Chapter 27: A Grand Welcome

"Yes, yes, I understand, I am very sorry."

In the dim, dark sewer, a man's voice, carrying a hint of exhaustion, came from above.

"Yes, okay, if the maintenance staff on your end cannot resolve it, we will come over first thing tomorrow morning to provide service for you as soon as possible..."

The time was 11:00 PM. Lin Yun held his phone, standing at an opened sewer manhole, promising the person on the other end of the line with a blank expression but a sincere tone.

Then he hung up, opened the text message interface, edited and sent a message, and only then did he put away his phone and let out a long sigh.

Investigating the popular locations of urban legends, dealing with customer complaints about his subordinates in the middle of the night, and being nagged because he had no signal while in the sewers—it was truly physically and mentally exhausting.

Fortunately, there were not many locations left. If a Pupa-rank Remnant Beast truly existed in the sewers of Fang Ting, he could drag it out of its hiding place tonight.

Grasping the Flower of the Heart to transform into a Magical Girl once more, Lark flew into the night toward the next rumored location.

"The Singing in the Sewer," as a recently popular urban legend on the internet, had many versions, but tracing it to its source, most posters claiming to have experienced it firsthand insisted it was in Fang Ting.

The content of this urban legend was roughly that when passing by a sewer manhole late at night, one could occasionally hear an ethereal, very strange yet magnificent singing voice. Although it was not a human language, it seemed to convey some kind of emotion. Just like the legendary sirens, it seduced passersby, giving them the desire to investigate.

And once someone was captivated by this singing, they would uncontrollably want to approach the source, even moving the manhole cover to try and listen to the beautiful melody from a closer distance. In the end, they would be grabbed by a hand reaching out from the manhole and dragged directly into the darkness.

If someone ignored the singing and had no interest in it at all, they would be completely trapped in the same area, as if encountering a ghost wall. The singing in the sewer would grow stronger and closer until they were completely drowned in it.

Only those who showed enough appreciation but were not completely captivated could safely leave the area where the singing was heard.

As this ghost story spread, some serious-sounding claims even appeared, saying that seeing an open but unclosed manhole cover meant someone had been victimized, and one could surely find news of missing persons nearby.

However, Lark had not seen any.

Every time she endured the stench of the sewer to search within, let alone missing people, she hadn't even seen many rats; the dim and oppressive sewer only had the sounds of water flow and wind.

Recalling the claims in the urban legend, Lark kept her attention focused on her hearing, trying to capture traces of the so-called "singing," but there was no result from beginning to end.

Just like that, she floated and flew through the maze-like pipes for a full half hour.

The gray-yellow walls and dense pipes that kept appearing before her eyes were annoying, but Lark still forced herself to continue searching all the way. Regrettably, this trip was still fruitless.

Having failed to find what she wanted, Lark had to choose to head to the next location, but when she prepared to pick a path to leave, she suddenly realized something was wrong:

——Half an hour, she had been flying for so long, yet she hadn't encountered a single exit?

Her consciousness, which had been somewhat sluggish, instantly became clear, and her dormant magic power began to stir. Lark moved her hands, traced a few patterns, and then released her magic power, which spread outward in circles like sound waves. Waiting in place, after a round of probing, she realized: she might have finally found the right place.

Not only because she sensed extremely faint residual magic power, but also because of the obviously abnormal spatial structure here: it was not a normal city sewer at all, but only had the appearance of one; in reality, its structure was like an anthill, a layered and nested spatial maze.

This was the symbol of a "Pupa"-rank Remnant Beast's nest, distorting the space that originally existed in reality.

Adjusting her flight state to lower her floating height, several balls of magic light flew from Lark's sleeves, lighting up the surrounding field of vision. Her hands did not stop, quickly tracing in the void. Accompanying these movements, several Favo runes leaped from her fingertips, flying to the surroundings to form a faint magic barrier; a moment later, the light extinguished along with the runes.

This sequence of actions had used up half of the techniques Lark had mastered. The techniques she learned were mostly auxiliary abilities related to investigation and protection, and when facing powerful enemies, one could never have too many.

Having completed this series of preparatory steps, Lark braced herself with twelve-fold focus to welcome the enemy that might arrive at any moment.

Pupa-rank Remnant Beasts were relatively rare enemies for her in the past. Now, 19 years later, her strength had indeed declined quite a bit compared to before. For an enemy she could not guarantee victory against, a cautious mindset was most important.

Traveling along the crisscrossing passages, Lark would first let the magic light balls illuminate the environment whenever she passed an intersection to avoid being ambushed by enemies from the dark.

This subconscious vigilance was soon rewarded—she discovered a lurking Remnant Beast at the top of a passage at a certain turn.

Like a piece of rotten meat smashed against a wall, scattered minced meat clung to the wall, and tentacle-like flesh buds fixed its form. Without a doubt, this was an Egg-rank Remnant Beast.

"Thump!"

Within a few breaths, it was pierced by a magic beam from Lark, who was in a hurry. The deterrent hiss it hadn't yet emitted was choked off in its throat forever, and it fell dully onto the water surface, splashing a patch of filth.

Extending her hand, dots of starlight gathered within it. After collecting these Egg-rank Remnant Echoes, Lark continued forward.

From the moment she encountered this Remnant Beast, the enemies she encountered along the way became more and more numerous.

A large number of Egg-rank Remnant Beasts, and even a few Larva-rank Remnant Beasts, surged toward her from all directions of the tunnel. It was as if something was commanding them, allowing them to accurately find Lark's position.

Lark was completely unafraid.

Enemies of this level, unless she were demonstrating for a newcomer, would not require any effort on her part. Magic equipment precipitated, and strands of lethal magic silk spread throughout the surroundings. Many rushing Remnant Beasts collided with them before they could react, directly sliced into a pile of fragments by the threads as sharp as blades.

She moved forward with a blank expression, and along the way, Remnant Beasts would fall from time to time with hisses.

The sewer tunnel seemed to have turned into a slaughterhouse, only what was being slaughtered were not livestock, but Remnant Beasts. The bloody smell even overwhelmed the rot that should have been in the sewer, and the yellow water was dyed into a red river by the blood of the Remnant Beasts.

Lark did not count how many Remnant Beasts she had killed, only remembering that by the end, she was too lazy to even collect the Egg-rank Remnant Echoes.

Until finally, she heard the singing.

It was not the faint, intermittent singing from the rumors, but a grand and magnificent chorus, like a gorgeous performance.

What appeared before her was no longer a narrow, cramped tunnel, but a massive cavern that, normally speaking, could never appear in a sewer.

One could not see the top at a glance, only crisscrossing pipes and bricks. Countless sewer outlets extended from around the cavern, and massive amounts of sewage flew down from all directions, gathering into a bottomless pool of water.

Above the pool was the existence that was emitting the singing.

It was not a siren, nor a mermaid; without a doubt, it was a Remnant Beast.

Lark looked up, and the first things to enter her eyes were meat, chunks of meat, and fleshy limbs.

Flesh that looked like intestines hung in mid-air, covering the entire sky of the cavern like strings of colorful flags, as if for a festival. In the center, a huge Remnant Beast hung down from the air. Its entire body was only the pink and red of flesh, like a fish that had been skinned and descaled, yet it lacked the eyes and gills of a fish, with only a huge oral cavity remaining.

That huge oral cavity was now opening, closing, and wriggling like a human's. The beautiful singing emitted from it resounded through the surrounding corridors, and the intense echoes mixed together to form a chaotic chorus, sounding sacred and solemn.

There was no human language in it, yet Lark seemed to be able to understand its meaning:

It was welcoming, welcoming the arrival of the Magical Girl.