MMG

by Throwaway1971

Frozen MMG

2. The Dawn of a New Week that isn’t Better

Blinking, you come to yourself, blearily finding your bearings. You don't recognize the ceiling you're waking up to, and all attempts to find your glasses prove to be futile.

Then you come upon white hair growing from your head, and it clicks.

"Right, so it wasn't a dream."

"What wasn't, chuuh?"

Looking lower, you behold your Puchuu, the black cat of a stuffed toy standing by the opposite wall of the office you took as your temporary bedroom as it carries some weird odds and ends on its head.

"This whole magical girl thing," you explain. "Doesn't matter now, though." All that matters is what you do going forwards.

"If you say so, puchuu. I've been packing up all night after you went to sleep, so I'm nearly done here, chuuh. You don't happen to have a use for a few hundred only slightly moldy condoms?"

You give the Puchuu a hard look.

"Thought so, chuuh. You ready to move out?"

"Actually, I would like to experiment with my powers a bit, first. We have no idea what we may run into, so I'd prefer to get some practice in ahead of time."

"Chuuh, unlikely, especially with your 'eyes', but- your prerogative, puchuuh. Anything you need help with, chuh?"

"Well," you say, thinking and consiering your apparent abilities, "I could probably work with my magic, figure out more ways to use it than throwing cold at a problem. Or maybe I should just practice with my waterguns a bit, use condoms as target practice so they have some use at least. I also keep getting the feeling that I suddenly know something I didn't know before, but I'm not sure how comfortable I feel with trying to mess with that right now. Better to get a secured base to work in first, then poke around inside my head, you know?"

"I see, puchuuh."

"Threat Detected. None shall escape."

Your 'transformation phrase' is very much in the same vein as your detransformation phrase, even as calling it out floods your mind with familiar calm coming over you.

"Interesting, chuuh. The transformation phrases of a girl are usually indicative of their character more than anything else, chuh, and yours is uncommonly short."

"I see," you answer, not really caring at this point. "Let's get started, then. How do I attack things with magic?"

"Puchuuh, normally, you would attempt to condense your mana to create an effect and move it with more mana, for beginners, chuh. We can go try it on the leftover condoms, chuuh!"

Hesitantly, you follow after the Puchuu. This can't work out... too badly, can it?

As it turns out, it actually doesn't. The Puchuu is patient and explains what is happening to you in the roughest terms, walking you through the steps of condensing your mana into a concrete shape that you can move around in the moment of its creation, mainly in the form of making it 'fire' off into a direction.

Many of your casts misfire, ending up as just a bunch of half-realized chunks of ice that soon fades away or just materializing, but not moving (because this is actually hard and needs you to concentrate), but before long, you start to get the hang of it.

"Chuuh! And that's how you deal with monsters, puchuuh. Creating a coherent spell like you did immediately after being created is very uncommon, chuuh."

You have the uncomfortable feeling the Puchuu is looking at you in a way you'd prefer not to be looked at, but you don't have the time to question it about that, the fluff abomination jumping onto your head all of a sudden.

"Now can we get a move on?"

Staring at an alleyway as though consternated in your transformed state, you keep on observing the swirling flow of magic surrounding the alleyway you're standing in front of, slowly puzzling out how the fuck to step through it.

Your first foray into the Overcity was... annoying, a passage on the side of a busy street right next to the old condom factory that required one to stand in front of a streetlamp, wait exactly thirty seconds and touch it before passing between it and the wall next to it, all done at a certain weekday that changed with the month.

Suffice to say, neither you nor the Puchuu really cared about trying it out.

The next entrance you tried was a little easier to traverse, merely requiring you to hop into it backwards, but as soon as you actually managed to enter, you got a bad feeling.

That feeling was reinforced as you took a look around, saw chitinous growths covering the urban landscape around yourself and hopped right the fuck out of there again when you heard clicking, buzzing and scuttling from everywhere around you.

Again, not exactly a place you wanted to use.

