NOVEL NEXT Chapter 53 – The Virtue of a Magical Girl (3)
“Ma, Demon King!”
“Good job… I’ll say that much. But what’s the situation here?”
After confirming that Kim Soo-jung was completely asleep, I grabbed Plesea’s hair and pulled her out of bed.
The confused girl scratched her head awkwardly.
“I clearly told you to act perfectly like ‘me’.”
“S-so that’s what it is. If it were the Demon King, you would have definitely acted like this.”
“What?”
Plesea’s words made my forehead twitch. The probability of her refusing my command and lying was low. This meant that her words were probably the truth.
“It’s probably true. She has perfectly impersonated you for the past few days.”
Ren chimed in at that moment. It seemed something had happened while I was in the Demon Realm. Although it wasn’t significant enough to contact me.
“Tell me. No, send it to me.”
“I’ll do that.”
Seeing is believing. Plesea smiled at my words and pulled out a finger. As it stretched out, it transformed into a thin tentacle made of slime.
That tentacle slithered up my body and poked the end into one of my ears.
“Is it really fine? Can I freely poke and invade the Demon King’s brain?”
“Stop with the nonsense and hurry up. I know you can’t even make a scratch.”
Seeing her smirk, I clicked my tongue. After all, this wasn’t the first time. I had previously allowed her to take parts of my memories, which is why she could impersonate me until now.
I had permitted her to extract memories from my brain, and in any case, I could control that as well.
“Ugh…”
Soon, the slimy tentacle began to slither inside my ear. Even though I said it casually, it was truly a dreadful sensation.
“Ugh.”
“It wasn’t a big deal.”
How much time had passed? As the tentacle slowly pulled out, I opened my eyes to see Ren’s horrified face first.
After regenerating my eardrum, which had been destroyed by magical force, I was able to understand what had happened during my absence based on the memories Plesea provided.
“That might be a reasonable thought. After all, this is just that creature’s personal desire.”
“I never wanted to create such a deep bond from the beginning.”
I sighed at Ren’s words. As I expected, there had been no significant issues while I was gone. After capturing Mamute, I had not been active at all, so that made sense.
Plesea being clung to by Kim Soo-jung was a minor incident. I heard that the teacher, Ahn Sun-young, mistakenly gave her a chocolate containing alcohol that had come as a gift. Absurd but merely getting drunk and causing a scene.
“But that scene was real. This human girl has intense dependency and obsession for a Demon King pretending to be a human. She might cross the line any moment.”
“That’s fair. It’s my mistake for not shaking it off.”
Plesea was right. I wasn’t an ordinary human. This body was merely a fake, and I didn’t age or grow like others.
This meant I couldn’t continue my connections with the locals. After all, I was only here for entertainment right now.
“Enough. I’ll handle this, so just wait until I call you.”
“Ahem, I’ll do that.”
I opened a dimension gate back to where Plesea turned back into her original slime form.
As she returned, only Ren and I stood awkwardly in the dim room.
“Now that you know my identity, you won’t be saying unnecessary words, right? Let’s take it easy.”
“…”
I plopped down into a chair and smiled at Ren sitting on the bed. However, his expression was strange. I expected him to be really intimidated after learning my identity.
“No. I’m going to keep going. Right now, you’re not a king, you’re a magical girl.”
Moreover, his response was unexpected. I was slightly taken aback and found myself speechless.
“My job as your mascot is to keep guiding you until you have the proper virtues to be a magical girl.”
“…Ha, nonsense.”
His confident attitude made me chuckle. But for some reason, I didn’t feel bad about his demeanor.
“I know the reason you became a magical girl now. But is that really all? Is this life of yours just a pointless game?”
However, Ren’s following words made my face stiffen.
“I don’t think so.”
This was something I hadn’t deeply considered myself. Was I truly satisfied with this? And was my whole being just chasing after nostalgia from over a hundred years ago?
“I can’t claim that’s not true. You’re right; if playing was all there was, I wouldn’t be this troubled. Perhaps I wanted another life. That’s my failure as a Demon King.”
“…I don’t know exactly what you want. But I just wish for you to treasure this life.”
After finishing his words, Ren drooped his ears and lowered his head. His voice had a resonance to it.
It was a notion that I, as Magical Girl Takilas, should become more than just a toy, transforming into another aspect of Demon King Takilas, no longer just a simple whim or journey.
“I’ll have to think about it. Of course, not now, later.”
Outside, the dawn was approaching. I put on my school uniform, deciding to push those complicated thoughts aside for the moment.
*
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“…It’s nothing. Just feels like the mood has shifted oddly.”
In the shuttle vehicle.
Hong Soo-young, whom I hadn’t seen in a while, fired a sharp question at me as soon as she saw me. Maybe it was thanks to the magic implanted in me that made her perceptive.
Even if Plesea copied my memories and appearance, I was still the real me, after all.
“It’s just a feeling.”
I naturally shrugged it off with a scoff. After all, it was just a personal instinct without any clear evidence.
She didn’t press further, and others like Kim Soo-jung didn’t bring up the topic again either.
As we arrived at school, we all got off together. Now that Mamute, who had been irritating me for a while, was gone, I thought things might finally be more comfortable.
“So what now?”
“Uh… it’s midterms, Jin-ah.”
As I got off the shuttle and stretched, trying to sound bright, Kim Soo-jung coldly reminded me of reality.
In that moment, my face froze. Of course, I had no reason to worry about middle school-level studies, but still, I hated the tense atmosphere that always came with exams.
“You’d better study hard. If you get good grades, the facility gives out rewards.”
“Even if I study hard, it’s not like my scores are going to go up…”
However, other students, including Hong Soo-young, seemed to have their own motivations and were diligently studying, despite the situation.
So I assumed others would be similar. I had heard that kids today are even more enthusiastic about education than we were back in the day.
“By the way, why does the school atmosphere seem a bit different than I expected?”
“True…”
But upon entering the classroom, the atmosphere was sheer noise and chaos.
“What’s going on?”
“Right? I just found out the news.”
As Kim Soo-jung went to her friends, I intentionally distanced myself from her. The one who engaged me in conversation was Park Tae-jun.
Even though he had become a bit more subdued after being possessed by a demon spirit, compared to Kim Soo-han, who seriously dropped out for health reasons, he seemed mentally more stable.
“Seriously believe in that Magical Girl Serum?”
“Strictly speaking, it’s not actually a Magical Girl Serum, is it? I heard it’s partly revealed some of the secrets of magical girls. They’re saying it might even be a Nobel Prize contender.”
Unlike the other kids, who were excited, Park Tae-jun was genuinely skeptical.
“That’s ridiculous. Humans do a lot of strange things, but that’s complete nonsense.”
Ren also had a dismissive attitude. To be fair, it was hard to believe that humans who didn’t even understand the concept of magic could handle it.
But at the same time, something else crossed my mind.
The various illegal experiment subjects I had encountered so far. Viewing the monsters created by those who collaborated with Mamute, it didn’t seem completely impossible for Earthlings to wield magic, despite the horrifying biological experiments that came with it.
“Well, let’s hear the explanation. We’ll see whether they really achieved this ‘legally’ and technologically.”
The kids weren’t merely excited by the news of the experimental success. They had come to the school specifically to explain the situation, directly from the researchers leading the experiments.
Nonetheless, I just couldn’t shake off the thought of why.
“I sense… malice.”
Both I and Ren, who muttered absentmindedly, could sense it.
An approaching malice toward us. The concern was that simply seeing that malice wouldn’t allow us to identify exactly what it was.