The sacred unicorn bathed in the cold, pale moonlight — graceful and otherworldly.
Yet warm blood trickled down her spiraling horn, staining snow-white fur a deep crimson. Beneath her hooves, a leather-armored female warrior convulsed on the ground, a wound driven clean through from her back to her chest.
The elven mage clutched desperately at the arrow buried in his thigh, dark blood welling up between his fingers no matter how hard he pressed — he never got a word out. A Magic Arrow detonated between his eyes. In almost the same instant, a brilliantly luminous arrow slammed into his chest, and the force flung his body back several meters before the bolt punched out through his spine.
Grace swept a blank, expressionless glance at Sherlock. They were both Sequence 9 — and yet the precision of his spellcasting, the sheer finesse of his mana control, was something she simply could not replicate.
"Chaos Arrow... heh. This young lady carries the lineage of a Chaos Marksman. With enough Fortune, she could one-shot a mid-Sequence Transcendent while still sitting at Sequence 9."
The ancient voice murmured in Sherlock's mind. He felt a faint flicker of surprise — but beneath the mask, his eyes curved into a smile. He gave Grace a polite, measured nod.
Clang.
Qin Zhihua's longsword slid back into its sheath. Her white robes were smeared with blood. Working in tandem with Cowell, she had taken Avje first, then carved through the orc warrior in a single exchange — five enemies, all accounted for.
[You have slain Boris Copper-Hammer. +2,368 EXP.]
Li Fei wiped Dark Night clean on the dwarf warrior's clothes and straightened up. By the time she was on her feet, the fight was already over.
When two groups met on a narrow road, the stronger side had gone for the jugular without hesitation — ambushing a weaker, fully wounded, utterly exhausted party that had already made its peace with death. The moment Li Fei opened the engagement, the outcome had never been in question.
And yet no one wore a look of triumph. Every face was grim.
Through the thick curtain of night, sounds were converging on them from all directions — dense, overlapping footsteps, and strange, burbling calls that set the teeth on edge.
"We're... about to be surrounded."
Cold sweat beaded on Simon's forehead. He ground the words out through clenched teeth: "Which way do we run?"
Li Fei shifted her gaze to Beatrice.
The elf had always seemed ethereal and otherworldly — but her battlefield awareness was razor-sharp. The moment the fight broke out, she had already summoned an owl, her eyes going white as she scanned ahead for a post-combat escape route.
A moment later, she tore open a [Mass Acceleration] Spell Scroll with one hand and pointed sharply to the left: "Move — break through, now."
A vivid green surge of mana washed over the group. Li Fei felt a sudden, vertiginous lightness — as though gravity had simply forgotten about her.
"Zhihua, put these in your pouch."
While everyone else had their heads down and were sprinting, Li Fei burned exactly two seconds — no more — to snatch up the dwarf's axe and Avje's spear at lightning speed. The moment Qin Zhihua stowed them in the Grotto Pouch, the system flagged both weapons as "spoils of war," and her Fortune value — which had been completely bottomed out — exploded into five digits.
Without breaking stride, she immediately sorted by price and bought the most expensive Tier-I movement combat skill on offer.
Cloud Dragon Fold — First Form (Lv1)
Skill Effect: Increases movement speed, balance, and agility during acceleration, deceleration, and directional changes.
Her experience points cascaded like a waterfall, pushing her to Level 11. In a crisis like this, even a single extra point of stats was worth having.
In the next instant, Li Fei — whose running form had always been slightly awkward from years of half-hearted PE classes — suddenly moved with an effortless, almost unearthly grace. Each stride fell into a strange, wordless rhythm, as though she were an immortal walking through clouds, the clumsy "warm-up" phase of a sprint compressed to almost nothing, her speed hitting peaks she had never touched before.
The world streaked past in a blur. Then a mass of twisted, diminutive figures flooded into her field of vision.
