NOVEL NEXT Chapter 87 - Experiment?
Following Liu Meng out of the room and into the living room, YouYu took in the sight of a meticulously organized space. Other than the essentials for daily living, there was nothing extra cluttering the room.
“Over here. Your meal is here,” Liu Meng said, breaking YouYu’s observation.
YouYu turned towards her voice and saw a plate of steaming food placed neatly on the table. It looked freshly prepared.
“Thanks. But… how did you know I’d wake up just now? This is still hot.”
“I just happened to catch you waking up. Though, to be honest, I was planning to wake you myself.”
“I see.”
Nodding, YouYu sat down at the table and began eating. Across from him, Liu Meng watched as he finished, then asked, “How is it? Did you get enough to eat?”
“Hmm… my stomach is full, at least. As for the taste… well, it’s passable. I take it you haven’t cooked in a while?”
“…That’s not important, I used to just eat leftover bread from a bakery. It’s been a long time since I’ve actually cooked. If the taste isn’t great, it’s no surprise.” Liu Meng replied, letting out a small sigh.
“At least you still have taste buds.” She sighed again and added
“Even though you’ve become a Negative Beast, the fact that you can still taste and feel ‘full’ from food means there’s hope for you.”
“That’s a strange way to put it. What do you mean by ‘hope’?”
“Negative Beasts feed on negative emotions. To gather those emotions, they often resort to destructive acts or other harmful behavior to provoke them. That’s how they sustain themselves.”
“When they go too far, magical girls will step in and ‘purify’ them—which essentially means killing them.
“But if you can still get energy from human food, you don’t have to become like the others and cause destruction. That’s why I said you have hope.”
“I see…” YouYu fell silent, deep in thought. After a long pause, he looked up, frowning. “But I have a question.”
“You said that Negative Beasts feed on negative emotions, and those evil cardes controlling them should do the same, right?”
“In this world… there are already so many places where negative emotions naturally arise, so many sources they can draw from. Why are they so fixated on using Negative Beasts to wreak havoc and trigger negative emotions?”
“Isn’t there a better, more effortless way to do it?”
This question had crossed YouYu’s mind before, and he’d once asked Mamba about it. However, Mamba’s answer had been that it didn’t know.
According to it, there was some kind of taboo that prevented them from gathering negative emotions directly. Instead, they had to generate it themselves through destructive means. This taboo was an unspoken rule among the residents of the Dark Tower, seeing that others didn’t do it that way, it chose not to either.
Back then, YouYu hadn’t delved deeper into the matter. The negative emotions they harvested were sufficient, so he let the mystery lie. But now, with the chance encounter of Liu Meng—a magical girl with two years of experience—he thought she might hold some answers.
“…”
“Those methods you mentioned—they’ve tried them before.”
Hearing YouYu’s question, as if recalling something utterly dreadful, Liu Meng let out a deep sigh and said:
“But… after doing those things, they all vanished. They all failed.”
“Can you elaborate?”
“Okay.”
Liu Meng nodded. “During my time as a magical girl, there was an incident in the city center where I felt a massive surge of unease. When I arrived, I found numerous Negative Beasts and magical girls who had fallen into despair and turned into witches.
“Back then, I had no idea what was happening in that place, but I had no choice but to brace myself and fight. In the end, I was defeated by those magical girls who had turned into witches.”
“Later, the idiot responsible for this mess showed up and revealed their plan. They said they had exploited the slight ability within ‘wizards’ to manipulate negative emotions, then used the negative emotions they had collected from factories and schools to turn them into Negative Beasts. These creatures were then unleashed into the city to wreak havoc… Afterward, they used human media and news outlets to widely broadcast the chaos, making sure nearly the entire world saw it.”
“Magical girls who saw the news rushed to the scene. But since it’s so difficult for them to harm humans… they ultimately lost in the final battle.”
“Some couldn’t withstand it and ended up dead.”
“Others… their beliefs and wishes collapsed, and they transformed into witches.”
“That idiot wanted to use this plan to force me into becoming a witch as well, but I held on and chose to fight against them to the very end.”
“But, to be honest, back then, I didn’t see any chance of victory.”
As she spoke, Liu Meng shook her head, her expression a mix of exhaustion and simmering anger.
“But… if the incident was so massive, surely the whole world must’ve known about it?” YouYu asked, puzzled. “Why haven’t I heard of anything like this before? Even with my memory loss, I should have at least some impression of it.”
“…Let me put it this way, It might have something to do with the force that grants magical girls their powers.
“Before we become magical girls, there’s always a voice deep within us—one that asks about and confirms our wish. Once it does, it grants us our powers and then vanishes.
“But during that incident, when I was on the verge of collapse, that voice returned. It told me this time the rules had been broken, and it would handle it. Then, it told me to leave.
“As soon as it finished speaking, I blacked out. When I woke up, it was the next day.
“I tried to investigate what had happened, but there was nothing online. The city center was untouched, as if nothing had occurred.”
“I don’t understand what exactly happened.”
“But it must have something to do with that voice.”
After saying this, Liu Meng fell silent for a moment before finally continuing:
“And after that incident, nothing similar ever happened again.”
“Those evil cardes… it seems like, without realizing it, they established an unspoken boundary in the way they operate.”
“It feels as though something—or someone—is manipulating them.”
“Since then, my activities as a magical girl have gradually decreased…”
“…”
“I see…”
Rubbing his chin thoughtfully, YouYu murmured,
“Breaking the rules… dealt with…”
“From everything you’ve described,”
“It almost feels like someone is conducting some kind of experiment…”