The Line That Must Be Defended
I hurled the pathetic victim I had caught. After all, right now I was a magical girl. Since I couldn't touch them directly, I had only to restrain them however I could.
I snatched up a steel rebar that had fallen nearby, slammed the struggling girl to the ground, and then wrapped her tightly with the rebar I manipulated freely with my hands and feet.
Yet the girl didn't even scream. She only kept thrashing.
A thick aura of dark energy poured from every inch of her body. The experiment conducted in this hellish place had been insane from the very start—injecting negative mana into a girl's body by force.
"Their scent is already far away. They fled without the slightest hesitation."
My senses detected a group of people growing distant. They weren't fools; pursuing them through this underground facility and catching everyone would have been impossible.
"Ugh—urgh! Die, you monster!!"
"I'll handle the cleanup myself."
The only thing I could do right now was to wipe out the remnants here.
I shouted and shot the man firing bullets in half with a casual gesture, then let my entire shadow flow across the facility.
They were just leftovers. Living fools could spout whatever nonsense they wanted, beg for mercy, or do anything—I would simply pierce, chop, and tear them apart.
If they were here, it meant I had zero hesitation in killing, and they were pure filth.
"TAKILAS!"
When I finally stepped out of the blood-soaked facility after cursing at the corpses...
What greeted me wasn't the first group of runners, but the police force and magical girl Aria who had just arrived.
"Long time no see. But you were late. Terribly late."
"You killed people again?!"
Aria, who never let her guard down anymore, clenched her lips while burning red mana.
If it were any other time, I would have teased her mercilessly. But today I didn't feel like laughing either.
"I did kill them. Exactly seventy-three... and in exchange, I saved thirty-four girls."
"...What?"
"If I hadn't come, what would have happened? Senior, you'd have saved those seventy-three for sure. But among those thirty-four girls, several would have become unwilling victims of illegal human experiments like those twenty-one kids who died, or twisted into monsters."
Did my words hit her? Aria's face drained of color in real time. The police officers behind her looked pale too, and murmurs rippled through them.
"Mammut, stop worrying about that bastard and do your job properly. While those ghostlings are scouring the country for young girls to use in experiments on possessed bodies, what exactly have you been doing?"
"...Don't talk nonsense. Mammut is an evil too powerful to challenge lightly. What do you even know?"
"Yeah? Then let's make a bet, senior."
Her voice turned icy the moment her pride was stung. I chuckled. Mammut was certainly a tough one to hit. But that was all.
"The egg-headed freak—if I actually beat him, what then? Will you admit how useless, weak, and inefficient you all are?"
Our eyes locked in the air. Mine calm, hers a vivid scarlet. At the same time, I read hesitation in her gaze—whether I would truly kill Mammut.
She was still too young.
"Eeeh! What the hell are you all doing?! That kid over there is under capture orders! Shoot! Little shit, talking back to us adults like that..."
"These crazy—"
But a voice that shattered the silence blasted from the megaphone.
The man Ren had cursed and who had been glaring was a middle-aged police chief with half his head shaved. He ignored Aria's warning and ordered his subordinates to open fire.
It was an impulsive action I could only stare at blankly for a moment.
"What are you doing?! Stop immediately!"
"You're the noisy one! Who are you giving orders to? I'm enforcing the law right now!"
Ignoring Aria's protests, the man kept screaming instructions.
The poor juniors who actually had to fight in real combat looked at him with resentful faces for coddling such arrogant superiors.
I raised my arm to shield my face. Tasers and capture nets for abnormal beings flew toward me, desperately trying to restrain my shadow-protected body.
"Whatever. Let's pull back for now. We already let the key figures slip away anyway."
Ren shook his head, then poked my ankle with his foot.
But since I had transformed for the first time in a long time, today I had no intention of simply retreating. Receiving a first strike and then just taking it didn't make sense.
"Huh?"
As I took a step forward, panicked Ren collapsed to the ground. I didn't even glance at him and raised my killing intent.
