“Rather than magical creatures, don’t these guys look more like monsters?”

After taking down another monster that had been completely corrupted and lost its mind, Jiang Cha glanced at its mutation level—which had reached eighty percent—and casually made conversation.

“‘Monster’ means something else in our vocabulary. The full name for these guys, who mutated because they couldn’t withstand magical pollution, is ‘severely witch-sick magical creature.’”

He Qin looked at the familiar mutant monster with a trace of sadness, but quickly recovered and gently explained the basics to Jiang Cha.

“Wow… This world really is dangerous.”

“Yeah…”

“Really dangerous.”

They’d said the same thing, but the two girls’ expressions couldn’t have been more different.

He Qin couldn’t hide the sadness she felt. Jiang Cha, on the other hand, was perfectly calm. With her memories gone, she really didn’t have much empathy. Even when faced with such a tragic monster, amidst all the chaos, her instincts had focused on assessing how dangerous it was and what kind of magic it used.

The blond loli crept up beside Jiang Cha and winked at her behind He Qin’s back.

The girl understood at once. Magic quietly gathered in her toes and flowed through her little leather shoes into the ground, while she simply gave a sweet smile.

“Lina~”

“Hmm?”

“Up you go~!”

“I’m not a little kid.”

Lina looked utterly baffled, thinking that Cha Bao was absolutely terrible at changing the subject.

And then…

Then she really did go flying!

“Lina-chan!?”

The melancholy He Qin was startled by Lina suddenly taking flight.

“Holy crap! Cha Bao, you sneaky little menace! You really went all out, huh!?”

The skies above this forest weren’t safe at all. In that split second, Lina sensed hundreds of magical creatures quietly zeroing in on her, while a dense swarm of black specks raced toward her from far away.

“Sorry~”

The girl responsible still wore a bright, sunny smile. She clasped her hands together and closed her eyes in a flippant apology.

Then she grabbed He Qin and ran!

“What are you standing around for? Run~!”

“H-Hey! Aren’t we going to do something about Lina-chan?”

He Qin stumbled as Jiang Cha tugged her along, then hurried to keep up. Feeling Jiang Cha’s hand around hers, she was surprised by how exhilarating it felt.

“Lina can definitely catch up! Hehe~ Let her contribute a little more to the team.”

The girl grinned mischievously and stuck out her little tongue. It was cute, but for some reason, she still gave off a bit of a bratty vibe.

‘Jiang Cha-chan’s definitely getting revenge, isn’t she?’

He Qin gave her a sidelong look. She could more or less guess what was coming next.

“Jiang—Cha!”

A furious, gritted-teeth roar came from the sky behind them. He Qin glanced back and saw a blond loli wreathed in scorching flames, hurtling after them like a precision-guided missile and following their exact route.

“Holy crap! Lina-chan, what did I ever do to you!?”

Jiang Cha dragged He Qin into a full sprint. A flash of blue light passed over them, and their speed immediately increased.

For some reason, He Qin seemed to have gotten lighter. Was it an illusion caused by the magic enhancement?

“What do you mean, ‘what did I ever do’!? Cha Bao, how thick is your skin!?”

Lina was so angry she almost laughed. She stopped listening to Jiang Cha’s excuses, beat her dragon wings, and led tens of thousands of flying creatures straight after Jiang Cha along her route.

“He Qin, He Qin! Help! Hurry up and put up a Magic Shield! You won’t come out of this unscathed if I get blown up, either!”

“So that’s why you dragged me along?”

An unfamiliar girl’s voice rang out, and Jiang Cha suddenly sensed something was wrong.

She turned around—and saw the Yamato Nadeshiko-like young lady smiling gently at her from at least a hundred meters away.

And what she was holding…

Was a magical puppet.

A special magical puppet, no less—one covered from head to toe in lifelike synthetic skin, and even capable of speech.

“Hahahahahaha! Die, Cha Bao!”

Lina cackled as she swooped over Jiang Cha’s head. The fire magic she’d been building up erupted all at once.

“Boom!”

“What are those three little troublemakers up to now?”

Vladimir noticed the disturbance through his magical senses and glanced at the explosion of dragon breath. After confirming they weren’t in danger, he looked away.

With the strength of Jiang Cha’s group, they wouldn’t be in any danger in the Second Tier Zone. The other, weaker groups were more worthy of his attention than those three little troublemakers.

“Was that really necessary, Lina?”