Ultimately, your third try only needs you to wait until 'dawn or dusk', that is, some arbitrarily defined period during which the sun is going up or coming down above the city, to walk right through the wall.

Luckily, you woke up a bit before sunrise, so you and the Puchuu can get through without any trouble. Once on the other side, you can immediately tell the difference in atmosphere; the Overcity, it seems, is nothing so much as it is...

Silent.

Cloying and heavy the complete and utter absence of sound presses down on you, each of your footsteps echoing loudly between the walls of the alley you came in from.

"Finally, chuuh," your Puchuu says, "a decent place to set up shop in. Doesn't sound like anything else is around, either."

Uncomfortable with being so subjectively noisy, but compelled to fill the silence anyways, you voice your questions and concerns. "So we just... take over one of these buildings?"

"Yep, not like anyone else is using them, puchuchuchu. Many magical girls or even monsters that end up here set up a base, if they have a reliable entrance nearby, chuuh. Few do, though, which is why your sight is so useful, puchuh."

"So not many magical girls are around?" You ask, taking a look around the slightly, but distinctly changed version of the street you recall being here.

"That depends, puchuh! Some girls that 'retire' just spend their days in the Sprawl, scavenging food from the surroundings, but normally, you only get friendly denizens in the rare settled areas mostly springing up around big cities, puchuuh. Active magical girls come here sometimes, but are usually more active on Earth, puchuh, on account of there no being humans to protect from the monsters in the Overcity. Rare exceptions are places where it is extremely accessible and just becomes another part of the normal city humans can't differentiate from their usual surroundings, or the very rare girls that can shift between the Sprawl and the normal world at will, chuuuh."

"I see," you answer, and you do. It is theoretically possible for you to be found here, but exceedingly unlikely, is what the Puchuu is saying. "How about this building?"

The house you're pointing towards is a decently sized family home, with a big garden and two floors that you can make out.

"Chuh, it'll do."

Setting up shop, as it were, is as simple as breaking open the door with a well-targeted chunk of ice and declaring it yours. The inside is actually furnished, much as you would imagine a family actually living here would, with food in the cupboards and functioning lights.

And yet, you can't help but feel like this place has never been intruded on by any being whatsoever, the lack of dust more to do with the absolute stillness of even the air until you came than anything else.

"This place has a basement, puchuh! I'm calling dibs on it, chuh," Your Puchuu informs you before storming off. "Just take whatever room you want, chuuh."

"Alright," you call after it. Taking your time to look around the house, it turns out there's actually stairs leading up to a third floor instead of an attic, the roof slanted noticeably but still leaving a lot of open space, a small side room all that's segmented from the rest of the space up here.

There's also a wide doublebed you immediately fall in love with. You have found your new room!

Well, you've managed to find a place to rest, at least. It doesn't exactly feel like home, but hey, neither does your body quite feel like yours yet. You'll just have to live with it.

Speaking of living with it, while things have been... hectic, so far, you have managed to get a rough grasp on the situation. Fight monsters to keep the Puchuu happy, get coins somehow to become more powerful, hopefully assemble a harem of other magical girls and achieve world domination at some point in the future.

To actually do all of that, though, you'll have to be powerful enough to survive the first part. Luckily enough, the Puchuu currently producing the sawing sounds drifting out of the basement (somehow) has already taught you the rough idea of how to use magic beyond the instinctive flailing you did back when you woke up in this situation, so...

"I'll be in the garden for a bit if you need anything," you call down the stairs, the sounds ceasing for a moment. "Got it, chuuh!"

So far so good.

Freely creating ice, as it turns out, is a lot harder than you'd have thought.

You would think, generally, that being able to create ice like for the ice shard thing you can already do should be simple, merely repeating something you can already do on a different scale. But no, coherently creating ice as a general measure as opposed to a practiced spell is an enormous difference.

Best you can put it, your control over your magic kind of works like muscle memory does for a human body. You practice a particular move so you can perform it easier. The more direct and simple a spell is, the easier a time you have casting it, while it becomes increasingly more difficult to cast something the more complex and diffuse it is.

