Chapter 209: The Hunt

Yuan fell silent, locking eyes with Margaret.

She asked no more, merely offering a somewhat meaningful smile, then raised the wine glass in her hand, bringing it to her lips, and downed the strangely colored liquid in one gulp.

Then, she set the glass down, smacking her lips as if savoring the taste she had just experienced, and said with a hint of disdain: "Disgusting. It's a bit like mixing soy sauce into wine and then diluting it with water. And there's no aftertaste; it feels like the wine vanishes the moment it passes down the throat, leaving not a single extra flavor behind."

Yet, even as she called it "disgusting," when she saw the empty glass slowly refill with liquid identical to the first, she raised the cup again and drained it in one swallow.

This time, the expression on her face had shifted from blatant disdain to understanding; she shook the now-empty glass in her hand and added: "Rotten wine."

"I have received your evaluation. I am deeply sorry for failing to provide a drink that satisfies you."

Margaret, standing opposite her, nodded readily, as if truly a bartender: "This is a failure on my part. May I ask if you would be willing to grant me another chance to slightly adjust the drink in your hand?"

"Oh? You even offer to remix it? Then I shall not stand on ceremony; I leave it to you."

Yuan paused, then smiled as if genuinely agreeing, placing her glass on the bar counter: "Personally, I hope for a stronger intensity and a more stimulating mouthfeel, and preferably no more excessive off-flavors..."

But halfway through her sentence, she changed her tune, withdrew her glass, and lowered her tone: "... Do you think I would say that?"

With this question, the atmosphere that had been somewhat relaxed around them instantly grew much more tense. Within the already quite quiet Mirage Realm, only scattered whispers remained, along with the still melodious music. Yet even the music could not alleviate this chill; it only made the scene appear more awkward.

In this atmosphere, facing the other's accusation, Margaret merely maintained her elegant and proper smile, offering no answer.

Seeing the other remain silent, Yuan was not angered; she simply continued talking to herself: "As for me, I actually do not worry at all about whether poison has been added to the wine, because my internal organs are filled with 'Qi'; they can at any time help me isolate whatever I drink, rendering poisons useless against me."

"But, just now, to verify my hypothesis, I used Qi to wrap the wine in that cup and guide it into my stomach, only to discover a very interesting phenomenon—this wine did not enter my stomach at all; it merely slid past my mouth and then vanished."

"And after it vanished, the cup in my hand was refilled. In other words, this so-called 'unending wine' has been nothing but a single cup from beginning to end."

"This is quite interesting: a cup of wine that remains unchanged from start to finish, and coincidentally, everyone holds one, all appearing under the influence of your Mirage Realm..."

Raising the cup in her hand once more, letting the warm yellow light around them shine through the wine within, Yuan gazed at the shimmering light shattered by the ripples and stated with certainty: "This cup of wine is probably not a simple symbol, but directly corresponds to my true form, correct?"

Margaret's expression did not change: "Perhaps this is merely my bluff?"

"How can this be a bluff? I have pondered countless times what my true form and my magic should look like once separated from this shell? And upon seeing this cup of wine, I already understood: it is the answer to the question. My true form should indeed look like this."

Yuan only shook her head: "And if it is my true form, then will the changes in this cup of wine cause corresponding changes in me myself? Can you tell me the answer, bartender?"

"A brilliant deduction. I can answer you; your guesses are already very close to the truth."

Margaret's hand gently swept across the table, opening beside Yuan's glass: "It is a pity that reaching this conclusion is actually a bit late now."

Silence reigned at the bar for a moment.

"You say 'late,' what does that mean..." Having understood the other's words, Yuan's eyes widened slightly, but before she could finish speaking, she felt an uncontrollable emotion erupt from the depths of her heart.

Sorrow, pain, regret, depression... countless bitter emotions suddenly filled her mind, almost completely scattering her thoughts.

The uncontrollable sorrow and bitterness made her instinctively clutch her chest, feeling as though her heart had been scooped out, leaving only suffocation and numbness in the wake of the pain.

Along with these emotions came the change occurring in the cocktail in front of her.

At some unknown moment, a shade of deep blue had quietly blended into the layered black-red wine, and like a drop of thick ink falling into clear water, it rapidly spread to fill the entire glass.

For humans, emotional experiences often inversely affect physical actions; for Yuan at this moment, extreme sorrow acted like a paralysis technique, leaving her standing in place, unable to move.

"—Make your move." Thus, the bartender standing behind the bar withdrew his hand and announced as such.

In the next instant, various colors of magical light flashed throughout this small world resembling a tavern.

