“Lyrika!” Hyperia yelled again, despite being only a foot away now.

  “H-Hi,” Rika answered, forcing a smile onto her face.

  “I’m a huge fan! Been a huge fan! Will always be a huge fan!”

  The girl stared up at Rika, unblinking.

  “You don’t look huge,” Ami said.

  Hyperia took the teasing in stride and said, “It’s my heart that’s huge. It nearly bursts out of my chest when I hear Lyrika sing.”

  The pink color of Hyperia’s outfit was overwhelming and, now that Adah was looking at her up close, the color even found its way into her cheeks and the highlights of her blonde hair. As intense as the almost neon color was, the outfit itself was relatively simple. The top half resembled a sleek, sleeveless buttoned jacket you might find in a marching band, while the bottom was essentially a tutu. Hyperia tied it all together with a few choice accessories: an oversized bow on the back of her hair, pink and white detached shirt cuffs around her wrists, and a shining silver necklace.

  The girl didn’t need to go overboard when it came to her transformation; her bright eyes and energetic voice made her plenty lively already. If Iris had a cuteness that crept up on you, Hyperia’s screamed in your face.

  “Thanks, that’s nice of you, but don’t you—” Rika’s words were cut off by a husky voice bellowing from across the pasture.

  “Sammy!” Dystopia shouted. “Get your ass over here! We’re about to fight!”

  “No need to yell,” a second voice, mellow to the point of sounding like a lullaby, spoke through a magic channel instead of shouting out loud. “She’s happy to meet her idol. You won’t get distracted, though, will you, Sam? You’re going to put on a good performance for Lyrika.”

  Hyperia spun around to face Dystopia and Elegia and gave them a thumbs-up.

  “You bet,” she said. “I’ll make it worth Lyrika’s while to come out here. It’s time for a show!”

  “Why the hell did they come here in the first place?” Dystopia grumbled.

  “Now you’re distracted, Dani!” Hyperia said as she flew back to rejoin her teammates.

  Just as the three of them regrouped, a gray figure materialized in the distance. About a hundred yards separated the members of Fifty Flip from the badger Cruelty. Off to Adah’s right, the herd of cattle that were grazing on these flat fields also sensed the presence of danger. They clumped themselves together like the cows had done during Adah’s N-Rank mission, though that defense mechanism would only assist today’s Cruelty in causing damage.

  “Weirdos,” Emi said as Hyperia flew away.

  “Not that we can talk,” Adah said.

  Once Hyperia connected with her teammates, they broke apart into a preplanned formation. Hyperia herself flew upward, while Dystopia took her place near the ground, and Elegia flew straight toward the Cruelty. Adah and her teammates traveled closer to the action for a better view, but even at this distance it was a simple matter to tell Hyperia’s teammates apart.

  Of course, they each had a clear color theme—dark blue like the night sky for Dystopia and a plum purple for Elegia—but the styles of their designs were also drastically different.

  There was really no avoiding it when talking about Dystopia’s transformation: her design leaned heavily into sex appeal. Her top, which wasn’t much more than a loose camisole, was cropped so short that it made the exposure of Rika’s stomach look modest. Loose and dainty as it was, the top did little to cover the lace bra beneath it, especially in the heat of battle. This didn’t seem to bother Dystopia at all, nor did the lack of coverage from her skirt, which was broken into segments of fabric like the petals of a flower. Even when hovering in place, the tiny compression shorts she wore beneath were always visible.

  All of this exposure was entirely intentional, with the girl’s undergarments even designed in a complementary, lighter shade of blue to her outer layer that drew your eye to them. She wore a pair of thin, silver chains around her belly that highlighted the colorful tattoos that crawled up the right side of her torso before connecting with the sleeve of artwork from her shoulder down to her wrist.

  Despite this, Dystopia moved without reservation. She flew just above the grass of the pasture in a circular pattern, occasionally touching the ground with her hand. She seemed to be setting up some kind of trap similar to Emi’s [Hailstorm Hex]—Adah noticed darker spots appear in the grass where Dystopia had touched, but nothing else happened yet. Though it was hard to tell at a distance, the girl’s flight appeared on the faster side, comparable to Adah’s own.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  Once she had set up her spell, Dystopia said something to her teammates, presumably through their own magic channel. After hearing this, Elegia began to move in earnest.

  The eldest member of Fifty Flip also included an element of eroticism in her transformation, but Elegia’s was more of a hint than a bold declaration. The woman’s outfit was like a mix between a witch’s robes and an evening gown, beginning with a broad-shouldered robe up top with long, loose sleeves. The outfit tapered down as it approached her waist, ultimately transitioning into a slim dress skirt. The skirt fell down below Elegia’s knees, but was split along the right side, revealing her leg all the way up to the upper part of her thigh. This split was bridged—and perhaps secured—by a loosely criss-crossing chain similar to those Dystopia wore around her stomach.

