Black Badger

Shu had been living with Cecil ever since Cecil fell into her deep sleep.

She no longer lived in a studio apartment. The small place she had rented in the bustling district of Center Core had been given up when her legs stiffened. Now she lived in a much larger home together with her father, and Cecil had come to occupy a place there as well.

The person who had helped the most in caring for the sleeping ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) Cecil was Ami. When Cecil’s rampage had finally ended, Ami had suddenly approached Shu and asked if she intended to live together with Cecil.

When Shu said yes, the senior said she would buy the things they needed and then disappeared.

And the very next day, a large number of nursing devices—including a bed—were delivered one after another to the house.

The father and daughter were startled and called Ami, but Ami firmly refused to accept any money.

[It takes way more work than you think.]

The senior told them about her own experience of having been in a coma for two years.

[Even Yun oppa and Yehyeon oppa—those two with all their money—apparently had a really hard time taking care of me. It costs a ton, and more than anything it takes an enormous amount of time. Well, part of that was because those two stubborn idiots refused to hire professional nurses. Anyway, Shu, if things get too hard, tell me. And if it feels like you need support, you absolutely have to say something! Got it? You must tell me!]

Just as Ami said, it wasn’t easy.

But it wasn’t as difficult as she had feared either. Perhaps because Cecil was a mage? Rather than looking like someone in a coma, Cecil looked more like she had entered hibernation.

The things Shu and Simon Diamond had to do were mostly simple: regularly change Cecil’s position so she wouldn’t develop bedsores, keep the room she slept in at a proper temperature, and move her arms and legs so her muscles wouldn’t completely waste away.

When Shu told Ami this, Ami was delighted.

[That’s such a relief!]

Even so, Ami still told her to ask if she needed help and contacted her periodically.

Hildebert, on the other hand, had made a very complicated expression when Shu said she wanted to stay with the sleeping Cecil.

Sometimes Shu recalled that expression.

A face where apology, sorrow, and guilt seemed tangled together.

‘Thank you so much.’

‘I’m only doing what I want to do.’

At Shu’s calm reply, Hildebert had smiled faintly.

It was a face that could not hide the weight of life no matter how hard it tried. Having unintentionally learned about the heavy fifty years he had endured, Shu had tried at that time to end the conversation quickly and simply.

Someday, when Hildebert had calmed down a little more inside, there would probably be a moment when she could ask if he was alright.

Thinking that, she carefully moved Cecil where people wouldn’t notice.

The people who claimed to have known Hildebert for a long time had helped with the whole process. Shu remembered the gratitude they each expressed in their own way. The man who looked like a jet-black Doberman had seemed the most affectionate. After asking Shu’s age, he raised his eyebrows as if wondering why someone this young was doing such a thing, and stared at her for a long time.

‘Will you be alright doing this alone?’

When she told him she would be living with her father, he looked relieved, which was almost funny.

‘If you need help, contact me. Though I don’t check messages very well.’

Since he had abruptly given her his contact information, it probably hadn’t been an empty offer.

Shu gave him her number as well. But she never contacted him first. Even when Hildebert’s hands and feet were discovered one by one, she didn’t call.

Strangely enough, she knew Hildebert was alive.

It was probably because she had seen so much on the day Cecil ran wild. A man who had spent nearly fifty years trying to return to his subordinates. Even after losing all his memories to Cecil’s magic, Hildebert had never forgotten the task he had to accomplish.

A man like that wouldn’t have allowed himself to die at human hands.

So Shu hadn’t been very worried. And since a situation that required help never really came up, she never contacted them.

Seeing him fake his death and disappear like that, she had simply thought he must be busy with something.

There was no reason to disturb busy people.

But then—

“Dad.”

Shu suddenly jumped to her feet and stood in front of the bed where Cecil lay.

“Dad!”

“Yes, daughter?”

“Run!”

“What?”

“Run!”

Shu was seized by terror.

The sound of Simon running toward her instead of fleeing as she told him only made her more frightened.

But she couldn’t run to Simon Diamond.

A yellow teleportation circle was unfolding, half overlapping the doorframe of the room.

