Chapter 4 — Sleep, until your life is over • Episode 4–4 — Runaway ①
Translated by KaiesV
Edited by KaiesV
After the battle, Shadow was taken to a general hospital in the Magical World by medical fairies summoned by Succubus, where her wounds were healed on the same day by the superior technology of the Magical World, and she was hospitalized for about two days for observation, but no particular problems were observed, so she was released without incident.
Succubus, who came to visit her every day after school, naturally accompanied her when she left the hospital, and Shadow roughly patted her on the head, telling her she was overreacting every time.
「I’ve had a lot of free time. I’m just saying, I’m healed, so let’s get out of the hospital.」
「It’s a good thing that the Magical World has the ability to heal the wounds sustained in the battle with the Diests.」
「That’s a given. If it were up to the Magical Girls to pay for their treatment and hospitalization, no one would fight.」
Injuries sustained in a fight against Diests are, so to speak, like work-related accidents. Of course, if the injury was sustained in a private life that has nothing to do with the fight against the Diests, the medical expenses will be billed to the individual.
「Master, I have trained extra hard! I will continue to train hard! I will become stronger so that I don’t drag Master down with me! That’s why, will you continue to fight with me? I will do my best not to slow you down!」
「Hah, what am I going to say. Apprentices are supposed to bother their masters, right? Suit yourself. Besides, this time I was a bit wrong too. Until you get a little stronger, I’ll stop challenging Diests above the Earl-class.」
「Master…」
Succubus doesn’t know the details of why Shadow fights, but she still knows that she is fighting for money. Such Shadow is saying that she will drop the rank of the Diests that she is taking down. It goes without saying that this would mean a drop in earning, and even Succubus knows that much.
「Thank you very much! Master!」
Shadow pushed back Succubus, who was so moved that she jumped into her arms and rubbed her head against her as if she was marking her with a grizzle, and let out a sigh of annoyance.
「That’s all well and good, but we’ve got some immediate problems to take care of.」
「Problems to take care of?」
「You said you used enchantment magic on Wind Witch, right?」
「Yes! She haven’t been there to defeat the Diest since we were saved the other day, so I haven’t been forgiven yet! While Master was in the hospital, I thought I could ask Elephant-san and Blade-san if I could somehow meet with Sylph-san, but it looks like they refused…」
「This is just my hunch, but perhaps your magic is working.」
「……Eh?」
Succubus looked a little saddened by the situation, thinking that she had become a Magical Girl because she admired Sylph and wanted to be close to her, but that she might be disliked rather than befriended because of her own shallow thinking, but then she popped like a pigeon that had been hit by a peashooter at Shadow’s unexpected words.
「The other day, when the witch saved us, she didn’t seem angry. Rather, she seemed embarrassed.」
「Really? But if it’s working, then Sylph-san must like me, right? Why did she run away?」
「I don’t know anything about that. Maybe she’s shy. Well, that’s just a guess. But if she does, it’s a bit of a hassle. Let’s say she’s still under the spell now, and eventually the time runs out and it loses its effectiveness. Then, the Witch might get angry when she finds out that you used a devilishly outrageous thing like enchantment magic. If you don’t break the spell and sincerely apologize before that happens, it will be impossible to improve the relationship between you two.」
「N–No way…」
Until now, Succubus has been caught trying to force her to like her by using enchantment magic, and she thought that this was the reason Sylph was avoiding her, but if this isn’t the case, then Sylph is still being forced into unwanted feelings.
Sure, succumbing to desire for a little bit, Succubus had used such an outrageous magic to manipulate people’s minds, but she soon regretted it. She was reminded that it would be meaningless if she didn’t turn around by her own power. And yet, Sylph may still be trapped by Succubus’ magic.
「Abnormal spells like fascination are only used to destroy the frame when magic is used. It’s not surprising if you don’t notice it.」
For example, Shadow’s Shadow Beast and Succubus’s Open The Gate Of Nightmare require the intervention of the user to maintain the magic, thus destroying one possible slot for simultaneous use. On the other hand, Open The Gate Of Charm, and Open The Gate Of Daydream, consumes a concurrent use slot when they are activated, but after the anomaly is passed, the gate is closed and remains in effect for some time without the user’s intervention. Otherwise, Succubus, which normally cannot use multiple magic at the same time, wouldn’t have been able to use enchantment magic while maintaining the hypnotic state of Sylph.
「I need to do something soon…!」
「Can’t you just unlock it now?」
「I know how to do it. But what is this? Is it locked?」
As Rabbitfoot once showed against Wigs Crosseau, the magic of the state of affairs can be released at any time at the will of the user. Even if, as in this case, the end condition had been set separately, such as that Sylph would return to sanity after clapping Succubus’ hands three times, the user would be able to ignore such a thing and force the end, as she should’ve been able to.