The first to launch an attack against Yuan were Senior Cuique, who had regained mobility after a brief rest, and Hong Siyu, who had been by her side all along.

The Current situation was precisely why she had asked Margaret to use Profound Bloom.

Margaret's Profound Bloom, Discretionary Heat Drunkenness, as an advancement of Passion, possessed the ability to finely manipulate the liquid magic within the cup, and this form of manipulation was just like mixing cocktails.

By placing various different emotions into the cup, Margaret could break free from her own emotional state and easily customize the effects of the magic within the cup.

She could layer healing and protective effects together, configuring the highest quality positive effects like preparing potions; she could also layer attack effects of various natures such as fire and lightning together to brew even more ferocious offensive effects.

And more importantly, this act of "mixing cocktails" was not limited to her own cup.

Combining her own Mirage Realm, Asano Enka could project everyone's true form as a cocktail, and she could use this opportunity to manipulate the wine in others' cups.

When the "wine" changed, the corresponding true form of each person would also undergo a corresponding change; moreover, regardless of whether the other party drank the wine in the cup, it would directly act upon their true form. This was the truly terrifying aspect of Asano Enka's ability.

Just now, she had performed "mixing" on Yuan's cup, thereby inversely affecting the other's emotions, causing the other to fall into immense sorrow from which she could not extricate herself.

This influence would not last too long, and the more magical power the target possessed, the shorter the duration. However, for a battlefield that changed in an instant, even a mere moment was enough to determine victory or defeat.

The silk threads in Senior Cuique's hand, transformed into dagger-shaped masterpieces, and Hong Siyu's technique arrived before Yuan almost simultaneously, and only at this moment did Yuan still remain motionless.

Only at the very moment her body was about to be struck did she finally blink, retrieving a sliver of self from those nearly uncontrollable negative emotions.

Gripping the wine glass with slightly increased force, she twisted her body within a hair's breadth; at the same time, the "Qi" within her body began to circulate, moving along a certain trajectory to protect her vital points in the shortest time possible.

Then, a surge of magic erupted from within her, and the powerful impact force blocked both the dagger thrown by Senior Cuique and Hong Siyu's technique.

Having narrowly blocked this wave of attacks, she was just about to dispel the emotions that still occupied her mind, but she suddenly realized she did not have the opportunity, because the next wave of attacks had already arrived.

The bartender standing behind the bar tilted the wine glass in his hand slightly, splashing the liquid within toward her direction.

As this liquid detached from the rim of the cup, every drop seemed to have received the most precise command, dispersing from one another as much as possible, like a net spread open. This net made of liquid descended from the sky, directly enveloping Yuan's position.

Yuan had to react within an extremely short time, yet the emotions in her mind became a huge drag, making her reaction slow and numb. So, almost at the moment the liquid was about to touch her body, she suddenly accelerated, escaping the area covered by the liquid with her previously terrifying speed.

Then, she discovered that she still had not become safe.

Because when she forced her body to accelerate and fled at maximum speed, other things were already waiting on the paths around her.

—These were glowing blue, nearly imperceptible silk threads, dense as a spiderweb, connecting every direction around her.

Undoubtedly, this was Senior Cuique's handiwork.

These silk threads were numerous, but their strength was actually not high, because what Senior Cuique needed most to ensure was their coverage area, guaranteeing that no matter which direction Yuan fled, silk threads would block her path ahead.

Under normal circumstances, these silk threads could not pose much of a threat to Yuan, because their strength was low; let alone using a weapon, even smashing through them directly with the body would be effortless. Given Yuan's speed after Profound Bloom, she could even advance while chopping down these threads.

But Yuan could not do so at this moment.

Because she had forced herself to accelerate in panic, not expecting so many silk threads to be ahead of her. And even though the strength of these threads was not high, colliding with them during such high-speed movement—

—would be no different from being struck by a blade.

This was exactly what Yuan had been avoiding, and also the goal Senior Cuique and the others had decided to achieve.

She could not let them succeed.

So, she tried to summon her Qi once more, attempting to use it to counter these threads of magic. After all, mobilizing energy within the body was merely a matter of thought, faster than commanding her body to move.

If she could successfully use her Qi, it should soften these threads of magic before her, thereby avoiding injury from colliding with them...

... Could it?

Yian's thoughts stalled once again.

For she discovered she could not summon her own Qi.

After a brief stall came realization, and a sense of relief.

Indeed, wasn't the very ability she had been guarding against from the start precisely this power of the opponent?