Their limbs were frog-like — long, knobby joints, webbed feet. Their bodies were covered in dead-pale fish scales. Oval dead-fish eyes occupied half their faces, a murky blue-black that held nothing alive in them.
Li Fei had seen them in a textbook. These were the lowest caste of the fish-men — formally known as Muggle Slaves, though most just called them fish-slaves. They bred like rats. They were the Sea Clan's most expendable fodder and most irreplaceable biological resource, all at once.
A black tide of fish-slaves surged against the fleeing group, threatening to swallow them whole.
"Out of the way!"
Cowell charged at the front. His greatsword swept out with irresistible force, a white blaze of battle-qi slashing through the press — fish-slaves burst apart in rows.
The group ran through blood and flesh. Even Qin Zhihua, in her white robes, was painted with it — red spattering her face in fine, sparse drops.
Li Fei carried her oversized staff, and yet her footsteps made almost no sound at all. She ghosted along the flank of the group like a specter — extended the staff with a casual, almost lazy motion — and fish-slaves went flying as solid skulls met irresistible momentum, each impact just a slight break in her stride before she was back at full speed.
As expected... these things are non-combatant units. No experience.
Li Fei narrowed her eyes, quietly repositioned to conserve stamina, and said nothing.
"Eastern Qinggong? Quite impressive... I didn't expect the Magic Academy's two Special Enrollment students this generation to be such freaks of nature as well. Fascinating."
The ancient voice chattered away in Sherlock's head. He responded inwardly, with considerable weariness:
"Uncle Joasen — of all the moments, you pick this one?"
"Relax. You won't die. Those beauties, though — such a shame... According to how these things tend to go in the stories, this is precisely when the hero reveals his hidden trump card, turns the tide single-handedly, and after saving the damsels, they would naturally—"
"Stop. Stop right there."
Sherlock broke into a cold sweat and shot back internally: "Do you have any idea what the bestselling novels in Loxibrook are about? Stories of women and women. And in those stories, when some man decides he's going to collect them all — you know how that ends, don't you?"
"Besides — Uncle, is there really no way to get all of us out of here together?"
"Ha. By tomorrow at the latest, every outsider on Turtle Island will be hunted down and eliminated. They have nowhere to go — heaven won't answer, the earth won't swallow them..."
"What about reinforcements?"
"Do you have any idea how far Loxibrook is from here? Half a continent — and then an entire ocean on top of that! I'll admit, Bai— dammit, she can't hear me here — I'll admit Bai Mengtian's strength is beyond anything I can fathom. But at this distance, even she couldn't rebuild a teleportation corridor in under three to five days!"
"And do you honestly think that woman — whose infamy echoes across the entire Continent of Enlos — would bother making the trip herself just to save a handful of survivors?"
The old man's words left Sherlock momentarily speechless. His gaze wavered — but only for a moment. It steadied again quickly. His eyes found the towering silhouette at the head of the group, and he murmured quietly:
"There'll be a way."
The words had barely left his mind when his five fingers elongated — stretching into five tentacles several meters long — and shot out like striking vipers, punching through the skulls of the fish-slaves pressing in from the side.
Slash!
Cowell's power was staggering. His battle-qi ran full and deep as a great river, his blazing sword-aura enough to make gods and demons alike give way — he carved a river of blood through the endless fish-slaves.
But there were simply too many of them. Wave after wave, no end in sight. Cowell's brow was creasing tighter and tighter. At this rate, sooner or later they would draw in the Sea Clan's more elite, more powerful warriors.
"Just ahead!"
Beatrice called out suddenly.
Everyone's spirits surged. They looked up — the fish-slaves ahead were thinning. Beyond them lay a dense forest.
If they could make it inside, under cover of darkness, there was every chance they could shake the pursuit before the Sea Clan's net fully closed.
A lifeline — right there in front of them.
Then Li Fei's ears caught it: a voice. Soft and seductive, crystalline and sweet, with a penetrating clarity that seemed to bypass the ears entirely — like some celebrated singer performing to a gilded opera house full of rapt listeners, hitting notes so pure they vibrated in the chest.
