After a simple lunch, Ye Xingyao and Yi Shiyue returned to the safe house hand in hand.
The assembly time for the evening mission was set for 6:00 PM. Calculating the time needed for preparation and the commute, it was no longer that early.
Ye Xingyao pulled out a flat hiking bag from under the bed in the safe house. Then, she began dumping a variety of tools from her toolbox into it, quickly filling the bag until it was bulging.
The girl zipped it up, lifted it with one hand to test the weight, and felt a sudden sense of security from being well-prepared. She set the hiking bag back on the floor and patted her chest, letting out a satisfied sound.
Sitting on the bed nearby, Yi Shiyue watched her “performance” with curiosity. She had never seen Ye Xingyao tinker with such things before. In theory, very few people bothered with these items nowadays.
As for the reason…
Technology had advanced significantly. Precise mechanical structures and high-performance materials ensured that the equipment people used in their daily lives almost never broke down.
Even in the unlikely event that something needed repair or maintenance, people simply handed it over to an Artificial Intelligence. Why would anyone need to do it themselves?
“It’s only hunters like us—those who walk in the gray areas without official status or powerful abilities—who bother studying these things.”
Noticing Yi Shiyue’s confusion, Ye Xingyao plopped down beside her to explain.
“Besides, a full set of these tools is much more expensive than those high-tech gadgets, you know?”
She then leaned closer to the silver-haired girl, softly catching the scent from her neck—a familiar, sacred fragrance that reminded her of the moon at night.
It caused the latter’s face to turn bright red.
It was hard to say if the previous Ye Xingyao had been too dull or if he simply had no time to worry about such things after everything he had been through.
In short, it was only now, after becoming a girl, that she felt this sense of closeness and the pure, bright aura that made her instinctively want to move closer to the girl beside her.
Sometimes, this instinct to be close caused her to unconsciously act somewhat spoiled. As a former male, she still felt a lingering sense of shame about it.
However, she didn’t exactly hate it.
“By the way, Shiyue, can that disguise magic hide only the features of your ears?”
Suddenly, as if remembering something, Ye Xingyao reached out to pinch Yi Shiyue’s pointed ears and asked curiously.
“Xingyao, no pinching. And of course I can. Do you have something in mind?”
Yi Shiyue swatted away Ye Xingyao’s mischievous hand and answered.
“Eh, they’re turning red. Shiyue, are you feeling shy?”
The black-haired girl didn’t answer the question. Instead, she covered her mouth and giggled. Her star-blue eyes looked exceptionally beautiful between her slightly curved eyelids.
“Focus on the task.”
Yi Shiyue raised an eyebrow. She reached out, quietly wrapping her arm around the black-haired girl’s waist, and then lightly traced her fingertips across the skin of her side.
“Pfft… Hahahaha! Shiyue, stop it—”
With just a few tickles, Ye Xingyao laughed so hard her body shook, and a few tears even squeezed out from the corners of her eyes.
Wiping her eyes, Ye Xingyao steadied herself, her small face still slightly flushed as she spoke seriously.
“We’re going to be working with the Magical Girls. Even if they are Magical Girls, they still come from human society. It’s better if your elven traits aren’t too obvious. We might have to move around using these identities in the future.”
“Take my previous cross-dressing identity, Ye Xin, for example. Although I’ve become a girl now and have disguise magic, allowing me to switch seamlessly between Ye Xingyao and Ye Xin, anyone who looks closely will definitely find the connection between the two.”
“In this era, secret identities are far too easy to dismantle. Furthermore, that blue-haired girl from that night is among the Magical Girls in Satellite City. We still don’t know what her attitude toward us is,” Ye Xingyao explained.
After she finished speaking, Yi Shiyue tilted her head and thought for a moment as soft, lunar mana began to radiate from her body.
Soon, the silver-haired girl in front of Ye Xingyao changed her appearance. Her prominent pointed elven ears vanished, and the details of her face became noticeably different from before. A small beauty mark even appeared near her lips.
“Rookie hunter, Yiwena, sends her regards.”
Yi Shiyue grinned, revealing a hearty, frank smile that didn’t match her usual gentle style at all.
“Yes, exactly like that.”
“But I still think you looked better before,” Ye Xingyao commented.
—
That afternoon, at Sanhua Cafe.
“Senior Jin Ming, you’re finally here!”
Ye Xingling acted as if she had found a savior, skipping out of the archives room to welcome the arriving blonde girl.
The “Light of the Future” for Satellite City, the currently Radiance class Magical Girl “Frost Flower,” felt like she was on the verge of a breakdown.
No one told her that being a Magical Girl required so much prep work!
Specifically, the teacher assigned to explain the mission details and past case files to her was her silver-haired, expressionless senior, “Skylark”!
Could you imagine a cute, silver-haired loli Magical Girl sitting beside you, calmly explaining a massive pile of obscure and difficult concepts?
Her impression of Senior Skylark had shifted from a profound, expressionless loli to a profound, expressionless loli Artificial Intelligence.
Though it was a bit rude to say, Skylark always gave her a subtle “bot-like” feeling.
“Oh? Hello there, my cute junior.”
The blonde girl nodded, seemingly quite satisfied with the way Ye Xingling greeted her.
“Miss Jin Ming, we are moving out in 1 hour. Come and review the mission data as quickly as possible. The representative from the Hunter Union has already left ahead of us to scout the location.”
Before they could exchange any more words, Skylark poked her head out of the archives, her gaze burning as she stared at the two of them.
“I hate investigation missions the most,” Jin Ming complained in a low voice, but she still followed behind Ye Xingling into the room.
This was a common trait among Magical Girls. Before they became what they were, they were just ordinary girls. Their hobbies, family backgrounds, and personalities were all different, but most of them had very little contact with things like mana or superpowers.
After all, the Magical Girl gems seemed to value the purity of their hearts or the strength of their aspirations more than anything else.
And girls caught in the center of such a vortex often had many things on their minds.
People like Skylark, who acted as a semi-technician and threw her entire focus into the task at hand, were a minority among the minority—a very rare type among Magical Girls.
“This factory used to be a blood processing plant. A few days ago, a hunter from the Hunter Union found something similar to monster tissue nearby. Unlike the usual corpses of monsters that dissipate upon death, that tissue is not only composed of mana but also appears to have a physical form similar to flesh and blood.”
“Our goal is to investigate the origin of this tissue. This mission likely won’t require combat, but we cannot afford to be careless.”
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A blood processing plant?