Chapter 211: Home

There are many inequalities in the world.

There is inequality among humans, inequality among Ravaged Beasts, and indeed, there is also inequality among Fairies.

Fairies born in the Magic Kingdom enjoy tranquility and beauty from the very beginning of their lives in a world of blooming flowers; they are loved by the Magical Girls, employed by the Wang Ting, and play key roles in the Magic Kingdom, active in every field.

But Fairies born in the Interstice spend most of their lives trapped in this desolate and dull world. The sky here is filthy, the earth here is cracked, life here is withered, and the moon here is blue. In their lives, there has never been a "spring."

For Fairies who naturally love nature and are close to flowers and plants, such a world is no different from a death zone; therefore, their lives in the Interstice have always been confused and pessimistic.

Semy was one of these Interstice Fairies.

For it, "the meaning of life" has always been a false proposition, because Fairies like it simply have no meaning of life. The vegetation and forests that Fairies love cannot be seen here at all.

Yet even so, the heavens never showed a shred of mercy to this world; frequent and terrifying natural disasters, Ravaged Beasts everywhere, every Interstice Fairy had to fight with all their might just to survive, then gaze at that sliver of blue moon in the night sky and continue to face a hopeless tomorrow.

Is it really necessary to live so boringly like this?

Semy once expressed such a question to Big Jack.

Big Jack was the boss of the Interstice Fairies, or one could say their common parent; it was a pure-blood Fairy of enormous size, fully ten-plus meters tall and ten-plus meters wide, an existence that blocked out the sun and moon in the eyes of ordinary Fairies. It always said its name was "Jack," but because it was truly so huge, the name eventually became "Big Jack" through word of mouth.

"Do you find living boring, child?" In response to Semy's question, Big Jack first asked it back.

"Very boring. I want to play happily among the flowers, I want to enjoy peace under the shade of trees, but there is nothing here; I feel depressed every day." Semy stated thus.

"It sounds like you don't hate 'living,' you just hate this boring world."

"Is there any difference?"

"Hehe, of course there is."

Big Jack patted its belly, making a dull "thump-thump" sound: "Perhaps one day, when you can leave this land, you will discover many beautiful things you have never experienced. At that time, you will probably feel that living has meaning."

"But we simply cannot leave here; we can never go to another world."

"Who said we can't?"

Big Jack spoke in a muffled voice: "As long as I wish, child. If I wish, I can take all the Fairies and leave this world at any time."

"Then why do we still have to live here?" Semy did not understand.

"Because this is our home, the root of us Fairies."

Big Jack said cheerfully: "No matter how broken this world becomes, we cannot abandon our home; if we leave here, we will only be a group of wandering drifters, and no matter what, we will not find another place to settle."

"I hate such a 'home'." Semy said this.

"Hating it is useless." Big Jack did not care at all.

"I want to leave this place."

"Do as you please, if you can really go."

"Help me."

"I won't help."

In the end, Semy could not persuade Big Jack.

It could only continue to stay in this hateful world, day after day, year after year, repeating a hateful life.

Until one day, a change occurred.

It seemed that due to some conflict with the Magic Kingdom, the Interstice Fairies and the Magic Kingdom began a large-scale, protracted war.

The intensity of this war was unprecedented; countless Interstice Fairies rushed to the battlefield one after another, as if to exhaust their unfulfilled ambitions and anger in the Interstice, burning their lives out on the battlefield.

However, compared to the Interstice, a place with nothing, the Magic Kingdom had far too many resources and was far too powerful in combat strength. Moreover, Fairies were not particularly good at fighting; compared to Magical Girls, the war素养 of Fairies was simply not excellent.

In the later stages of the war, even Big Jack was Suffering greatly and fell into a coma, while the remaining Fairies were already deeply entrenched in the war, unable to advance or retreat.

Just at this moment, a group of strange humans who called themselves "Apostles" appeared.

