REAPER SCANS

Mr. Magical Girl

[Translator – Kuro]

[Proofreader – ilafy]

Chapter 36: 23:59:45 (2)

Blood.

When I regained consciousness, the first thing to reach me was the smell of blood.

I slowly woke up, trying to recall what I last remembered.

Oh, right, it was getting stabbed in the forehead by a purple syringe and learning that the injections were all just plain water.

Was the purple liquid a sedative?

I had no idea how plain water could act like a drug or medication, but it probably made sense to Oxymoron.

The same went for me. If you asked me how I could tear a rift in dimensions with just pure physical strength, I also wouldn’t know how to answer.

‘I just can’ was the only way to explain it.

That was the case for most heroes and Otherworld beings, so it was pointless to question the logic or reasoning behind such abilities.

My bewilderment from the shocking reveal subsided as I thought things through. In fact, plain water was much better than getting injected with weird, unknown substances.

‘Alright, let’s open my eyes.’ I had to figure out where the smell of blood was coming from.

A familiar white ceiling came into view—the ceiling of an ordinary room in the Hero Association’s accommodations. I hadn’t been transported elsewhere while unconscious.

I was still wrapped up in restraints and bandages, but I could still move my upper and lower body. I sat up on the bed and saw that not much had changed since I had passed out.

Some differences were the amount of dry bloodstains in the room and how drenched my students were in said blood.

“Oh, you’re awake?” Oxymoron stood in the sea of blood and turned to me.

“What the hell happened here?” I asked.

“I gave them a special training course by slicing some flesh here and there.”

I looked at the girls and saw them sleeping from exhaustion.

Upon inspecting their bodies, I saw that, fortunately, they didn’t have any injuries. Oxymoron apparently only sliced her own flesh and not the students.

The blood must’ve been from Oxymoron too. I had nothing to worry about, then. In fact, she probably preferred it that way.

“How are their healing skills?” I asked.

“The one in white clothes got a bit better. She’s still held back by her common sense, and her healing efficiency isn’t there yet, but it’s usable on the battlefield.”

The one in white clothes? Although her clothes were burgundy after getting drenched in blood, I assumed she meant Abin Han.

“What about Sihyeon Baek? She can also use healing magic, as far as I know.”

“Oh, her? It’s hopeless.”

“Hopeless?” That was a wildly different answer than what I had expected. I never thought Abin’s healing would be usable and Sihyeon’s hopeless. “What’s the problem with her?”

“Hm, how do I explain it…” Oxymoron sat on the bed, pondering about where to start. “Her healing is excellent. I’d even say she’d surpass me if she trained diligently for maybe a decade.”

A decade… that sounded like a long time but also wasn’t.

“However, she has a fatal flaw as a healer,” she continued.

“What flaw?” What could be so wrong with Sihyeon that Oxymoron—arguably the most abnormal healer—would call her hopeless as a healer?

“She can’t imagine other people in their intact form. She can heal herself and people who get injured in front of her, but otherwise, it’s hopeless. She can’t heal injuries she didn’t personally see happen.”

“In simpler terms?”

“Basically, she needs to know exactly how someone got hurt in order to treat them, and it doesn’t seem to be a restriction of her powers, but rather… it’s her own personality that’s the problem?”

“That’s pretty bad.” Simply put, her healing power was limited to herself, outside of atypical situations.

To be honest, I wasn’t too surprised. There was something wrong with that freakish genius’s brain. I was sure she had a few screws loose up there.

“Still, it doesn’t mean she can’t heal at all.” Oxymoron stretched out her hands to show me. “The girl healed my hand. Do you notice anything strange?”

Nothing seemed wrong with them at first glance. The skin was flawless, and she had the right number of fingers. Oxymoron clearly hadn’t grown bizarre scales or tentacles on her hand.

“I can’t really tell,” I admitted.

“Hm, that’s a shame. Well, the answer is that both my hands are right hands. Isn’t that funny?”

‘…Huh?’ I carefully inspected her hands after the reveal, and it was true. Both hands had the exact same shape. It wasn’t something you’d notice at first glance when searching for more obvious mistakes, but it was a fundamental error.

“It must be because she used my right hand as a reference to fix my left one, and I believe she’s able to fully regenerate missing limbs as an A-Rank hero.”

“Doesn’t the Association say not to categorize heroes into ranks?”

“It’s the easiest and most intuitive way to sort them. They’re the ones ranking enemies, so why stop at heroes?” Oxymoron smiled bitterly behind the gas mask before chopping off her left right hand. She then picked up her original left hand from the floor and sewed it back on.

“Hmm… It’s been a while since it fell off, but doesn’t seem to have any issues. I’m glad it didn’t start rotting already.”

