Chapter 80: Sestus

In the next instant, Senior Cuique saw the wand in Sparrow's hand dissolve into star-like motes of chaotic mana.

She had already sensed the opponent's position constantly closing in on her and realized Sparrow might possess an ability usable only at close range.

A warning instantly arose in her heart, but fortunately, Senior Cuique had prepared beforehand; as runes flew from her sleeve to form a barrier, she had already begun retreating backward.

The direction she retreated was also pre-located, an area where her magic armor could leverage force.

"Too slow!"

Sparrow perceived Senior Cuique's intent to move, drew a grotesquely shaped claw-like magic armor from the chaotic flow, then swung the rope at its end, hurling it fiercely toward Senior Cuique's position.

Almost at the same moment, Senior Cuique felt her backward speed begin to slow.

The magic armor Sparrow threw was a hidden weapon resembling an eagle's claw, featuring three front and one rear blade-toes totaling four, with a rope attached at the root and the end gripped in Sparrow's hand.

In the cognition of the material world, such a weapon, or hidden weapon, is called a flying claw.

As Sparrow threw the flying claw, the magic armor generated a strange attraction, like a magnet drawing surrounding living things, causing Senior Cuique, its target, to reduce her flight speed.

Moreover, even though its direction upon being thrown was not aimed at Senior Cuique, once Senior Cuique was affected and reduced her movement speed, it turned its direction as if possessing self-awareness and began flying rapidly toward her.

In the blink of an eye, the flying claw had already flown to Senior Cuique's front.

Seeing her attack about to hit, the smile on Sparrow's face grew even more gleeful.

This was precisely why she was willing to use the magic armor only after shortening the distance between them: her magic armor possessed a dual effect of target acquisition and attraction within a certain range. Combined with its inherent extreme lethality, once used, it would surely severely injure the enemy.

Followed by her gaze, the flying claw struck straight at Senior Cuique's figure not far away, soon emitting a dull "poof" sound, as if hitting something.

Everything was as she had predicted; the information between herself and the opponent was not equal, and it was precisely this information gap that allowed her to hold all the advantages in this battle where the enemy was visible and she was hidden.

"Haha! I told you, you can't escape!"

Laughing loudly, Sparrow pulled the rope backward with force, wanting to drag the flying claw at the end and yank Senior Cuique back from afar.

But as the rope was pulled and gradually retracted, she suddenly discovered: there was nothing on it.

Only a few strands of undissipated mana threads clung to the flying claw's blade-toes, reminding her what she had caught.

"This is—"

She couldn't help but widen her eyes.

"—it's a substitute doll I wove on the spot."

A cold voice came from behind her.

Behind her, Senior Cuique had appeared there at some unknown time, her magic armor having transformed into the form of Masterpiece, becoming two huge gauntlets wrapped around her hands.

"Masterpiece, the second: Sestus of the Heavy Strike."

Without uttering another word of nonsense, she murmured it and swung the gauntlets in her hand, punching heavily into Sparrow's back.

Before Sparrow could even turn to look back, she felt a tremendous force suddenly strike her back.

Boom!

A massive sonic boom sound erupted from the sky, causing countless passersby below to stop and look up.

Then, they saw a small figure fall from the sky, smashing violently onto an empty stretch of road.

Thud!

After the huge impact sound, what appeared before their eyes was the road surface almost completely smashed by the collision, flying earth and stones, and at the bottom of a deep pit, a black figure lying there.

"Finally caught this guy. Next... I'll notify the Special Strategy Bureau to take them away first."

Descending slowly from the high sky, hovering at a height of about ten meters above the ground, Senior Cuique dispersed the gauntlets surrounding her hands, looked at the pit in the road below, and sighed:

"However, this time I'm afraid I really have to let the Investigation Bureau come over."

The rebel organization named "Claw Marks" had indeed appeared in Fang Ting City, and moreover, they had come knocking so blatantly, challenging her to a fight. For an incident of this nature, she absolutely could not let it slide.

Not to mention, according to the director of the Fang Ting City Special Strategy Bureau, this group was likely also related to the disappearance of the former Planter, Senior Nini; even the pupa-stage residual beasts that mysteriously appeared underground might be the work of related personnel. Even for the sake of her daughter's future safety, she had to pull out all the branches these people had extended into Fang Ting City.