Unbeknownst to Succubus, and also unbeknownst to the sloth fairy who inspired Succubus, Sylph has already been subjected to one weak thought induction and one powerful suggestion. It was a coincidence, it was intertwined with the hypnosis and fascination applied by Succubus, and became like a spaghetti code, a complex and burdensome mental pollution that even the user herself couldn’t analyze.
「Maybe when I used the hypnotic magic, I decided that if I clapped my hands three times, it would wake her up, and I wouldn’t be able to disarm it otherwise.」
「I guess you’ll have to meet her in person. It looks like she’s avoiding you, so we’ll just have to go after her when she’s fighting in the Deception World.」
「Ugh, Master! Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?」
「I’m just trying to keep you from running off the rails. If you go out there alone to take down Diests when I can’t move, you’ll just get turned around. Worst case scenario, you’ll die.」
Succubus, in fact, is so completely right and irrefutable that she manages to suppress her feelings of deviation with a grunting groan.
If Shadow had taken the situation a little more seriously at this time, and had called on Elephant and forced her to meet with Sylph, or had told the other Magical Girls about the mismanagement of her apprentice, the future that would’ve been reached might have been different.
But while enchantment magic is certainly outrageous, it’s not an urgently life-threatening magic, so one can hardly blame Shadow for thinking a little too long and hard. She didn’t want to make things worse by resolving the situation as quietly and secretly as possible, and she didn’t want to make her student as hated as she was, even though she was the one with the most notoriety.
.
「What should I do, what should I do, what should I do?」
On a Saturday night, about a week after Shadow was discharged from the hospital, Oosaki Rika, a girl dressed in rough loungewear, paced around her room in anxious, shaky voice, repeatedly turning on and off her magiphone, and then turning it on and off again.
A few days ago, her teacher as a Magical Girl, Shadow, pointed out to Rika that the magic to control her mind, which she had thought she had used and failed in her desire, had actually succeeded and was still in effect. At first, it was Shadow’s hunch and perhaps a story, but when she questioned the sloth fairy who was coasting in Rika’s house, Shadow’s concerns turned out to be true.
It seems that fairies have the ability to analyze the state of magical girls, and when the sloth fairy reluctantly analyzed Sylph’s state at Shadow’s order, she was able to confirm that she was under fascination and hypnosis, she thought he had noticed that there are some other complex implications involved, but he don’t know what they are, so for the time being, “the operation is a success–nuh～, huh, but I said it was only for one day–nuh,” he replied
As usual, the sloth fairy didn’t follow Succubus into battle. Therefore, on that day when Succubus hypnotized and enchanted Sylph, the fairy didn’t confirm the scene. Succubus was still noisy with the strategy meeting, so he thought it had failed.
After receiving the fairy’s testimony, Succubus was finally in a hurry to do something about it as soon as possible. However, even if she could have happened to come across SYLPH fighting in the Deception World, she couldn’t afford to clap her hands for three beats because she would have fled home after the battle was over. However, this is not possible because doing so in the midst of battle would leave Sylph wide open, and to this day, she hasn’t been able to break the spell that has been placed on her.
「If you want to see her so badly, just go see her in her dreams–nuh～ I don’t think any amount of Witches can escape if they’re in a dream, nuh～」
「…What’s that? That’s my magic.」
「If you want to use it, you can use it there, nuh～ A Magical Girl’s magic is something that she has to carve out for herself, nuh～ The Magical Girl Of Dreams like you should be able to at least sneak into someone’s dream–nuh～」
The sloth fairy announced this in a tediously paced voice, perhaps because the busily moving Rika was too noisy.
「I’m tempted but…」
This sloth fairy has never lied to her before, although he has many explanations missing. So, although she is half-convinced, Rika transforms into Magical Girl Succubus and, sure enough, she realizes that she is able to use her new magic. It’s a magic that intervenes in another’s psyche through dreams rather than diving into them, and is classified as a direct-acting magic, a type of magic that would normally not work on Magical Girls, but when untransformed, protection is irrelevant. She have to have completed marking before diving into a dream to target a specific person, and this time she have already done that marking.
「If I have this kind of magic, tell me about it as soon as possible!」
「You never asked me–nuh～」
「Pooh-chan’s so useless～!」
She didn’t know if the clapping of hands in the dream was a signal to end the hypnosis, but even if it was not, she could explain the situation directly to Sylph and ask her to meet her in reality. Normally, Sylph runs away like a rabbit as soon as she sees Succubus’ face, but in her dream, she cannot run away from Succubus. After all, Succubus is a Magical Girl Of Dreams, and in her dreams, she is almost invincible. In reality, she may be compensating for her weakness. However, since it is said that Diests do not dream and Magical Girls aren’t capable of basic marking, they are still small fry as Magical Girls overall.
