limit. If a whole new army of fresh recruits is added to this bunch right now, it’s like someone thinks I’m not dying fast enough, right?”
“Once the balance is broken, no matter which world’s life suffers a cataclysm first, the life of the other world won’t have a good ending. That’s why I sent you to stop that idiot. If she dies, I’m finished over here too.”
“I can’t control the battle between those two idiot World Consciousnesses, but I can’t just stand by and watch our world turn into a lifeless wasteland. And to prevent that tragedy, I have to protect the idiots of the other world, making sure they don’t die too many or too fast.”
Saying this, White Night sighed again.
She truly felt like a sucker.
She was doing fine as a genius girl with a bright future, and then—bam—the World Consciousness tricked her onto this sinking ship.
Now, she was like an acrobat walking a tightrope ten thousand meters in the air.
If she made even a tiny mistake, she would fall, taking every living soul from both worlds down with her to be smashed to pieces.
“So… is there no solution?”
“There is. Make those two shake hands and merge peacefully. But that’s impossible.”