Mr. Magical Girl

Chapter: 144. Deployment Record – Someone’s Diary (1)

In the front line, there’s always bound to be some trouble. As a place overflowing with Otherworld’s Power, it’s common to have distortions of physical laws, even if it’s not outright Otherworld Invasion.

Last week, we had to chew on raw meat because the gas wouldn’t ignite. Those from countries accustomed to Yukhoe managed to eat it somehow, but many others were horrified. Thanks to that, the cook ended up making jerky, but who knows when we’ll ever use it? I mean, if the gas won’t ignite, what guarantees there are that jerky won’t spoil?

Anyway, even though incidents occur frequently at the front line, the event that day had a somewhat different shape.

The smoking room was filled with hazy smoke. Ashtrays piled high with cigarette butts, yet no one opened their mouths. Everyone seemed absorbed in filling themselves with nicotine, perhaps wanting to enjoy their short break. Or maybe they just ran out of things to talk about. The faces in the smoking room were always the same. It had been a while since we started repeating the same stories, and it was getting dull.

If the guys currently deployed return to the rear, and new recruits are sent to the front, the voices in this smoking room might echo again. Of course, that’s limited to the soldiers. If someone like me, an Awakener, were to go back, it would probably just be for dealing with some incident or dispatching someone.

In the thickening silence, the atmosphere grew denser. Bang! The door to the smoking room flew open, and smoke poured out with it.

Then, a voice echoed through the previously silent smoking room. “The smoke is thick. We need to ventilate.” A man I hadn’t seen before stood there, army fatigues with short blond hair, slinging a large sniper rifle over his shoulder.

“What’s up, Meteor? Decided to become a smoker at last?” The American A-Rank Awakener, Meteor. The one who had been nagging me to quit smoking.

What did he say again? That smoking only gets in the way of snipers or something?

“I’m just here to find you,” he answered, cutting to the chase, pushing through the cigarette smoke toward me.

“What’s up? Didn’t you say you hated the smell of cigarettes?”

“Cut to the chase. There’s a rat.”

“Let’s bring a cat then. A smoker coming to the smoking room for a rat? Is there some giant monster rat stealing food from the pantry or something?”

“I might have cut it too short. How should I say this…?” He fell into thought for a moment before coughing instead of finishing his sentence. “Let’s talk outside.”

“No choice then.” Since it seemed that Meteor was struggling to keep it brief, I’d have to give way.

I tossed my cigarette into the drum ashtray and left the smoking room. Phew! I immediately heard Meteor taking a deep breath.

“To be more precise, there’s a rat in my room. Help me.” He was in such a hurry that he didn’t even look for a suitable spot to ask as soon as the smoking room door closed. The request felt so trivial I had to hold in a frown.

Why was he consulting me about that? He could have told the lodging manager or bought rat poison from the PX. Or was he just afraid of rats? But were we close enough for those kinds of conversations? Maybe I was the one overthinking it.

“Seems I was less clear than I should have been. More accurately, it was a huge rat. One as big as a person was looking down at me.”

Now that changed things. “Was it yesterday? No, last night. While I was asleep, I sensed a presence, and when I opened my eyes, a huge rat was glaring down at me.”

His description, with flailing hands, made it sound genuine. It didn’t feel like a joke or a prank, but rather a desperate claim that there was an Otherworld enemy lurking in the base.

“What about Commander Macbeth? He must have heard about this.” If he came to me, he must have reported it to them as well.

“I meant to mention it, but… According to Macbeth, he didn’t sense anything.”

“With magic?”

“Exactly.”

“And the Infinite Architect?”

“Also said there were no intruders inside the building.”

Hmm. Neither magic nor superpowers could detect anything… Then the answer was clear. Sigh. “Must be an illusion. Go see Oxymoron. They’ll prescribe something to calm you down.” Or maybe it was a nightmare. Whatever it was, it seemed Meteor was losing his sanity.

The situation at the base must be pretty awful. I had a hunch that chewing on raw meat had driven him nuts.

…Commander Macbeth and Infinite Architect were all saying the same thing, yet I was convinced there was a rat, so I sought you out.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“Your superhuman instincts… No, I misspoke. I meant I want you to use your extraordinary perception to locate the rat.”

…Was that a request or an insult?

“If they couldn’t find it, then what makes you think I will? What’s the reason for your conviction? Honestly, if an Otherworld enemy were here, they’d have been dead ages ago.”

An Otherworld enemy could sneak into the vicinity of a sleeping Awakener and just sit there? An enemy that could evade magic and psychic detection? It seemed absurd to think that way. But then his next words were enough to shake my reasoning.

“It’s my instinct. I firmly believe it’s dangerous to leave it be.”

Instinct.

Instinct, huh…

“Isn’t that a bit silly, saying that?”

“The instincts that have kept me alive all this time don’t sound so funny.”

True. When it came to instincts, I wasn’t in a position to criticize.

“Alright. Then let’s go.”

“Where to?”