Case in point, creating ice however you want to is hard, while conjuring ice shards flying at something, while costing more mana compared to how much ice you get, is much easier, faster and can be done by simply expending the energy, mana, magic juices or however you want to call it and forming the spell almost automatically, instinctively.

Turns out magic isn't exactly easy, though your ability to rapidly regenerate any mana you expend does come in handy for your testing.

Coming back inside and noting that you don't seem to be sweating at all even after all that practice, you walk over towards the stairs, hearing noises as though from a drilling machine come from the basement this time.

"I'm done in the garden, going to scout out the surroundings a bit next," you call, the sounds stopping once more.

"I see, chuh."

That's that, then. Time to take a look around.

Well, you have good news and you have bad news.

The good news is, you've found a decent amount of loot. The buildings around 'your' neighbourhood are intact and fully stocked with what you'd expect in normal homes and inhabited buildings, including food, the odd piece of clothing and even cleaning supplies, all free for the taking!

The crowning part of it all, of course, is the huge mall building you found, smack dab in the middle of of the city where you're pretty sure nothing of the sort is in the real world. Thing is, that's where the bad news begin.

You keenly remember your encounter with what you have dubbed The Swarm earlier today, the confusing mess of plantlike chitinous growth filled with what you could only suspect to be massive insects. Thing is, it turns out you're completely correct, as you can observe enormously oversized insects flying to and from the place, carrying what you think is a bunch of food scavenged from the surroundings inside their claws.

This, then, is what the area you appeared in looks like from the outside; a massive overgrown nest of insects.

Plus side, they seem to be keeping to the area nearby, at least? You, uh... you have no idea how to see the positives of this situation, honestly.

You hate bugs.

In the end, you just... turn back. You simply just weren't going to mess with that mess for the time being, and staying in the area doesn't seem wise, so... Yeah.

You aren't running away, you're making a strategically sound decision in advancing into the other direction.

On the way, you actually go ahead and enter a few of the nearby buildings once you've gotten some decent distance between yourself and The Swarm, looking around for anything useful or valuable. Pocketing a few chocolate bars as you go along, mentally marking promising sources of good food after you've calmed down a bit, you actually come across a smartphone of some kind just lying there on a living room table.

Snooping around a bit, you actually find a charging cable, and a tentative attempt shows the thing to be functioning and unlocked.

Sure, it isn't any design you've ever seen or heard of before, and it's apparently made by 'WhiteView', but hey, whatever. It has a functioning camera and can apparently do apps, though it can't get any connection with anything right now.

You still pocket it for now. If nothing else, the camera and notes functions may come in handy.

Finally arriving back at the building you are simply thinking of as your base for the time being after your several hour long trek (properly scouting a cityscape takes a surprisingly long time), you waste no time in getting back to the Puchuu.

Luckily, the bugger seems to just be hanging out in the kitchen now that it's done doing something to the basement.

"Hey Puchuu, I wanted to show you this," you say as you hold out the weird smartphone you found. "Got this from one of the buildings a block or so away, is it safe to keep?"

"Puchuuh, should be fine. Objects that show up in the Sprawl are generally fine unless placed as traps, and it doesn't look like something trapped, chuuh. You have to see whether it works in the real world, though, puchuh."

"Good. That's good. Also, uh, there may be a problem."

When the Puchuu just keeps looking at you, you swallow before taking a deep breath.

"There'sagiantloadofbugsandIhatethem."

"Chuh."

Getting up, the Puchuu jumps off the kitchen table and comes to sit in front of you. "What kind of giant bugs, how many and what were they doing, puchuuh?"

"Uhh, I don't know? A lot inside some kind of nest, the same one I stumbled inside earlier, and they were scavenging the surroundings, I think," you say, unsure where this is going.

"Should be alright then, puchuuh." You give it a disbelieving look, and it seems to get it. "If they're the nesting type, they are likely lead by a queen, and should not become a problem for a while yet unless they have access to a portal, puchuuh. And the one only we know is near them requires backhops, right?"

