The Strongest, but the Genre Is Magical Girl

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Meanwhile, a land that was supposed to be pure white… more like an icy area covered in chunks of ice.

On the deck of the icebreaker heading to the North Pole.

There, a magical girl with orange hair, dressed in clothing that seemed out of place in the Arctic, was stomping her heels on the ground in a *thump, thump, thump* rhythm.

With her legs crossed and one leg trembling, she tried to hide her discomfort while crossing her arms.

“Hah….”

As soon as she let out a deep sigh, her breath turned into a white mist.

The sky looked like it was midnight.

In fact, it was around 1 PM, a time when the sun being high in the sky wouldn’t be strange at all.

This was the phenomenon called “polar night,” where the sky stays dark as if it were night all day long.

It wasn’t as pitch black as a countryside evening at 10 PM with no lights on, but it was certainly an inconvenient environment for anyone trying to navigate around.

*Beep beep*, a loud whistle echoed.

At that noise, I took off from the deck and soared into the Arctic skies.

In this dark daylight, the lonely flights of magical girls from various countries began again today.

The magical girls who had been clustered together scattered off on their own, traversing the Arctic sky without a set area.

“Aah, how far are we supposed to go today….”

While leaving the nearby monster detection to the mascot, I muttered my quiet dissatisfaction.

It was already the third day of absorbing the surreal ice landscape of the Arctic.

Not a single monster was in sight; not even a shadow of that cute Arctic fox.

“Should we just head to the North Pole and come back?”

The Gomteng casually mentioned the North Pole as if we were just going around a travel course.

No matter how clueless he is, in this place where I only see strange ice chunks in a strange sky, he’s the only one to chat with.

Normally, I would have brushed it off with a “shut up,” but now, at least five hours are ahead for monster searching and hunting.

Staring silently at the white ice chunks, it wouldn’t be surprising if I went insane during this time, and I continued the conversation just to occupy the silence.

“That seems a bit too far.”

“Hey, when else will we get a chance like this?”

“Well, I don’t think there’s any need to go…”

While continuing the pointless chatter, I suddenly didn’t manage to avoid a cloud right in front of me and crashed straight in.

As I emerged from the damp cloud, water droplets drenched my body in an instant.

The chilling Arctic wind made sure there was no time to dry off, freezing everything in place.

“Ugh, damn….”

I muttered in annoyance as I shook off the ice crystals stuck to my clothes and skin.

It had only been an hour, yet I was still lively enough to keep the conversation going.

To ask for the opinion of the mascot who was supposed to be a monster, I finally opened my tight lips.

“Hey, if monsters were here, what do you think they’d be doing?”

“Huh? Umm, I don’t really know. We just did what we were told anyway…”

“But from a strategic point of view, what do you think?”

“Well, if I had to give it meaning… maybe ecological or environmental research?”

“Hmmm.”

That did sound plausible, but to start research on ecology and the environment all the way out here in the Arctic…

It wasn’t a completely unfounded statement, but it wasn’t exactly something I could confidently agree with either.

As my meaningful groan followed his response, the Gomteng seemed to want to bolster his statement.

“Why do you think they always get kicked out when there are people around?”

“Is that so….”

As I tried to wrestle with the logic of his added comment, I couldn’t help but rehash my thoughts of how “environmental and ecological research seems a bit off….”

Whatever the monsters were doing in the Arctic, they would surely be made to pay for eating my winter break halfway.

Making that determination, I continued to fly at a steady pace while staring at the white ice chunks, feeling like I was just killing time.

Three hours into the five of resentment towards the monsters that felt like it was all their fault.

With the sky darkening again as if it was about to brighten, my eyelids felt heavy.

Just as my barely opened eyelids were about to close,

“Huh?”

At the Gomteng’s sudden exclamation, I slowed my steady pace.

His voice grew slightly higher, as if he had discovered something interesting.

I opened my eyelids wide, not wanting to miss out, and peered at the ice chunks below, half conscious.

“What’s up, found a polar bear or something?”

