“Bahui, your days of coming and going as you please are over.”
On a battlefield saturated with magic, rain poured down in sheets.
A black figure stumbled out of the downpour, and the next instant, a silver arc slashed into the spot where it had just stood.
Magic exploded alongside the rainwater.
The magical girl known as the Mad Dog emerged from the rain, gripping a long sword made of magic.
Her glowing eyes, illuminated by the flow of magic, were fixed on Bahui, whose body was pitch-black and whose back bore a pair of wings.
Her eyes were filled with hatred.
Bahui was covered in wounds.
Even its left arm was gone.
It was the strongest of the monsters, a walking calamity, and humans had given it the nickname “the Butcher.”
The name Bahui alone was enough to frighten children into silence at night, but now it was at the end of its rope.
It glanced unwillingly at the building behind the magical girl, where the witch’s legacy was sealed, and roared.
“You haven’t won yet!”
Bahui could feel that the Mad Dog’s magic reserves were still plentiful.
If the fight continued, it was bound to die.
The magical girl’s eyes glowed again as her magic surged at high speed.
‘What a troublesome Mad Dog!’
The monster and the magical girl clashed again.
The impact was so violent that it shattered every window within several miles.
“If we keep fighting, you’ll die! Look behind you! No one in the city at your back cares about you. No one will thank you. What will you get even if you win?”
Bahui shouted bitterly.
In Bahui’s eyes, the girl’s power came from burning through her own life.
Even if she defeated Bahui, she wouldn’t have many days left to live.
“I never thought I could win!”
The magical girl seemed to have been struck where it hurt. She charged forward with her sword, roaring like a mad dog.
“I just don’t want to lose! Even if no one cares about me, I’ll protect this city. I’ll keep destroying you again and again, until you’re nothing but scattered flesh and blood!”
With that, she raised her sword, and magic gathered once more.
‘What the hell?’
‘She’s an orphan, and she’s about to die, yet she’s burning up her own life to protect a city that doesn’t even care about her. She’s even trying to stop me from obtaining the witch’s legacy before she dies. Humans really are disgusting.’
‘There’s no choice. I’ll have to use that move.’
Bahui had always kept a trump card in reserve, but it was highly unstable.
It wouldn’t use it unless there was no other option.
“Then die!!”
Bahui suddenly drove its magic to full power.
The rain falling from the sky grew heavier and faster, like a rapid drumbeat.
The immense magical surge made the magical girl’s expression change abruptly. She knew the final moment had come.
Neither of them said another word.
Their magic gathered to its limit, and then they hurtled toward each other at high speed!
A massive explosion rose slowly over the horizon, like a sun.
The world-shattering blast vaporized every building within several miles.
But the magical girl didn’t see the triumphant smile that appeared on Bahui’s face one second before their worlds collided.
Soul Transfer, a complex time-based spell.
By using immense magic, it sent the caster’s soul into the past.
The price was the loss of its body, and it couldn’t control what the soul would enter.
Everything was random.
But it could keep the caster from dying, and unless it was in a hopeless situation like this, Bahui would never have used such a spell.
The scene before its eyes looked like a film playing in reverse.
Blooming flowers closed again, fallen leaves returned to the sky, and migrating birds flew backward.
The stars shifted, time reversed, and six years were compressed into the blink of an eye.
Sanshan City, on the edge of the Inner Ring District, inside a bathroom.
Bahui slowly opened its eyes and sat up in the bathtub.
It could feel that it truly had a new body.
Both arms were intact.
It no longer had wings, and its body seemed to have shrunk, but it felt good to have its left arm back.
‘Looks like I succeeded.’
It had hands and feet and didn’t seem to have turned into a cat or dog or something.
It really was lucky.
The bathtub was overflowing with water, mixed with blood, and the whole bathroom reeked of iron.
There was blood everywhere.
Could it have become a monster invading a human settlement?
Noticing a mirror nearby, Bahui climbed out of the tub and went over to it.
The reflection showed a soft-featured East Asian face, seemingly in its twenties, at the age when a woman was most composed.
Long, dark brown hair fell naturally and thickly over her shoulders and down her back, without any deliberately curled styling.
Her trademark French bangs revealed a pair of gracefully arched eyebrows.
Her dark eyes were large and slender, with the outer corners tilted slightly downward, as though they held a hint of melancholy.
But the moment Bahui got a good look at the person in the mirror, its face twisted in disgust.
‘My soul actually ended up inside a human body?!’
‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’
Suddenly, something caught Bahui’s attention.
There was more than one human presence in the room.
Beyond the door, there seemed to be another, somewhat faint human presence.
Bahui’s soul hadn’t fully recovered yet, and its magic was limited.
It had to stay hidden.
It couldn’t let any magical girls notice it.
It gently pushed the bathroom door open and cautiously followed the sound.
Outside was a bedroom with wooden floors.
A faint musty smell hung in the air, and the floor creaked softly beneath its bare feet.
There was little furniture in the room: only a bunk bed, a wardrobe, a desk, and a stool.
The ceiling light cast a dim, yellow glow.
Following the sound, Bahui soon spotted a young-looking black-haired girl on the bed.
She looked like an ordinary human girl, but the moment Bahui saw her face, its pupils contracted.