The Fairies were not unfamiliar with these humans, because they had actually been lurking in the Interstice for a long time, but they had always focused on dealing with Ravaged Beasts, so they and the Fairies were like well water and river water, never crossing paths, with no interaction between the two sides.

These people appeared when the Fairies were about to be defeated, offering the remaining Interstice Fairies another choice.

"Borrow the power of the Ravaged Beasts."

At least, that was what they said.

Since Fairies themselves were not good at fighting, then use the magic power of the Ravaged Beasts to fight the Magic Kingdom; this would make up for the lack of individual combat strength.

Semy joined them.

In its mind, if they were defeated and retreated to the Interstice, it would be continuing a meaningless life like rats in a gutter anyway, so it was better to burn everything and perish together with the enemy.

Thus, with the help of those humans, it and its companions mastered the power of the Ravaged Beasts, and could even transform into Ravaged Beasts, unleashing combat strength far beyond the past.

This group of Fairies, holding the determination to fight to the death, together with the Ravaged Beasts brought by those humans, launched a surprise attack on the center of power of the Magic Kingdom—the Wang Ting.

At that time, Semy probably never imagined that this very surprise attack would become the rest note of the war between the Kingdom and the Interstice.

Twenty years passed, and this war had already been recorded in the history of the Magic Kingdom, known historically as the "Garden Defense War."

And the result of this war was a pyrrhic victory for the Magic Kingdom, and a crushing defeat for the "Resistance," namely Semy and the other Interstice Fairies.

Semy could not remember when it lost consciousness on the battlefield.

It only remembered charging forward continuously, stepping on the corpses of countless companions, just to pass through the "Garden," reach the Rose Palace, and at all costs swing its claws at the figure on that throne. However, consciousness sank into silence amidst what seemed like endless continuous battles.

Later, it woke up in the arms of a Magical Girl.

That was a Magical Girl who had participated in the war just like it—it knew, because in its haze it remembered scratching the true form of the other party before falling into a coma. This caused the other party to suffer injuries that even the Magical Girl's abilities could not heal, forever losing an arm.

But it was this one-armed Magical Girl who secretly hid Semy, who had fainted on the battlefield, and took it away from the Garden.

The one-armed Magical Girl hid it in her own home, evading searches from the Wang Ting, raising it as if it were truly a pet. She knew Semy's name, but insisted on giving Semy a nickname, calling it "Mao Mao."

Semy did not understand.

It did not understand that it was her enemy, and had even injured her arm; by all rights, they should be enemies. But this one-armed Magical Girl did not kill it, and even chose to shelter it.

It had once raised this question to the other party, but the answer given by that Magical Girl was "I don't know."

The Magical Girl and the Fairy, who should have been enemies, lived together peacefully in the Magic Kingdom.

This period of time was probably the happiest days in Semy's entire life.

The one-armed magical girl was a girl who appeared somewhat cold but was actually very gentle and delicate; she took extremely careful care of Semi, not only satisfying his needs for food and drink but also taking him to various places throughout the kingdom, witnessing many landscapes unseen in the Interstice.

They climbed every mountain within sight, crossed every river they encountered, and then, upon reaching their destination, the girl would always use her single remaining arm to embrace Semi, sitting with him in various scenery like a fairyland, quietly gazing blankly at the sky.

Whenever this happened, Semi would recall the words Big Jack had spoken to him years ago, and Big Jack had indeed not spoken falsely; here, he discovered there were many beautiful things he was experiencing for the first time, and his life was filled with meaning for the first time.

But happy times are always short; soon, a change occurred once again, and this time, it happened to the one-armed magical girl.

—Because she suffered an incurable severe injury and became disabled, greatly affecting her combat ability as a magical girl, the Magic Affairs Bureau, after research, decided to have her retire.

And retirement, in fact, meant taking away the Heart Gem, completely ending her career as a magical girl.

Furthermore, because the girl was injured during the Garden Defense War and had merit in protecting Wang Ting, the Magic Affairs Bureau gave her very generous retirement treatment: not only wealth that could be said to be inexhaustible; but also a stable rear-area job; and even if she had children in the future, they could prioritize obtaining the qualification to become a magical girl.