Her thoughts began to blur.
Until an ancient voice snapped out a counter-incantation: "Deportation."
Her clouded mind cleared in an instant. Li Fei felt something warm and itchy under her nose. She touched it without thinking — and her fingertips came away bright red.
A white blur flashed past her — trailing a faint perfume.
Qin Zhihua checked that Li Fei was unharmed, didn't even spare a moment to feel sorry about the nosebleed, and immediately pivoted toward Fufu.
Su Ling'er had slumped unconscious across the unicorn's back, blood seeping from her nose, her mouth, and even the corners of her eyes.
"It's the Siren's Song!"
Cowell's expression turned grave. He looked at Sherlock. "You alright?"
He didn't understand why an old man's voice had just come out of Sherlock's body, or how Sherlock had managed to cast a third-tier spell — but the cost was obvious. Sherlock was bent double, gasping in ragged breaths, looking like he might collapse at any second.
"Fine," Sherlock said.
He poured a vial down his throat, waved off the concern with difficulty, and turned his gaze upward — to the silhouette hovering in the night sky.
A massive blue serpent soared overhead, twin wings spreading wide from its back. On the serpent's back stood a Siren — long fish tail raised upright, her back to the moon, casting a long shadow below.
Her arms were pale and sinuous, curling green hair falling to her waist. Her face wore a warm, gentle smile — the kind a mother might give a daughter coming home from school, or a wife welcoming her lover through the door.
And yet it had been her — using the Siren's Song — who had just attacked them. The spell had been interrupted in time; the Transcendents were mostly intact. But Li Fei, a non-combatant, had gotten a nosebleed, and Su Ling'er had been knocked out cold on the spot.
This is bad...
The serpent circling overhead made every heart in the group sink lower.
Fish-slaves in front blocking the path. Sea Clan forces closing in on all sides. And a Siren picking them off with spells from the sky. Any hope of escape was growing thinner by the second.
Grace loosed an arrow without hesitation — a rainbow of light blazed upward like a falling star in reverse. It didn't come close to the Siren. The sea-serpent twisted, and the arrow passed by harmlessly.
"Stop standing there — keep running!"
After watching Qin Zhihua force a potion down Su Ling'er's throat, Li Fei forced the words out from between clenched teeth.
The Siren's attack had cost them over ten seconds. The fish-slaves were surging forward again. Cowell swung his greatsword in another great arc, a hurricane of blade-light scything through them to open the path.
Beatrice — who had been carefully conserving her mana — swung up onto Fufu's back and wrapped one arm tightly around the unconscious Su Ling'er. Her other hand was already ringing the silver bells. She had been saving this mana for exactly this kind of moment.
"Eeya—"
While everyone else was running desperately for the forest ahead, a small figure shot off in the opposite direction — like a moth hurtling into flame.
The fairy — nearly forgotten, her presence so faint it barely registered — beat her translucent butterfly wings with everything she had. Tears streamed down her face. She let out a thin, high, ragged cry — shrill and desperate — and flew straight toward the massive shadow that blotted out the moon in the night sky above.
She was smaller than a dwarf. Slender and fragile. The serpent was dozens of meters long with a wingspan of nearly ten — its crimson forked tongue flickered between razor-sharp fangs with a steady hiss, and its slit yellow eyes were flat and utterly cold.
The Sequence gap was too wide. The instinctive pressure of bloodline suppression made the tiny fairy shake in every limb. Her beautiful face twisted with terror — and still she kept flying, mouth repeating the same word over and over in the fairy tongue — mother — tracing a wild, unsteady arc toward the monstrous creature ahead.
She must be so afraid...
Some invisible thread connecting them made Li Fei's heart seize — as though she could feel the fairy's fear as her own.
Her eyes went dark. A rage unlike anything she had felt before ignited in her pupils.