“Your room, right? You asked me to find the rat.”

I had no idea if I’d be of any help, but still…

“Here.”

The room we reached with Meteor, being an American stationed along the Siberia-East Asia line, had a strange sense of money behind it, or maybe it was just the world’s crazy state that made it seem like the U.S. had money to spare.

“The accommodations are better than ours. Personal rooms are the same, but here they have thick mattresses and a proper wardrobe instead of some shabby closet, and even a personal television and refrigerator.”

Our side had personal rooms in name only, with thin walls where I could hear all the noise from next door, and a 3 cm mattress on a creaky plastic frame.

I’d heard that on the Soviet side, Awakeners and regular soldiers shared a room.

In any case, I’d only heard about the Americans’ wastefulness; this was the first time seeing it myself. The distinction was palpable.

“Is that so? I thought everyone lived in accommodations like this.”

Well, I hadn’t realized how big the difference was until I saw it firsthand, so I didn’t plan to comment.

That said, the room lacked any sense of life.

A neatly made bed with not a speck of dust in sight.

Aside from the bookcase filled with books, there were no personal belongings to be found anywhere.

In such a desolate place, was it even possible to perform personal maintenance?

Thanks to that thought, I wondered if Meteor had truly lost it and was just seeing illusions, but I shook my head to dismiss it.

Once I decided to believe, what needed to be done became clear.

“You said it was next to your head. Are you talking about this place?”

The left and top sides of the bed were blocked by walls, leaving only the right side where the door to the room was visible.

“That’s right. It was staring at me from there.”

Hmm. A surreal situation where something could stick to the wall and stare?

“Has the room been cleaned already?”

“I searched everywhere looking for evidence, but not a single hair was found.”

So it really doesn’t exist, right?

Lost in those thoughts, I focused and charged my sensory ability with mana.

A strangely developed sense that could detect even twisted places or illusions.

Of course, it consumed a lot of mana, and I’d been warned by the Thunder God not to use it often since it couldn’t keep up with the processing speed of information.

But right now, there was no choice.

With that, I slowly opened my eyes.

The overload was beginning to kick in.

A world of rotting flesh.

An ordinary world filled with gray.

A world of everything nailed down and governed by gears.

A paradise made of flames.

I pushed aside such useless things from my mind, selecting only the near situations, extracting what I wanted.

A distortion from reality.

I squinted, searching for such anomalies, but…

…What? There’s nothing?

Nothing caught my eye.

No distortions of the world, no twisted realities, no magical evidence, or signs of psychic phenomena.

All that was here was our reality polluted by Otherworld’s Power.

…So, is that it? Hearing those words from you made me feel like it truly was just my delusion.

It really was an illusion.

“No choice. If Commander Macbeth also experienced hallucinations, let’s have dinner or something as compensation…”

I said that then tried to retract my senses when I suddenly felt a presence.

There was a faint sense of alienation.

If I hadn’t noticed, it would have completely disappeared.

Bzzz. I strained my senses and sensed the faint presence lingering in the shadows.

“Wait. Don’t move.”

I halted Meteor, who was about to approach me.

“Is there… something there?”

With eyes shut, I injected more mana.

All in a desperate search for even the slightest sign.

The more I concentrated, the weirder the sensation became.

Why could I detect it?

Surely, nothing felt connected beyond the darkness before my eyes.

Yet, it was definitely there.

As if both existing and not existing at the same time.

I lowered my posture and began crawling on all fours toward that faint trace, wanting to get a closer look.

In the darkness, a weak gray line split through the darkness of my eyelids.

It felt like it might be blown away by the wind.

If I got too close, it might disappear.

If I lost sight of it once, I might never find it again.

I moved cautiously, uncharacteristically careful.

Did those emotions translate over? Meteor’s breathing quieted to the point where I could no longer hear it.

I concentrated all my mind and reached out toward the gray line.

My hand touched the line.

It felt as thin as hair, a barely-there sensation.

It felt like I grasped something significant… but I couldn’t fully trust it.

That was why, in that position, I asked Meteor a question.

“Meteor.”

“What is it?”

“Is there something in my hand?”

…There was nothing.

“Look closely?”

“Nothing at all.”

Is that so? Not even Meteor could see it?

I thought to myself, and to confirm whether the object between my fingers truly existed, I rubbed them together.

With a short sound, even the faint existence vanished.

As if it had never been there from the start.

Was there nothing left but that?

To uncover a little more evidence, I braved the headache and turned my head, but I couldn’t find any trace of it beyond this point.

Still, one thing I knew.

“You said it was a rat?”

Drawing forth mana to calm my senses, I spoke it out loud.

“Right.”

…There might genuinely be something. Tell Commander Macbeth right away. There’s been an incursion in the facility’s interior.”

Yeah.

There is something there.

My senses confirmed it.

So did Macbeth’s magic.

Even the Infinite Architect’s superpowers.

All outran the foreseeability of all futures.

An Otherworld enemy is inside the base.

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