Raban could only shut his mouth in the face of that concise and persuasive logic.
‘Considering he came up with that kind of magic, he really is extraordinarily insane….’
The Mother Fairy’s bizarre beam existed in a realm beyond Raban’s understanding. Even though he had been near the scene where the beam was fired, and had repeatedly come into close contact with its victims.
Though Raban’s specialty was black magic, he was not ignorant of other forms of magic. Since the foundation of his mana was dark mana, it was inefficient for him to use them directly, but he still had to establish at least a minimum countermeasure for when enemies used them.
And among all the magic Raban knew, there was no clue whatsoever that could explain something like “a beam that turns you into a magical girl.”
In that it altered the target’s body and reshaped it into a desired form, it did share something in common with black magic.
However, neither Inian, who was a demon, nor Raban himself, who was a black mage, could possibly dismiss the magical girl beam as black magic. Between magical girls, who handled the mana of dreams and hope, and black magic, there lay an immense distance.
“…Fine. So in your eyes, Na I-hyeon is Magi Black?”
“It would be stranger if she weren’t.”
Within Raban’s mind, a judgment based on the common sense of black magic flowed forth.
As a master of black magic, his judgment was that the high-density negative ideation accumulated in Na I-hyeon was enough that it would not be strange if she suddenly lost her mind at any moment. It was like deliberately making the activation switch of a nuclear bomb loose.
Choosing Na I-hyeon, steeped in negative ideation, as a magical girl was in itself proof of madness….
But if, as Inian suggested, the Mother Fairy had not been sane to begin with, then such common-sense judgment was meaningless.
No matter what objection he tried to raise, his logic collapsed before a single line: “So could a sane person make a magical girl beam?”
Raban squeezed his eyes shut.
“Fi…ne. Let’s say Na I-hyeon is Magi Black.”
“It is not a matter of saying so. It is certain.”
“Then what do we do now?”
“?”
“Extracting negative ideation from a magical girl… Is that even possible?”
Raban looked at Inian with a desperate expression. Inian, who had been left holding the bag on the Na I-hyeon theme stock together with Raban, also grew urgent. The Grand Duke of the Demon Realm’s stock report was issued swiftly.
“Praying that Na I-hyeon is not Magi Black is for amateurs.”
“Then?”
“In any case, did your plan not already include a most insidious level of interference in Na I-hyeon’s surrounding environment? Even while she is Magi Black, treat her extremely well as usual and strive to break down her psychological barriers.”
“…Strive?”
“That is so.”
“That’s it?”
“Is there another way?”
Raban blinked a few times, and at last understood reality and screamed.
“Are you telling me to perform a circus act in front of a nuclear bomb?”
Inian nodded.
“Does this look like something effort can solve?! Damn it, if effort could solve things, why don’t you try dispelling the beam that turns you into a magical girl with effort too!”
“You are dragging in something that has nothing to do with this! This is the plan you chose! Endure it with spite and grit!”
After bickering with Inian for a long while, Raban eventually ended up sprawled on the floor of the room. The difficulty of the reality he faced had become so high that he did not want to get up.
“Ha. If you, Demon Realm commoner, had mana endlessly welling up like other magical girls, we wouldn’t even have a reason to be doing this.”
“Keep dreaming.”
When he said it, it was nothing more than a lament mixed with nonsense. But as Raban chewed over the sentence he had spoken, he felt a certain sense of incongruity.
If Inian had truly become a magical girl, should she not be able to produce mana as well?
Until now, he had been calling the Mother Fairy’s bizarre beam the “magical girl beam,” taking it from Inian’s appearance, but he had never verified whether Inian’s current state or race was truly that of a magical girl.
“Why are you opening your eyes in such a revolting way?”
“Demon Realm baron. You are a magical girl, right?”
“Are you saying you want another round?”
“No, that’s not it.”
From the battle records of magical girls he had observed so far, Raban derived the characteristics of magical girls.
“First. They receive the mana of dreams and hope supplied by the Mother Fairy or her underlings, while the mana loss rate is close to zero.”
This was impossible to verify. As if a mascot would be insane enough to hand over their mana to a great demon.
“Second. Magical girls themselves are capable of producing mana through dreams and hope.”
As Raban repeatedly reviewed his battles with magical girls, magical girls had a trait of becoming stronger in extreme situations.