After a massive explosion, Jiang Cha had just managed to reinforce her Magic Shield with magic. The shield was almost shattered, and she gave Lina a sidelong look. Lina stood back-to-back with her, facing down tens of thousands of bats.

“You brought this on yourself, Cha Bao.”

Lina’s voice was thick with anger, but with a full twenty thousand bats in front of them, she had no choice but to work with Jiang Cha to break through.

Tier-Two Magical Creature. Pegasus Galaxy. Tier-Three Medieval World. Vampire Bat.

That was how their Information was recorded in the Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures.

These bats were social creatures. In their native world, their populations could easily exceed ten thousand, even reaching the millions. Their rate of reproduction was astonishing.

The magic they wielded was unusual, too: a Mentalism-type defensive spell that linked them all together. You could think of it as a Magic Shield that grew stronger the larger their group became.

Thanks to this magic, the bats’ mutation level was very low. They still looked exactly like ordinary bats.

That didn’t make them any less dangerous, though.

“Lina-chan, Jiang Cha-chan~ Over here, over here!”

Outside the dense ring of bats, He Qin had deployed the magical puppet shield. Her No. 3 puppet, the [Bomber], a long-range support unit, opened fire at full power and barely managed to clear a small patch of ground.

“Can you handle them?”

The girl’s eyes lit up as she quietly asked Lina.

“Who do you think I am?”

The blond loli was brimming with confidence. The instant she finished speaking, flames flared up around her again. The little dragon-girl raised a hand, and the heat killed dozens of bats.

It barely made a dent in their numbers, but it was enough to break through.

“Then let’s go!”

Magic surged around the girl, and thousands of Lightning Bolts appeared out of nowhere. They linked together into an electric net, blocking off the way behind them, while flames poured from Lina’s every movement as she blazed a path ahead.

The two witches had been sabotaging each other just moments ago, but now they were working together—and with surprising coordination!

When all was said and done…

No matter how many Tier-Two creatures there were, they were only a bit of a nuisance to the girls.

The creatures couldn’t even get close to them. They’d only chosen to avoid a fight because they didn’t want to waste too much time.

“Don’t do that again!”

Once the two were inside the magical shield, He Qin used Mentalism to command the Guardian Puppet forward, then put on the stern air of the dorm’s eldest sister and bonked them each on the head.

She scolded them angrily.

“Cha Bao started it!”

“Yes~”

The blond loli pouted and tried to shift the blame, while the girl obediently admitted her mistake.

The next second, they both burst out laughing.

“Hahahahaha~”

“Pfft~ Cha Bao, when did you learn that trick? That hidden casting was so sneaky!”

“Didn’t I use it once just now, back at the entrance to the Second Tier Zone? You were the one who wasn’t careful, Lina.”

“You’re asking for it!”

Watching the two of them start horsing around again, the Yamato Nadeshiko-like young lady sighed softly.

She’d been able to keep Lina in check when it was just the two of them. Now Jiang Cha had shown her true colors, too… He Qin could already picture the exhausting life ahead of her.

“Qin Bao, Qin Bao, why don’t we go straight to the Third Tier Zone?”

After fooling around for a while, Lina made the suggestion. He Qin looked at the bats still surrounding them tightly and could only agree helplessly. “We don’t have any other choice.”

Still, she glanced at Jiang Cha with concern.

“The sooner we go, the sooner we’re done. I want to get back to studying as soon as I can.”

The girl noticed her look and nodded, speaking cheerfully.

She had no trouble adjusting to combat. If anything, she’d been comfortable with it from the start.

Even facing tens of thousands of monsters hadn’t bothered her. Jiang Cha didn’t know why she felt so at ease on the battlefield—or why she even liked it a little. Maybe it was a witch’s nature. Maybe she hadn’t been such a good person in the past, either. Either way, it was a good thing.

At least she’d be able to handle this subject without any pressure in the future. It was less a combat class than a ‘battlefield class.’

“Then let’s move out. Jiang Cha-chan, don’t push yourself too hard.”

“Don’t worry, don’t worry~ I’ll be totally fine.”

“Yeah, yeah. He Qin Mom, you’re way too cautious~”

“I told you not to call me Mom!”

The morning sun blazed over the entire forest. It fought its way through the dense swarm of bats and the azure shield to shine on the girls’ faces.

This was the beginning of their new lives.

Every ray of sunlight brimmed with the girls’ youth and energy, the scene as warm as a photograph.