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

She couldn't remember what she said, or what Gorgen Mashiro refuted.

However, there is another thing that Gorgen Mashiro remembers, something she will never forget.

When his deep hatred for the corrupted magical girls and his desire to eradicate them all collided with his powerlessness in the face of years of relentless effort yet still being completely unable to contend with them, his heart was answered.

Genki Mashiro felt an unprecedented power accumulating and filling her body; she also saw some strange sights she had never seen before, such as the magical brand on the other person's wrist.

However, she also realized that even if she gained power, she still could not fight against the darkness.

Unfortunately, she lost.

Fortunately, the nuns arrived before the corrupted magical girl could do anything to him.

Genken Mashiro watched as the nuns of the Holy Temple subdued the corrupted magical girl, and then used another method to eradicate her future.

However, the girl leading them, though also dressed in nun's habit, was not a nun from the church.

Because she also has "blonde hair".

According to Mashiro's estimation, the girl was a little older than her, but not by much.

After everything settled down, Genki Mashiro watched as the girl walked up to her, then gathered the hem of her nun's habit and tucked it under her knees before squatting down in front of Genki Mashiro.

Her smile was like the warm sunshine, making it seem as if time had turned back for Mashiro Hakuen, returning her to that spring when everything was awakening.

"Oh, are you alright?"

……

"Nonsense? How could I be alright? Of course I'm in trouble! There's been no progress at all, and my problems are much bigger!"

Helica frantically scratched her head, her phone on the table still displaying the forum she had accidentally clicked on a few nights ago.

The forum's flow remained as slow as before, with a few fresh posts and replies occasionally appearing, but most of the time it was lifeless.

Even during lunch break, the discussion on the forum was not very intense.

"This damn forum doesn't even have an inner interface, does it? Yuuki Yukino, did you really see some witch pulling them into a hidden page in that memory?"

"Of course, why would I lie to you?" Yuuki Yui said with absolute certainty.

After witnessing the strange brand firsthand, Yuuki and her friends made much faster progress.

First, some criminal suspects were successfully identified. The method for finding them was quite simple: check the surveillance footage from public places.

Entering the monitoring room is even simpler. Let Sumireko Yumehara activate her ability to put ordinary people into a state of slumber, and then Enishi Yuuki can go in and search the room, using the footage to locate the suspect.

Isn't putting someone into a deep sleep a bit too much of a dark magical girl thing?

That's right, Yuuki Yuuki is a corrupted magical girl, so this kind of little prank is nothing to her.

It didn't cause any impact and even saved a lot of time. Times change.

However, they didn't remember what they had done; their minds were in a daze, but the only vague memories were of those few days, which did not affect the girls' normal lives.

How did you know that? Well, that's where our invincible little helper, Sumireko Yumehara, comes in again.

The more Yuuki Yukino investigated, the more she felt that taking in Yumehara Sumireko was the right decision. Her ability to peek into fragmented memories through dreams was simply an invincible and wonderful little tool.

Through Sumireko Yumehara's power, the wishes that the girls who borrowed the witch's power wanted to fulfill could be roughly discerned.

The girl in the cram school wanted to get into university, so she cursed everyone who got better grades than her to die, because there's a rule in the brand that the more closely the location is connected to the wish, the better. So she chose to be in the cram school.

The girl in the gym couldn't stand that others seemed to be getting better results from her workouts, so she secretly added high-calorie powder to other people's water bottles. After being kicked out, she harbored resentment and wanted to take revenge on the gym's management.

Uh... well? Getting revenge on the boss is possible, but even if all the magical girls teamed up, they probably couldn't beat that red-streaked temporary worker.

There was another girl in the hospital who had developed a host of illnesses due to her own bad habits and refused to cooperate with treatment, so she hoped to transfer her illnesses to the doctors who ordered expensive tests for her.

By the way, the high-priced examination was something she made up herself. Hospitals are indeed expensive, but they wouldn't joke about something like this.

Well, to sum it up, it's about a group of mediocre guys who made some mediocre wishes and wanted to take revenge on the world.

Besides that, they all had in common that they had logged into that strange forum and posted some obscene comments there.

Including the woman we caught before, we should be able to figure out this pattern.

A group of strange individuals are making bizarre statements on a forum discussing magic. They claim that if someone is dark enough, they will be chosen by some witch and pulled into the forum's inner world. After passing a selection process, they can obtain the witch's power.

Okay, let me translate this: Someone who is very likely Mashiro Goraku created an online forum, gathered a group of wayward girls together, and then used their evil desires to create chaos and collect certain things in the chaos.

Collect something…

Yuuki Yuuki always felt that these so-called "certain things" shouldn't be as simple as just magic.

If Mashiro Gorgen only wanted to collect magic power, then she wouldn't need to use such an inefficient method.

However, Yuuki Yuki doesn't yet have a clear idea of ​​what exactly it is.

To figure out what that guy was up to, the most direct method Yuuki Yui could think of was to find out who that witch was.

Unfortunately, Yuuki Yuki's small team doesn't have a hacker-type character that's very useful in anime.

Yuki En even considered having Baqi study it, but no matter how fast Baqi learned, by the time she returned, it might be too late.

Then the only option is the most rudimentary one: ask Helica to play the role of a bad guy and engage in intense online battles with people on the forum whenever she has free time, to see if she can enter that so-called underworld.

As it turned out, Yuuki Yukino's operation was very effective, specifically because Herika's account was banned the next day.

Then, Helica proactively registered a new account, which was banned three days later.

Then came the third and the fourth. Each time, Helica appeared on the forum in a different guise, which moved Yuuki Yuuki deeply. She felt very embarrassed that Helica had taken the time out of her busy schedule.

