Apocalypse, then transforming into a magical girl

Chapter 213 The Phantom Pain of Others Yesterday

Bai Shuyuan parked the car and glanced around casually, noticing that Sasha was facing an abandoned construction site near the overpass.

The tower crane is completely rusted, the color of the rust blending almost into the sky, but the structure is still relatively intact, and it will probably be a few more years before it completely falls apart.

The Shannon counter did not show any alarming fluctuations in reading when it was pointing to that area.

There aren't many resources, and there's no real danger. Bai Shuyuan nodded.

Then, they stopped the car and dropped Sasha off.

"Be back before dark."

She left behind only this one sentence.

However, although it was quite safe here, she thought that some safety measures were still needed to prevent accidents from happening.

She pulled a pure white crystal from her cloak; clearly, this was something magical girls called a blessing.

Instead of absorbing the magic within, she carefully poured a portion of her own power into the surface of the crystal.

Blessings are one-time consumables. This operation does not allow it to store more magic power; it merely dissipates a portion of the magic power, which is then replaced by magic power bearing its own imprint.

In that case, if the person who crushes it isn't a magical girl, or doesn't absorb its magical energy, then it would be...

Once crushed, the magic that dissipates into the air will cause a subtle fluctuation.

With targeted practice, magical girls can detect this silent fluctuation from tens of kilometers away, just like hearing a distant bell.

Therefore, all Bai Shuyuan gave her was a distress signal flare.

"If there's any danger, just crush it."

She shoved the modified crystal into Sasha's hand, said nothing more, and drove her motorcycle away, disappearing into the end of the elevated road without looking back.

Sasha looked at the white crystal with curiosity, and a strange thought suddenly popped up from the depths of her consciousness.

What would happen if I crushed it right now?

Will Bai Shuyuan turn back immediately? Will she be angry? Or will she just ask, "Why?"

—No, that's not right. You can't have that kind of thinking.

She remembered that Xia Zhaozhao called this impulse "courting death".

In the inherited fragments of memory, "Ye Shasha" had been slapped a lot when she was young because of similar thoughts.

Would Bai Shuyuan hit her? No.

However, she knew it was wrong to do this. This was something very important given to her by Bai Shuyuan, so it should be kept safe.

So, she thought for a moment, lifted her skull, and placed the white crystal inside, next to the brain tissue.

Humans use safes to store precious things, she thought.

And here is a very sturdy safe.

After doing all this, she clapped her hands contentedly and turned to run towards the abandoned construction site.

The construction site was completely empty, with nothing that caught her attention. There were no strangely shaped wild aggregates, not even oddly shaped pieces of scrap metal.

The harpy dogs and harpy lizards followed closely behind her, and everything made her feel a little bored.

Sasha looked up, her gaze passing over the unfinished buildings and landing on the rusty tower cranes.

She suddenly had an idea.

Magical girls can all fly, and they even carried her to very, very high places.

She loved the feeling of flying through the air, with the wind and rain brushing past her ears.

Well then, since the magical girls aren't here, I'll do it myself.

So she simply climbed up the tower crane bit by bit from the bottom, just like climbing a giant pea vine in a fairy tale.

The harki lizard didn't follow; it just watched silently from below.

It seemed to know that this was quite tiring and pointless, but Sasha didn't force it.

But not Haki.

Sasha gave it a direct command to switch to the Cantonese twin ponytail style, and then followed it.

The climb took longer than she had imagined, and the wind seemed to have picked up a little. Finally, she reached the top of the cockpit.

Following the example of the clowns she remembered performing acrobatics, she carefully spread her arms to maintain her balance, and then walked step by step toward the end of the boom, overlooking the surrounding scenery.

Standing high up, you can indeed see very far. Under the scarlet sky, countless buildings are stacked together like Lego bricks, though some are dilapidated and not as bright and shiny as the bricks.

Looking down, a gray elevated highway stretches across the buildings, with vehicles and figures flashing by—those who survived.

She could even see the bank building; it was so small.

Unlike being carried by Xia Zhaozhao and flown up before, this feeling of quietly overlooking the world alone is not bad.

But she didn't climb all that way just to admire the view. The view from the top of the outpost was much better.

She just felt that it was higher up here.

Higher means you can fly longer.

Under her command, Haki had reached the end of the crane arm. Its primitive Haki brain seemed to be sensing something ominous.

Sasha commanded it to grow its wings, then grabbed its legs and leaped into the air.

Haji Khan's cockroach-like wings fluttered helplessly in the air, clearly unable to support Sasha's weight.

