Public Enemy
I kept watching Kim Su-jeong twitch in her sleep, wondering if she would come after me again.
"Ugh..."
She mumbled something incomprehensible and squirmed, then finally sat up. Her eyes widened as she looked around, landing on me sitting on the bed.
"Huh, when did you get in?"
"...You really came out like that?"
My tongue clicked at her first words, eyes wide in surprise. It didn't seem like a lie.
She really looked like she had no memory of the possession from last night. The problem was the demon still lived inside her body.
"By the way, I was definitely in the lounge last night..."
"It's fine. Come down first. We need to eat breakfast... and go to school."
There was no need to dig deeper. If she couldn't remember, she didn't need to be scared into thinking she was possessed and had beaten me with a stick yesterday.
But one thing was clear: the Kim Su-jeong from yesterday showed her true self, including her genuine personality.
That meant I had to watch for when she would turn on me again and stab me in the back.
"Even if you stab me, it'll be okay. Surprisingly... I didn't even transform, how..."
Chaos Surge
Kim Su-jeong stumbled down to change clothes while I kicked the sullen Ren lightly.
"Hey, what is this?"
"I don't know."
Kim Su-jeong asked me in a slightly trembling voice about the wrench and electrical tape on the desk, but I just shook my head.
Eventually we left the room with a bit of awkwardness between us.
"Wait, Jin-ah."
After breakfast, however, Hong Soo-young appeared with a tense face, someone I hadn't expected at all.
"Senior, what's wrong?"
"Um... just listen without jumping to conclusions."
She led me to the empty emergency stairwell and her eyes were shaky, voice trembling.
She was usually bold and loud, but the tension meant something serious.
"I'm worried about you."
"Worried?"
"Y-yeah. Your actions lately. Yesterday you almost got into big trouble by getting mixed up in it."
She struggled to continue. I listened quietly and analyzed everything at once.
Was Hong Soo-young acting like this on her own will? But she seemed to be watching my every move too closely.
"Stop hanging around with Park Tae-joon's group. Those kids are scarier than you think."
"It doesn't matter to me since I can handle them."
"Handle them? What do you mean? Gold accessories? Shortened uniforms in their taste?!"
She shook her head, unable to understand.
"I've seen it myself. Kids who've been messing with them since elementary school and got forcibly transferred after causing trouble. That guy doesn't like you. He'll throw you away like garbage when he gets tired."
"She's definitely got a rotten heart."
"Then..."
"I have my own reasons to believe in you. Don't worry. More importantly, did Su-jeong do anything strange yesterday?"
I moved my mana. At the same time, my eyes hidden in black started glowing red again.
It was just a mimic of Succubus eyeballs, but it would work on someone psychologically cornered.
"T-that..."
"Su-jeong asked you, right?"
A line of cold sweat ran down Hong Soo-young's forehead.
I pressed her gently. Even if she was bold, she was still a kid and couldn't withstand this pressure.
Eventually Hong Soo-young spilled everything that had happened while I was in the city yesterday.
"It's getting more troublesome."
Thanks to her, I decided I needed to extract the demon from Kim Su-jeong's body before it became any more annoying.
[Demon here, demon there]
Inside the school bus, I clicked my tongue while watching demons crossing the city center. I had already seen Mammut's level yesterday. The only annoying thing was those other demons.
"I can't kill them all. Right now I'm a magical girl."
"..."
I looked at Kim Su-jeong staring blankly out the window beside me. Like this potential bomb hidden in society.
And if Mammut commanded them, he could drag the whole area into chaos at any moment.
"It's legendary that kids are going to school normally after last night's chaos from the kaijin."
"That yesterday? It happened on the east side of Seoul."
The atmosphere inside the bus was also chaotic. All the students knew what happened yesterday and were anxious.
Kaijin weren't the only ones who were weird. The fact that normal people had gone mad planted fear in people's hearts.
[That bastard definitely has collaborators]
"That's true. But I don't know what kind of bastards they are."
[If you dig into the suspicious points the other way, maybe something will come out]
Ren's words triggered something in my head. The unidentified experiment subjects I saw when I raided the illegal nightlife spot.
"M-Mammut... are you planning to attack?"
[No choice. If I leave them alone they'll get more annoying, so I have to clean them up first]
It was obvious. The fire had to be stepped on before it grew bigger.
*
"Slowly... stronger magical girls' screams and flesh... I want to taste."
"How do you like our proposed plan?"
"Quite reasonable."
That was when the whole world was facing an anxious morning.
Mammut, the kaijin at the center of last night's chaos, leaned back in a proper office chair.
He had just eaten a magical girl alive without anyone noticing after a mindless raid on the organization's office.
But for him, the blood and flesh of weak magical girls was nothing new. He had eaten it all the way up to now.
"Then let's proceed as planned. The other bastards will think you left the country because you lost interest. While they do that, we'll become bait and lure the strong magical girls you want. Then you can eat them."
"Can you handle it?"
Mammut clicked his big teeth and grinned.
"Of course. Once the magical girls who are obstacles are gone, we can push this world into the chaos you want."
The man nodded confidently at Mammut's words.
'Once I get the sample and complete the experiment, that's it. I need the blood of a really strong magical girl.'
Of course it wasn't exactly the same goal as Mammut's simple slaughter and rampage, but the end result would be the same.
"Then I'll watch from here."
Mammut stood up from his seat and snapped his fingers. His body wrapped in thick smoke and vanished instantly.
As planned, Mammut crossed the sea to Japan. He would show himself there and draw attention.
"Executive. Now what..."
"Contact the boss. Tell the research director too. It's time to start the operation. We also have control over the demons we planted in Korea."
The ones left in the office immediately started acting.
They planned to lure the magical girls who would be careless about Mammut's move to Japan.
"Mammut is heading to Japan. It's the closest country with lots of people and famous magical girls, so it will draw attention."
"Monsters eat the fresh blood and meat they want, and we just need to obtain pure biological data."
After all, the whole country was focused on Mammut's every move right now.
Thanks to that, the organization that had a little more freedom from surveillance set up facilities inside Korea as planned.
This place was a underground bunker built under a mountain villa.
From the outside it looked like a normal villa basement, but a lot of people were bustling around inside.
"Everything ready, Andrei?"
"Yes."
Andrei, the chief director and research director of the place, proudly showed something toward the screen.
"Heh... hihi... ahh..."
The girl tied firmly to the chair was the mother of the demons he was commanding in this area. Using electrodes connected to her brain and body, he could issue commands to control the demons. Such results! Only we who directly researched Mammut could do this!"
Andrei introduced the girl who was tied to the chair with pride.
The girl whose eyes were rolled back and who let out strange moans instead of words from her mouth was horrifyingly exposing part of her brain with her head half open.
The electrodes connected all over her body were deeply implanted in the brain too.
"If I can move the scattered demons, it's no big deal."
"...I hope you succeed."
Andrei's enthusiasm was overflowing. He was the leader of this project after all. In fact he thought the plan was almost complete.
"Move the demons. It's better to first create a criminal group to lure the magical girls. They won't know that demons can do this kind of thing."
Andrei laughed and gave the order to start the plan.
At the same time the researchers input commands through the electrodes.
The girl screamed horribly and twisted her whole body in convulsions. The demons commanded by Mammut were once just fragments of a normal soul.
The poor soul torn into thousands or millions of pieces was, of course, being thoroughly crushed as a tool for its flesh too.