Even if you're a corrupted magical girl, you still have to try to redeem yourself.

Especially when Miyashita Mia mentioned that the way to undo the corruption wasn't by replenishing mana, her wariness increased again.

“But Xiaoyuan and I replenish our mana…” His own mouth raised this question for Baqi.

“What’s special isn’t the mana replenishment, but Yuuki Yukino.” Miyashita Miya said, observing the puzzled expressions on the two people’s faces.

"It seems you don't know yet, so let me finish explaining what happened before."

After attacking her first victim that day, Miyashita Mia's intense desire was not relieved. Instead, she became addicted and wanted more people to experience her love.

This target is not easy to choose. There are always variables when there are too many people. Who knows if there are a few magical girls mixed in with the crowd?

Although she hadn't asked Megumi, Megumi hadn't deliberately hidden it either, so Mia knew that Megumi was secretly training a new magical girl junior.

　(The fact that Liu's father secretly fell into depravity cannot be told to Hui, nor can it be known to the magical girl that Hui is training.)

So she was willing to wait a little longer, until there were hardly any people left in the school, and then quickly finish what she needed to do in the bushes and make a quick getaway.

After that, she found a target, a junior schoolmate with pink hair.

Miyashita Mia launched an attack and successfully absorbed a small amount of the pink-haired girl's magic power.

Then she was interrupted by the blue-haired girl who arrived.

After being interrupted, she suddenly had a strange thought—what am I doing?

She clearly possessed the power to defeat her opponent, but this lingering thought made her decide to leave.

Then she was stopped, then she activated her true name release, then the second magical girl appeared, and then she felt the thought of "what am I doing" getting stronger and stronger, and finally she ran away.

"Excuse me for interrupting." Miyashita Mia mentioned the release of true names, and Yuuki Yuuki took the opportunity to ask a question that had always been on her mind: "Senpai, after you fell into darkness, did your wand change?"

“Yes, my previous wand—Aphrodite—became unusable after I fell into darkness and was directly replaced by my current Lilith,” Miya Miyashita replied.

"Direct replacement? Direct use? Direct release of true name?" This is completely different from Yuuki Yuuki's current situation.

Miyashita Mia gave an affirmative answer: "Yes, that's right. Aren't you like that too?"

"No..." Yuuki Yui hadn't yet released her true name according to the game's timeline when she fell into darkness, which might be the reason for the difference between the two, but she couldn't explain it, so she left it at that for now.

"And what about you?" Miya Miya asked Inuyama Tomoe.

"Oh, me? When I become a magical girl, I'm already in a corrupted form. I don't understand what you're talking about," Baki answered frankly, lying on the bed.

“You two… are really strange,” Miya Miyashita said, continuing to recount what had happened.

Shortly after Miya Miya escaped, she received a call from Megumi.

Megumi mentioned the existence of her junior to Mia and told her that her junior had encountered a new enemy at school. Megumi's current strength was insufficient, and she needed Mia's help.

Mia realized that the so-called junior must be one of the two magical girls who stopped her, and that the new enemy was herself.

She didn't want Hui to know that she had secretly fallen in love, so she gave a few perfunctory words and left Hui's house.

But she felt that her perfunctory approach wouldn't solve anything, so she rushed back.

However, it's in the transformed form.

When she came to her senses, Tsukimi Rie, whose magic had been drained by her magic, was already lying on the ground.

Her reason, influenced by the black magic mark, told her that for her own safety, she should have Tsukimi Rie keep this secret for her forever.

But for a moment, she had that thought again—why should I do this?

So she ran away again and couldn't sleep all night afterward.

The next day when she went to school, Megumi didn't come. Mia received a note with only three things on it: time, place, and Megumi's name.

“That note meant that what I did had been exposed, which terrified me. But by then I was already under the influence of the Black Magic Mark, so I had a new idea—whoever came, I just needed to shut them up,” Miyashita Miya said.

"So, I'm really lucky," Yuuki Yuuki joked.

"It's not that you're lucky, I'm the lucky one."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because it was you who came, I passed the test by a twist of fate. If it had been someone else, I might have actually taken action."

"test?"

"I only found out about this later. On the night I did that irreversible thing to Megumi, she was saved by another magical girl. And that magical girl told Megumi that I was the one who attacked her, and that I had already fallen into darkness." Megumi's brows furrowed even more as she mentioned this.

