Chapter 341: Teaching Her the Flame Formula

“I’ll leave you with something, enough for you to use. For you, this is probably the safest and most reliable choice.”

Vivi looked at the girl before her, unable to hide her stunned expression.

Had Teresa remembered something?

Or had she noticed something because of the information online and the news this afternoon?

Her identity really was shrouded in mystery.

Why was she left with only a brain and a Soul Gem?

Why did she possess such terrifying magic control?

And why had she happened to fall from the sky into this dilapidated landfill right after the high-altitude explosion at Herth?

In truth, Vivi had already guessed that Teresa had probably fallen from Herth, the place that symbolized the very pinnacle of Neon City, because of that explosion.

And at this moment...

She suddenly had a powerful, inexplicable intuition.

Perhaps she was facing the most important choice of her life.

One step forward might lead to an abyss.

But if she took one step back, she could still receive a substantial “severance payment.”

Yet now, the white-haired girl lowered her head and remained silent for a long time.

Then—

“You said it yourself, didn’t you?”

Vivi spoke softly. “You said you could help me become a magical girl.”

“You weren’t lying when you said that from the beginning, right?”

“Mm.”

Lin Guang nodded. “If you want to, I’ll make you a [true] magical girl.”

It seemed that, for her, making someone a magical girl wasn’t a matter of probability or luck. It was simply something she could do if she wanted to.

“...Phew.”

Vivi suddenly smiled. “Then what’s there to talk about?”

“I’m a wild dog who grew up rolling around in the dirt, without even a mother. I’ve never had a way out.”

Lin Guang gazed into her eyes.

“I’ve said it so many times, haven’t I... I want to become a magical girl.”

“......”

“Lots of people think I’m crazy, but there’s one thing they don’t understand.”

Vivi murmured, “A moth that’s never seen light in its whole life will fly straight into a flame when it finds one. It doesn’t care if it burns itself to death, or even burns someone else... It just wants that light...”

“Because it’s the first light it’s ever seen, and it might be the last.”

“So...”

“No matter what you are, whether you’re a demon or a magical girl, whatever you want to do, whoever you want to kill, whoever you want revenge on or repay, or whatever you want to do with my body...”

An unparalleled determination burned in Vivi’s eyes.

“As long as you can make me a magical girl, I’ll gladly go along with it.”

The white-haired girl reached out toward the figure before her.

Their two pairs of remarkably similar eyes gazed at each other.

The next moment, that illusory, slender hand gently grasped the hand Vivi had extended.

And at the instant their hands overlapped,

Vivi suddenly saw the phantom of a golden roulette wheel appear above the pink-haired girl’s head.

She had seen this wheel before, at the moment of last night’s contract.

As Vivi watched, the wheel slowly turned by exactly one notch.

Clank—

It sounded like a grand tolling bell, and also like the crisp ring of interlocking gears turning.

In an instant,

seemingly endless orange-yellow radiance swallowed her whole.

………………

When Vivi came to again, she discovered that she was no longer in that cramped, shabby rental room.

As far as she could see, an endless, desolate expanse of yellow desert stretched before her.

The blazing sun hung high overhead. Waves of heat distorted the distant air, while rolling dunes shimmered with a golden sheen beneath the sunlight.

Vivi was so astonished her jaw nearly hit the ground. She looked down at her hands, then stamped on the soft sand beneath her feet.

“What is this...”

“This is a virtual training space I created with a spell, deep within your consciousness.”

The calm voice sounded in her mind.

“But it feels just like the real thing...”

She crouched and grabbed a handful of yellow sand, feeling the warm grains trickle from her palm bit by bit. Her eyes were full of disbelief.

No.

Even saying it felt real was giving it too much credit.

She couldn’t tell the difference between this place and the real world at all... Was this the virtual world you could access after getting a brain-computer interface?

The white-haired girl’s eyes were filled with indescribable amazement.

Vivi had no idea.

Even the virtual-world devices available on the open market in Neon City, which cost six figures, seven figures, or even more, couldn’t achieve anything like this.

After she’d had her fill of playing with the sand, Vivi stood up and asked curiously, “By the way, why did you bring me here?”

With Teresa’s personality, she wouldn’t do anything meaningless.

The other girl’s voice sounded beside her ear. “You asked me this afternoon whether I could teach you how to fight, right?”

“And you’re planning to enter that competition to make money.”

“Ah!!”

The white-haired girl’s eyes lit up. “That’s right, that’s right!”

“Perfect. I was planning to teach you something else.”

“Since your Innate Technique is [Demolition], and you’ve now shared some of my precision-control abilities through our contract...”

A trace of nostalgia suddenly flickered in the pink-haired girl’s eyes. “Then... I’ll teach you [activating the spirit outfit].”

“[Activating the spirit outfit]?”

Vivi still hadn’t figured out what that meant when she suddenly felt a whole mass of complicated information forcibly stuffed into her mind.

It was like a jumble of formulas and techniques.

Vivi struggled to understand it and had to concentrate with all her might.

By using a special rhythm of breathing and thought in conjunction with her Demolition spell, she could activate her magic power in a wild, explosive manner, increasing her mobility and close-combat strength...

So it was like burning magic power in exchange for speed and strength?

She thought she’d more or less grasped the principle. “Is this... a spell?”

“It’s an extension of that meditation technique I gave you. They go together, so you could call it a spell.”

Lin Guang spoke calmly. “By using the flow of magic power to imitate the Spirit Outfit field that only appears after a magical girl transforms, you can use abilities that normally only become available after transformation.”

“And once you learn the Magical Girl Transformation, this technique won’t become obsolete, either.”

“...”

After transformation?

Vivi instinctively felt that something was very wrong.

Wasn’t she still working toward the magical-girl qualification exam? Why were they suddenly making plans for after she transformed?

Was this really something a tiny E-rank nobody like her should be thinking about?

It was like sitting at home, dirt-poor with nothing but bare walls, buying a lottery ticket, and immediately fantasizing about how to spend the first-prize winnings...

Besides, was it really possible to use magic power and a meditation technique to forcibly imitate a magical girl’s Spirit Outfit field?

Why had she never heard of anyone being able to do that before...

The information in her head was simply too abstruse and obscure. But because she trusted the pink-haired girl, Vivi didn’t think too much about it and instead focused all her attention on understanding it.

After who knew how long, she finally managed to go through all of it once. She felt as if her brain could barely keep up.