You motion for it to go on. "They are bugs, chuh. They cannot hop backwards, biologically speaking. The nearest portal they may be able to use is ours, chuuh, so as long as we keep it secure, they will likely just keep building up their nest, puchuuh, and that gives us time to deal with them. Just keep an ear out for lots of sudden disappearances, that means they'd have found a way to the real city, chuuh."

You are... less than enthused. "What about us? Won't they attack the base?"

"Unlikely, chuuh," the Puchuu says. "Nesting types will generally stay close to their nest and avoid venturing further, as the queen can just lay more eggs. While human breeders would be a boon to them, they do not need them, and will not seek them out until they move on to rapid expansion, puchuuh."

You're still not really happy.

"I am still not happy about them being there. We'll actually have to fight them, by which I mean 'I' will have to fight them, right?"

"Don't worry about it, chuuh. Bugs are weak to cold, and to fire, and to a lot of things, puchuuh. By the time you'll actually have to face them, you will have had time to prepare and build up yourself, with my help, even, chuuh!"

"I remember the help you were to the fire girl," you murmur in response.

"That was an entirely different situation, chuuh. She ignored my advice, and see where that got her," the Puchuu protests. "You have proven to be at least minimally competent so far, and you didn't get captured as a bug breeder as a target of opportunity, so let's hope the pattern holds, chuh!"

Lovely.

"Okay, next question. I see you're done in the basement, but what exactly were you doing down there?" You ask, wondering if it even put this much effort into its previous hideout.

"Setting up a place to run some experiments, puchuh! You may call it a lab if you want, as that isn't far off, chuh," the Puchuu answers as it begins pacing around. "I mentioned helping me in a few of my own projects already, chuuh, and my bastion of science will be the forefront of the war for knowledge, puchuuh, as well as where I will make the most progress! You may even profit from it yourself, puchuh."

"Oookay," you answer, deadpan. "I guess I shouldn't come down there, then?" It being what looks a lot like your newly creepified murder basement or something.

"Oh no, chuuh, feel free to come down. Just don't touch anything."

An awkward break in the conversation sets in, with neither of you knowing what to say next, before you adjust the sides of your worryingly revealing dress (you still aren't sure about wearing one, by the way) and just spurt out what's on your mind. "How likely is it there are more goblins in the woods?"

"Pretty likely, chuuh. Goblins often build nests in woodland and caves, so I expect there to be at least one group the raiding party was coming from, puchuuh. Why do you ask?"

"I need to fulfill my role as a magical girl, apparently, and my magic seems well suited to dealing with goblins," you explain. "So I wanted to know if you had any actual advice for dealing with them."

"Why didn't you say so, chuhchuh? To begin with, goblins are a monster species with high reproductive rates, but pathetic individual strength, occasionally being fought off by even mundane humans unless using their numbers. When out to find food and or mates, they will attempt to surround their targets to gang up on them wielding primitive weapons, but they are smart enough to set still primitive traps nearby and inside their nests, puchuuh, so watch out for that."

That's... actually pretty useful to know. "Anything else to watch out for? Any... subspecies, or things like that?"

"Oversized versions of goblins are sometimes spotted, puchuuh, but whether these so-called hobgoblins are an evolved species of goblins that arise from their lesser brethren, some kind of enhanced goblins empowered by unusual amounts of mana or a seperate monster race entirely is unknown as of yet. If you see one, make sure to bring its corpse back, I can pay you a bronze or two. Aside from that, I would need more information to tell you more... how about that phone you found, does it have a camera, chuuh?"

"It does. Do you want me to take pictures?"

"Of anything of interest you find, chuuh. I'll pay you at least a few copper for any interesting footage, puchuuh! But for now, you should go and rest, chuh, to prepare for tomorrow," the 'grinning' black cat twirps at you.

"Right," you answer. Time to go and... try to get over the shock of The Swarm.

