Raban stood there blankly for a long while.
It was the aftereffect of having fallen for a contract scam—something he hadn’t suffered even back when he was a beginner who had only just entered the path of black magic.
“Damn demon bastard…”
Vicious. Truly vicious. Before the contract was done, it clung to him like that, and the moment it had sucked him dry, it threw him away.
Venting his rage toward the demon, Raban plucked out a single strand of hair.
In that instant, his mind grew still. It was a spell that gathered seething emotions into a part of the body and forcibly extracted them. Rather than peace, it was closer to silence.
Raban tucked the strand of hair he had pulled out into the catalyst pouch inside his robe.
A body part containing the intense emotions of a black mage was a rare magical catalyst. All the more so if it held real emotion, not feigned emotion or false tears.
Only after he had driven his rage into the strand of hair did he realize it.
“Good heavens.”
He was truly short on mana.
Even using a simple mental spell to seal away emotion was a strain. In order to return to his hometown, he had scraped together every last bit of mana he had and offered it to the demon.
Out of habit, his hand rose to tear off a hangnail on his left hand, but he lowered it again. Trying to contact the demon again now would only make the situation worse.
If the demon ignored the call, or if the spell was incomplete and he only wasted mana without being able to speak? That would be preferable.
The real problem would be if the demon answered. If the demon supplied mana collect-on-delivery and completed the spell.
‘It would definitely put the mana used for the communication on my tab and work me to the bone.’
He had no desire to become the demon’s debtor again. Raban ground his teeth and looked around.
‘Those brats called magical girls were throwing mana around like crazy.’
It was enviable, but at the same time, their skill was terribly crude. Mana that hadn’t been properly condensed was scattered all over the battlefield.
If he extracted mana from the lingering traces of magic, he could recharge slowly but surely.
Just as he was about to head toward the center of the clash while composing a magic circle to recover mana—
“Hm?”
Regeneration began.
Mana seeped into every corner of the city. Walls scorched by fire became clean, and the heaved ground was neatly restored. Even the traces left by the magical girl’s finishing move—the blow that ended the battle and devastated the area—vanished.
As if in inverse proportion to the cleanliness of the scenery, the residual mana that had filled the air began to disappear.
“No, hey. Wait!”
Raban let out a scream no one would heed. He hurried toward the center of the mana. Even after the ruined city finished regenerating, there was still some mana left.
‘It’s really only a mouse’s tail’s worth, but it’s better than nothing!’
The moment he stretched out his hand to absorb the mana—
A pink flash erupted.
When the radiance subsided, not a single speck of mana remained.
“…Ha ha.”
Raban felt two emotions at once. One was emptiness. Damn it. If only he had started recovering the mana a little sooner.
The second was curiosity. The “restoration magic” he had just witnessed was truly refined work. It was far too delicate for the magical girls who went around spilling mana everywhere.
Then what was it that had handled the magical girls’ cleanup?
Raban reflected on his memories of Earth. Surely, when it came to “magical girls,” there was usually a mascot that arranged the contract enabling the girl to use magic.
“With this kind of ability, it doesn’t act directly, but outsources the work instead?”
It was intriguing.
Raban recalled several magical-girl stories he had seen on Earth. There were quite a few tales where the mascot was actually the final boss or the root of all evil.
All he had seen so far was a clash between two magical girls and those called the Four Heavenly Kings of the Ivory Tower. He hadn’t even confirmed the mascot’s actual existence yet.
Even so, the hypothesis of a mascot controlling everything from behind the magical girls was quite amusing.
As the black mage continued his pleasant speculation, the wind brushed past his feet. The cold night wind woke Raban from his daydream.
“Sigh…”
What did it matter if he had found an interesting and novel spell? He had no mana to use for researching it.
First, he had to gather mana.
***
The monster struck by the magical girl’s finishing move scattered into particles of light.
[Dark-mana response: zero! Good work today as always, mohu!]
Papirun, a fairy whose appearance was somewhere between a teddy bear and a mouse with greatly spread, deformed ears, confirmed the monster’s purification. Its strange verbal tic, whose reason for being no one knew, was accepted by everyone thanks to its cute appearance.
Only then did Magi Black and Magi White stretch and release their transformations.
“Wow, is it because we had that huge fight last time? Eibon’s monsters have all been pushovers lately～”
“You nearly got done in because you let your guard down like that during Eibon’s resurrection ritual, remember?”
“T-that was then!”
“Carelessness is your bad habit, Black.”