“…” It was best not to react to every single one of Oxymoron’s bizarre behaviors.

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Translator - Kuro

Proofreader - ilafy

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“Actually, something feels off. Maybe I should keep the second right hand? It doesn’t sound too bad.” She kept muttering very disturbing stuff, and I continued ignoring her. Reacting to her sinister words would mean my willpower wasn’t strong enough.

I just shifted the topic to change the mood. “In any case, the girls’ healing powers are now usable, right?”

“Yes, their powers don’t have any problems, fundamentally. They just couldn’t bring out their full potential without a good teacher.”

She was calling herself a good teacher. Well, she wasn’t wrong. Despite having some issues, she improved my students’ basics and taught them the fundamentals.

“Thanks, Oxymoron.”

“No need for thanks. It’s only natural to teach my adorable juniors.” She chuckled cheerfully, eyes arching behind the cracked gas mask. 

I couldn’t help but laugh with her.

Two heroes laughing away in a crimson room with a bloody stench—that was the dynamic of our relationship.

“Oh, wait, I forgot. There was one exception…” Oxymoron suddenly turned to me. “The gray-haired girl… I said she pretty much couldn’t heal anyone but herself, but there was one exception.”

“An exception?”

“How’s your right eye? It’s working perfectly, right? Well, she’s the one who restored it.”

‘My right eye?’ I blinked my eyes and felt the presence of a right eyeball despite the eye socket being empty before falling unconscious. It was so perfect that I had forgotten about having lost my right eye until Oxymoron reminded me.

“This isn’t a duplicate of my left eye, is it?”

“It’s not. I checked it myself. I performed the finishing touches to rectify the optical nerve connections, but besides that, it was a perfect regeneration.”

Sihyeon could only herself properly, but I was an exception. Was it because she was a big fan of mine? 

I stopped thinking too much about it since I wouldn’t find an answer either way.

A hero’s powers didn’t follow proper rules or standards, so there were plenty of weird ones out there. We even had a charlatan who used plain water instead of medicine.

“Is that why she conked out on the floor?”

“Yes, I think she used up all her mana restoring your eye. Regenerating parts is a tough task for healers, after all.”

“What about Abin? Why’s she sleeping too?”

“Simply from exhaustion.”

My lips curled into a wry smile. To think an A-Rank hero had used all her mana and fainted to heal me. What a gift of an eye.

I didn’t have anything else to ask regarding my students, so it was time to move to the next subject. “How long until the war?” I asked Oxymoron as I watched Unho snoring next to me.

It was finally time for the white furball to get to work. He had spent 10 long years lazing around at home since my story wasn’t continuing, but the day had finally come for him to earn his keep.

“One day left.”

“And my left arm?”

“Still in incubation.”

“I see.” I flopped back down onto the bed.

The slow yet steady footsteps of war were approaching. How many would die? How many would survive?

Everyone in the war council meeting was excited at the opportunity to finally fight at full power for the first time in a while, but I knew that, deep down, they were simply acting tough to hide their fear.

They were honorable heroes who had invested their all into the great cause of improving the world for the next generation of heroes. Some even went as far as to erase themselves from history like me.

I wasn’t alone—everyone was the same. We hid our fears and emotions with vanity and pride.

I didn’t consider the possibility that I would die in the war.

What I feared was how many others would. How many casualties would there be? How many civilians would be sacrificed?

I knew no one would blame me since they knew my story was a calamity on the level of natural disasters, yet no one could deny the fact that the war was waged in my name—I would be behind all the deaths.

As the anxiety hit me, the stench of blood lingering in the room reminded me of the old days on the battlefield. Feeling nostalgic, I voiced out a genuine question from my heart. “Al’Liv, what do you think of the kids these days?”

After the founding of the Association and through 15 long years, our work to improve the reputation and rights of heroes had created the new generation, but I wondered what my colleagues really thought of the new heroes.

“You know I don’t like being called by my name.”

“It’s because I’m asking you a serious question.”

“Then I guess I’ll allow it.” Oxymoron took off her gas mask and lay down next to me. She had a very light skin tone coupled with Middle Eastern facial features and structure behind the mask.

Her long black hair spread out on the white bedsheets as she fell back. She detested exposing herself to the outside world, so it was extremely rare for her to show her face to others.

“If I were to compare them to us, I would say that they’re bright.”

“Bright, huh?”

That was a positive change. We had built the Hero Association to erase the despair around the world and inside of us, after all. We didn’t want them to inherit our dark experiences.

In exchange…

“However, they’ve all gotten weaker. I really hope they all survive this war, but…” 

Without experiencing true hardships, the quality of the modern heroes fell, and their spirits weakened.