“No, it’s… well…”

The Gomteng hesitated to answer my question about whether he spotted a polar bear.

Looking flustered in many ways, he couldn’t continue his words.

Seeing his demeanor was frustrating me inside, I placed my hand on my waist and stood skewed in the air as if to urge him.

“If you have something to say, spill it quickly!”

“The monster reactions are coming from far away….”

“What?”

I was baffled by his response, mirroring his surprise.

In fact, while I followed the orders in good faith, I had been somewhat skeptical about the whole monster hunt in the Arctic.

The Minister claimed it was definite, but I figured it must have been a false alarm, like old UFO photos, or maybe something like a polar bear showed up incorrectly on the radar.

I had thought we would just be floundering about in the Arctic, but the Gomteng, who was the monster radar, picked up a signal.

Thus, the sudden monster search commenced in the stark white Arctic.

A sudden major revelation.

My heavy eyelids and drooping consciousness jolted awake, like a detective spotting a culprit during a stakeout.

“Which direction is it?”

“Northeast! Northeast!”

After staring blankly at ice chunks like glaciers and icebergs for three hours, we were now pumped up as if we found a fun toy, accelerating our search.

Following the Gomteng’s lead, we flew to a spot that looked no different from any other—a glacier glimmering with blue hues.

With not even an Arctic fox or polar bear in sight, it was merely a plain expanse filled with snow and ice.

“What’s here?”

“Uh… I feel something deeper below?”

When I asked the Gomteng in confusion, he gazed at the ground, continuing his sentence.

In that instance, I wasn’t sure if I had really heard him correctly. I pointed my right index finger at the ground and echoed part of his words to seek clarification.

“Deeper? Below this ice?”

“Y-yeah, if this feeling isn’t wrong…”

Given the positioning, the Gomteng also seemed unsure, hesitantly mixing in a “maybe” in his affirmation.

It’s no wonder he wouldn’t be certain.

It was already surprising enough to learn that monsters were hiding in the Arctic, and now to think they were quiet beneath such a large glacier?

But the mascot’s unique monster detection ability should be reliable, leaving us both in bewilderment as we exchanged glances.

Thinking of the absurd, I blurted out a hypothetical.

“What if they’re dead?”

“Come on, you know dead ones don’t show up.”

“True enough….”

His response, brimming with confidence on that point, left me affirming briefly yet skeptically trailing off my words.

I had certainly heard that animals frozen within the ice were well preserved, but I’d never heard of any still being alive.

At worst, maybe bacteria or viruses, but living creatures surely wouldn’t survive frozen beneath this ice.

With those thoughts, I gazed under the ice, following the Gomteng’s line of sight.

Beneath the thick layers of pristine white snow, the base of the ice was invisible.

The patchy white snowfall had only tiny holes scattered about, as if an Arctic fox had been foraging.

Wait, holes?

“Hey, check if there are any passages inside those holes nearby.”

“…Ah! Yes.”

There must be at least one path leading inward somewhere.

With that conviction, I started checking every hole in the vicinity.

After about 10 minutes of stepping on the crunchy or perhaps squishy surface of the glacier.

“I found it!”

From about 400 meters above the identified monster on the glacier, I discovered a hole that seemed impossible to reach all the way down into.

As I stomped around the vicinity to apply force, the ice that had frozen and blocked the hole crumbled, revealing a rather wide passage.

It was a passage that couldn’t possibly have been dug out by just any beast, perfectly rounded and smooth.

Now, the idea of a monster lurking beneath the ice seemed all too real.

Even just one polar bear might be able to pass through.

As I took a step down into the sound of footsteps echoing through the passage, I heard the indistinct murmur beyond the end.

“What’s that, did a fox fall into the pit?”

“That sounds a bit heavy for a fox, maybe it’s a wolf?”

They were trying to identify the source of the noise coming from the passage, and the only things I had to show to those monsters were the red-hot staffs I used like flashlights.

And, alongside the glow of the red staff, it was just my face, glowing red in the darkness.

“Here I come!”

“Gyaaah!!!”

“Uwaaah!!!”