Why'd it have to be bugs?

Your rest is troubled and filled with dreams about swarms of insects streaming all over you, numerous tiny little legs crawling on your skin and eating through your flesh, though you at least manage to sleep through what amounts to 'night', as you only now realize the sun never actually rose above the Overcity, an eternal half-awake gloom not contributing to your efforts to get a good night's rest until you stumble around and shut the blinds to block out the low level of light coming in through the slanted roof's windows.

Anyways, after a hearty yawn and a quick note to yourself that you don't really stink or anything after wearing your transformed costume all this time (you don't feel comfortable detransforming with The Swarm nearby) and don't even have bad morning breath somehow, you descend down the stairs, kind of thinking about panties and the lack of them in your costume, as well as the possibility of this being intentional to make magical girls better monster bait as opposed to you just being an outlier.

Something to keep in mind if you ever meet another magical girl.

"Good morning, chuuh!" Your magical mascot greets you as you come down to the ground floor, following after you as you make your way to the kitchen.

"Mornin," you mumble, refusing to physically rub the sleep out of your eyes and look even more like a little girl than you already do anyways as you start searching through the cupboards, the chocolate bars you scarfed down yesterday far from enough to keep you sated.

"I have been quite busy last night and managed to successfully create a few potions with the ingredients I had left over from what I collected before we met, chuuh. They should come in handy for your goblin hunt, puchuuh."

"Mhgrmble?" You ask as you pull a carton of eggs out of the freezer. Some sunny side up with toast sounds lovely right about now.

"Three of them," your Puchuu replies, either having understood you or just assuming, "with three different effects, chuuh. One can heal you, one can increase your strength for a time and one is very, very flammable, puchuuh."

"Mguh?"

"Trade secret. If you want the recipes, either find them on your own or pay up."

Some might question whether it is a good idea to expend all your mana as you try to reliably get your almost instinctive surge of cold to cover a wider area as you cast it, and to move it around easier after you do.

To those concerns you might answer by spitting on anyone that were to actually tell you about them. With the rate you can just regenerate mana, there isn't exactly any sense in trying to cautiously save it up except a certain amount to make sure you can react to any sudden issues, and so you keep on working away at improving your best proven anti-goblin strategy.

Of course, it doesn't take that long to attract a certain magical plush animal.

"I would have thought you would be out on your way by now after what you said yesterday, chuuh," the Puchuu squeaks at you in its high-pitched voice.

"I just want to go out the best prepared I can be," you explain your actions. "Seeing as how the last girl turned out, I'm just making sure that I have an easy exit strategy in case I need to retreat and recover. Speaking of which, I had a few questions for you, if you don't mind."

"Fire away, chuuh, I just won't answer some things."

"First off, I am going to need to find those goblins if I am to fight them. Any suggestions as to how?" You ask, the question that's the most present in your mind your highest priority.

It is kind of important, after all.

"Chuuh, there are a few ways. Goblins are, theoretically, magical, insofar as what they have can be called magic, and thus should register with your ability to see magic, puchuuh. Aside from that, you could try following any tracks you might find, or just make a lot of noise and see if you can attract goblins that way, they should approach if they her a young female's voice, puchuuh. Or just wander the woods until you find them?"

"Right," you say, taking in the deluge of information. "That's a few ideas, at least. "Anything else I should look out for in the woods?"

"Unlikely, chuuh. If there was anything else, it would likely be fighting the goblins, though, so if you see any other monsters, just try to lose it or lead it towards them. There is very little ambient mana in the area, too, which makes it more likely nothing more magical than the goblins is present, and little to none magical plants or the like are liable to crop up, puchuuh."

The Puchuu is literally getting up now, so you hurriedly add one last question before it manages to wander off. "Any idea about how many goblins there are likely to be?"

"Puchuuh, judging by the size of the raiding party you fought, I would guess around fourty goblins, or between fifty and sixty if they did manage to capture a breeder or two at some point, chuuh. Any more and they would have swarmed you with more numbers. Chuh."