What she saw in the corner of her eye was that petite blue-haired girl not far away, standing expressionless in mid-air upon a magic net woven from fluorescent blue threads, with countless threads wrapped around all ten of her fingers, extending from there to form the all-encompassing encirclement surrounding Yian.

More importantly, behind the opponent stood the young girl who had silently opened a vast library, and in her hand, a small pair of scissors resembling a mere shadow.

The instant the threads touched Yian's body, she used them as a medium to temporarily sever the concept of "Qi" from the opponent.

Thus, the prey entered the net.

Driven away by gunshots and weapons, the dark beast frantically crashed into the trap the hunter had long woven.

Within the wine glass, that black-red cocktail seemed to have been spilled out; in an instant, a layer the width of a finger vanished.

Magic flew upward like ash dancing across the sky; the black mist surrounding her body visibly shrank by a circle in an instant. Yian's figure, entangled and bound by heavy threads, finally swayed a few times before being firmly tied up in mid-air.

Yian, who had previously relied on her own speed to evade attacks and had suffered only a handful of injuries, finally revealed her greatest opening.

Of course, the battle was not yet over.

For even if Yian was bound to a certain position, these threads, which possessed low inherent strength, were essentially useless; for Yian, as long as she could recover from that surge of emotion, breaking free from these threads would take but an instant.

Yet she still could not obtain the chance to "recover."

Beneath the net of threads binding her layer upon layer stood a group of magical girls, each already holding a magic armor, their hands brimming with spell formulas and magic bullets ready to fire.

The remaining six magical girls had all gathered here, solely to deliver the most crucial strike to her.

Whether it could truly cause damage was unimportant, for Senior Cuique had previously instructed, "As long as it hits, it counts."

Gazing at the magic lights of various colors, Yian in the center of the net stared blankly, then grinned, revealing an expression of immense exhilaration.

"Great coordination!"

A roar from the depths of her heart erupted simultaneously with the magic in the young girls' hands.

All the magic within her body was mobilized in that instant; even without "Qi," the remaining momentum elevated her power infinitely, once again overpowering the flashing lights.

As she shouted, she used her willpower to suppress all those negative emotions, and then, swung the weapon in her hand.

She accepted falling into a disadvantage, but she would absolutely not accept losing everything due to a single disadvantage.

No matter what, she had to break free from this layer of netting on her body and dodge the coming attacks.

Her body's speed was pushed to the extreme; all the mist turned into afterimages, and countless weapons thrust forth from the afterimages' hands, as if thrust from her own hands.

Fast, extremely fast; Yian's figure merged with the heavy afterimages within the weapons in that instant, and these countless overlapping figures almost simultaneously swung their weapons at the all-encompassing net.

"Chak!"

It was a deafening roar like a sudden storm, waves like a terrifying surge; in an instant, it was as if a hundred blades, a thousand blades, had been struck, sweeping away the surrounding net and even the bar's roof in an endless display of might, severing them all.

The originally tightly woven blue threads all turned into scattered debris; fluorescent blue magic particles sprinkled across the sky like starlight. Above the broken roof, the originally pitch-black night was revealed, and this night, adorned by the star-like magic, became as beautiful as a galaxy.

Bathed in this star-rain formed of magic, Yian held a blade in one hand, breathing slightly heavily. She lowered her head, looked toward Senior Cuique's direction, and then revealed a dashing smile.

Senior Cuique did not return the expression.

She merely waved her hand, dispersing the threads wrapped around her fingers that had already snapped, returned the shadow-like scissors in her hand to Hong Siyu, and gently smoothed her slightly disheveled hair.

Then, she waved gently toward Yian's back.

Only then did Yian realize she seemed to have missed something.

She turned back and saw six magic trails of different colors rising from beneath her feet, extending forward without hesitation toward the distant mountain peak.

Undoubtedly, from start to finish, those young magical girls had never intended to clash with her head-on.

The magic fluctuations they released, the charges they launched toward her, were not for a joint attack, but... flight.

While Yian was clearing the net to dodge attacks, these magical girls had already bypassed her side and advanced toward the mountain peak.

"... How did you know it was that direction?" Yian turned back, asking Senior Cuique with some helplessness.

To this question, Senior Cuique merely raised her hand, revealing her wide sleeve cuff; within it lay a purple-black crystal stone flickering with a faint, eerie light.

Yian recognized it at a glance; it was precisely one of the targets she had been pursuing throughout this journey—the Beast's Origin.

"I temporarily borrowed it back; because it involves the magic of the Remnant Beasts, it can serve as a detector."

Senior Cuique closed her sleeve, blinked, and as if it were the most natural thing in the world, gave this answer.