It was a power separate from the mascots’ mana supply. The mana possessed by the mascot faction itself might be inexhaustible, but there was a limit to the mana each individual mascot could stably handle.
Nevertheless, the output of magical girls drew a dramatic upward curve according to changes in their own emotions. This was circumstantial evidence that the magical girls themselves were equipped with a function that produced mana.
“It must be the sort of hope that says, ‘If I smash that thing in front of me, a more comfortable day will be waiting tomorrow.’”
“I have heard quite enough about your history of voyeurism. So what are you curious about?”
“Can’t you self-generate through dreams and hope?”
Raban asked in an intentionally indifferent tone, but within him there was a mixture of a certain sense of crisis and expectation. The sense of crisis was fear of the possibility that Inian would charge enough mana and then run off to the Demon Realm on her own.
The expectation was the possibility of embezzling the mana of Inian, who had become capable of producing mana on her own, and returning home.
Inian lowered her eyes half-open. It was a habit she had shown since her days as a grand duke whenever she was deep in thought.
She opened her eyes.
“After meeting you, every single day has been a succession of despair and frustration. Do you think hope would charge?”
“Ah.”
Raban did not bother to refute her. Since he was a magnanimous black mage, he could flexibly overlook the unreasonable rebuke of a great demon.
“Then again, who told you to make a fraudulent contract?”
However, he could not endure failing to correct the causal relationship properly. If the Demon Realm commoner had sent him home properly from the start, there would have been no reason for them to make each other angry.
Inian, who had habitually braced herself on the table and was about to unleash a 540-degree spinning kick through the air, stopped short at an idea that flashed through her mind.
“…Hmph.”
“Huh?”
Raban, who had likewise habitually raised both arms into a defensive stance, cautiously opened his eyes when the impact that should have arrived did not.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Have you ever seen mana being produced from Na I-hyeon or Syune? I mean from their bare bodies before transformation.”
Muttering, “It’s not confirmed yet that Na I-hyeon is Magi Black,” while clutching at shattered hope, Raban arrived at an answer after 1.5 seconds of deep contemplation.
“I haven’t.”
“Then.”
Inian laid out the magical knowledge she had accumulated as a Grand Duke of the Demon Realm. Though the mascots decorated it with the phrase “dreams and hope,” the domain of the energy source they handled was broader.
“It would be appropriate to call it positive ideation, the counterpart to negative ideation. It is mana refined from a broader range, including happiness.”
“Uh, so you mean mana like white powder that makes you happy if you eat it?”
A contemptuous gaze stabbed into Raban. Inian added that positive emotions themselves and those emotions processed into energy had to be distinguished.
“Contact with you is, to me, utterly incomprehensible, but for the two magical girls it must have been a positive experience in its own way. Even so, is it not strange that no mana generation reaction was felt from either of them before transformation?”
Raban had no difficulty grasping what Inian was trying to say.
“You’re saying self-generation of mana using dreams and hope is only possible after transformation?”
“There is a high probability of that. Among Hikarius’s culture, its food culture—and within that, especially the standard of its desserts—exceeds the average of the Demon Realm. I myself, who have enjoyed the pleasure of regular meals and yet have not been charged with mana, prove it.”
“Tsk.”
Raban clicked his tongue. There was a way to determine the truth of Inian’s hypothesis at once, but the timing was not good to use it now.
After Inian finished transforming into that magical girl form with wolf ears and crow wings, she simply had to beat Raban himself up.
‘With that bastard’s personality, if I give her a chance to hit me, she’ll swing full force without hesitation.’
The Grand Duke of the Demon Realm did not have a hobby like sadism. However, he had understood with his body that every time she successfully completed an attack against Raban himself, she felt a certain kind of satisfaction, and beyond that, even a sense of mission.
‘But if we transform right now and experiment, the mascots’ eyes bother me.’
The mascots’ surveillance capabilities extended across all of Hikarius, and transforming in this dormitory, where surveillance would be especially strict, was reckless.
‘It would be better to test it when the time is right. Using Charles or O Chan-ja as a shield should be suitable.’
Raban added one line to the list of experiments in his head. Now it was time to get to the main point.
“Inian, how much mana do you have available?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Thanks to eating that friend Reshef’s liver, I have a certain amount of mana to spare. So I think we can afford to spend mana quite generously on this matter.”
On beating Charles down.