"When are the next rank wars? Are we finished here?"

"Well, we have two more hours to spend. About twenty minutes here and an hour and forty minutes in area 50," Alice smiled.

"Now that you mention it, MGs don't have to take patrols, right?" I asked as I sped up. I was being stubborn. I knew it wouldn't change the time that must be spent in each area, even if I walked faster. And so, we walked through the narrow streets to the next area. Eden was a dense concrete forest. The roads between buildings were only wide enough for a single lane of cars and pedestrian paths. It was such a hassle navigating through it with sharp turns everywhere, so most people preferred a combination of bicycles and tube trains.

"Lily... stop scowling..." Alice said.

"I am not scowling."

"Look, look! Patrolling magical girls!" a bystander pointed towards us. They slowly inched together in excitement.

"Wow. She is wearing black? I have never seen a Magical Girl wearing black as their dominant color..."

"Hello," I waved at them, putting on the usual smile I had trained all my life to maintain.

"Hello! Hello! Magical Girl Shining Arrow here!" Alice greeted them with her trademark happiness.

"Magical Girl Sapphire Priest! Has there been any trouble?"

"Red Flame Darkness here! Call me if you see an anathema, okay? I'll beat them all and protect all of you!" he then patted one of the boys who came with their parents on the street.

"Ahh! My sister mentioned you! She is one of those girls from New Mesa! Thank you for saving my sister."

"My friend's dad was there too! Thank you for saving him! Too bad some of his coworkers died." Some kid mourned at the death of his friends We didn't save everyone. When the initial usurpation hit, there were more than two thousand people died. His friends must be one of them.

"Yeah, New Mesa only had 3 MGs during the attack. It was lucky they managed to save more than seven thousand people there."

"Stupid Shirayuki. They should never have endorsed such a reckless project." The mere mention from the bystander of Shirayuki sent a pang through my heart. I shot a glare at the bystander, my eyes filled with a mix of anger and sorrow.

"Lily, I sense discomfort in your heart. Are you okay?" Fel asked.

"I am fine," I answered telepathically.

"Very well. Please remember that you should not attack civilians unless absolutely necessary. You can leave if you feel uncomfortable."

"First warning, huh?"

"Everyone gets it. Don't worry. Humans have emotions. Sometimes, they did something outside of our predictions. It is our duty to warn you not to be controlled by your emotions. The result could be catastrophic if you hit a civilian out of anger since you could practically kill them with a finger."

"Well, don't say that…" I pouted. I wouldn't pick a fight. I have perfect control over my emotions. I've trained my whole life for it.

"I believe in you. However, it's true. You could kill or seriously harm civilians in your Guardian form with a flick of a finger. So, don't fight with civilians."

"If Shirayuki is at fault, what about the other fifteen frontier cities? Are you saying we should stay cooped up in sanctuary cities?" I asked them back. I tried to smile and control my tone so as not to appear intimidating.

"Well, I guess Shirayuki only got the short end of the stick, huh?" the civilian muttered. "But five cities have already fallen. I guess the reconquer project is doomed already. What a shame. We were probably too ambitious."

"New Mesa was attacked by twenty usurpations in one day, you know!"

"Hey, hey, did you guys really fight those huge, scary anathema monsters?"

"Well… huh?" Alice looked down into the air, but I knew she was talking to her familiar telepathically. "No. We were on supporting duty! It was Magical Guardian Issen and Pink Heart that repelled the monster! Ah, and here is our new member, Black Lily! She helped lure the monster away from civilians, you know!"

"Why do you need to lure the monster away? They have an emergency barrier, right? What a stupid thing to do," one civilian muttered.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Maybe they wanted to perform an ambush?" another civilian suggested in response.

"The ba—" Stop there, Magical Girl Black Lily—" Felicia interrupted me with a telepathic conversation. I looked at her. She then manifested herself on my shoulder.

"They must not know the barrier can be broken. It will create fear," she telepathically told me.

"Wow, a cat! Can I pet her?" one of the bystanders asked. Wan-chan, Shining Arrow's familiar, also manifested himself and joined in. Alice then distracted them from New Mesa's topic: "We have a cat and a dog!"

"Yes, you may pet me, nyaa. I will jump to you!" Felicia jumped toward the girl, and they played around, distracting the civilians.

"Please, can I have your autograph? I also saw you on TV yesterday! You got promoted to Rank E in a week. Awesome! They said you were the fastest!" After we did some PR stunts, we waved them goodbye.

"Thank you. Please keep supporting me and Shining Arrow, okay?" I waved goodbye.

"But it's rather pointless, right? Over 7000 people saw it," Alice said telepathically through her familiar after the peanut gallery dispersed, and we were alone. Her chat was set to public, so I could also hear it. She received the same warning too, huh?

"They didn't see the barrier breaking. All they saw was the crumbling of Guardian Command. Guardian Command then decided to make an announcement that the barrier went offline due to unexpected reasons. Many people speculated that it was due to the constructions not being earthquake-resistant."

"..." I glared at her. "I don't like how you put it. It makes Shirayuki Company seem like a villain for providing shoddy construction jobs."

"We do not place blame on Shirayuki. We simply advised to put earthquake-resistant buildings to house emergency barriers next time. Of course, it was all a ruse."

"What if another aberrant attacked a barrier?" Alice asked.

"We will come clean if there are many witnesses. We will say a level 270 monster broke the barrier. Trust is important, after all. When the time comes, we will also admit Shirayuki was at no fault, though we never pointed fingers at them to begin with. Then we will develop a new version of the barrier that could withstand such attacks."

"You are a bit too optimistic," Alice commented.

