Chapter 2: Hanging by a Thread

“Huh?” Wakaba thought she must have misheard. Her large, dark eyes widened in surprise, looking utterly adorable. She asked again. To her shock, this creature was serious?!

“Suspicious, extremely suspicious!” she thought. “How could a magical girl make a contract like this?”

Wakaba increasingly felt that the magical girls in this world were deeply problematic. The chibi spider-like creature showed no urgency, quietly hovering in the air, waiting for Wakaba’s decision.

Wakaba fell silent and suddenly glanced toward the double-winged doors of the container. Because of the earlier fall, the doors were slightly ajar, as if the suited men who had carried the bodies out hadn’t closed them tightly upon leaving.

Peering through the narrow gap, Wakaba saw the scene outside. It was a vast warehouse, with containers neatly stacked inside. The ceiling was very high but had been torn open, a hole about ten meters wide revealing the pitch-black night sky.

Suddenly, a bright light appeared deep in the dark sky, rapidly speeding toward them.

Wakaba’s eyes widened in alarm. It looked like a high-speed missile!

“Hey, we’re still here!” she panicked silently. “Why use a missile?”

She assumed the missile was launched by the military of this world. If so, they must be coming to rescue them. But she never expected that in this world, rescue meant firing a missile directly.

“Do they not know there are hostages?” she thought anxiously.

Suddenly, countless tiny points of light rose inside the warehouse. On closer inspection, they were dozens of palm-sized drones—hundreds of them, flying so fast they were almost invisible.

The swarm of drones darted through the hole in the ceiling, rushing into the night sky to intercept the incoming missile.

After a moment, the sky lit up with bright fireballs, like exploding fireworks.

But strangely, despite the drone explosions, the missile did not detonate. Instead, it pierced through the drone defense net and continued toward the warehouse.

Under Wakaba’s stunned gaze, the missile reached overhead. Its body opened to release countless small iron spheres, scattering over the warehouse like an inverted bowl-shaped meteor shower.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Explosions erupted one after another, accompanied by the agonized screams of men outside.

Wakaba had already cowered in the cage, covering her ears and resigned to fate.

The continuous explosions shook the container violently, tearing three or four large holes in its walls. Flying debris pierced the container, killing two unlucky girls trapped inside the iron cage.

Several others were injured, the worst a girl whose face was pierced by a dozen shards, bleeding profusely. She instinctively covered her face with her hands, but the pressure only pressed the shards deeper, causing her to scream in unbearable agony—an utterly horrifying sight.

Wakaba, having lain flat on the ground, avoided the flying debris but still suffered severe pain from the shockwave, her internal organs aching.

Outside the cage, the body of a teenage boy rolled to her feet, separated only by the iron bars. Blood from the corpse seeped into the cage, staining Wakaba’s delicate hands.

Her pupils suddenly contracted sharply.

From the depths of her soul, an inexplicable voice echoed:

“Ding! Corpse detected. True Spirit Points can be consumed to create a clone. Create clone?”

“This is… a system?” Wakaba was startled, then delighted.

‘I actually have a system, I just hadn’t triggered it before.’

Her mind absorbed the system’s information.

“...At the pinnacle of the Tower of Meaning, the singularity of all things, the unique will, spirit fragmentation and extinction… ritual formula…”

“In simple terms, this system can turn deceased life forms into clones of oneself.”

Wakaba glanced at the status box displayed on her retina:

Name: Wakaba
Age: 11
True Spirit Points: 67+
Clone: None

“True Spirit Points are still increasing.”

“Creating a clone requires meeting three conditions.”

“First: sufficient True Spirit Points. Second: a corpse, the more intact the corpse, the fewer points needed. Third: a strong enough consciousness to contain the clone, and True Spirit Points can elevate consciousness.”

“So ultimately, the key is True Spirit Points.”

Wakaba reviewed the system’s key information.

“True Spirit Points appear only when a life ends, and can be collected within fifty meters…”

“These nearly 70 points must have come from those who died outside.”

Although it seemed long, only a fraction of a moment had passed. Wakaba snapped back to reality, the explosions and chaos roaring again in her ears.

She then looked at the corpse of the teenage boy pressed against the cage and without hesitation activated the system’s ability.

“Ding! Create clone from detected corpse?”

Hearing the prompt deep in her mind, Wakaba immediately chose yes.

Only three corpses were accessible: two girls inside the cage killed by debris, whose clones would be useless trapped there. The only choice was the boy outside.

He had fought desperately, killing five adult men—he must be formidable.

“Ding! Detected ordinary life form corpse, 70% damage, consuming 5 True Spirit Points.”

A strange force enveloped the boy’s bloodied body. His gruesome wounds began to heal.

Beyond the universe’s fundamental particles, deep within countless infinitesimal layers at the Tower of Meaning’s summit, the boy’s body was being eroded and distorted…

All happening silently.

Suddenly, the container’s double doors were roughly forced open from outside.

Several black-suited men, wounded and scowling, stormed in.

“Damn it! That Security Bureau bitch warned us we had hostages here, yet she still dared to do this... Damn it!” snarled a burly bald man with fierce eyes.

The others wore equally grim expressions, their losses severe.

“Wakaba, what do we do now?” one man asked the leader.

“That bitch ignored our warning, so we’ll give her what she wants,” the bald leader said coldly, glancing at the girls in the cage. “Kill all the hostages.”

His voice carried without lowering.

The girls inside the iron cage heard every word.

Already terrified, they could no longer restrain their fear.

A tall girl pressed against the cage bars, sobbing uncontrollably: “No, I don’t want to die! I’m so pretty, I’ve never even been in love—why must I die...”

Bang!

A bloody mixture of brain matter and blood erupted from her forehead, her expression frozen eternally in horror as she collapsed backward, hitting the rusty metal floor with a thud.

“Chatter, so annoying,” the bald man outside grumbled irritably.

After killing the girl, he didn’t lower his gun but aimed it at another girl inside the cage and pulled the trigger again…