The world was peaceful enough to survive with such weak heroes, but powerful enemies were coming to destroy the peace.

“Those who haven’t faced true hardships have no right to call themselves heroes. A hero must stand by their own justice,” Oxymoron muttered. 

I was taken by surprise by the extremely familiar phrase. 

She continued with, “Didn’t the Black Marauder say that? Honestly, it sounds like something someone I know very well would say.” 

She giggled softly, not muffled by the gas mask. “This war will be a great opportunity for them to experience true hardships and gain the right to be called heroes, don’t you think?”

She stared into my eyes with a deep intensity, not letting me avoid her gaze.

“…Then what are your thoughts about the kids being revered as heroes?” I crossed a dangerous line by treading on that topic—a line I could never go back on. 

Normally, I never would’ve asked the question, but that could end up being the last day I saw her, so I had to ask. I wanted to know what she thought of them. 

A quick-witted person would easily see the truth behind my words.

“Personally, I don’t approve of it.” Al’Liv’s face crumpled in a frown as though she’d recalled a nasty, unpleasant memory. “We started using the term ‘hero’ as a small reward for Awakeners who overcame hardships and fought in gruesome battles.”

Right. The ‘hero’ title was a small reward we handed out to the combatants in terrible wars. We also hoped the title would allow them to get treated as humans and not be discriminated against by the rest of society.

“Even I don’t approve of ignorant and unaware children who have only known peace calling themselves heroes.” Oxymoron started removing her clothes, slowly revealing numerous scars all over her body.

There was a large gash stretching across her back and countless cuts and stitch marks surrounding it. A patch of skin of a different color was sewn on her upper abdomen, and there were metal pins in her neck.

They were all traces of past injuries she couldn’t erase since her powers weren’t as strong back then.

Her hand then gently landed on my cheek. “Mister…”

“What is it?” She hadn’t called me that in a long time.

“You’re the Black Marauder, aren’t you?”

I quickly sharpened my five senses, straining to see if anyone was overhearing us. Heartbeats, breathings, sounds from machines and devices… I scanned for any sort of presence.

I didn’t find anything noteworthy.

Unho and my students’ breathing and heartbeats were normal for sleeping people, and I sensed no listening devices in the room.

“Are you worried someone might be overhearing us?” she asked. “It’s okay. I injected everyone with sedatives already,” Al’Liv proudly explained, as though her actions were praiseworthy.

She wasn’t trying to get a read on me or trick me into revealing myself. Oxymoron was as calm as ever, as if she had stated an obvious fact.

“Haven’t you read the official announcement from the Association?” I asked. “The Black Marauder is a monster that’s mimicking me.”

“You think so? From what I saw, the broken bones and injuries on the victims looked exactly like your handiwork, Mister.”

Oxymoron giggled cheerfully, entertained by how she was playing around with me. She squeezed my cheeks with her hands before continuing, “During my time working with the Association, I’ve seen plenty of victims of your hammer and fists, Mister. I know exactly what your patterns are. There’s no way I wouldn’t notice.”

Having closely known each other for decades, she had figured out the truth in an absurd and nonsensical way—the pattern of injuries.

Then what about those who were in the war council meeting? Could they have figured it out? And what of Infinite Castellan? He’d fought against Black Marauder personally.

The situation was much riskier and more dangerous than I had expected.

“…Will you reveal that info to the Association?” I asked. I wanted to grab my hammer and silence her, but my reason stopped me. 

‘Are you really going to swing your hammer at a colleague?’ I asked myself. All I could do was ask her one final question.

“I won’t do anything at all because I love everyone on both sides.” She cryptically answered.

“What do you mean?”

“I hope that, through this war, the children rethink what it means to be heroes.” Oxymoron avoided the question with a whimsical statement.

Her arms gently wrapped around me as we shared our body temperature. I was the one to hug her in the past, and the tables turned as I fell into her embrace.

Al’Liv—the small child who used to play around with syringes—had grown into the fully fledged adult Oxymoron. Oh, how time flew.

My head lay against her neck as she spoke. “Please don’t be like Grandpa Sword God. Please don’t try to shoulder everything and die alone.”

‘Like Heavenly Demon Sword God, huh…?’

I felt her voice tremble through her neck, revealing our deep connection.

The time we spent together, our continuous relationship, the adventures we experienced, her care and trust in me…

Those were the feelings I sensed through her voice.

“I won’t.”

Time would keep flowing.

The Association, the new heroes, Linshua, everyone… They all changed with the time.

Why was it, then, that I was still the same?

Why was I still unchanged after 30 years?

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