klisemfg Chapter 587 Freshmen
Chapter 587 Freshmen
A giant egg covered with black patterns.
Seeing the giant egg, which was even larger than a fox's tail when it was bristling, Su Tianqing was quite surprised. She even deliberately made her tail bristle to show it off.
"Bigger than my fox's tail!"
"What's the scale of your tail?" Fenrir couldn't help but complain.
Despite her complaints, the gray wolf girl never took her eyes off the giant egg, and even silently gripped the light machine gun in her hand, refilling the magazine with magic bullets, maintaining a state of high alert.
"...Be careful, that thing gives me a very bad feeling."
Fenrir quickly stopped Alice and Jack from getting closer to observe, standing in front of them with his wolf ears standing up, not daring to take a single step forward.
Not only the gray wolf, but also Su Tianqing, the true master of the mental world, sensed the eerie aura hidden within the eggshell:
In the world of card games and racing, it was scattered in the ruins in the form of "eggshells".
However, in this underground labyrinth, it existed in the form of a perfectly intact "giant egg," which reminded Su Tianqing of the "chaotic" behavior pattern that Garuda had shown so far.
If the giant egg becomes "chaotic," wouldn't it just become a pile of scattered "eggshells"? And so far, this illusory vision hasn't shown any of Garuda's shadow monsters, which could mean...?
"Should we knock it off?" Akashi asked.
She held a lever shotgun in her hand, which Su Tianqing remembered as one of her transformation weapons when she was a magical girl, looking as if she wanted to smash that giant egg from a distance.
However, she did not impulsively open fire, but instead maintained a cautious and observant attitude.
"Rather than suggesting we smash it right here, I think your idea is more suspicious to us," Fenrir said, glancing back at Akashi beside him with a slight frown.
Unlike Cheshire Rabbit and Alice, who are obsessed with their idols, Fenrir doesn't have much feeling for Akashi and can deliver the most scathing critiques.
No magical girl who knows magic would say something like "break that thing," let alone someone as experienced as Akashi. Even though she has been retired for more than ten years, she is only about thirty years old now, far from being senile.
Su Tianqing was also puzzled by Chi Xue's suggestion and whispered to her:
"Why would you want to break it, Akashi?"
"Because I remember now, I've seen what it looks like when it hatches," Chi Xue said without hesitation.
"You remember how I fought against a projection of Garuda in that winged people's rural town a month ago?"
"I remember what you told us." Su Tianqing nodded. "At the time, you thought it was Garuda's true form, so you did everything you could to banish it back to the Astral Plane. But later you found out it was just a projection."
"Yes...it's just a projection...but even though it's just a shadow cast from the astral plane, it possesses almost exactly the same characteristics as Garuda."
At this point, Chi Xue silently began loading bullets into the lever rifle, and the clanging and humming of solid magic colliding with each bullet as it was pressed into the chamber could be heard.
"Chaos, disorder, incomprehensible, its true form cannot be described by reason; it is like a living nightmare."
"That night, I witnessed a giant egg with black markings hatching in the forest."
"Even I was almost affected by its chaotic magic, which almost clouded my perception. Luckily, I still remembered how to use the Mind World, so I wasn't completely dragged into it."
"When I came to my senses... I looked back from the hillside and the village had been turned into a sea of fire."
"What emerged from the eggshell disrupted everything around it, and everything became chaotic and disorderly—houses burned and collapsed, fields collapsed and dissolved, and people died screaming but then rose again as pitch-black monsters, destroying everything in their path."
At this point, Chi Xue had already loaded all the bullets into the magazine, cocked the lever shotgun, and stared intently at the giant egg covered in patterns not far away.
From her subsequent narration, Su Tianqing gradually pieced together the entire sequence of events that night:
Akashi left the village at night, intending to transform into a magical girl in a secluded spot in the mountains and fly to her next lodging location. However, she inadvertently followed the traces of magic and discovered a giant egg hidden deep in the mountains, obscured by her perception of reality.
Her mind was affected by something that hatched from the giant egg. Thanks to the Guardian Star's active protection, she was able to enter the magical girl Akashi and regain her senses. However, the village had already been completely destroyed by that dark shadow monster.
"If that's the case, then inside this giant egg..." Fenrir opened his mouth slightly and turned to look at the giant egg.
Chi Xue nodded gently.
"That's right."
"The thing that hatched from this giant egg that night was the projection of Garuda."
The center of the maze was silent. The girls stared at the giant egg, none of them daring to make a move.
