LIGHTNOVELSTORY Hearing the unbelievable words from Gomteng, I grabbed my mask and kicked the front door as I dashed outside.
In this utterly unbelievable reality, with only one person nearby to vent my frustrations on, I couldn’t help but snap.
“Are you serious? Three of them?!”
“I’m telling you it’s true! Have you ever seen me lie about this kind of stuff? Wait, it’s increasing again?”
Even if I wanted to deny it, it was reality.
For sure, even if Gomteng was useless, he had never once lied about monsters.
Given that I wasn’t in the mood for a wild goose chase like last time, I had no choice but to accept this reality and move quickly.
“Ugh, damn it! I thought it felt quiet lately!”
“Four, five! Oh come on!”
As I cursed and burst out of the shared entrance, Gomteng’s radar kicked in just when I needed it, increasing the detected numbers.
Unable to hold back, he joined in on the cursing.
Normally so laid-back, even the usual transformation spots were hard to find today, likely because of the adults cooling off at the playground gazebo.
“Sun!”
In some corner of the street, where cars were parked in legal chaos.
By the time Gomteng mentioned that six monsters had appeared, I was finally able to transform and take to the sky.
There was no time to steadily torture my opponents.
What the news or articles were spouting about magical girls didn’t concern me anyway.
I just needed to take care of it quickly to avoid bothering those around.
“Hey, over there!”
“Get lost, you bastard!”
I couldn’t accept the sudden change in situation and felt my temper flare.
Fully relishing that power, I dropped down with enough force to leave a huge crack in the ground and crushed the monster.
With its form obliterated, it left no trace behind.
Before it could scatter into magical powder, I soared up to the sky and asked Gomteng for the location of the next monster.
“Where is it?!”
“It’s over there!”
The numbers kept rising, and aside from the one I’d just finished off, there were still seven monsters left.
While I was sure it would be best to handle them one by one, was I short on time or power?
“Damn, it’s tiring to go down! Beam-!”
From the third monster onward, I took care of them with precise beam bombardments from the sky.
I repeated this process, watching the ground turn into neat craters and seeing the magical powder scatter.
As a result, an entire 16 minutes and 49 seconds had passed since the first monster showed up.
That was how long it took to completely take out the eight monsters that appeared in our area.
Even though I had seemingly finished something, I felt nothing like it, so I perched on a rooftop and asked Gomteng.
“Is there more?”
“No, not for now…”
“Ugh, what a hassle….”
With Gomteng’s words ringing out like a confirmation, I leaned back and sprawled on the rooftop of the nameless apartment.
Had they all taken some sort of drug? Even though it had been quiet for a while, what was going on?
Lying there, I rolled my eyes and pulled Gomteng closer as he floated by.
“Hey, what’s going on here?”
“Well, um… I’ve never seen anything like it either, so I can’t say.”
“Am I the first again? What the hell….”
Seeing Gomteng looking genuinely perplexed, I let go of him and dropped my right arm to the ground.
Elbowing each other on the rooftop of the apartment.
The smell of green waterproof paint baking under the sunlight only intensified my pitiful situation.
When ‘first’ is usually a good thing you’d want to achieve, being first for a negative reason really felt disgusting.
In a storm of anger, where should I even channel my grievances?
“Well, it seems they won’t show up anymore. Let’s head back.”
“Yeah, that’s for the best….”
Listening to Gomteng’s careful guess, I let out a short sigh, got up, and headed home.
I didn’t want to do this again next time.
As soon as I got home, I quickly grabbed my smartphone and flopped onto my bed.
Even before I stepped into the community, the front page of the search engine was full of new news.
Naturally, there was no way they wouldn’t cover the eight monsters that had just appeared.
[Is there really no safe zone left?! ‘Safe City’ treated as XX…]
[‘Is this a good restaurant? Eight monsters appeared all at once in this city.]
[Even with eight monsters appearing, zero damage—what’s up with the magical girl in charge?]
Various news outlets began to chew on that story without missing a beat.
It felt like a chunk of raw meat thrown into a lake full of piranhas.
“Mari, are you okay?”
“Oh… No, I’m fine, don’t worry about it.”
I waved my hand dismissively toward the voice from the unseen first floor and turned my attention back to my smartphone.
