With speed that was unusual for what she was previously—a high school girl—Natasha raced toward the auditorium in the west on her bike at her fastest possible speed. Her seemingly mediocre skills at cycling before all this began had disappeared; all awkwardness, lack of balance, and unrefined control were cast aside as she seemed to instantly improve at this skill.

  ‘Hmm… This Corastrum, let’s say that it’s because of it that I have been so prodigious in riding this bike, because no matter how I think about it, Dodging the Flame Monkey’s attacks on a moving object that’s not my body is insane, and it being a bicycle of all things is even more ridiculous.’

  Natasha knew she didn’t have such skills, and the fact of the matter was that the Flame Monkey was a genuine supernatural creature with outrageous abilities...

  Evading it on a bike of all things wasn’t something anyone could achieve, and as, quite frankly, a nobody in terms of biking skills—at least previously—Natasha knew that her limit wasn’t so high as to achieve such feats.

  Natasha breathed as she returned her mind to the outside world, standing on her bike as she relentlessly pedaled; the girl cruised through grass and concrete paths. Swiftly passing by the building she had once inhabited but was burned alive in, Natasha set her sights westward and began moving there with haste.

  It would be a particularly long journey, possibly above 5km, and she would have to cover this under the threat of several magical entities tracking her and attempting to kill her.

  ‘Yay! So much fun…’ Natasha drawled, and put her legs to as much work as she could.

  Her hands trembled, but she didn’t sense any threats. Natasha breathed, looking at the sky that seemed to be in a near-perpetual twilight she felt a little chill down her back and began to ride her bike more inward, not as brave to ride under the open air as before.

  ‘How are these Meta-Beasts made? Are they regular animals that get conceptualized? Or are they like genuine monsters in those RPG games…’ Natasha pursed her lips. She didn’t really play games—not out of disdain or anything like that but because keeping track of Leon was a lot of work, so she didn’t have much time for anything else.

  Not that she had anything else to do.

  ‘I mean, I can only got skiing and ice-skating so many times.’

  The former, she couldn’t quite recall who had taught her this skill or if she learned it on her own, while the latter was taught to her by what could only be called a deceased relative.

  In other words, she was basically a hobbyless bum that had nothing to do other than stalk a guy she met on the internet or waste away in the Fatherland.

  To speak honestly, this made Natasha feel like anybody else looking from the outside may feel as if she was less than a person of her own and was too dependent on another person for her goals and aspirations as well as her drive.

  But Natasha didn't feel that way herself.

  Stalking and obsessing over Leon kind of gave her life a bit of purpose other than laying around in a house in Russia, which is why she came back to Japan in the first place—because she had seen some news about Leon and had grown to admire him from that point on.

  Or at least, that’s what she thought, but Natasha couldn't shake off the feeling that there was a deeper reason than that—a “why” that she couldn’t locate—which became her reason as to why she had decided to obsess over Leon in such a deep and analytical way.

  ‘Anyhow, I said this before, but this school is really a bit large. There must be an absurd amount of wealth put into this school. And it's been a school here for like possibly 100 years. Or maybe it was less than that, maybe 50. It's a school with a long history—that I honestly don’t care about—and it's forged a lot of foreign exchange students with impressive pedigrees or whatever. Anyway, I came here on a whim so I don't need to perform like they do nor do I care to do any of that.’

  Natasha chuckled to herself and suddenly felt the ground beneath her tremble intensely. Not even looking at the buildings she was riding close to, she immediately went back under the open sky, not willing to risk getting trapped under a building if it collapsed.

  Stolen story; please report.

  And she knew some of them would, as the shaking was immensely more powerful than any other time before this.

  Natasha frowned, feeling a bit conflicted inside. ‘These 1-star Meta-Beasts are too powerful! But this also means that Magical Girl would also have a similar power ceiling.’ It was really a conundrum, but in the long run, as long as she and the others survived, they could make a way in this changing world.

  Natasha had never forgotten the feeling she had gotten at the beginning, her awareness enveloping the planet—or what she thought was the planet, as the thought “world” likely pointed to Earth more than anything else in this context—and sensing thousands of awakenings.

  She didn’t know if this was unique to her being a 4-star or her being unique in and of herself, but she felt like either Mirai or Yuki would have mentioned it by now if they too had such an experience.

