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

Helica interrupted Mizuno Yu in a low voice: "It's easy to say. How do you know that their data is definitely here, and how can you be sure that it exists on your server? This idea won't work, it's too naive."

“I don’t think it could exist here. In fact, I think it’s impossible for it to exist here at all.” Mizuno Yu continued walking, her pace not slowing down at all.

"Then why did you bring us here?" Helica was getting anxious, but out of trust in Mizuno Yu and the current atmosphere, she kept her tone from being too harsh.

“But there are people here who can help us find those things, no matter where they are,” Mizuno Yu replied without changing her expression.

Mizuno Yu spoke casually, but the meaning behind her words was quite obvious.

To put it in a slightly dramatic, almost childish way, it's hacking.

But in reality, it's just stealing information through illegal means!

Herlica increasingly felt that people who spent too much time with Yuuki Yui would go astray, and even Mizuno Yui, who looked so innocent and kind, was now getting into this shady business.

Yes, this was actually evident when the school trip planned to investigate surveillance footage in order to find out the pink devil, Nishio Reki.

Finally, Mizuno Yu led everyone through a maze of twists and turns to an ordinary single office, then went straight to the desk and launched her offensive against the young woman sitting in front of the computer.

"Mizuki-nee, these are my classmates. Recently, a forum related to magic has become very popular at school, but it's causing trouble for many people..."

Mizuno Yu was meticulous, logical, and concise, persuading the other party with just a few words.

What Mizuno Yu's logic is is not important; the point is that she completely absolved everyone else and shifted all the blame onto this website.

While that is indeed the case, Mizuno Yu's ability to persuade someone without touching on the topic of magical girls is truly extraordinary.

Then the woman called Mizuki responded and started typing rapidly on the keyboard, opening a bunch of windows that no one could understand. Then the things on the screen started flashing rapidly.

After finishing all this, Mizuki pushed up her glasses: "It will take some time to scrape the data from the website and crack its backend interface. I'll send it to you later."

"Okay, thank you for your hard work."

Mizuno Yu nodded, then left the room with the others and began to return the way they came.

Once they reached a secluded spot, Helica dared to speak without worrying about being overheard.

"I have to say... this method actually seems to be quite effective."

"We were thinking about how to get into the inner space of that forum, but that led us astray. Since they were able to prevent us from getting in, they might just be using ordinary technical means, so I thought of using the same method."

Mizuno Yu nodded.

"So we just need to wait quietly for good news to come."

……

The next day.

The girls sitting around the Rainbow Club's activity room all had their brows furrowed, finding it hard to believe that this hard-won step had come to such an abrupt end.

"The website is down? Are you kidding me?"

“I’m not kidding. Sister Mizuki told me that the website was completely shut down shortly after we left the company. Although she had collected data from the website, it’s impossible to find the interface to that other world from a closed website, so our investigation has to come to an end.”

Even Mizuno Yu, who usually has very little emotional fluctuation, was somewhat indignant.

“Mizuki told me that she used a secure path to access the backend and retrieve data, and normally no one should have noticed… But this isn’t normal…”

Mizuno Yu wouldn't have such a strong emotional reaction if there was no progress. However, the closure of the website might not only mean the end of the clues, but also that the person she sought help from had been targeted by a potential enemy.

Objectively speaking, Mizuno Yu's decision was indeed somewhat ill-considered. She originally thought that as long as she didn't tell the other party that it was about magical girls and just treated it as a normal hacking attempt to steal some data, there wouldn't be any problems.

However, the website administrators' reaction seemed a bit too much.

Once someone directly scraped the data, the entire website was abandoned. Keep in mind that a forum is not something that can be built casually, especially one that hosts so many users.

A desperate act of self-sacrifice? Or was it something we had planned all along?

Mizuno Yu couldn't quite put her finger on what the other person was thinking, but she knew they definitely didn't want anyone to find any trace of them in this way, and would rather abandon the website they had prepared in advance than reveal their identities.

That mysterious guy is more difficult to deal with than everyone thought.

The fact that an employee of Mizuno Yuya's company stole data within the company is a matter that can be either a minor or major issue. If it escalates, it could very well become a public relations crisis, potentially damaging the entire company's reputation. It could also become leverage for others to sanction Mizuno Yuya.

It's not so bad that I'm the one who gets punished, but if an innocent person is directly attacked because of Mizuno Yu's unilateral decision, then Mizuno Yu can't bear the responsibility no matter what.

Yuu Mizuno's thoughts did not escape Yuuki Yu's eyes. Just by looking at Yuu Mizuno's silent and furrowed brows, Yuuki Yu knew that what Yuu Mizuno was worried about was not so simple.

"Let's focus on handling the aftermath first. The fact that the other party has shut down the website is a fait accompli. There are only two possibilities now: if the website reopens, we can continue to investigate; if the website is permanently shut down, reducing the number of victims is also a good thing for us."

Yuuki Yukino offered words of comfort, letting out a soft sigh.

Mizuno Yu agreed, and sighed as well: "At this point, this is the only way to do it."

In the following days, to Mizuno Yu's relief, the thing she had feared did not happen.

The company's reputation was not damaged, and the employee I was concerned about was also unharmed.

Perhaps it was just a false alarm, Mizuno Yu comforted herself, but she never let her guard down.

She wanted to secretly protect the employee named Mizuki, not only because it was her own mistake, but also because the enemy's surprise attack on her could be a breakthrough for Mizuno Yu to find the mastermind behind it all.

However, the website is indeed no longer open.

This should have been good news, proving that the enemy could no longer sabotage the operation in this way.

Unfortunately, the enemy stopped using websites to win her over, simply because their plan had moved on to the next stage.

The breakdown of daily life begins to spread from a corner that no one pays attention to.