It wasn't until one afternoon during lunch break, when Yuuki saw Helica still holding her phone and giving perfunctory replies, that she glanced at Helica's phone and learned the truth.

Helica just enjoys laning.

But it wasn't that Helica wasn't working hard; it's just that she seemed to be excluded for some reason and could never access the inner interface of that strange forum.

Therefore, it was inevitable that Helica would complain.

"Could it be that this website has the ability to detect magical girls? If we magical girls go in, our accounts will just get banned? Huh? Is that it? Is that it?!"

Helica complained very loudly.

"It's possible..."

Lin Jiezi, unusually, echoed Tian Lei Helika's statement.

"Ugh... Seriously, how could this happen!" Helica swayed back and forth in her chair helplessly, glancing at her phone on the table, as if she was about to take action the moment a message notification came in.

Of course, taking action most likely refers to the laning phase.

“However, it’s actually quite possible.” After a moment of silence, Mizuno Yu agreed with Hayashi Mustard’s statement.

"Perhaps we really need to find an ordinary person to help us this time."

Chapter 159 Before the Storm

These magical girls have always tried to avoid involving ordinary people.

At the beginning, the magical girls were unaware of Yuuki Yuki's identity, and Yuuki Yuki joined them as a strategist.

Lin Jiezi was invited to the Rainbow Society to monitor her unusual behavior, so that she could be watched under everyone's noses.

However, when a battle actually broke out, their first priority was to protect Yuuki Enishi and Hayashi Keiko, for which they did a lot of unnecessary work.

After all, Yuuki Yukari's strength has never been lower than that of magical girls, and the primal power within Hayashi Keko when she was in danger was beyond their expectations. In hindsight, protecting them was indeed a futile effort.

However, these futile efforts only reinforced their belief in one thing: the conflicts between magical girls must never involve any ordinary people. Otherwise, if something unexpected were to happen, they might not be as lucky as Yuuki Enishi and Hayashi Mustard.

But now that Mizuno Yu has offered this suggestion, it has raised doubts among the others.

"Mizuno-senpai, is it really appropriate to involve ordinary people in this? What if they really get targeted by that witch because of us..."

“I never said we were going to just jump into the forum and wait for the opportunity to strike like a bolt from the blue. We need to take a more proactive approach.” Mizuno Yu closed her eyes, looking determined.

"A more proactive approach? What do you mean?" Helica didn't understand what Mizuno Yu was talking about either. These kinds of cryptic exchanges were something that Helica Tenrai was never good at.

But Mizuno Yu seems determined to keep it a secret.

"After school, you'll come with me to meet someone, and then you'll find out."

……

Finally, school was over, and the girls gathered at the designated spot to meet the "ordinary person" that Mizuno Yu had mentioned.

Yuuki Yui also works at a coffee shop, so during her lunch break, after consulting with Mizuno Yui, she said she didn't plan to go with the others.

Moreover, this concerns magical girls, and Yuuki Yuuki herself felt that it wasn't appropriate for a fallen magical girl like herself to be constantly by her side.

As Yuuki Yukino's full replacement, the person who sets off with everyone is Nishio Reki.

This person was chosen by Yuuki Yukino herself, so it's impossible for anyone to have any objections.

Besides Mizuno Yu, who was leading the team, and Nishio Reki, who replaced Yuuki Yuki, only Tenrai Herika and Sakura Hanako remained.

Once everyone had arrived, Mizuno Yu gave a shout and led the others out of the school gate. They took the tram and got off when they were almost in the suburbs.

Being near the suburbs doesn't mean this place is a desolate wilderness; on the contrary, the surrounding area is incredibly luxurious.

This kind of luxury isn't about opulent splendor or extravagant extravagance, but rather a corporate park. The girls could tell where they were just by looking at the huge light sign hanging on the tallest building in the distance.

The company owned by the Mizuno family is also the place that Mizuno Yu should inherit in the future.

But that's just speculation. Mizuno Yu's family situation is quite complicated, and some people have long coveted her family fortune. It's likely that Mizuno Yu's future won't be so smooth.

However, what Mizuno Yu is like is not the focus of everyone's attention today. What is really important is who Mizuno Yu is looking for.

Following Mizuno Yu, entering the company was not difficult. The security guard, an older woman, politely addressed Mizuno Yu and the girls beside her, who were also wearing Tsukimi Middle School uniforms, as "Miss" and then let them through.

It's a bit strange to hear someone call Mizuno Yu "Young Lady." If Tenrai Helica didn't know Mizuno Yu's true personality, she might still be fooled by her icy exterior.

Unfortunately, their familiarity had become a thick barrier, making Herika feel strange no matter how she looked at it.

But Sakura Hanako didn't seem to think so. Seeing the unknown side of her idol, Mizuno-senpai, even though Sakura Hanako was suppressing her excitement, she couldn't hide it.

Taking the elevator, the group went up to the upper floors of the office building, and then, led by Mizuno Yu, they stopped in front of a door with a sign that read "Computer Department".

After entering the main gate, there is a series of winding small offices, but only those in certain positions can enjoy this. Most people still need to work in small cubicles made up of computer desks.

As Mizuno Yu passed by, the sound of keyboards being typed around seemed to quicken considerably, and some people were nervously staring at their computer screens, seemingly doing something else entirely.

Mizuno Yu must have seen it, but she said nothing. Instead, she led the others straight through the area and headed straight for the deepest room.

Only after entering an empty corridor did Mizuno Yu lower her voice and explain to the others the purpose of their visit.

“This industrial park doesn’t just house my family’s company. Most of Yuehai City’s network servers are located here. If we can’t query through normal means, wouldn’t it be better to just trace the source of the data?”