Please Save Me
Please save me.
"This isn't right!!"
The first emotion I felt the moment I set foot in the Tower was despair. The instant I became certain I couldn't even protect my own body, I crumbled.
"Send me back! Get me out of here. Please… please…"
I don't want to die yet. I want to keep living.
What is this. I finally thought I was going to make money, and now a bunch of weird skills are blocking my path.
Steadfast Will, my ass.
This isn't my will. This is just torture. It's a prison.
"If you were going to put this kind of shackle on me, you could've at least given me an attack skill… right?"
I wanted out of the Tower that very second. But the System's words kept circling around me.
Skill Steadfast Will is active. You cannot leave the Tower. (23)
I can't leave.
You're trapped here. Climb the Tower for the rest of your life.
You will never escape this place!
"Please…"
I despaired at reality. Being locked inside the Tower was no different from this.
The single biggest reason anyone dreamed of Awakening — the biggest reason Awakening meant you could make money — had just vanished. Escape was sealed off.
The only thing I could trust was the magic power overflowing inside me. Of course, I didn't even know how to use it. All I could feel was that something was flowing through my body on pure instinct.
And in this state, I'm supposed to kill a boss.
The only skill I've actually used is that Change thing, or whatever the transformation skill is called.
"I have to go, don't I…?"
A pitiful voice on the verge of tears filled the unknown space. I forced my crumpled body upright and started walking toward the door in the distance.
I still couldn't sense a single presence. Maybe they were going easy on me because this was supposed to be a tutorial.
Somehow my weak legs kept carrying me forward. Even in high heels, my feet didn't hurt. Was that another magical-girl thing?
"…There it is."
Whether because the space itself was small or not, something came into view before long.
A massive vine stood guard over the doorway. The kind of tentacle-like vine that looked like it would mean big trouble in every possible sense if it touched you.
It had already invaded this space long ago, expanding its territory. Even now, the vine kept growing — as if its sole purpose was to swallow this place whole. It spewed a nauseating violet liquid as it crept toward me.
I had no idea where it had come from. All I could do was follow the ominous vine through the door.
"…Please."
I moved forward along its trailing length. I didn't even have the luxury of paying attention to the hammering of my heart. I simply moved my legs, as if something were pulling me along.
The only way out of here is to kill the boss. If I want to live, I have to kill. But it's a tutorial, so it shouldn't be that hard…
Skreeeek—!
I froze mid-step. A shriek from far ahead dragged my lost sense of reality back into place — the fact that I had walked into the Tower with my life on the line.
"…What the hell was that?"
I'd thought it was just some nothing tutorial. A freebie floor. But now I felt completely unprepared.
Who would ever imagine their own skill would lock them out of running away? Who would ever predict that being EX-rank — being a magical girl — would lock the difficulty in place?
"…Ugh."
Honestly, I feel like crying. I should have read the skill description before leveling it up.
People called me a walking pile of variables, but this was purely the result of my own laziness.
Even so, I had to keep going. Thanks to that godawful skill, even fleeing had been stripped from me.
The vine stretched endlessly inward. Following it, I soon found the source of the shrieking.
The monster was thrashing its vines like tentacles, smashing everything around it — but the flower that seemed to be its main body couldn't move.
"A fixed monster…?"
A flower bloomed from the part that felt like a head. As time passed, its color grew more vivid and its size swelled larger.
"So that's what I have to kill…"
Repeating to myself that I had no confidence, I raised my staff and crept toward the plant in silence. It still didn't seem to have noticed me.
That gave me a spark of courage. I felt the tutorial floor all over again. If the boss was a fixed monster that couldn't move, then surely I had a chance.
"Hup!"
I lifted the staff as high as it would go and brought it down. Reckless as the attack was, I prayed it would land. In that moment, no one in the world could have been more desperate than me.
But my strike did nothing more than pull the monster's scattered attention into a single point.
Skreek— skreeeek—!
The monster roared as if screaming. The sound flooded the empty space — a grotesque cry I had never heard in my life.
I tried to drive the staff into the center of the flower again. I was going to keep moving, keep fighting to live — or so I thought.