It was very necessary for the upcoming activities of the Fang Ting City squad to finally catch their tail, capture all these people scheming in the dark, and drive them out.

But the reason she sighed was that once the Investigation Bureau got involved, news of her return would truly be impossible to hide.

As the institution organization where she held a nominal post, the Investigation Bureau had countless ties with her, including many who could be called "old acquaintances." After news of her return spread, her regular life of working and raising children in Fang Ting City would likely be unsustainable.

To be honest, although since she decided to resign and even dug out the Heart Flower from the closet that day, she had been prepared to face these things, but when it really came to this step, she couldn't help but feel somewhat melancholy.

Putting those thoughts aside, she should first call someone to control this guy.

She calculated in her mind, just about to take out her phone and dial Hong Siyu's number, but as soon as her palm touched the phone, she found it vibrating first.

Looking at the screen, she saw the characters "Lin Xiaolu" displayed, and couldn't help but raise an eyebrow.

Senior Cuique remembered the message Xia Liang had sent her in the group chat earlier, saying they suspected Moke had found a prospective magical girl but concealed it to follow and investigate.

The call now was undoubtedly about this matter.

Although logically, she should explain the situation to Hong Siyu and the Special Strategy Bureau first, after a slight deliberation, she felt that Lin Xiaolu's call was indeed more urgent.

With this expectation in mind, Senior Cuique raised her thumb to the screen, preparing to press the call button.

But she ultimately didn't get to press it.

"Swish!"

Because, almost at the same time, a black shadow suddenly swept past her wrist, flying rapidly to collide with her hand.

Senior Cuique's peripheral vision caught this scene; relying on her quick reaction, she withdrew her hand in time, but because the target of this sneak attack was so small and came so fast, she only managed to withdraw her hand. The phone she had originally held was knocked down, falling into the bushes nearby.

Unable to check the phone's condition in time, Senior Cuique immediately turned her gaze to the small black shadow that had suddenly attacked her, and after clearly seeing its appearance, asked with some confusion: "Sparrow?"

She was not shouting the enemy's code name.

Rather, the small black shadow she saw with her eyes was nothing else but a little sparrow flapping its wings.

A normal sparrow should not have such a fast flight speed, nor possess relatively poor flight endurance; how could it be fast enough to make even a magical girl like her unable to react?

"... It hurts so much."

Just as Senior Cuique involuntarily began to think, although its position was still some distance from below, Sparrow's voice clearly came from the pit.

"I'm not dead yet. Thinking of making a phone call at a time like this? I should praise you for being worthy of a former Flower Card?"

Emerging once more from the pit, Sparrow appeared again within Senior Cuique's field of vision.

She remained conscious, and one could even say she still retained combat capability; this fact surprised Senior Cuique.

She was well aware of the power of her own Masterpiece's heavy strike: without using high-level spells or defensive magical armor, most Leaf-rank and even Bud-rank Magical Girls would be unable to withstand such an attack.

Given a Magical Girl's physical constitution, taking a single punch from the Masterpiece—

let alone the fact that this Magical Girl named Sparrow was attacked from behind by Tang Tu, even if Senior Cuique herself stood still to take the hit, she probably would not have felt good.

Therefore, the fact that Sparrow could still maintain mobility at this moment was quite an incredible thing.

This Magical Girl who suddenly appeared claimed to be formerly a Character Card, so her stage of Ability Blossoming should fall within the range of Leaf to Bud rank.

It is not that there are no Flower-rank individuals among the Character Cards, but those Magical Girls whose Ability Blossoming reached Flower rank yet lacked the qualification to obtain a Flower Card would not introduce themselves as Character Cards to the outside world; they felt that calling themselves Character Cards was a loss of face.

Most crucially, Senior Cuique knew very well: she currently could not defeat a Magical Girl whose Ability Blossoming had reached Flower rank.

A Magical Girl's Ability Blossoming, as the stage continuously rises, starting from the Bud rank, every step is a huge bottleneck; after crossing it, there is another huge leap.

From Leaf to Bud, from Bud to Flower, every time such a crossing occurs, the Magical Girl's combat capability increases by an important dimension.

Regarding her own current combat capability, Senior Cuique's self-awareness was very clear.