"Then the magical girl told Megumi that while she couldn't undo my corruption, she could stop it from worsening and allow me to live like a normal person. However, she needed to determine if I was worthy of being saved. Her method was... to have me meet with you, the victim, alone to see if I would harm you again. If I failed the test, Megumi and the magical girl would work together to find a way to get rid of me."

"What? Tsukimi-senpai just believed her? And this kind of flawed thing can be considered a test?" Yuuki Yuen was even more confused.

"Of course, I only found out about the test much later, and I also think that such a thing is hard to be true as a test, but the point is that Hui believed it and accepted it. So if I had made a move against you back then, I would have really been taken care of."

"Then why didn't you lay a hand on me?" Yuuki asked, still shaken.

Given the power Miya Miyashita displayed today, if she had turned against him back then, when he couldn't even summon a magic wand, he would have had no chance to retaliate.

"Because both of us were tricked into meeting there."

"Wait, wait, I don't quite understand." Yuuki Yuen covered her head, finding many of Miyashita Mia's words quite incomprehensible.

“You’re behaving very strangely. At first, I thought you wrote that note, but you acted like you knew nothing about it, and even seemed a little nervous. So I guessed the note had nothing to do with you, but you probably know that I’m the one who attacked you.” Miyashita Miya sighed and began to explain slowly.

"I don't know how you recognized me, but you knew who I was, and on the day we met, you kept saying you didn't understand magic and didn't want to understand it. No matter how I tried to be friendly, you were unmoved, which was a bit too deliberate. It was as if you didn't want to have anything to do with me at all. Someone who doesn't benefit from this wouldn't do that, right? That's why I'm even more certain that you have nothing to do with this."

Was that a gesture of goodwill? It was more of a threat!

"But these are all just guesses, right?"

"Yes, the previous part was just speculation. The real reason I wasn't allowed to take action is because you are also a corrupted magical girl."

"How did you know?" Yuuki Yu was startled, and her voice rose with surprise.

Miyashita Mia gave me a look as if I were an idiot: "When I pinned you to the ground, you were still planning to transform, right? At that close range, any magical girl could feel your magic, right?"

"This...this can only mean I'm a magical girl, right?"

"If you're a magical girl, why didn't you transform to defend yourself right away? Why didn't you transform with the others to fight me? You're being protected here and saying things like 'she's my friend,' which means you must know each other, right? You're still not transforming at this point, what else could it be but hiding your identity? If you haven't fallen into darkness, why are you hiding your identity?" Miyashita Mia launched a barrage of attacks, leaving Yuuki Yukino speechless.

"It's that simple?"

“It’s that simple.” Miyashita Mia said decisively, “So when I saw you back then, I realized that someone wanted us to meet. The reason for bringing two corrupted magical girls together... must be to form some kind of alliance between us.”

“But I refused.” Yuuki Yukari was beginning to understand the meaning behind some of the things that Mia had said earlier.

"Whether you reject me or not is not important. In fact, I guess the person who arranged our meeting knew you would reject me. What is important is that this meeting allowed me to see with my own eyes a corrupted magical girl who can control herself—that's what she wanted me to see. So Hui and I really believed that she could suppress my dark magic runes."

"In the end, both Megumi and I were deceived. She said she could suppress my descent into darkness, but that was just a word game, a deception. From the very first time we met you, we were already in a trap. Yuuki Yuuki, you can suppress your descent into darkness because you are special, and it has nothing to do with the person who approached Megumi."

Yuuki Yukino was speechless for a long time. According to Miyashita Mia, Tsukimi Rie couldn't possibly be that mysterious person.

But there just happened to be a spot in the whole affair that was perfect for placing the mystery person inside.

"The person who arranged our meeting, the person who left the note, and the person who set up this test with Tsukimi-senpai..." Yuuki Yukari muttered to herself unconsciously.

Baqi's timely interjection revealed the conclusion that Yuuki Yukino had in mind.

"That guy must be the mysterious person who caused Xiaoyuan to fall into darkness!"

Chapter 103 When the Venomous Fangs Fall

"Mysterious person, is that what you call her?"

“If you’re asking about that strange woman carrying the coffin, yes,” Baki answered for Yuuki Eri.

"She has called herself many times in front of us: Rakshasa, Faust, the guardian of history, etc. In short, let's call her the Mysterious One, as you say."