"Wh-what…?"
The reeking monster shrieked once more, and at the same time a strange liquid splattered across my face. I scrambled backward, putting distance between us.
The sensation of my skin burning made me flinch hard; I frantically wiped the liquid off my face.
"Just run for now…!"
I felt our eyes meet. Nested inside the flower was a human pupil, and it was looking at me. It had recognized its enemy.
The vines that had been so still whipped violently through the air. A violet mist began to fill the space.
The monster's goal was simple: kill the invader who had trespassed on its territory. A creature without purpose, following instinct alone, testing whoever would climb the Tower.
"Ugh…"
What do I do. I don't even have an attack skill.
…At least let me use magic. Please.
One question kept circling through my mind — the anxiety of whether I could even clear the tutorial.
If I couldn't clear it, there was only death. With the option to run locked away, failing the tutorial was no different from accepting that I was going to die.
"I don't want this…"
I screamed in front of the monster and fled back out through the door. The moment I saw it, a visceral revulsion hit me. Every single one of its movements became even more disgusting.
A human eyeball just staring at me from the middle of a flower — how the hell is that not disgusting, for fuck's sake.
"What even is that…? Everyone said the tutorial was just three goblins…!"
Dying in the tutorial before you even properly Awaken was basically natural causes. For a talentless hunter, dying was the happier option. People on the forums tossed around jokes like that without a second thought.
"No matter how you look at it, that thing kills you, right…?"
And it saw me. With those disgusting eyes, it looked right at me.
"What am I supposed to do now…"
I couldn't find a way. I couldn't leave this Tower. I couldn't run. The space left to stand on was about to disappear entirely.
…Miracles don't happen to me. For someone as unlucky as I am, this kind of thing is ordinary.
I had to accept an unavoidable future. Who would have thought a hunter's end would come on the tutorial floor? To be finished on the very first level.
"I don't want this… Stay away…!"
Where the door should have been had become a dead end with nowhere to flee. Right there, I had to prepare myself to give up on everything. The tears I'd been holding back finally broke free.
My strength gave out and I collapsed to the floor. For some reason, my thighs felt warm — a thoroughly unpleasant dampness.
…Truly, it couldn't have been a more pathetic ending.
"…Fuck."
There's still so much I haven't done. I didn't climb the Tower for this. I didn't Awaken just to die like this.
"I don't want to die…"
I couldn't keep thinking. I sobbed bitterly, my mind grinding to a halt.
By the time I realized that struggling any further was meaningless, a thorned vine was already right in front of my face.
I felt death coming. A miserable finish was waiting for me. Without even clearing the first floor, my life was about to end.
"…"
The massive vine closed in. In a moment it would smash into my body. Tears kept forcing my eyes shut. Soon I wouldn't be able to see or feel anything at all.
What kind of magical girl is this. Can't even clear a single tutorial, and I'm supposed to be EX-rank?
Nothing works. Right up to the very end, I just get swept along. I never even had a self of my own.
I don't want to die. I want to run. I want to live.
If I'd known it would be like this, I never would have wanted to Awaken at all.
"…"
This is just torture. Giving someone hope and then snatching it away again — pure malice.
"If you're going to do this, just take it back…"
My body… wouldn't move. My mind had already been broken for a long time. I had given up on everything. Cursing the Awakening I never asked for, I waited for the death creeping closer.
…And then.
A familiar mechanical voice began to sound inside my head.
A magical girl does not lose to something like this.
Activating Magical Girl Nejeri's unique skill.
Before my ruined mind could catch up, my limp body moved first. It pushed me up from where I'd collapsed, and "I" muttered something to block the monster's attack.
"…Reflection."
A voice came from lips that had been sealed shut. Or maybe "pulled out of me" was the better way to put it. My mouth was chanting some kind of unknown spell.
It felt like the control of my body had been stolen.
Rising past the terror, I released a small light from my fingertips. A brilliant radiance poured from my body, filling the narrow space — an alien blue starlight that had no business existing here. The near-infinite magic power glowing from within me lit the jewel on my staff bright.