"Maintaining morale is important," Felicia responded. "The appearance of high-level anathema and the hierarchy of barriers is a huge deal even to the zenith. We could not afford to send Rank S Guardians to remote places. They needed to guard sanctuary cities now more than ever. I suspect the Frontier project must be halted, and its residents pulled back in the meantime. Without RED, the enemy could pull out stunts like this all they liked.

"But there hasn't been such kind of announcement, right?"

"There are none so far."

I scowled all the way through Area 50. It was so noticeable that it even made a civilian hesitate to greet me. However, I quickly turned my perfect smile back on when they approached. The civilian simply assumed I was grouchy because of some minor issues. They all knew magical girls were humans, not some all-loving goddesses. They only smiled, and some even chuckled as they made assumptions about why I was scowling. They didn't pry or ask me directly, though, understanding it might be something private.

As soon as we returned to the Guardian Academy (Guardian Academy and Guardian Command are next to each other), I went to the virtual training room and chose a random duel.

"The opponent has rejected the duel invitation," the window flashed before my eyes.

"Hm?"

"Ah, the opponent can reject a duel invitation."

"Why?"

"Duels are not mandatory, after all. They only count toward the weekly quest," Alice explained. "Many even forfeit the duel openly. Duels are different from training or sparring. They are displayed on the monitor."

"Accepted."

I jumped into the sleeping pod and emerged 5 minutes later. The enemy was a green rank, and he swung his sword randomly. When I cut him down, he didn't seem the slightest bit apprehensive, and the match was over.

[Weekly Quest! Duel 2/3]

[Reward: 50 points]

[Remaining Points: 444 (394 + 50)]

"... the opponent threw the match," I muttered.

I looked at the leaderboard and noticed I was ranked 82 out of 300. Just two duels and I had already reached rank 82? "Why..."

"Solo doesn't have a tournament. Every new semester, the members' points are reset to a thousand. Then they duel. If you win, you get 10 points; if you lose, you lose 5 points. This isn't about gate points, by the way," Red Flame explained. "Team rankings' points don't get reset, though. If you survive, it's two points; if you kill an opponent, it's one point."

"They rank them based on points?"

"Yes."

"I see." I nodded. I vaguely recalled in the virtual room, there were multiple options, such as dueling, training, dummy-making, etc.

"Well, it's not recommended to go out solo. So, if they want to go outside, it's better to be in a team or contract with companies." We then left the training room for the restaurant's VIP room as we chatted. There were no more duels even after I waited for an hour there in the virtual room. I was disappointed. Solo ranking felt like a dead game server. Is a team tournament the only way to go?

I looked toward Sapphire while thinking about contracting with companies. "Did you guys..."

"Ehehe. We wanted to go outside, too. Patrolling is boring, right? But we only reached rank 47 out of 100. We were way off from being in expedition teams. That's why we made some dealings with Mr. Kageyama."

"He was mean, though. Ouch!" Sapphire elbowed Red Flame. "I'm an honest guy, alright. If I don't like someone, I say it to their face."

"Thank you for your honesty," I smiled.

"See, she likes it."

"Why does Uncle make an agreement only with you?" I asked, but it was Felicia who answered my question.

"We also wanted more MGs to go outside, but we can't leave Eden empty either. We need at least five or ten teams ready at all times. Moreover, sending E and F-rank teams might pose a serious safety concern. They lack training and experience. But MGs are free. They can leave and contract with companies if they wish to. So, we put some discouragement, such as quest distribution, etc."

"There are barely 200 MGs of rank D and above..." I tried to recall MG rank distribution in Eden.

"By the way, Serene Night is in the top five in D rank. She reached such a rank one month ago!" Sapphire commented.

"I see. That's why our reinforcements are so awkward. Some were excellent, like serene, and others were mediocre. They were made just the day before. But we should still have enough. Why do we only have three MGs?" Shining asked.

"We don't meddle outside of Eden. So, it's all human decisions."

"The Enra company almost took everything, huh." I sighed and recalled the first and the most prominent company of Eden, Enra.

"We have no data about that."

"You don't?"

"We don't delve into human affairs that deeply. We don't want to control everything."

"Do you know how many MGs are in each frontier? Including the fallen ones?"

"Yes. Accessing archives." Felicia then spawned a window before us.

"Eugh! The fallen cities has no MGs? They must be crazy."

"It was more like an outpost or a village than a city. The population was merely two thousand."

"This city had 3,000 deaths out of 3027 residents! It was a total annihilation! We sure were lucky in New Mesa!" Alice commented.

"This city has 50 MGs! Some of them are ranked C, and 2 of them are ranked B! This one had 100! That's cheating!" Sapphire muttered, aghast. These were New Lake and New Hill frontier cities. Both are managed by Newstar Co. and Enra Company—the company I offered my services to so we could get more MGs for New Mesa.

"Fel, close the window. We're done." Disgust rose in my stomach as I finally understood the politics here. However, Shirayuki is the eighth-ranked company in Eden. Why do we only have one group of MGs? When I looked at other cities, they had at least two or three groups of MGs, except for these four other frontier cities. They said they rely entirely on MS. Did we try to become like them?

"Nyaa. Closing."

"So, what are we going to do now? Guard other frontier cities?"

"No. We will focus on the team ranking tournament. I want to be on an expedition," I answered.

"Eh? It's dangerous! Lily, expedition teams have the most casualties, you know," Sapphire exclaimed.

"Yeah. Even though they are top ten in each rank, three or four MGs die on every expedition!"

"... Well, we are Magical Girls! We have a duty to save the Earth! Right, everyone?" Alice said.

"With Black Lily, it feels like we have a chance. I'm in," Red Flame said.