Toyokawa Shoko doesn't want to become a witch

Do you know why this store looks like a big coffin from the outside?

Miaomeng asked, turning back as she walked.

Xiangzi shook his head.

Before she could even utter the word "don't know," Miaomeng pushed open the soundproof door blocking their way.

The electronic bass in 4/4 time vibrated the ground, the sound waves clearly reaching Xiangzi from his feet and ears. The pure white lights bathed everyone in the same color, and people danced indistinguishably, as if everything was mixed together.

"(That's why.)"

Meow Dream has switched to speaking via the Magic Channel.

Because in this environment, even if two people are face to face, they can't hear each other without shouting.

"(Just imagine, what if that white doll that's spreading pyramid schemes didn't limit its targets to young girls?)" Meow Dream licked her lips. "(How many witch-like creatures would be born in a place like this?)"

Continue to venture deeper into the dance floor from its edge.

"(Going up to the second floor from here leads to the secondary VIP area; the entrance to the barrier is in an area where you can eat ice cream.)"

"(To eat ice cream?)" Chu Hua tilted her head. "(Did you come to a place like this just to eat ice cream?)"

“(No…)” Miao Meng couldn’t help but laugh. “(Never mind, it’s better not to know. Try to avoid places like this if you can.”)

The Tale of Nirvana: Maintaining One's True Self: Chapter 87 The Anthill

"(There are security guards on the second floor. How do you plan to get us up there?)"

Xiangzi squinted, focusing on the two burly security guards standing next to the stairs.

"(Well...)"

Miao Meng turned around and magically produced four cards in her hand.

"(VIP card, I've got it ready.)"

"(Where did you get this from?)" Xiangzi raised his eyebrows.

What do you think?

Xiangzi pursed his lips.

I almost forgot that this is what MeowDream is good at.

Miaomeng distributed the cards to the three people.

"(Hold on tight, it's only a few steps, there are quite a few other people in the group.)"

“(Thank you for reminding me.)” Chu Hua raised her hand again after just putting it down.

I easily passed through security with my VIP card and arrived at the second floor.

The second floor is a mezzanine built around the dance floor. Standing on the high floor, you can clearly see the people dancing in the dance floor. It is a little quieter up than down, but not much. To the right of the dance floor, there is a row of cubicles that look like the kind of cubicles in the internet cafe where Xiangzi lived.

That's probably the place she was referring to as "eating ice".

Enduring the scrutiny of all sorts of complicated gazes, Xiangzi quietly followed behind Miaomeng, passing through a cubicle. He could faintly hear the sounds coming from inside, as well as the vibrations of the door.

What is this doing?

Xiangzi had a vague suspicion, but it was too embarrassing to talk about.

She glanced at Chu Hua and Hai Ling. Chu Hua's expression was similar to her own; her face, flushed red by the light, was filled with embarrassment and disgust.

Hailing, on the other hand, hadn't spoken for quite some time, and clearly wasn't in the mood to care about her surroundings.

"(Remember to pinch your nose later...)"

Miao Meng seemed to remember something and rolled her eyes.

"(Oh well, never mind, it doesn't matter whether you pinch it or not. You can't walk around with your nose pinched forever.)"

"(What do you mean?)" Chu Hua asked.

"(that is......)"

Miaomeng gripped the doorknob and pulled it out.

"(...Ugh, even though I've seen it once before, seeing it again still makes me feel disgusted.)"

A foul stench wafted from the tiny toilet-sized cubicle.

From a normal human perspective, the white, translucent, and red viscous liquid is mixed with a lot of powder and candy-like crystals scattered in the cubicle. The wooden walls of the cubicle are covered with handprints smeared on the viscous liquid, which show a patina-like texture under the light.

To the average person, this is a room where someone has done *that* kind of thing, making a huge commotion, and it looks very exaggerated.

However, the four girls, including Xiangzi, were not normal people. What they saw was far more exaggerated, absurd, and disgusting.

The patina-covered wooden walls were replaced by writhing chunks of flesh. Scattered bits of meat clung to the walls, and tentacle-like fleshy buds connected them together, forming a cave that opened and closed like the mouthparts of a worm. The inner walls of the cave were not the sticky flesh walls one might imagine, but rather fleshy tendrils like human hands, writhing as the cave opened and closed.

The stench was coming from inside the door.

"(Welcome!)"

Miao Meng stood at the entrance of the barrier, bowed, raised her hand, and invited.

"(The gates to hell~)"

=========

Witch's Name: Ave Maria

Its characteristic is that it is a collective.

The witch's barrier resembles a giant anthill. The witch's true form is an ant queen, whose combat power is low, but she has a considerable number of familiars serving her. The familiars are divided into soldier ants and worker ants.

Worker ants are responsible for maintaining the barrier's operation and are not aggressive.

Soldier ants are highly aggressive, but their discipline surpasses their aggression. They are responsible for guarding the barrier and hunting outside the barrier. After they are promoted to witches, they return to the nest and are killed by other soldier ants. The lamentation seeds they produce will be left to the queen ant.

Often, only one or two soldier ants out of a large swarm can become witches, and they have no intention of becoming the new queen. Their ingrained discipline will lead them back to the nest to face death.

"The above is the information I have gathered this afternoon."

The interior of the barrier was just like the entrance they had seen from the outside; many indescribable chunks of flesh formed a huge maze, and the worker ants that Miaomeng had mentioned crawled past Xiangzi's feet.

As Miaomeng explained, she squatted down and picked up a worker ant.

The visual difference between worker ants and soldier ants is that the worker ant's eyes are much smaller, and the densely packed human eyes on top are not very clear, so they don't look as scary.