Miyashita Mia nodded and began to recount her story in a calm and unhurried manner.

"The day Hui didn't come to school, I went to look for Hui after I met you. But I found nothing all day. When I got home at night, I found that Hui had been waiting for me at my house all day. There was another person with Hui, and that person is the mysterious person you mentioned."

"Megumi said she wanted to talk to me, but I ran away because I was afraid to face her. I paid a heavy price to escape from the mysterious man, which meant that I had to hide in the city for a while to slowly recover my strength. Until the day you and your two friends got into a fight, I thought it was a good opportunity to form an alliance with you and take advantage of the chaos to weaken the magical girls. But as you know, the mysterious man reappeared."

"What you don't know is that after I left, the mysterious man caught up with me and brought me to Hui."

"Then came the most interesting part of the scam. She explained the previous tests to me and said that she could prevent me from becoming further corrupted. With the meeting with you as an example, we really believed her. She never mentioned why you were not affected by corruption, and we all assumed that you were able to do so with her help."

"But no, she deliberately made us have this misconception. In fact, she did prevent me from turning evil, but just like she didn't tell us about you, she used some unknown method to shift all the cost of turning evil onto Hui."

"Transfer?" Yuuki Yuen frowned, sensing that things were not so simple.

“Yes, the transfer. Megumi took all the corruption for me, and through this, I gradually understood the essence of the Dark Magic Mark. The Dark Magic Mark is like a processing plant that adds a dye to the magic power of a corrupted magical girl. The more this dye accumulates, the darker the color becomes, causing the corruption to become more and more severe. But what Megumi did was to use her body to filter out this dye for me and then return the magic power to me. In this way, my corruption naturally stopped.”

Miyashita Mia spoke with difficulty.

"What about the dyes?" Yuuki Yui's question seemed like a pointless question, but she had already guessed the answer.

“Of course it was left in the filter, which is inside Hui’s body.” Mia’s eyes were terrifyingly cold: “Hui didn’t fall into darkness, but she became like that. She just, just frantically possessed me, just like I did to other people. She had already begun to lose her power, she could have been freed from this damned identity of magical girl, but because of me, she has to suffer this again.”

As she spoke, Meiya covered her face with her hands, her emotions gradually spiraling out of control.

"Yes, what so-called kidnapping, what so-called master-servant game, what you saw were all her actions after she turned evil for me! It's the complete opposite of me actively hurting others after I fell into darkness. She was so gentle, even if she had to bear the price of turning evil for me, she would only choose to hurt herself."

“I must obey her, I have no choice but to obey her, otherwise all the suffering I have endured will have been in vain.”

Yuki Yuki's fate is both understandable and seemingly incomprehensible.

It sounds like a twisted prisoner relationship. Although Rie Tsukimi would suffer a lot, it seems that it could be maintained if both parties were willing.

But why would the mysterious person do this? Why make an ordinary magical girl suffer the consequences of turning evil? What benefit would this bring the mysterious person?

Yuuki Yukino couldn't believe that someone who would so easily corrupt others would be so kind as to help someone else.

Did she set any conditions?

“You noticed, didn’t you? She did indeed bring up two things that we had to comply with.” Miyashita Miya took a deep breath and held up two fingers:

"First, we cannot use the power of magical girls. Not that we can't use it at all, but we must keep our magic as abundant as possible. Otherwise, the dynamic balance between me and Megumi will be broken, and the power of corruption and the cost of turning evil will return to me. What happened today proves that she was right."

"The second condition sounds very strange. She strictly forbids us from contacting you, and even more so from revealing your corrupted identities, otherwise the cooperation will come to an end."

"She asked me to meet you in order to gain our trust and make us believe that she has the ability to restore the corrupted magical girl to normal."

"I didn't trust you at first because I was worried that you might be using the same methods, or perhaps more sophisticated methods, to shift the cost of your corruption onto others."

"I came to you later because even if the cost had to be shifted, I didn't want to continue seeing Hui like this. And... I'll talk about that later."

"I couldn't figure out why she stopped me from contacting you until you saved me. Then I gradually understood everything and I saw hope again."

Miya Miyashita got up from the bed, sat down next to Yuuki Yuuki, and patted Yuuki Yuuki's hand.

"Yuki Yuuki, aren't you curious why you're special?"

"Ok?"