However much power Secretary Sirk actually had to influence the magic industry, the one factor Adah was certain he couldn’t control was the appearance of Cruelties. Maybe he could prop a team like Desiire up and reserve the most prestigious missions for them, but he couldn’t decide when those missions would manifest.
And yet, fate’s dice seemed to roll in his favor anyway.
Three months after Desiire staked their claim to the next S-Rank mission, Locke and his teammates got their chance to complete one. As if the universe itself was mocking her, the Magedars detected the energy signature of an S-Rank Cruelty mere hours after Adah left the karaoke suite. Sirk couldn’t have asked for better timing to prove his point—that is, assuming Locke and the other boys could finish the job. Although the rare S-Rank mission had become a spectacle for the public in recent years, Adah felt something much closer to anxiety than anticipation.
Adah had seen two magic users fall victim to the Cruelties last year. The last thing she wanted was to start this year by witnessing a third. For that reason alone, she prayed all of Sirk’s predictions proved correct.
The detection of the S-Rank was heralded by alarm sirens that blared out of every television, cell phone, and personal computer in the country, as well as every warning speaker set up outside. These speakers were spread farther apart in Region 4 than those Adah had grown up around, but they were still loud enough to drown out all other sound. The sirens continued to scream for fifteen minutes, though those near where the S-Rank Cruelty’s energy signature had been detected would continue to sound off until the monster itself appeared.
For now, Region 4 was safe from danger. The S-Rank had been detected at the outskirts of Avepoir in Region 1—another coincidence, though it was hard to say if this one fell in Sirk’s favor. The destruction resulting from even a successful S-Rank mission could be catastrophic, and the danger zone for the forthcoming battle would encompass Avepoir and all of its neighboring cities. That was a lot of people to evacuate, and a lot of people who could find themselves in danger once more if Desiire failed to contain the monster.
Thankfully, Adah’s parents lived beyond the immediate evacuation zone. Yet, that didn’t mean they were out of danger. No one was, not really.
During the appearance of an S-Rank, other Cruelties tended to spawn in simultaneously. The hotspots at which evacuees gathered were of course appetizing targets for the monsters, and thus required their own guard units of magic users. People who fled their homes once could often find themselves evacuating their supposed safe zone in the face of a new threat. It wasn’t like the rest of the world could relax, though.
An S-Rank required a massive investment of essence from the Cruelties, and they wanted to use the ensuing chaos to strike as many additional targets as possible. Even if all their attacks on humans failed, the amount of resources humanity would have to divert to protect its population centers would inevitably open up opportunities for the Cruelties to harvest essence from wildlife. Humanity had to balance chasing down stray Cruelties in the wilderness against weakening their defenses around cities and evacuation points. Although humans had bolstered their number of magic users in recent years and improved their coordination of resources, they were far from perfect.
The Cruelties would claim a hefty bounty of essence by the time the S-Rank was defeated. But if every magic user did their job, none of that essence would have belonged to a human.
All of this meant that Adah and her teammates—along with every magic user in the country—had to remain on standby until told otherwise. As soon as they heard the sirens, just as they were figuring out what to eat for dinner that night, the four girls initiated their transformations. They would stay transformed until all four regional Secretaries of Magic declared the emergency resolved—a decision they would make based not only on the defeat of the S-Rank, but also the stabilization of all other Cruelty appearances in their regions. Until that moment, Adah and her team would be ready to fight any Cruelty in their zone of control or that they were requested to assist with elsewhere in the region.
Already, Adah was thinking about how to prepare her team. They should eat as soon as possible, even if what they put together wasn’t a full meal. It was better to steadily munch on easily digestible fuel in this situation, to avoid fighting on either an empty or full stomach. At this point in the day, they’d also need to make a plan for sleeping. They should go in shifts, two at a time. That way, the two people staying awake could make sure the other didn’t drift off to sleep by accident. If Grace was here, they could consider a different arrangement.
With that thought, Adah grabbed her phone—no longer blasting the S-Rank’s warning—and started to call Grace. Their manager was more familiar with the mission portal, and it would be ideal to have someone other than Adah or her teammates keeping an eye on any alerts. Beyond that… Adah felt more at ease with Grace nearby. Somehow, she got the sense that Grace wouldn’t let her do anything stupid. Though, how much could Grace know about handling a situation like this either?
“Adah,” Rika called out as Adah tried to search for Grace’s number with shaky fingers. “I already got her. She just left the cabin.”
Rika held up her phone as an explanation. While Adah had been thinking, she must have called Grace already.
“The one time she takes a vacation, it gets cut short,” Ami said. “Guess we’re on our own until like midnight, huh?”
“Seb’s on his way,” Emi said. “Michel’s driving him.”
In the end, the whole agency would be together for this. That was for the best. The more hands on deck, the less likely anything could go wrong. There was always a chance Adah and the other girls wouldn’t have any Cruelties to fight, but that wasn’t a chance she had any intention of betting on. Even if this whole ordeal played out that way, she’d still be glad for everyone’s company. This emergency state could last for days.
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Detecting an S-Rank Cruelty worked a little differently than most other variants. Rather, the amount of essence that went into an S-Rank Cruelty amplified a nuance that had always existed in the creation of these monsters. Whereas a mascot could pop in and out of physical existence near-instantaneously, a Cruelty had to gather essence in a particular location over time before it could spawn a physical form. That formation process was one of humanity’s advantages in this war, for it was what allowed the Magedars to detect Cruelties before they appeared.
On the C- and B-Rank missions that the Last Light had taken recently, the Magedars would usually detect the energy signature of a Cruelty with a half hour to an hour’s advance notice. However, the Magedars identified the previous S-Rank that had appeared almost a full twenty-four hours before the monster itself materialized. Desiire would likely be waiting around that long before this battle, too.