Wooooong!

“Shu!”

“Get out!”

When Simon Diamond flung the door open, Shu shouted louder than ever before.

“You’ll only get in the way if you stay! Go!”

Seeing her father grit his teeth, turn his body, and run out, Shu felt relief.

At that moment the light of the teleportation circle abruptly died out and a person appeared.

Shu inhaled sharply. Tense to the limit, she fixed her eyes on the person who had calmly appeared inside her room.

It was the woman she had seen in the footage.

The inhuman being who had appeared in the sky of the Core during the epidemic, when the sky itself had been covered in Core barriers.

She had to be a mage.

Right now she had only two hands.

But around her, afterimages flickered in and out as if holograms were glitching. Most of them were multiple pairs of arms. As if two arms were not enough, three or four phantom arms would appear before crackling and disappearing.

「I thought mana feedback was the worst thing. But something more terrifying is when the mana circuits twist.」

The woman standing before the illusion muttered.

The words sounded like an incomprehensible foreign language to Shu. The speaker did not even glance at her. The woman’s vivid black eyes were fixed entirely on Cecil, lying neatly on the bed.

「I’ll return the favor. I still have enough mana to pour out to wake you from mana feedback.」

“Step back.”

Shu raised her gun.

“If you don’t step back, I’ll shoot.”

「I’ve never really had talent for healing magic.」

Nabarate muttered to herself.

Then she strode toward the bed.

Shu clenched her teeth and tightened her finger on the trigger.

“Don’t come any closer.”

「I’ve never been confident about perfectly waking a mage from mana feedback. But this time it doesn’t matter at all.」

The other woman didn’t listen.

Did she not understand?

“Stop!”

Shu shouted, raising her palm in a warning signal.

“Final warning. Stop!”

「Time to wake up.」

Ignoring Shu’s cry, Nabarate raised her right hand.

From the lifted hand, seven more hands bloomed.

Three of those hands had rotting fingertips.

But regardless of their condition, spells began forming on the open palms.

Bang!

The moment seven small whirlwinds rose into the air, Shu pulled the trigger.

At the same moment, a spell shot toward Cecil.

“Cecil!”

BOOOOM!

Shu hurled herself toward Cecil.

「What is this?」

The bed exploded.

Fragments of the shattered bed shot in every direction, embedding themselves in walls. The explosion burst outward, letting a heavy draft rush in from outside.

People screamed from below the house.

Now one of Shu’s feet was hanging in midair. Fortunately she didn’t fall, but if she hadn’t grabbed the wall in time she would have plunged down together with the bed.

The wounds from the explosion healed rapidly.

Leaning inward into the room, Shu tightly wrapped Cecil in her arms.

Only now did the mage seem to notice Shu’s existence.

Her eyebrow lifted.

「A human?」

Bang!

Shu answered with a bullet.

RATATATAT!

She fired in rapid succession. Even though she was shooting while holding Cecil in her arms, her accuracy didn’t falter.

Whooong!

The problem was that the bullets were swallowed by tiny whirlwinds before reaching the enemy.

PAAANG!

When the mage caught the bullets—slowed within the whirlwinds—in her palm, they scattered between her fingers as if bouncing inside her hand.

Seven or eight fragments of bullet pierced through Shu’s flesh.

Clenching her teeth, Shu pulled her phone from her pocket.

Fortunately Cecil’s curled body was shielded by Shu’s instinctive cover, leaving Cecil uninjured. The phone had miraculously survived as well.

Staring at the mage’s bored expression, Shu tapped the phone.

「Why is a human doing something like this here?」

The mage looked down at Shu as though she were a mouse that had crawled out inside a house.

「And what is that square wooden board?」

Shu ignored the incomprehensible muttering.

Having once been kidnapped by a dark mage, she quickly decided she had to escape.

Dad must not come back.

「Well, it doesn’t really matter.」

Nabarate raised her hand again.

This time both hands.

「Nothing will change anyway.」

Beep-beep-beep-beep!

Ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dori!

Beep! Beep! Beep!

Draang!

The noisy sounds drowned out the magic.