Chapter 160 Magical girls sprouted up like bamboo shoots

The initial mutation was a small change that no one paid attention to.

That day, Helica had just finished her tutoring class and was slowly walking out of the tutoring building with her schoolbag on her back.

The moon was dim that day, hidden under thick clouds, and Helica was unable to see the sky she longed to look up at.

It was just an ordinary day.

Helica thought to herself.

Immediately afterwards, the tutoring center building behind Helica swayed precariously amidst a deafening roar.

A dark, corrupted magical girl clad in black slowly emerged from mid-air above the shattered building, her eyes, now stained black, gazing back at the sudden chaos, like a mad artist admiring a masterpiece created through her own evil deeds.

"How wonderful!"

She said this.

These were the last words she uttered.

In the next second, the golden lightning that cleansed her sins completely engulfed her body.

She fell to the ground, her entire body charred black, yet she was still ecstatic, ecstatic about the scars she had inflicted on the city.

The scene was chaotic: a running crowd, a speeding ambulance, and police officers trying to stabilize the situation.

Helica looked at the girl who had collapsed to the ground and silently left the spot.

She recognized that face; it was the one sitting in front of her in the cram school, always saying that she had to study hard to live up to her family's expectations. Every day, she would arrive at the cram school early and sit down, just like any other ordinary girl.

The ambulance took the girl who had been struck by Helica's lightning away, and it seemed that no one realized she was the corrupted magical girl who had caused such devastation—except for Helica herself.

"Perhaps some strange wish was answered? She's already at the age of going to high school, so it's inevitable that she'll have some bad thoughts. Well, girls at this age always seem to take some detours."

This was Inuyama Tomoe's assessment at the time.

"But if you want to become a corrupted magical girl directly, shouldn't you first be a magical girl? Why haven't we seen her?" Sakura Hanako asked.

However, no one could confidently answer this question for Sakura Hanako, and the explanation that everyone ultimately accepted was only Tenrai Herika's own reasoning.

"Maybe she's already a magical girl, but because these corrupted magical girls aren't causing much trouble, they don't have the chance to fight, which is why we know nothing about her. Just like we didn't know Sakuragawa Nana was a magical girl before, right?"

There seems to be no other explanation besides this possibility.

That girl really was a corrupted magical girl; Helica saw the black magic markings on her earlobe when she was taken away in the ambulance.

She is not the kind of victim who gains power in an instant only to have it taken away, nor is she an ordinary person who has taken away Mashiro Urouge's power only to have it taken back at any time. She is a genuine, corrupted magical girl.

This is very important.

Helica Tenrai had considered simply eliminating the other party, but since Yuuki and the others were also corrupted magical girls, Helica Tenrai felt it would be better to consult Yuuki's opinion first.

After learning about the appearance of a new corrupted magical girl, Yuuki Yuuki naturally wanted to go and see her, and also use her abilities to help her remove the corruption.

So, just like when she secretly went to find the rascal who had been bullied by Kuroba Reisei before, Yuuki Yuuki put on a nurse's uniform and, led by Sakura Hanako, found the ward.

Incidentally, Sumireko Yumehara is waiting in Yuuki Yuki's Pocket handheld console. With Sumireko's help, there's no need to slowly extract information from weak magical girls.

The corrupted magical girl who was stunned by Helica's lightning strike must be very weak.

Yuki Yuki's progress was very smooth. When she got up and went to the bathroom alone, he blocked her near the bathroom.

After replenishing her mana with a tentacle, the panting, flushed dark magic girl told her everything.

In short, just like Helica said, she was a hard-working graduate who was striving to get into Higashino University, but her grades were always unsatisfactory. The more she studied, the more mistakes she made, and she felt that she had let down the expensive tutoring classes and her family's support.

When she woke up this morning, she heard her mother on the phone complaining about work. She said that she kept making mistakes on her homework at school during the day, and that she felt she couldn't keep up with the teacher's pace at her evening tutoring class, as the knowledge just wouldn't go into her head.

After the tutoring class ended, she went to the tutor to ask about the knowledge points she didn't understand. The tutor said that the points had been explained many times and that she could go back and review them. If she still didn't understand, she could come back and ask her again.

Then she heard a voice that told her that if she destroyed everything, then all the problems would disappear.

That was her own voice, and she had the ability to do it.

So she did it, and it ended right at the start because of that lightning strike.

"Pink Demon Lord! I know you. If I follow you, you can make me as strong as you, no, just half as strong! I will take revenge on that despicable person who defeated me! I will make her pay the price!"

The corrupted magical girl knelt on the ground, clinging to Yuuki Yuki's leg and pleading. She even tried to kiss the toes of Yuuki Yuki's feet beneath her stockings, but Yuuki Yuki dodged her.

"Do you still think that way now?" Yuuki asked. "Do you still want to destroy everything, and do you still want to become a new version of yourself?"

"That's right! That's right! That's what I think! That's always been my thought!" the girl exclaimed excitedly.

“But I don’t want that. You don’t need to speak to please me. I want to hear your own voice.” Yuuki Yukina narrowed her eyes, scrutinizing the girl kneeling on the ground, yearning for her. An inexplicable sense of resistance welled up within her.

"I..." The girl hesitated for a moment, seemingly struggling with how to answer Yuuki Yukino's question.

The strongest among the corrupted magical girls—at least the one recognized by the masses—was asking this question right in front of her, so the girl really needed to think it over carefully.

"I want to! I still want to do it! I just can't stand those guys doing bad things!"

You bastard, you're the one who's doing all this evil!

Yuuki Yukino knocked the girl unconscious with a thud, then clapped his hands and pulled out his handheld game console from his pocket: "Sumiko, little Sumireko~ throw her into the Dreamland for me."