  ‘Then again, those two seem like heavily unreliable teammates, but they’re 4-stars and aren’t too stupid, so I have to take what I can get… Not to mention I had also forgotten to mention it as well; it’s easy to get caught up in the moment. Maybe I was too harsh on them concerning this piece of information…’ Natasha criticized, disdained and then reflected after a few seconds—her thoughts flowing smoothly from one fragment of the topic to another with little issue.

  After these initial thoughts—her mind now satisfied with diverting from the initial topic to extend its monologue—she returned to her lonesome strategic meeting concerning the future after these initial disasters.

  While she was indeed focused on surviving, escaping, and—or quite possibly, more so hopefully, killing—the Earth Hippo and Flame Monkey in the now, with 85% of her mind on this matter, the other 15% were nearly completely focused on how they would navigate the changing world that was guaranteed to surface after they left this school alive.

  ‘I don’t want to think of "ifs.” I need us to survive, all of us. This type of outcome cannot come to pass...’ She couldn’t help but frown at the idealistic thought, but all plans were thoughts in the beginning, as were all desires, ideas, and goals—along with several, other mind-born essentials to living as a human being.

  Everything started somewhere: the thousand-mile journey from East to West China beginning with a few steps, the ten-year habit that was precluded by just doing it a minute a day—every day—and the strong thirty-year marriage starting as a 90s couple proposing in a junkyard from a few scant feelings, hope, and a dream.

  Natasha breathed out, her thoughts especially clear at this moment; she had a few goals and a certain objective—she just needed a bit of luck and hoped her power worked.

  Whatever it was, she was eager to find out. Anyway, as a 4-star, even if she ended up being some fodder like [Leaf] or [Petal], her attacks would still contain a certain potency that would be hard to match for lower ranks, or at least she hoped.

  ‘A strong concept and ability would still be for the best, as even if I get to the point I don’t have to worry about 1-stars to 3-stars, there is still the similarly ranked 4-stars to worry about, and heavens know that all battles would be started and ended depending on their whim. Even a 1-star is this powerful; I’m really not looking forward to what the highest peak is capable of doing.’

  Just that girl Mirai was enough to time-loop steadily, and this was just Partial Awakening…

  Another rumble snaked it’s way through the ground, and Natasha felt her bike tilt; she snapped out of her monologue just to see her bike entering what seemed to be a small, newly made crevice. Thankfully, due to the trembling of the earth moments before, the front tire was tilted, so the bike didn’t dive straight down into the crevice—soon to be a fissure, by her rough estimates—which was of considerable size, although lacking a bit of depth.

  But it being just a little under what seemed to be 1-2 meters was already deep enough for a death sentence to someone not paying attention to where they’re going—AKA—her.

  “What the hell? Is it close, or is this just it going all out for once? But why now?"

  Natasha couldn’t help how her jaw slacked, and she quickly used her feet to stand and divert the bike—if she recalled correctly, fissures and crevices created by Earthquakes were around the Magnitude 5-7 range…

  “Five to Seven range in Magnitude, then the buildings—” Just as she said this, she heard rumbling all around her, and looking at the source, a dark look came over her face—the chain of buildings she had been cycling under earlier, had all began to crack, fracture and slowly collapse into rubble.

  ‘That shit is all the way into the south of campus and while I’m about 2-3km’s away from the west, and the auditorium, it’s still ridiculous for it’s power to spread so far...’

  Natasha pursed her lips, and then a moment later, a sickening chain of thoughts barreled into her mind that left absolutely stunned and… terrified.

  ‘That thing… It’s power isn’t capable of eclipsing the entirety of campus, right? Don’t joke around; this campus is already the size of a small to large town! And that’s depending on who you ask and if you take into account it’s near the sea, there’s even more things to cover.’

  And the other?

  ‘Also, those Meta-Beasts… They can’t, also awaken, right…?’

  Just at this moment—

  —“Hey, on the topic of awakening, so like with Magical Girls or I guess now Witches apparently because of this Witch Factor thing, can Meta-Beasts also awaken?”

  Natasha’s heart nearly fell, and she immediately knew that the answer might make or break the operation they were going to do.