"I see," you mutter, watching the Puchuu leave the garden for the time being. That's... something to work with, at least.

Alright You took your time to prepare, you have those three 'potions' tucked away inside a satchel color-coordinated with your outfit you summoned up and slung around a shoulder and you have a good idea of what to do.

You can do this.

"Are you going to start or stand here all night, chuh?" The Puchuu asks, clearly unimpressed by your staring contest with the trees just out of town.

"I very nearly died and had all of this happen to me in there. I am entitled to a moment to mentally prepare myself," you deadpan.

Well, you do have that handy power to literally see magic, and goblins are supposed to be magical in the at least technical sense. So you just walk into the woods a decent distance, until you can no longer see the road, and begin climbing the largest tree you can see.

At least in this your younger body does come in handy, as well as ample practice from your actual childhood. You still have to put in some effort even as you are nimbler than you can ever recall being, but before long you manage to get a decent distance up.

Once you find a good branch that can take your weight, you take a seat, carefully taking a look around. There really isn't much out of the ordinary that you can see, but you make sure anyways, thoroughly scanning everything from your surroundings to the horizon.

And eventually, your persistence pays off! You spot a weak swirl of colors arising from a section of street in the distance, too far away to really be easily seen.

Luckily, you happen to have that possibly magical, but likely just otherworldly or something smartphone on hand. Which has a camera.

With a zoom function.

Yeah, you've found yourself some goblins alright.

Well, you have a location and, more importantly, the element of surprise. It doesn't matter whether or not it'll actually be worth it, seeing how the last fight with goblins turned out, you categorically refuse not to do this properly.

Which is why you approach the goblins first of all. While you don't have any idea how many there are exactly, the foliage in the area having blocked your sight, a general location is more than enough to work with, far as you're concerned, especially as the Puchuu didn't mention anything about enhanced senses when it described goblins to you.

Sure, it could have been trying to get you killed, but if that's what's going on, you'll just have to deal with it.

And run like crazy, obviously, in case your spells can't save your ass, potentially literally.

So, having a rough notion of being 'close enough', what with you not exactly having a map of the area or anything, you begin using your magic. Specifically, you conjure ice from nothing.

A whole load of ice. Enough to exhaust you for a few moments, though you can simply rest a bit to recover.

Never too long, of course, fearing the goblins may move on at some point if you take too much time in this. Eventually, you manage to implement the overall idea of what you're trying to go for; a winter wonderland covering the floor in slick ice, with thick spikes jutting from nearby trees you can grow them out of.

Ice skating in any weather, with 'natural' obstacles to boot! Who wants a try, who's a chicken?

Suppressing the urge to snicker, you place the last part of your trap; your smartphone, embedded in a small bowl you carved into your ice, set to ring an alarm in two minutes.

Hopefully enough for you to get onto that tree approximately in the middle of your setup.

The effects don't take long to show themselves; within mere seconds, a horde of goblins storms into your trapped area, most of them running right onto the ice without thinking.

Less than a handful stay back, cackling with glee as they watch their comrades frantically attempt to keep upright, crunching through the thinner parts of your ice in the process, your smartphone entirely forgotten for the moment.

One by one, the moronic little creatures stumble and fall, only to get up again and repeat the whole thing. Until they manage to impale themselves on the spikes you left, screeching out and bleeding all over the place.

A few of them just get a spike through the hand, arm, leg or foot, managing to avoid dying quite yet. Most that didn't manage to quickly return from the ice and join the others in pointing and laughing, though, get the pointy pieces of ice through their heads or torsos, the ones that die quickly with an impaled lung or even heart lucky compared to the ones who get their stomachs, franky, fucked up, bleeding massively in a way you would imagine looks similar to a stuck pig and struggling until their lives run out.

At the end of it all, nearly half the goblins involved in this whole thing are dead, but... not all of them. And from the looks of it, this might just be a patrol or other 'away' party, so... you'll need a way to find the nest if you want to uproot them entirely, even if you imagine your Puchuu would be satisfied with the deaths of all of these creatures for now.