"Pfft."

At the bottom of the crane, under the watchful eye of the harpy lizard, the two oddly shaped lumps of meat took a long time to recover their original shapes.

"Useless Hakiwang—no, that's not right, it seems I can't blame it, it's my own problem," Sasa thought.

Sasha fell into thought.

Luckily, I had placed that white crystal inside the skull earlier. Otherwise, it would definitely have shattered from that impact.

However, that's not important.

The important thing is that she had an idea. A really, really good idea.

She remembered that she had just fallen and turned into a meat patty.

The disc shape is very useful. If it could be made even thinner, as thin as a paper airplane, it would seem to be a very fluid dynamic solution.

She stood up and walked towards the crane once more. This time, she didn't take the poor Haki with her.

The second climb was much more skillful than the first, and she quickly reached the top. Afterward, she focused all her attention on her own body structure.

Wing membranes grow between the arms and torso, and the creature tries to flatten itself, like a sugar glider.

Then, imitating the animal, she spread her limbs and leaped into the air.

The moment she jumped, it felt pretty good. The wind supported her body, and she did experience a brief feeling of floating.

However, the next second, she immediately felt her body tumbling uncontrollably in the air, like a tattered plastic bag.

The sky and the ground appeared alternately before her eyes, making her feel dizzy.

"Smack."

This time she didn't fall to her death, but the spinning left her with round eyes for quite a while.

However, she did not get discouraged and tried again and again.

She discovered that learning to be a sugar glider was no easier than learning to be a human.

She constantly adjusted the angle of her body tilt, the rigidity of her wing membranes, and the range of her limb extensions, eventually even growing a tail as a tail fin.

Finally, after countless attempts, it glided down from the top of the crane to the bottom like a glider and landed steadily on the ground.

She was quite excited about her success.

Although, poor harpy lizards and harpy dogs have been standing here as punishment for who knows how long.

She was pleased with her progress. Although it wasn't real flight, just gliding, it was still a huge improvement for her.

She happily recorded her previous experiences in her mind.

First, when gliding, the body needs to become very flat and stiff. Once it softens, it becomes like a plastic bag, wobbling and spinning around.

Secondly, turning requires subtle body movements. You can't swing your arms; instead, you can slightly turn your head, lower your shoulders, or simply have a weight attached to one arm, which is more convenient.

Moreover, and most importantly, you need to look in the direction you want to go.

So this is what flying is like, she thought.

But it was really fun.

The gliding experiment has come to a temporary end.

Next, she took the harpy and harpy lizards around the area, looking for small wild aggregates or even just scrap cardboard to feed them as cheap biomass.

After wandering around for a while, she arrived at the sales office of the property development, which was a rather impressive building.

It seemed to be some high-end residential complex, with rather luxurious interior decorations. However, she wasn't interested in any of that, because the resources she needed weren't there.

She was about to turn and leave when her gaze was drawn to a locked door on the side, which looked like a warehouse door.

The door was locked very securely. She tried to insert a finger into the keyhole, mimicking the shape of a key and hardening it, attempting to open the door, but failed because it wasn't hard enough.

However, this was not a problem for her at all.

She flattened herself out and squeezed through the gap, opening the door from the inside.

As the door opened, light streamed in. Then, she saw a surprise.

A huge, deflated balloon lay quietly in the center of the warehouse.

No, it's not a balloon, it's a GG airship.

There were also many metal bottles stacked next to it, which should contain hydrogen gas—no, they should contain helium gas.

Ignoring the GG on the surface, Sasha fully unfolded it and discovered that it was a standard medium-sized GG airship.

It wasn't as exaggerated in size as the Kirov airship in the game, but it seemed to be larger than a regular bus.

Sasha's brain began to work at lightning speed, and the mathematical knowledge she remembered was once again being recalled.

Ultimately, she came to the conclusion that such an airship, once filled with helium, should provide enough lift for it, the harpy lizard, and the harpy dog ​​to ascend together.

She excitedly dragged it outside and then filled it with helium cylinders.

And so, this GG airship began to slowly expand.

Finally, it broke free from Earth's gravity and rose up.

Upon returning to the base, Bai Shuyuan succinctly briefed the survivors on the situation at the new survivor base.

It seems that quite a few survivors plan to go there to exchange for different kinds of food and explore the surrounding area to ensure their safety.

Then, we walked towards the Chlorella culture room.

The food was plentiful, but it was nauseating.