She hugged the worker ant and leaned against Xiangzi.

From a distance, it wasn't that scary, but when Xiangzi got closer, the dense array of human eyes on the compound eyes still made him feel nauseous.

"What are you going to do?"

Xiangzi took a step back.

"Don't run away. Let it crawl around you a couple of times, leaving behind magic (pheromones), and the soldier ants won't treat you as an outsider."

After hearing Miaomeng's explanation, Xiangzi stopped backing away, but frowned and let the worker ants crawl all over him.

Chu Hua and Hai Ling naturally enjoyed the same treatment.

“So disgusting…”

Worker ants perched on Chu Hua's shoulder, their compound eyes scanning her face, which was as pale as Xiangzi's.

Witches come in all shapes and sizes, but Chu Hua had never encountered one so disgusting.

After all, the witch's barrier is a dreamlike space presented based on the original magical girl's memories and subconscious. A magical girl, of course, is a girl, and girls' minds are filled with sweet romance or various adolescent anxieties. The barriers they construct, though bizarre and fantastical, are at least...

Not many people would like this kind of cult film during their adolescence, right?

Finally, Miaomeng put the worker ants on them back onto their original tracks, and the worker ants immediately followed the magical residue left by their companions and returned to their original work.

Walking through the anthill made of flesh and blood, similar scenes are everywhere.

"Did Mary make all of this?" Hailing asked in a deep voice.

"It's hard to say," Miaomeng said, leading the way. "It's also possible that someone else set this up, but I think it's better not to get your hopes up. After all, Kabukicho is her territory, and I didn't say that."

At this point, Miaomeng also sighed.

"What can I say? You can't judge a book by its cover."

After navigating countless turns in the maze, Miaomeng led them to an open area.

Although both scenarios involve moving from a narrow place to an open space, using the phrase "suddenly enlightened" here is an insult to the word itself.

"Speaking of which, the familiar I was chasing was actually about to become a witch, which is why it didn't chase Xiangzi when it was inside the barrier."

Miaomeng pointed to the area below the hole.

"We should be able to see the ritual of harvesting the seeds of lamentation from the anthill right now."

The Tale of Nirvana: Keeping Your True Self: Chapter 88, Ave Maria

Harvesting the Seeds of Lamentation seems to be a ritual for familiars.

Looking down from the cave entrance for about thirty or forty meters, at the very bottom of this open area is a structure resembling an altar. The altar, made of stone carvings and flesh, has patterns flowing with the blood of some unknown creature. Surrounding the huge cross, more than ten meters long, in the center of the altar, is the pattern of the witch's kiss in Xiangzi's palm.

Countless ants crawled around the altar, as if performing a sacrificial dance.

Faint music filled the air, like the sacred religious music that Xiangzi and the others had heard in the church.

The escaped soldier ant had broken away from the ant colony from the beginning and crawled to the center of the altar. It had deviated from the size that a soldier ant should have. The soldier ants that Xiangzi killed in the afternoon were only about 60 or 70 centimeters long, and the largest one was more than a meter long, while it was a full two meters long.

"The ceremony is about to begin."

Miaomeng rubbed her hands together, took out her phone, turned on video recording mode, and pointed the camera downwards.

"Hey, what are you doing?"

Xiangzi lowered his voice and pressed down on Miaomeng's hand.

"I forgot to take pictures this afternoon, but I won't forget this time," Miaomeng said eagerly.

"No, you can't take pictures." Xiangzi held out his hand. "Give me your phone."

"Huh? Why? People will buy this stuff, you know, in huge quantities."

"Aren't you afraid of shattering the audience's worldview if you post this online? Why do you think magical girls have to do everything in secret?"

"People will just think of it as a cult film with good special effects; nobody will take it seriously."

Miao Meng sighed, grumbling, but still obediently handed the phone to Xiangzi.

"Eh... can we still be considered magical girls?"

No one paid any attention to Miaomeng's complaints, because the ceremony was about to begin.

The soldier ant that was about to become a witch crawled to the center of the cross. Its already enormous body, which was two meters long, swelled up again. Its fat abdomen swelled up like an inflating balloon, bursting through its shell to reveal white fat that looked like it contained five times the protein of beef. It eventually grew to nearly ten meters long.

The six legs that originally resembled an insect burst open, transforming into six human arms—fair, delicate female arms.

The compound eye has doubled in size, and the human eyeballs on the compound eye look around aimlessly without a focal point.

In the center of the compound eyes, a beautiful human female mask grows, with a compassionate expression on the mask.

The music around him became clearer, and Xiangzi could clearly hear the lyrics: "Praise the Virgin Mary," "Praise the Son of God," "Praise God."

"It's already a witch," Meow Dream whispered.

The soldier ant, now transformed into a witch—it should be called the queen ant now—dragged its enormous body to the corresponding position on the cross and placed its six arms there.

With his head turned towards the sky, Xiangzi saw a new sight.

It turned out that hidden in its huge jaws was a row of large, white human teeth, which were opening and closing as if they were saying something.

No, it's not saying anything, it's singing.

Xiangzi suddenly realized that the singing she heard was not out of thin air, but was being sung by the familiars that were circling the altar below.

Two equally large soldier ants broke away from the circling column, climbed onto the altar, and picked up nails and a hammer from the altar table. They also had human arms, but only the two foremost legs.

Holding nails and hammers, they climbed to both ends of the cross and nailed all six of the newly minted witch's hands to it.

The witch clearly showed signs of pain, but she forced herself to remain still, making her compassionate, saintly mask stand out all the more.

Having completed this step, the cross gradually stands upright.

"The Virgin Mary and execution?"