It instinctively started circulating the magic in its body, nearly firing off a magical blast powerful enough to blow the entire building sky-high.
The girl lying on the bed looked exactly like Bahui’s sworn enemy, that damned Mad Dog magical girl!
For a moment, it thought she had chased it here.
But soon it realized that the girl on the bed had no trace of magic and looked only eleven or twelve years old.
That was right.
It had returned six years into the past.
The Mad Dog hadn’t grown up yet, which meant its sworn enemy hadn’t become a magical girl.
At that thought, Bahui let out a sigh of relief.
The so-called strongest magical girl was now just a human child who hadn’t grown up.
There was no surging magic or hate-filled stare.
All Bahui saw was a girl with a sallow complexion who looked sick.
She didn’t even notice Bahui walking up to the bed.
Her eyes were closed, her breathing was labored, and every so often she let out a faint groan of discomfort.
Seeing its sworn enemy in this state, Bahui nearly burst out laughing.
Was this fate?
Not only had it returned six years into the past, it had also ended up right beside the girl.
If it wanted, that slender neck would snap with a single squeeze.
‘Why not?’
Bahui’s lips curled into a bloodthirsty smile as it reached out and clamped its hand around the girl’s neck.
It didn’t squeeze hard right away. It didn’t want her to die too quickly.
That would be no fun.
It hated humans, and it hated that damned Mad Dog even more.
The girl caused it no small amount of trouble every time they fought.
Bahui wanted to savor its enemy’s dying agony, bit by bit.
Its grip tightened.
The girl could barely breathe and instinctively struggled, but her high fever had left her whole body weak, and her mind had long since gone fuzzy.
She had no chance of fighting back.
“Big sister… Sis… Don’t, don’t hit me…”
‘Big sister?’
‘And don’t hit her?’
Bahui raised an eyebrow and suddenly loosened its grip.
Other monsters didn’t understand much about humans, but Bahui was different.
It often enjoyed human works of art and entertainment, which gave it a deeper understanding of human society.
The word “big sister” referred to an important relative.
‘Why would the girl say that now?’
Then, recalling the bathtub overflowing with blood, a question suddenly sprang into its mind.
‘Who am I now?’
It was still Bahui, of course, but that was only its consciousness.
Now it had a human appearance, so it hurried back to the mirror.
No matter how it looked at itself, it bore no resemblance at all to the girl on the bed.
They didn’t look like blood relatives.
At that thought, Bahui looked around and finally found what it wanted on a phone.
It was a photo of the “original owner” of this body standing beside the not-yet-grown Mad Dog magical girl.
A caption had been added beneath the photo: “June 2030, left the orphanage.”
‘So my soul entered the body of her older sister.’
“Big sister…”
At the sound of her voice, Bahui slowly turned around and looked at the girl on the bed as she moaned unconsciously.
All it had to do was move its hand, and its greatest threat would disappear.
Bahui looked at the girl on the bed, then slowly turned its gaze toward its reflection.
An even more insane idea came to mind.
Bahui’s power came entirely from the unusual source of its strength: “deception.”
The more successfully it deceived intelligent beings and the more lies it piled up, the more power Bahui could gain without limit.
Now it had not only become human, its strength had also been greatly diminished. It would need time to recover.
But as long as it kept earning the girl’s trust and used lies to make her believe it was her older sister, getting her to lower her guard, it could not only recover its strength quickly, but also lure her into cor**[meow]**ruption and turn her into a subordinate under its control, someone it could use!
This would be a gamble without precedent or equal.
Gu Tong looked at the sickly girl nearby.
This was the best chance it would ever have to kill her.
It might never get another opportunity as good as this one.
But killing only the strongest magical girl wouldn’t do much for its future.
Before traveling through time, Bahui had already completed its Metamorphosis.
As long as it obtained the witch’s legacy, it could complete its final evolution, gain primordial power, and become a true witch.
By then, the entire world would submit before its absolute power.
But Metamorphosis could be both its salvation and its undoing.
It was a road with no turning back.
Its violent power would keep consuming its body, and it had to obtain the witch’s legacy as soon as possible.
Otherwise, the rampaging power of Metamorphosis would eventually kill it.
That was why Bahui hadn’t hesitated to go to war with the strongest magical girl and storm into a human city to reach the seal.
Unfortunately, its last attempt had failed.
Although it had returned six years into the past, the progress of its Metamorphosis hadn’t been reversed. If it failed again, it would truly die.
For the sake of survival and evolution, it had to lay the groundwork for the operation to seize the witch’s legacy six years from now.
There were second- and third-strongest magical girls below the strongest.
Killing this Mad Dog alone would bring too little reward. But what if it could make her work for it?
It would deceive the strongest magical girl, make her despair, and lure her into cor**(meow)r**ruption.
When magical girls fell into complete despair, they became monsters.
Then Bahui could control them as its subordinates and have them take some of the heat.
And that would be the most terrible revenge, wouldn’t it?
Making magical girls take up arms against one another, making them kill each other while Bahui reaped the rewards.
Just imagining the expression on its nemesis’s face when she learned the truth made Bahui tremble with excitement.
Once the idea had taken hold, it was impossible to suppress.
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