For a normal person, this might not be a problem: after all, a severe injury and disability already meant one could not fight well, so it was better to retire and enjoy life. However, the one-armed magical girl did not think this way.

She did not want to give up her identity as a magical girl.

No one knew her true thoughts; they only knew she rejected the Magic Affairs Bureau's proposal and refused the retirement process.

However, the kingdom also rejected her refusal, insisting she should retire, and after several communications yielded no results, chose the most drastic measure—forced retirement.

When Semi watched the one-armed magical girl being taken away by kingdom personnel at home, he could do nothing, because the other party had already ordered him to hide well and not show his face.

He watched the girl being escorted away like this, and only after the footsteps faded into the distance did he dare to climb to the window, gazing at the residual magic traces in the sky.

Semi sat by the window, eating and drinking nothing, staying still like a sculpture for three days.

These three days seemed very long, but to him, they were actually not long, because during this period his mind was empty, thinking of nothing, and his entire body seemed like an empty shell.

Three days later, the door of the house was opened.

Semi rushed to the door at nearly the fastest speed to welcome the other party, thinking about how to comfort the magical girl who had lost her magic, and thinking about how to spend the rest of his life.

Then, he saw that figure he knew so incredibly well standing at the door, but the originally empty sleeve had been filled again.

The one-armed magical girl—or rather, she who had once been one-armed—was standing at his doorstep; the originally simple and somewhat childish magical girl outfit was covered with evil patterns, and a pair of vertical pupils floated quietly within her black sclera.

On her body, there was a scent that was incredibly strange to Semi, yet also very familiar.

It was the scent of a Ruined Beast.

On that day, the girl abandoned her original magical girl codename and obtained a new codename called "Black Cat".

For Semi, on that day, he also ended his not-so-long peaceful years, returned to the Interstice, and restarted his life of wandering and displacement.

Only this time, there was a companion on the wandering journey.

The girl joined an organization called "Claw Marks"; the leader of this organization was the former Gem Scepter of the Magic Kingdom, whose background was astonishing, and the girl became the vice-leader凭借 her own powerful talent and combat power.

The girl would still often hold Semi; only she and he would sit quietly gazing blankly, but they were no longer gazing at the beautiful and azure sky of the Magic Kingdom; the view in their eyes contained only the endless yellow sand of the Interstice, and the blue moon that floated quietly there every night.

Only at such times would the girl gently tell Semi her dream—she wanted to build a truly beautiful and equal homeland, where there would be no war, no oppression, and no distinction of status, where everyone except the Ruined Beasts could live in peace and happiness.

And at that time, Semi would listen quietly to her speak.

Although she had suffered many injuries, the girl still held many beautiful illusions about this world; she expected to establish an ideal kingdom.

And Semi, he hated the Interstice, hated this barren land from which he could never escape, the so-called "hometown"; he hated the kingdom, hated that Wang Ting which had hurt Big Jack and hurt the girl yet still remained high and mighty.

However, within his heart, there was another voice; he actually still cherished this land of the Interstice which carried the emotions of countless fairies; he actually still longed for the beautiful and moving natural scenery within the kingdom; he actually still wondered about the strange civilizations created by humans in the Material Realm.

He also wanted everything to become better; he wanted this withered and lifeless native land to become a homeland carrying dreams.

Therefore, the girl's dream and his dream had become one at some unknown time.

Thinking of this, Semi opened his single eye.

Yellow sand gathered beneath his feet; the pitch-black night blended with wind and sand, like a canvas smeared with ink and then trampled, leaving only filth.

And that blue moon, that blue moon which had become a synonym for the native land, was now immersed in this filthy canvas.

This was his "nest" after transforming into a Ruined Beast; yet even the nest, as if branded, was deeply imprinted with the traces belonging to the Interstice.

Big Jack was right.

The Interstice is their home; he came from there, and ultimately, he will definitely return there.