The magical girls bickered. The unlikely duo of a class president and a tomboy, two people who would normally have had nothing to do with each other, had gone through their share of trials and hardships and were gradually becoming a proper team.
Papirun saw the two off with a pleased smile. The moment the girls disappeared beyond the sunset, Papirun’s expression sank coldly.
It was time to return to the fairy kingdom.
‘I don’t want to go back…’
Light wrapped around Papirun. The next moment, the little fairy arrived before a massive round table. The stained glass flashing in five colors and the ornate chandeliers made it look like a royal palace from a film.
However, the expressions of the guardian fairies seated around the round table were far from the elegance of court nobles.
[I’m telling you! How badly are you managing your jurisdiction that monsters are coming all the way to our kids, mohu! Isn’t this a drop-off, mohu!!]
Drop-off. It was slang used in drug crimes. It meant leaving the goods in a place that seemed unrelated to drugs, for the recipient to come and collect later.
Or a method of framing someone by dumping drugs on a person with no connection to them. The meaning that fairy was using now was an extension of the latter.
[Your mana usage last month exceeded the amount requested in advance, so you dropped them in our area to adjust your mana consumption, didn’t you, mohu?]
[What kind of beggar nonsense are you spouting, mohu? We agreed from the start to receive mana at the same date and time, but weren’t you the ones who stabbed us in the back and placed an early order for mana, draining our balance dry, mohu?]
[Bullshit.]
[Where’s your mohu, mohu? How dare you speak to a senior as high as the heavens like that.]
[Right now we’re struggling just to put our kids in their transformation costumes, so to hell with the heavens. As if our kids aren’t already starved for dreams and hope because they’re worn out from cram schools and tutoring these days, and now this crap—]
Papirun clapped with its tiny, adorable hands that resembled steamed buns.
Pyok. A pathetically cute sound.
At that quiet sound, the round table fell silent.
[Let’s all be quiet, mohu. Mother will wake, mohu.]
Such was the true nature of the guardian fairies who assisted the warriors of dreams and hope, the Magilists.
Papirun, who had to mediate among these juniors simply because it had committed the sin of being the first fairy created, wanted to cry.
[Now, now. First, we’ll distribute the mana that came out while our side dealt with the Ivory Tower, so Huhurun’s side should write up an application, mohu. Does anyone have any unusual matters to report, mohu?]
The fairies around the round table, which had briefly gone quiet, began chattering.
Things like how the number of magical beasts appearing compared to the previous month, whether they could reduce the amount of mana offered to Mother and send it to the kids instead, and what they should do when people no longer saw magical girls as symbols of dreams and hope but as fodder for shady, red-label fantasies.
[There’s a limit to how much we can let it slide just because they draw our kids prettily!]
[This is Terirun’s first time in charge of magical girls, right, mohu? Next time, contact the grievance department right away about that, mohu.]
Papirun skillfully gave the necessary advice, and when things had settled down moderately, it spoke up.
[I will brief you on the Ivory Tower’s Eibon resurrection ritual, mohu.]
The fairies grew serious and listened to the first fairy’s presentation. What the magical girls in each region usually faced were entities called “Evilpings”—a name chosen to suit the sensibilities of magical girls.
The appearance of Evilpings was closer to an unavoidable natural phenomenon, like the waxing and waning of the moon. Purifying such Evilpings was the usual duty of magical girls.
However, the Ivory Tower was different.
[The four homunculi created by the exile Eibon gathered and performed Eibon’s resurrection ritual, mohu. The Magilists under my charge interfered with the ritual, but it is unknown whether the ritual was completely destroyed, mohu.]
[Did Mother not detect Eibon’s mana wavelength, mohu?]
Papirun nodded at its junior’s question and moved the presentation to the next slide.
[Here is a comparison chart of the mana content in the monsters created by the Ivory Tower, mohu. There is a considerable difference in content before and after the resurrection ritual, mohu.]
The attacks on magical girls continued, but the monsters that served as the vanguard of those attacks had actually become weaker.
[Are you saying they’re diverting mana somewhere else, mohu?]
[That is my conjecture, mohu.]
The hypothesis was that the resurrection ritual had succeeded incompletely, and that they were now gathering mana to restore Eibon, who had descended without a body. It was a cunning method of maintaining nominal attacks while diverting the magical girls’ attention.
[Everyone, if monsters from the Ivory Tower appear in your jurisdictions, please take special caution, mohu. Then, the next agenda—]
***
“Ha, this is rough.”
Raban grumbled after sucking mana from a monster formed out of crushed leaves, cigarette butts, and the like gathered in the sewer.
The mana yield was terrible.