The power consumption of extraction equipment is still astronomical by today's standards. Until the power supply problem is solved, it will be quite difficult to transform it into a less nauseating form.

However, turning their attention to the side, the survivors had at least found a considerable number of chives during their previous exploration.

They also grow under the light, which barely improves their diet.

better than nothing.

Just then, there was a knock on the door.

She turned around and saw Shi Yao and Taozi peeking in.

Then they got straight to the point.

"We noticed today that a cloud in the sky seemed a bit thin, so we wanted to take a look with a telescope."

"It turned out that the place—seemed a bit strange."

"It's completely different from how I usually see the sky! It feels like there's something behind the clouds, blurry but I can't quite make out what it is."

Bai Shuyuan nodded, asked no further questions, and turned to walk upstairs.

The three then went to the rooftop of the bank.

Bai Shuyuan didn't immediately move closer to the eyepiece; instead, she raised her head and looked directly at the sky.

Because, compared to the so-called anomaly above the clouds, there is something much more obvious now.

A huge oval-shaped object is suspended high in the sky, slowly drifting eastward.

On the side of that thing, there was a huge slogan that read "Luxury International Residence, Enjoy a Luxurious Life".

Bai Shuyuan: "————"

Shi Yao:

peach:

In fact, Sasha's flight direction was not blind.

She has a clear goal, stemming from deep within her memory.

With its engine churning and creaking as it barely managed to keep going after being idle for who knows how many years, the airship flew over the bank, over Xinmao University, and headed east.

That direction was the direction of "home" in Ye Shasha's memory.

She had made a prediction that they were almost there.

Sasha shut down the barely functioning engine and let some air out.

The massive vessel began to descend slowly.

She gave commands to the harpy and harpy lizard beside her.

The two aggregates immediately understood, flattening themselves like band-aids and climbing onto the airship's main body in areas vulnerable to impact during landing, thus protecting those areas.

However, it seems that luck was on their side.

The airship did not crash into any buildings; it simply landed on the side of the main road, hooking onto a withered roadside tree without sustaining any damage.

Sasha didn't immediately deal with the airship. She jumped off and landed on the deserted road, then ran towards the neighborhood she remembered.

Haki dogs and harpy lizards followed closely behind, one on each side, guarding her.

They intended to defeat the blind monsters around them, but those monsters didn't seem to have much interest in them, who were also aggregates and were obviously more powerful.

Sasha, relying on her memory, skillfully made her way to the side of a residential building and looked up at that familiar balcony.

Then, he climbed up easily.

This is the old house where Ye Shasha and Ye Hao lived together, a place I remember.

Ignoring the withered plants in the flowerpots on the balcony, she pushed open the dusty window and walked inside, casually scanning the living room with her gaze.

The furniture was still there, but covered in a thick layer of gray dust, clearly indicating it had been abandoned for a long time. It seemed that...

This place had been abandoned long before the end of the world.

Those innate memories surged up like a tide.

Her memories told her that this place used to be very lively. There was the aroma of food, the sound of a television, and arguments and laughter.

But now, there's no one here anymore.

The circuit breaker was pulled down, there were stickers on the refrigerator, and height markings lined the wall.

The clock on the wall had long since stopped at some meaningless moment, for who knows how long.

She can come back anytime. But what's the point of coming back here?

A strange, throbbing pain suddenly came from her chest.

Sasha knew she wasn't Ye Sasha.

Those memories, though constantly trying to tell her "you are," she knew very well that she wasn't.

After all, in those memories, "Ye Shasha" was always presented as an individual being observed.

It's like watching a very, very long movie, much longer than Seven Samurai, and Ye Shasha is the main character.

She was the only audience member in the movie theater.

But now, why does she feel sorry for that protagonist?

She tilted her head, thought for a moment, and decided to temporarily stop the simulated blood flow in her body.

Then, he carefully reached into the chest cavity and pulled out the heart.

Biological knowledge and her instincts both told her that the organs she simulated should be intact and without any physical damage.

But that uncomfortable feeling still lingered in my empty chest.

Sasha suddenly understood.

This is perhaps what humans call "phantom limb pain".

Even if the limbs are gone, the memory and feeling of that pain still stubbornly remain in the brain.

Humans are such a hassle.

She couldn't understand it.

She decided to put it aside for a while, intending to seal this memory away for a few minutes and think about other things first.

Everything in the living room remained exactly as it was. Sasha closed the glass door to the balcony, turned around, jumped out of the window, and left.

She jogged back to the airship, then busily tidied up the GG airship, pondering the next direction she should go.

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