Apocalypse, then transforming into a magical girl

The two pushed open the already twisted and deformed unit door, and an even stronger stench hit them.

What lay before me was a crimson swamp with an eerie, oily sheen. The original green belts and sidewalks in the community were submerged in at least half a meter of water, and various kinds of garbage floated on the murky surface.

"Wow... there's so much water!" Xia Zhaozhao stood on the steps at the entrance of the building, looking at the vast expanse of water in front of her: "There's no other way but to go down."

"Little Green, are you sure the monster ran in that direction?" she asked, pointing southeast in the direction Little Green indicated.

"That's right." Little Green carefully sensed the remaining aura and nodded. "Although it's very faint, I can feel that it left from this direction and swam to a more distant place."

"Alright." Xia Zhaozhao took a deep breath, raised the woodcutter's knife from her waist to her left hand, and casually gripped her right hand, where her usual ornate greatsword reappeared.

"Hehe! Little Green, just you wait! I feel incredibly strong right now, and I can't wait to try out my knife!"

Undeniably, after her power surge yesterday, Xiao Lü felt that the magical girl in front of her was indeed much stronger, and in any case, she could no longer be considered a weakling.

"...Without that machete, you'd look like a proper knight. Are you sure that would be convenient for fighting?"

"You know nothing! I'm the reincarnation of Miyamoto Musashi, this is called Niten Ichi-ryu!"

Before she finished speaking, she had already leaped up, stepping onto the roof of an abandoned car that was half-submerged in water, and lightly jumped to the edge of a low platform of another building not far away.

Little Green shook its head speechlessly, flapped its magical wings, and floated up gently, following behind Xia Zhaozhao.

She used her magic to freeze all the rain falling on their heads into ice pellets, then gently tossed them aside to prevent them from landing on them.

"...Aren't you tired of jumping around like that? Why don't you just fly?"

"That's called conserving magic! Good resources should be used where they're most needed!"

"Look at you jumping around like that, you're obviously consuming more magic power than me."

"Don't worry about the details~" She brandished her machete. "Look, there's a monster up ahead. Let me show you what I'm capable of!"

The flower beds, stone benches, and waterlogged vehicles in the community, which were on higher ground, all became Xia Zhaozhao's footholds. She bent her legs slightly, exerted her strength, and leaped high like a cheetah, landing on the top of a small pavilion not far away.

She discovered that in the garden ahead, there were about a dozen monsters of various shapes and sizes, slowly lurking in the murky water.

They seemed to be nibbling at something floating on the water's surface, making unsettling gurgling sounds.

"Ha!" Xia Zhaozhao shouted, leaping down from the top of the pavilion. She adjusted her posture in mid-air and landed precisely near the monster closest to her.

The open space is great!

"Ha!" She kicked off with her foot, and the greatsword swept across with immense magical power!

"Crack!" With a crisp cutting sound, the monster was instantly cleaved in two before it could even react!

However, the monster, severed in half, did not immediately stop moving. Its body, broken in two, continued to writhe on the ground, and something was even wriggling at the wound, seemingly trying to reconnect.

"As expected." Although she had guessed that this would be the case, Xia Zhaozhao was still a little unhappy.

"Leave it to me."

She raised her knife, ready to chop the monster into pieces, but then she heard Little Green's voice. Little Green raised her hand, and the water beneath the severed monster instantly froze into ice pillars, shooting upwards!

"Pfft!" The icicle pierced through the monster's two halves from bottom to top, exploding inside. The chill instantly spread, freezing the monster's remains into an ice sculpture.

"Beautiful! Little Green Brand Sandalwood Punishment!" Xia Zhaozhao praised without reservation.

Having learned from her first experience, she changed her strategy. Facing another monster, she held her greatsword upright and cleaved it vertically in two from top to bottom.

This time, the monster's two halves twitched a few times before going completely limp, turning into a pool of lifeless black slime that sank into the water.

"So you have to cut it vertically!" Xia Zhaozhao seemed to have found the trick.

However, when she tried to use the same method to deal with the third monster, she found that although the monster was much less active, it was still struggling.

"Tsk." She impatiently chopped the monster into several pieces with both her machete and greatsword.

Having figured out how to deal with these things, the subsequent battles became Xia Zhaozhao's unparalleled skill. She dodged and weaved between high and low terrains, occasionally using flight to cut, slice, and chop up the monsters one by one.

Little Green observed the battle from a distance, occasionally using ice spikes to finish off the heavily wounded but not yet dead creatures. She would also freeze parts of the water surface into solid ice, providing her with stable footholds.

Although their cooperation wasn't exactly seamless, it was still quite effective.

Just then, a monster that looked somewhat different caught Little Green's attention. Unlike the other monsters, which were purely black aggregates of thread-like material, it retained a vague humanoid outline.

Although the body is also twisted and the skin is an eerie gray-black, the structure of the head, limbs and torso can still be distinguished.

Little Green conjured a sharp ice shard and shot it directly at the monster's head.

"Pfft!" The ice shard exploded the moment it pierced through, smashing the monster's head to pieces.

The headless humanoid monster merely swayed, its movements becoming slower and clumsier, but it did not lose its vitality.

"Huh? Why does this thing look like a human?" Xia Zhaozhao jumped over and casually swung her twin swords, cutting the monster into three pieces. "The only thing is that it can survive without a head, which isn't very human-like."

Xiao Lü recalled the itchy sensation on her ankle when she came into contact with the rainwater and made a guess.

"Do you remember that mental pollution from yesterday...? I bet it was residents from other buildings who were attracted to that mental pollution and wanted to merge with that monster."

"As a result, it was soaked by the blood rain outside halfway there and infected by those nematodes, and that's how it turned out."

Xia Zhaozhao fell silent, then silently raised her greatsword and dealt with the last few monsters one by one. The black slime slowly dispersed in the murky water.

"Alright, alright, all done and we're done~" Xia Zhaozhao casually flicked the grime off her wood-chopping knife, turned around, and noticed a colorful piece of paper floating on the water near where the humanoid monster had been.

Curious, she jumped over and poked at it a few times with a machete.

"It's a scratch-off lottery ticket...wait, this guy actually won a thousand dollars!"

"...Good luck."