  Each member’s transformation perfectly encapsulated her apparent personality: cute, punk, and mature. But how would they fight?

  With Dystopia’s trap set, Elegia flew back and forth in front of the Cruelty to bait it forward. Her movements were slow and lackadaisical, which probably only made her a more enticing target for the long-clawed badger to rush toward. The Cruelty began its telegraphed windup, twisting itself backward before spinning in the direction of Elegia. The badger moved quick in this top-like state—not as fast as something like the water strider or lynx Cruelties, but fast enough to catch a target that was slow to react.

  With Elegia’s almost lazy movement, Adah thought for a moment that the woman could be in danger. Elegia, of course, had a plan for this.

  She vanished.

  It wasn’t teleportation, or at least not anything like Ekki’s portals. She simply disappeared for a time. The Cruelty spun its way through the spot she had once been, but its claws sliced nothing but air. Then, after the monster and its attack had cleared her position, Elegia reappeared in the same exact spot. It was the kind of vanishing act that Adah had thought only mascots were capable of. If Fifty Flip was willing to join their cause, she hoped she could learn more about that spell in the process.

  Now that the Cruelty had spun past Elegia, it took a fair distance before it could slow its movement to a stop. When it finally managed to halt itself, it had wound up right in the middle of the trap Dystopia had set up.

  The magical girl snapped her fingers, causing the dark spots that surrounded the Cruelty to form into dark blue pools, almost like endless holes in the ground. From these pools rose a collection of tentacles, which surged toward the Cruelty from all directions and coiled themselves around the monster. The badger attempted to slice apart the tentacles with wild swings, but Dystopia’s spell moved too fast for it to do much damage. It was only a matter of seconds before the Cruelty was totally incapacitated.

  At last, it was time for Hyperia to enter the battle. She was floating a good distance directly above the ensnared Cruelty, and wasted no time in casting her spell.

  “Enjoy our grand finale!” she shouted, yet again opting not to communicate with the help of magic.

  True to her tutu-style outfit, Hyperia began to spin in a pirouette that grew in speed until she was turning like a top herself. Her pink magic swirled around her legs like a gymnast’s streamers, building in intensity with her speed. When she had prepared enough energy for an attack, she turned her raised foot and stomped down.

  The pink light that had gathered around her legs shot downward, following in the path of Hyperia’s stomp like a bolt of lightning from the clouds. The magic bolt struck the Cruelty in its neck and instantly severed its head. The faceless badger head rolled away while its body continued to flail about in resistance to the tentacles binding it.

  “Stop. Ruining. My. Moment!”

  Hyperia screamed each word in combination with another stomp, each one punctuated by yet another bolt of magic. The attacks each struck a different part of the Cruelty’s body, mangling it bit by bit.

  “Die. You. Fat. Rat!”

  Four stomps more. Four bolts more. And more and more, the badger’s body turned something resembling roadkill. A mixture of gray paste flattened to the grass, with fuller chunks of flesh here and there, and some vague shards of skeleton remaining.

  After a few more stomps, Hyperia finally settled down and leaned over with her hands on her knees, panting. The Cruelty was hardly more than a puddle of gray sludge at this point, but it had yet to dematerialize from this world. Its swirling sphere of a core still remained, floating on the surface of that puddle. Elegia floated down to the ground and walked up to the obliterated Cruelty.

  “How sublime,” she said, bending down to scoop up some of the gray gore. She let the liquid ooze through the gaps in her fingers and fall to the dirt. “Poor little guy. But now, we can take you somewhere better.”

  “If you eat that again, I’m seriously gonna barf,” Dystopia said as she touched down beside her teammate.

  Elegia stood up abruptly and brushed her hands together to rid them of any remaining ooze.

  “I’m only admiring today,” she said. “But perhaps our guests would like a taste? Or at least, I believe Heartbreak would.”

  “A taste?” Adah repeated, feeling like she was getting sick herself.

  “You collect their cores, don’t you?” Dystopia said.

  “We don’t mind if you indulge,” Elegia added.

  Hyperia joined her teammates now as well and said, “A gift to Lyrika’s friend is like a gift to Lyrika. Be our guest!”

  Adah didn’t budge.

  Across a private channel, Emi said to the rest of the team, “They’re psychopaths.”

  “Eating a Cruelty was a joke… right?” Rika whispered.

  “Maybe we followed the wrong team,” Ami said.

  Slowly, Adah called upon her scythe and began to float toward the Cruelty’s core.

  “I think this is what they meant by ‘Exist in Extremes,’” she said to her team as she left.

  Maybe, just maybe, she should have considered finding different allies.