Naturally, the shooting stopped.
"What the—"
"Step aside, senior. It looks like all of you have some misunderstanding."
Aria blocked the pitiful idiots who couldn't pull the trigger because they were crushed under killing intent aimed at themselves. But I ignored her and roared.
"You shoot so boldly, without any hesitation. You confident fools. You keep shooting because you've always believed magical girls can't have their heads cracked no matter what you do."
"Step back. Touching the police is crossing a real line."
"That's why people nowadays act so arrogantly and don't realize they can have their heads smashed anytime. What are you even basing your attitude on?"
"Get back now!"
Aria, still shouting, took up a fighting stance and blocked me until the end.
But her eyes were trembling too. What about that fragile girl hiding behind her back?
I had warned you... Kyaaah!
I wrapped Aria in explosive shadows and flung her away. Someone of her level could probably buy at least ten seconds. And that was enough.
In that instant, I grabbed the back of the head of the fleeing enemy with the shadow tentacle and slammed it hard into the ground.
"Cu... cuh..."
"Hey. Speak up. A police officer like you, spilling garbage guts like that. Who and what could possibly protect you now?"
I stomped on the chest of the groaning man on the ground.
The fact that I could even touch him like this was proof of just how rotten he was. The young patrolman next to him might have been weak, but he was clean, so I couldn't touch him.
"I-I am from the National Police Agency of the Republic of Korea..."
"Examiners, congressmen, even women who got eaten to death—die, you idiot."
"Aaaah!"
When I put a little force into his leg, the sound of his crushed ribs slowly crumbling echoed.
The hand that had gripped my calf and ankle trembled, and blood spurted from his mouth.
Just a little more... just a little more, and this trash would be dead.
"Stop!"
At that moment, Aria charged in and tackled me directly. Our tangled bodies smashed through the villa wall and tumbled inside.
Before the dust settled, she quickly pinned me beneath her, grabbed my neck, and pressed down.
"You're surprised your neck isn't snapped?"
"Hmph..."
I used my thumb and index finger of one hand to pry open her grip, forcing her fingers apart. Her forearm muscles quivered, but unfortunately my strength was greater.
Shadow slowly rose and turned into fists, then I struck like a baseball pitch, battering Aria's body beneath me.
"Then let's make that bet after all, senior."
"M-my bet..."
I offered her a tempting proposal while she struggled to rise from the smashed large TV.
"Create an illegal lab here, control Mammut's ghosts, and run human experiments. The core of that organization—you couldn't kill it. Because their experiments succeeded, and thanks to using innocent girls as test subjects, I, as a magical girl, couldn't touch them."
"Y-you..."
"Whether you cooperate with the police or not, catch that organization yourself. I'll take care of Mammut instead. The one who catches first wins."
Her eyes changed. She must have liked the idea. Honestly, I didn't know why I had said it either—just a slight shift in mood.
"If I win, you won't look down on me anymore. After all, you have no excuse left to stop me now that you've proven your incompetence."
"Then... if I win..."
Pant ing, she finally spoke.
"You stop the killings."
And she set her condition. I accepted it. After all, there was no way she would win.
"...Then try your hardest."
I brushed off the dust from my clothes and left her there, stepping out of the villa.
The police watching their leader get brutally beaten now felt intense fear toward me and couldn't even meet my gaze.
I liked that look. That was how it should be. As the weak, act weak—don't grab others' ankles, show mercy when the time comes, and humbly crawl on the ground knowing your place.
"I hope you learn from today's events. This world is one where even the weak can have their heads cracked open anytime if they act arrogant without understanding their place."
I recalled Ren, flew up into the sky, and disguised myself at a certain height.
The school was definitely turned upside down by now.
The place I headed to, hiding my body, was the underground lab I had just escaped from.
"You... no way..."
"Even if I go there now and can't make excuses or get interrogated, it would be better to just get kidnapped instead."
Wearing a respirator, I floated into the empty test tubes and chuckled.