But Su Tianqing sensed a subtle possibility and quickly pressed for an answer:
"Since you said that after this thing hatches, a projection of Garuda will emerge, what will happen if we break it?"
"In that mental world of playing cards and racing, we only found the eggshell. Why didn't we see the projection of Garuda back then?"
The two consecutive questions brought the atmosphere back to silence. Chi Xue remained silent for a long time but could not come up with any answers, so she could only sigh helplessly.
"Why……"
"To be honest, I have never seen an opponent of Garuda's level before, and I have no idea what it is."
"The only thing I'm certain of right now is that this giant egg will eventually hatch into a projection of Garuda, and we must destroy it completely before it fully hatches."
"As for what will happen after it's broken... should we take a gamble?"
At this point, Chi Xue raised the lever shotgun in her hand, aimed at the giant egg with three points aligned, and gently placed her finger on the trigger.
The group faced a difficult choice.
If the giant egg is allowed to hatch, it will eventually produce an astral projection so powerful that even a veteran Star Shadow like Chi Xue would have to exert all her strength to severely injure and banish it. And once it is broken, the consequences are unknown, and it is unlikely to be a very pleasant outcome.
This was a huge gamble. Su Tianqing suddenly realized this.
If you're brave enough, have everyone concentrate their firepower to destroy that giant egg, betting that the outcome of breaking it will be better than letting it hatch.
If you don't want to gamble, then wait for the giant egg to hatch the projection of Garuda, and then have the people present fight against that projection and banish it back to the astral plane.
Unfortunately, I've never been a gambler.
"Click."
The fox girl placed her small hand on the barrel of the lever rifle, lowering the gun and preventing Chi Xue from continuing to aim at it.
"Now that we have a definite result, and given your experience in banishing Garuda projections, there's no need for us to gamble on an outcome that no one knows," Su Tianqing said softly.
"Alright, since you've said so, then we'll do as you say."
Chi Xue didn't hesitate. She put down her hunting rifle, crossed her arms, and continued:
"Now we can take this time to discuss the intelligence we obtained today."
"Yes, to save time, let's do a summary now." Su Tianqing nodded in agreement.
A brief discussion of intelligence unfolded deep within the labyrinth.
Alice joined in, listening to Su Tianqing and Chi Xue recount the information while pretending to think, occasionally offering a novel perspective, gradually deepening the brainstorming session.
Ten minutes later, Su Tianqing clapped her hands gently, announcing the end of the brainstorming session after all the known information had been processed.
"The concepts you proposed are very interesting, and I think they are very feasible." Chi Xue nodded in praise of Alice's imagination and analysis.
The latter blushed slightly, looking a little shy, while little Jack quietly chimed in:
"But these are just possibilities that we've come up with on our own. We still need to go out and summarize and compile information from others."
"Let's call it a day then, we..."
Before he could finish speaking...
A clear "click" sound reached everyone's ears, and everyone immediately assumed a fighting stance. Even Gray Wolf, who had been dozing off and almost fell asleep in his dream, instantly became alert, each shouldering their weapon and pointing it directly at the giant egg that made the click.
"Click."
Another crisp sound rang out.
A crack and a small notch appeared on the edge of the eggshell, followed by a second notch, gradually spreading from the inside out to form a ring of cracks on the eggshell, and then there was a dull "crack"—
The giant egg's shell was split in two, and the inside was pitch black. Even eyes enhanced with magic could not penetrate this dense darkness. All that could be seen was something lifting the half-chisked giant egg from the inside.
Su Tianqing suddenly had a gut feeling:
What will hatch from this egg? What will Garuda's projection look like?
Was it a giant bird, a shadow-like monster, or... something more familiar to me?
For example, that rustic winged girl who came to the big city from the countryside, or that petite sparrow father, or even...
As Su Tianqing drifted into aimless thoughts, the dark shadow straightened up from the eggshell and stood up.
Everyone held their breath at that moment. Chi Xue's face first showed surprise and astonishment, followed by deep confusion and bewilderment.
"...What is that?" Akashi murmured to herself.
The dark shadow looked up at the labyrinth ceiling, then lowered its head to look at the girls in front of it, who had raised their weapons and were all aiming them at it.
It opened its eyes, which shone like molten gold, and spread its proud, broad wings.
Winged people.
A winged person whose entire body was pitch black.
Based on Su Tianqing's later description, it was more like a black version of the eagle-owl-winged man—
Black... Winged Sasha.