Precisely for this reason, she could deduce in reverse that this Magical Girl who called herself Sparrow would not be Flower rank either.

However, because she had suffered a heavy blow from the Masterpiece gauntlet and fallen to the ground, she was much more disheveled than before; the clothes made of magic also showed numerous tears and holes, sufficient to prove the damage received was not light.

Yet her appearance at this moment made Senior Cuique feel confused once again.

For at some unknown time, Sparrow's left arm as a human had vanished, replaced instead by a pair of black-based, yellow-spotted magic bird wings, looking quite sinister.

Her eyes had also undergone a strange mutation; the most obvious feature was that the iris ratio had become huge, almost occupying the entire eye socket; the remaining sclera part was no longer human white, but had transformed into black.

"You haven't seen it? Then you should be happy, after all, I very rarely use my Half-Beast Form in front of others."

Sparrow raised her head, revealing the purple-black Soul Gem below her neck, widened her eyes, and wore an excited and warlike smile on her face: "Don't get distracted, the real show starts now."

She lifted the half of her body transformed into bird wings; the jet-black magic wings flapped, and scattered magic surged like a torrent in all directions, stirring up layers of waves, even reaching many bystanders who had gathered to watch. The magic waves caused a round of gasps and screams; many people cried out in agony the instant they were touched by the magic.

This kind of magic has a certain corrosive and damaging effect on the magic of Magical Girls, let alone on ordinary people with weak magic. The tiny magic within the body, intimately linked to life, being corroded and destroyed is a pain far beyond what ordinary people can endure.

Senior Cuique, who had originally been observing the situation and planning to retrieve her phone, had no time for further thought; she could only use her magical armor, causing layers of threads to manifest from the intersection, blocking the momentum of the black magic rushing toward the pedestrians.

"Stop watching the spectacle here, get moving!" she shouted loudly at those foolish bystanders.

— "Didn't I tell you not to get distracted!"

On the other side, Sparrow roared excitedly and took to the air once more; this time, her speed was so fast that even her trajectory could not be seen by ordinary people.

Moreover, the little sparrows that had previously ambushed Senior Cuique from the darkness flew up along with her; several little sparrows followed beside her, like wingmen in the sky. These small birds opened and closed their beaks, actually spitting out streams of tiny magic bullets.

The tiny magic bullets seemed only the size of mung beans, and their power was not fatal, but they excelled in speed, difficult to distinguish with the naked eye, making it easy for ordinary people to be hit by them.

Black and blue magic crossed once again in the sky; this time, blue was clearly in a passive position.

After transforming into the sinister state she called "Half-Beast Form," Sparrow's physical constitution and speed not only strengthened, but the intensity of her magic also suddenly rose by a level, completely suppressing Senior Cuique.

If someone knowledgeable were observing this battle from the side, they would discover: although Senior Cuique was far superior to Sparrow in the flexibility of combat intuition and planning in magic usage, the method Sparrow used at this moment could be described as "one force overcoming ten skills," firmly occupying the upper hand in pure magic output.

However, Senior Cuique was not anxious; rather, she remained very calm.

Even though the situation was already passive, she was still conserving her magic, using the combined defense of barriers and the Masterpiece to block Sparrow's flashy and frequent attacks, while searching for an opportunity to counterattack.

"Why not unfold the Mirage Realm? Cornflower!"

And this one-sided defense made Sparrow feel very bored; she only felt that she was currently like knocking on a turtle shell, with absolutely no fun in the combat.

Thus, she released her magic again and took out her Flying Claw magical armor.

Jet-black magic spread from her right arm, and the tip of the Flying Claw began to emit an ominous color; she swung her arm through the air, like throwing a spear, and forcefully smashed it toward Senior Cuique.

The Flying Claw magical armor, also wrapped in jet-black magic, crashed heavily onto the Masterpiece condensed by Senior Cuique, but the output this time far exceeded the past: although it still failed to penetrate the Masterpiece, it smashed both the Masterpiece and Senior Cuique behind it flying away.

"Or perhaps, as the rumors say..."

Pulling back her magical armor with her remaining right hand, Sparrow laughed wildly once more:

"During the 'Garden' Defense Battle, because you used power beyond the limit, your Soul Gem had a problem, right?"