It was the activation sound of Shu’s customized hoverboard.

With the volume turned to maximum, it was loud enough to draw the mage’s attention away from the mana she had been gathering.

The moment Nabarate snapped her head around, four hoverboards burst into the room one after another.

The mage spat out magic instantly.

Three of the hoverboards rushing toward Nabarate crashed immediately. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

Only the one on a different trajectory survived and reached Shu.

Without hesitation, Shu stepped onto the hoverboard.

Still holding the sleeping Cecil tightly in both arms.

Now she could ride the hoverboard with both legs again.

「How far can a mouse run even if it escapes?」

Ignoring Nabarate’s muttering, Shu shot up into the sky through the broken wall.

***

Crash!

A window shattered with a loud noise.

“Aaaah!”

Bobby screamed as she fell.

She plummeted downward together with the shards of the broken window.

The staircase she had chosen had been blocked midway. Some people had decided to climb up through the collapsed debris, while others switched to another staircase. Bobby had chosen the latter.

She had opened the stairwell door, crossed the floor, and was heading for the entrance to another staircase when—

Something struck her in the side.

Bobby never learned what it was.

By the time she felt the impact, she was already in free fall along with the shattered window.

Hildebert wouldn’t have even been hit by something like this!

Gasping in pain, Bobby thought that for a moment.

The handsome junior she had first met at the Colosseum.

But the junior whose upright personality placed him infinitely far from Bobby’s tastes always seemed to drag chaos along with him.

Of course, Bobby had never cared about any of those disturbances.

People had been shouting about him being a Creature or something, but she still didn’t know what the truth actually was.

She hadn’t really been curious.

Still, sometimes she thought it might be fun to take him to parties.

And she often thought about Hildebert’s ability.

After becoming a Black Badger, Bobby realized something.

She was good at using her body, but she had no talent for combat.

At some point she understood that no matter how hard she tried, she would never reach the combat level of people like Ami or Jason.

And that realization became Bobby Winter’s inferiority complex, tormenting her constantly.

I want to dodge something like this too!

As she fell beneath headquarters, she clenched her teeth.

I want to sense things instantly when something approaches—like a rabbit!

I want to stay calm and respond immediately instead of panicking during sudden attacks!

No matter what situation I face, I don’t want to freeze up in fear!

Pew!

Bobby fired a wire into the headquarters wall.

Now all she had to do was wait for the wire to attach to the wall like an octopus suction cup and stop her fall with a jolt—

Click.

A few centimeters too short.

“What?!”

The wire hung limply without attaching to the wall.

“Seriously?!”

Bobby screamed.

“Is this real?! That’s impossible!”

She frantically tried to press the wire retrieval button, but her fingers wouldn’t move properly in her panic.

“Aaaah!”

Thud.

Someone caught her.

Her fall stopped abruptly.

Bobby widened her eyes and looked at the person holding her.

She wasn’t dull enough to close her eyes in a moment like this.

The green eyes in front of her curved into a long smile.

“Looks like you need more training~.”

Ricardo drawled lazily.

“You’ve been eating Badger rations for how many years now, and you still fail at attaching a wire~?”

That infuriating tone.

Feeling the familiar urge to stab him, mixed with relief at being alive and a sting of inferiority toward her own skills, Bobby reeled in her wire.

She pretended not to notice the glances Ska and Jonathan threw her way.

Acting calm, she attached the wire to the building wall.

“Thank you.”

Bobby answered with forced confidence.

“I was about to fire it again. Even monkeys fall from trees, you know?”

Ricardo snorted and released her.

She could hear Ska Owen laughing a few steps ahead.

Bobby pressed her lips together, tugged her wire a couple of times to test it, and climbed the headquarters wall after the seniors.

The first-generation seniors were far above them.

At least she had remembered to bring a proper wire.

If she hadn’t, she would have had to climb the building barehanded like Hildebert had done once.

To be honest, she wasn’t confident she could do that either.

Still, it was a relief that reaching the portal zone should no longer be a problem—

Crash! Crash!

Windows shattered.

Creatures clung to the outer wall, crawling down toward them.