It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts!

Her vision had gone completely black. A giant magical beast, twenty or thirty meters long, had swallowed her in a single bite, and an unbearable stench filled the air around her.

Bai Xiaoxiao’s protective magic had done a good job of blocking the fatal blow. Unfortunately, the digestive juices in the beast’s stomach enveloped her and began to eat away at her whole body.

The beast’s enormous body kept writhing, apparently crawling underground. Bai Xiaoxiao used every last bit of strength to raise a barrier, and finally her body felt a little more comfortable... As if!

Her magical-girl outfit was soaked, and her body was covered in slime. It was disgusting.

Something seemed to be interfering with the flow of her magic. Desperate, Bai Xiaoxiao could only struggle to push the beast’s body apart while wiping the disgusting, clear slime off her face.

“Ugh...”

She couldn’t stop throwing up. Bai Xiaoxiao was nearing her breaking point.

Why did she always have to be this unlucky? Why was she the one trapped in this kind of desperate situation again...?

If that twin-tailed little girl hadn’t shown up in time to save her last time, her short life would probably have already come to an end.

This time, she’d been swallowed by a B-Rank magical beast. She could barely manage to use her magic at all, and keeping up the shield protecting her body had taken every last bit of her strength.

Why...?

Why was she so weak? If only she could become stronger... as strong as the Savior Saintess!

Tears glimmered at the corners of her eyes. In the pitch-black space, it felt as if something was about to emerge.

Outside, Lu Wanxin had watched helplessly as the giant serpent beast swallowed Bai Xiaoxiao and immediately burrowed underground. She was on the verge of breaking down.

She hammered the ground with magic as if she didn’t care whether she lived or died. Explosions rang out one after another as magic orbs, even more powerful than hand grenades, shook the earth again and again. Unfortunately, the beast had escaped too quickly. That was all she could do.

“Xiaoxiao... I swear, I swear, I swear I’ll avenge you!”

Uncontrollable fury blazed in her eyes. Lu Wanxin’s magic began to run wild, and the light around her flickered as her blue outfit shone brighter and brighter.

It was a light brighter than the stars, more dazzling than the sun.

Lu Wanxin had just spent five years of her life in one go. A weapon shimmered before her.

This was the result of communicating with her contracted spirit in her heart: she’d gained the power of a magical weapon at the cost of five years of her life.

The light gradually faded, and the magical weapon slowly took shape. It was a shining bow, adorned with brilliant gemstones, while its arrows were made of light condensed from magic.

Lu Wanxin gripped the magical weapon tightly in her right hand, her gaze growing ever more resolute. She’d spent five years of her life when she first made her contract, and now she’d paid the same price all at once to avenge Bai Xiaoxiao. She didn’t regret it at all.

After taking a deep breath, Lu Wanxin aimed her bow at the unfathomably deep hole in the ground.

The radiant arrow gathered an immensely powerful force of magic. Brighter than the stars, more dazzling than the sun, it shot toward the hole in a streak of white light as Lu Wanxin finished drawing her bow.

As if it could lock onto its target, the arrow of light sped through the tunnel. Once it had found its mark, it pierced straight through the giant serpent beast’s tail.

BOOM!!!

A vast stretch of ground was blown away. The violent explosion tore through everything for several kilometers around. At its center, Lu Wanxin watched intently as the magical beast leaped out of the ground, then drew her bow again and took aim.

Just as she finished charging her shot and was about to release it, something strange happened to the beast’s belly as it writhed and struggled in midair. Its middle began to swell like a balloon, and the agony sent it crashing to the ground, thrashing wildly and sweeping away everything around it.

The dust it kicked up blotted out the sky. Lu Wanxin worried about Bai Xiaoxiao, still trapped inside the beast, and the light of the fully charged arrow dimmed.

“What happened? Where’s Xiaoxiao?”

Cai Mengmeng arrived from the other side of the zoo and immediately sensed that something was wrong. She looked at Lu Wanxin’s furrowed brows and seemed to understand.

“I’m sorry. Xiaoxiao...”

Lu Wanxin lowered her head, struggling to speak. Cai Mengmeng froze. She’d only been making her rounds for a few minutes, and Xiaoxiao was already dead???

“Wait?! Something’s wrong with the patterned giant python!”

Lu Wanxin had been about to say that Xiaoxiao had fallen in battle, but then the giant serpent beast on the ground began to turn pale around its belly. Its massively swollen abdomen bulged like a balloon.

Both of them felt an intensely powerful surge of magic coming from there. If nothing unexpected happened, Bai Xiaoxiao might still be alive!

Sure enough, an explosion rang out before their eyes. And who else could the figure standing on the giant serpent beast’s belly be but Bai Xiaoxiao?

She stood there, gazing straight ahead with a dignified expression. In her hand was a staff they’d never seen before. Though it was only a meter long, they could feel an immense amount of magic coming from its tip.

The staff was pink all over, with a pair of adorable little wings at the top. Bai Xiaoxiao held it high in her right hand, and wave after wave of magic spread from its tip.

The beast beneath her had been blown well and truly dead. Someone had torn it open from the inside with magic. Its scales might have withstood an A-Rank attack, but its soft internal organs couldn’t.

“Restore everything to how it was!”

The zoo, damaged beyond recognition, began to repair itself at incredible speed. The collapsed cages, trees torn up by their roots, and concrete ground smashed into rubble all returned to their original state.

The hole was filled back in, and the ground became much smoother. Unfortunately, the animals killed in the magical-beast disaster couldn’t be brought back to life.

Next came the disposal of the magical beast's corpse.

Bai Xiaoxiao pointed her staff at the giant serpent beast. Its enormous corpse slowly dissolved into white light and scattered into the air. With no suitable host left, the black magic within it drifted up toward the sky.

Once it was all over, Lu Wanxin could no longer hold back her excitement. The bow of light in her hand vanished into specks of starlight, and she threw herself at Bai Xiaoxiao, hugging her tightly.

“Xiaoxiao, you scared me half to death!”

They say a girl doesn’t cry easily—unless she’s truly heartbroken. Bai Xiaoxiao had naturally done the most in that battle: the beast had swallowed her, but she’d managed to turn the crisis around and defeat it.

The three of them silently agreed not to bring up what had just happened again. After surviving that close call, Bai Xiaoxiao understood one thing: if she didn’t want to hold everyone else back, she had to get stronger herself.

As she remembered those dark moments inside the giant serpent, loneliness, helplessness, and despair flooded her mind.

If she hadn’t made a deal with Ruby at the last moment and paid seven years of her life, she would probably be dead by now.

She now understood more deeply than ever that Magical Girls fought with their lives on the line.

Later, after Lu Wanxin reported back to Captain Meng Ting, she made a point of mentioning that Bai Xiaoxiao had been the main damage dealer in the operation. Captain Meng Ting said she could give her a raise, doubling her salary for the month.

Unfortunately, Bai Xiaoxiao didn’t feel much of anything anymore. What good was more money if she was dead?