Both Desiire and their backup teams would be focused entirely on defeating the S-Rank Cruelty, regardless of what happened elsewhere. Those backup teams should have been joining Desiire from the start, but the exclusive S-Rank reservation system was yet another symptom of how the magic industry had developed. The Secretaries tried to justify the idea of letting one team fight alone with the excuse that multiple teams fighting together could do more harm than good in such a high stakes battle. If those teams had never practiced together, they might get in each other’s way rather than help.
To Adah’s mind, those teams should have been practicing together from the start. Teams in the same region—or even different ones—should take missions together on a regular basis. That was what she intended to do with Region 4’s coalition teams. That way, they’d all be ready to rely on each other if the need arose. Thinking back to the K-Rank the Last Light had tackled with DreamRise, even that scrappy battle had been worth the effort. Their teams gained some understanding of one another, which surely helped them during their fight against the hydra.
With a man like Sirk at the helm, it was no surprise that the Department of Magic’s priorities had gotten so twisted. After all, how much FP growth would Desiire miss out on if they got help during this mission? That would be unacceptable.
In the end, Adah knew she shouldn’t waste her focus thinking about such things. She could do nothing to change Sirk’s approach tonight. Her responsibility was to protect her region.
All of the people who would gather at this agency office, and all of the people who had shown up at the new year’s carnival—Adah would make sure none of them had to worry.
And she would pray that Locke and his team could do the same.
☆☆☆
Adah woke up the next day after a full night’s rest that felt like a cat nap. Yet, her drowsiness was swiftly washed away by a surge of adrenaline as her conscious mind remembered the current situation. She jumped out of bed, still wearing Heartbreak’s tattered skirt and shawl.
Grace had returned from Ketzia’s cabin around midnight the night before, as Ami had predicted. She fired off a few questions to the girls—had they eaten recently, had anyone slept, had they received any special directives from Elise—as she rushed toward her desk. Her eyes lingered on Adah as she passed, the closest look to a glare that she’d ever given Adah, then sat down and began typing away at her keyboard.
“Go sleep,” she had ordered them. “In your beds. No alarms—take all the rest you can get. I’ll wake you if I need to.”
The four magical girls had obeyed, though Adah could tell they were all holding back questions of their own. Everyone had been equally interested in the reason behind Grace’s sudden trip to Ketzia’s. However, that wasn’t the time to pester her.
The high tension of the night before continued into today. Seb and Michel had also spent the night in the office, catching a few winks of sleep on the lobby furniture at Grace’s orders. Apparently Grace had sent Michel out to buy whatever bottled water and food he could find left at the stores, plus whatever else he could ransack from Grace’s apartment. When Adah came downstairs, the woman was even teaching Seb how the mission portal worked and where to look for special directives from the Department of Magic. If she was unable to keep an eye on the alerts, she wanted to have someone ready to take over for her.
As Adah entered the lobby, Grace stared at her yet again. This time, the woman must have realized what she was doing, as she quickly averted her gaze and acted like she remembered something else to tell Seb. Adah tried not to think about it. She had enough to think about today.
Sometime before the sun went down, the S-Rank was likely to appear.
Even a mission as dangerous as this was not exempt from the media circus. Every television station even tangentially related to the news, magic, or entertainment industries was playing some kind of programming about the S-Rank. Adah planned to spend the whole day sitting in the agency lobby, watching the drone footage of the location where the Cruelty was set to appear. Unless she needed to fight a monster of her own, she wanted to see every second of Desiire’s battle.
Throughout the course of the morning, Adah’s teammates made their way downstairs and joined her in front of the lobby’s television. They didn’t speak much to each other. Then again, there wasn’t much to say.
All they could do was watch and wait.
Michel returned partway through the afternoon. He made several trips to and from his car, hauling in bags of supplies each time. In addition to the food and water, he brought along fever reducers, hot and cold packs, and a duffel bag he set down beside Grace. A blanket and spare clothes, plus other stuff he thought she might need, he explained.
By early evening, everyone at the agency had their eyes fixed on the television. The S-Rank would materialize at any moment, given the Magedar’s analysis. Cruelty activity throughout the rest of the country had remained low, which every news anchor and commentator on the TV seemed to think was a good thing. That info only made Adah nervous, though.
Humans weren’t the only ones who had to manage how they spread their resources across the nation. Cruelties had to pick and choose where to expend essence, too. If they weren’t using any essence elsewhere…
But before Adah could worry too much about that, the noise from the television broke into chaos.
On the screen, there was a blink in space, a temporary void like a cosmic eye winking. When the void disappeared, a Cruelty had materialized in its place.
The monster was large, but not quite as massive as Adah had expected. It was a creature propped up on four legs, each as thick and tall as an economy hotel. Out there at the suburban outskirts of Avepoir, the beast certainly dwarfed the rows of houses below, but it would only stand as tall as the modest office buildings of the city proper. Adah had seen larger A-Ranks, including the one Pureheart had saved her from.
But its size didn’t matter.
As she realized what she was looking at, Adah clutched at her stomach. She wasn’t nauseous. The feeling was more like a hole had appeared inside her, and all her innards were falling through it. Down and away, into the void, leaving her empty.
“What the hell is that?” Ami asked.
“It looks like a moose, almost,” Seb said.
“So are those supposed to be antlers?” Rika said.
Those.
Those were what Adah had recognized.
Sprouting from each side of the Cruelty’s head were clumps of countless eyestalks. They grew out, indeed like antlers, from a single thick stalk that spread apart into a hundred or more thinner stalks. At the end of each stalk was an eye, just like that of the whale Cruelty Adah had fought. Or the turtle Cruelty.
Or, in such an overwhelming quantity as this, just like those eyes Adah had seen in her dream.