Li Fei knew she could call out. A single word, and the fairy might come back — or she might not, the first time a fairy daughter had ever refused an order.
She didn't call out.
"I never got around to giving you a name..." she said instead, voice low, black hair falling across her face. "Li Yue. That's your name."
She didn't look back. She was already running for the forest, the words swallowed by the rush of wind.
Li Yue felt it — something shifted inside her. Her body felt lighter than it ever had before. A flicker of moonlight caught her face for one brief, fleeting moment, illuminating a smile of pure, tear-stained beauty.
Even the Siren was struck by it. The incantation on her lips faltered. The churning mana dissolved into nothing as she looked down at the moth flying toward its own extinction.
"You didn't die for nothing," the Siren said.
Then the serpent opened its maw — far larger than Li Yue's entire body.
Crack.
A clean, sharp sound. Cervical vertebrae. The crystalline butterfly wings sagged and went still. The tiny, pale limbs trembled once.
Li
Yue's
body hit the earth with a soft, wet thud, scattering mud.
"But you still died for nothing."
The Siren began to sing again. A dense formation of ice shards materialized around her, spreading into a vast fan — then launched. A storm of razor-sharp ice arrows rained down in an instant, engulfing the fleeing group.
Qin Zhihua moved like a lotus blooming with every step, fluid as a dragon in flight — weaving at Li Fei's side, deflecting spells with ease and occasionally flicking her sword to cut down ice shards before they reached her.
Fufu seemed to have eyes in her tail. Carrying Beatrice and the unconscious Su Ling'er, the unicorn twisted and turned through the barrage with breathtaking elegance — as though performing a courtship dance — slipping through every gap in the killing frost.
Grace ran in a straight line — and somehow, impossibly, her path traced the exact spaces between the ice shards, as though Fortune herself were holding a parasol over her head.
Cowell's silver armor rang like a rainstorm on banana leaves, but the battle-qi blazing across his body held firm. The ice arrows couldn't slow his stride by a single step.
Sherlock's ten fingers had all become tentacles, woven into a wide, elastic net. The ice arrows that struck him were absorbed and dampened — none of them lethal.
"Augh—"
Simon let out a sharp cry. An ice arrow punched clean through the back of his knee.
Zoller didn't hesitate. He ducked down, hauled Simon onto his shoulder, and kept running. The words leave me formed in Simon's throat and never made it out.
"Zhihua — I have my Guardian Mage Robe. Don't worry about me."
Li Fei's voice cut through suddenly.
As a non-combatant, and with agility not among her strengths even with Cloud Dragon Fold, she was trailing at the back of the group. Qin Zhihua bit her lip and shot toward Zoller and Simon in a blur of movement.
A half-step too late.
Zoller had been deflecting ice arrows mid-sprint, but with Simon on his shoulder, his balance was off. He couldn't hold out. An ice arrow punched into his arm — his form broke — and several more drove into both of them in quick succession.
The impact staggered him, his center of gravity gone. He was about to fall — when the overwhelming barrage finally ceased. The Siren's mana had run dry.
He looked down. He stared at the shard of ice embedded in his torso, the one that had destroyed something vital inside. Then he turned his head and looked at Simon, who had already stopped breathing. He let out a broken laugh and slowly sank to his knees.
"Don't look back!"
Zoller marshaled the last of his battle-qi and roared it out.
Amid the sound of flowing water, his knees buckled. He knelt. His pupils began to drift.
Qin Zhihua's eyes dimmed. She skirted around both of them and pressed toward Grace and Sherlock.
Cowell's tiger-fierce eyes glistened. His battle-qi erupted — his longsword cleaved through a line of Sea Clan blocking the way — and the edge of the forest was right there, just ahead.
"I'll carry your share. I'll survive by any means necessary."
At the very tail of the group, Li Fei passed Zoller at a dead run. Dark Night slipped from her sleeve and drew a thin red line across his throat.
[Scene adapted from Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Episode 3.]
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