In reality, I felt like I could drop dead from exhaustion…
But I needed to ensure that Siyeon wouldn’t have to worry about me.
As long as the monsters didn’t mess with us again, we’d be fine.
As long as they didn’t do this again…
‘But why is it, all of a sudden, monsters like this?’
With that thought hanging in my mind, I suddenly became curious about the simultaneous monster appearances.
Should I have captured the last eight and asked?
But capturing one that had already turned to dust wasn’t an option.
At the time, I was in such a rush to take care of them, never knowing when the next monster would appear, so that thought was left as mere regret.
‘If this happened while I was at school, that would really be a pain….’
“Tsk.”
Thinking over a situation I hoped wouldn’t occur had me grimacing and clicking my tongue.
The season was steadily heating up, even as night fell.
Just as I opened the balcony door to let in a breeze of slightly cooler air.
“Ah, seriously.”
The ghostly scent of nicotine crept in and made me wrinkle my nose.
I wondered if I was fighting monsters for the sake of these humans.
But if I thought about it carefully, since I was getting paid, I wasn’t entirely doing it just for humanity.
Money is supreme.
It’s just that I also happen to be helping people.
“Haah.”
Today, my body felt extraordinarily tired, as if moving more than usual had worn me out earlier than normal.
Yet I still wanted to eat dinner before heading to bed, so I asked Siyeon what she wanted to eat.
“Pizza!”
“Pizza? What flavor?”
“Anything!”
This time choosing the type of food but leaving the flavor completely at random had me falling deeper into thought over Siyeon’s choice.
Let’s go with bulgogi and pepperoni pizza, something suitable for both Gomteng and the sea snake to enjoy as well.
After placing the order, I closed my eyes for just a moment.
Just that brief time was enough for my consciousness to start slipping away.
‘I shouldn’t be doing this again….’
With that worry in mind, Mari decided to stay asleep until the pizza arrived.
In stark contrast to her worries, inside the monster ships was a celebratory atmosphere equivalent to an earthly festival.
In what should have been filled with the cries of torture or insane laughter from the monsters who had usually visited that black area, the recovery room was instead brimming with cheer.
Monsters that woke up from the recovery devices embraced each other, feeling friendship beyond species and gender, and let out joyous roars of accomplishment.
“Wow!!! We did it!!”
“They died in an instant! Died in an instant!”
“It really worked! Who came up with this idea?”
“This isn’t the time! We need to tell the others!”
Looking at the monsters rushing out of the recovery room, Medic Tentacle scratched its round head with its tentacles bunched together.
Feeling both gratitude and joy at the monsters dying so quickly, even his own mood became ambiguous.
Not to mention he couldn’t gather data on Sun, as he crossed his arms watching them dash out, he muttered a few words more.
“Hmmm, when did our fellows become a suicide squad?”
“It’s not surprising. It’s that ‘black area,’ after all.”
In reply to Medic Tentacle’s mumblings, one of the monsters in the recovery room answered back.
Realizing yet again how immense and fearful the meaning of the black area was for monsters, even Medic Tentacle couldn’t help but feel it.
Still, however, he respected the commendable efforts to overcome it, yet the often incomprehensible demands placed upon him remained a bother.
“Last time, they asked me to create suicide bombs, didn’t they…”
“It’s better for the bomb to explode inside than to face that woman.”
After voicing one of the incomprehensible demands, one of the other monsters in the recovery room rebutted.
The verbal sparring continued.
“…Shouldn’t you, being part of the recovery room, side with me?”
Medic Tentacle turned to look at that monster, feeling somewhat offended and incredulous as he questioned.
Medic Tentacle, who was the unassailable direct subordinate.
Despite his expectations that an apology would come, instead he received an entirely unexpected question from the subordinate monster.
“Hmm. So, do you want to go there unarmed?”
An unexpected pivot to the topic came back like a surprise question.
“…”
Medic Tentacle fell silent in response to the sudden question.
Do I want to go there unarmed?
Even if I had hundreds of mouths, there would be no way to answer that question with a simple “yes.”
“Even so… it’s not a suicide bomb, just an explosive…”
While I couldn’t bring myself to respond to that sudden question, Medic Tentacle mumbled in silence as he kicked at the air with his tentacle limbs.