Concentrating for just a moment, you pump a bunch of mana into your surroundings, directing it towards where the laughing goblins have assembled.

All but one of them are affected by the piece of winter blowing through the area, the cold soon leaving them unable to move as ice creeps along their limbs.

Securely seated up in your perch, all you have to do is take aim and fire, and honestly? You hardly even need to aim when your targets are incapable of moving.

You don't really emote the way you're used to when transformed, mostly keeping a fairly blank face as far as you understand, but you still do a little fistpump in victory as the one goblin you left capable of running does exactly that instead of trying to hide in the nearby shrubbery.

Now all you have to do is follow it.

The short chase through the forest is almost brought to a halt once or twice, your strangely keen senses telling you a bit about where the goblin ran around certain areas and why. The fresh trail heads into the woods, of course, past bushes and trees and whatever one might find inside such an area.

Thing is, the bushes are filled with sharpened sticks of wood here and there, smeared with some slimy substance you honestly don't want to investigate closer, as well as what looks suspiciously like simple pit traps dug into the ground and camouflaged with leaves, loose dirt and the odd plane of plastic or clothes.

Looks like the goblins have been dumpster diving, or looting their victims.

Once or twice you have to jump over tripwires, even, and lures meant to trigger when something steps into them, their counterweights made out of whatever junk the goblins could find, from bricks to plastic containers to rolled-up newspapers, all bound together with primitive ropes made by binding plant vines together.

You make a note to take pictures of these things later on, both to show to the Puchuu and to let you review later on, but for now, your goal remains clear.

A smelly little cave for smelly little creatures.

Well, no real reason to change a winning strategy just yet. With that in mind, you begin casting, creating ice some distance inside the cave and working your way forwards, regularly stopping to recover your mana and add your trusty spikes.

You can't make any of your ice all that thick, on account of the kind of mana expenditure this would be, but before long, you have a decent amount of the cave's insides covered in your preparations, your own sharp sticks and slick trip hazard formed.

(Mana currently at 80/130)

Not a second too soon, too, the characteristic ugly screeching of goblins echoing towards you.

Time to do this and, hopefully, get it over with already. Call yourself a spiteful fucker, but you do distinctly remember why you nearly died and had to become a little girl to survive.

Killing all the goblins acutely responsible for that whole thing is just a start, as far as you're concerned. Not like any of the things seem in any way less monstrous little shits, so it isn't like anyone will complain.

To little surprise, the greenskinned menace doesn't take long to show itself, goblins charging headlong as soon as they realize something happened to the shitty cave they're lairing in.

Goblins also, however, still aren't any smarter than before, many of them impaling themselves when they're too dumb not to step right into your traps. You're... honestly feeling a little pity for just how stupid the creatures are.

Not that much, but putting them out of their misery definitely just shot up the list of motivations you have for this whole operation.

Anyways, the ones that didn't run into your icy spikes without a second thought are keeping back, apparently trying to find a solution for the concundrum of having no way out... when said solution comes to them.

Violently.

An enormous creature, one you immediately doubt is biologically related to the green midgets by virtue of its sheer size, steps forwards, actually clothed in pieces of what you can only assume to be brown leather and carrying an enormous club, likely made out of a whole tree torn from the ground.

And it's clearly a modicum more intelligent than the rest, too, seeing as how it lifts one of the goblins, wearing a cracked pot as a helmet, and throws it right at you!

Ducking out of the way, just barely avoiding the creature's flailing limbs as it sails past you, you hear several loud crashes as it proceeds to skip onto the ground several times, the sickening sound of cracking bones and garbled cries echoing through the hallway you're standing in.

This thing is fucking strong.

And, more worryingly, saying something, the grunting sounds seemingly actually laden with meaning, from how the goblins are starting to jump in place, more of their primitive, high-pitched cries echoing from deeper inside the caves.

This just got complicated...

You don't have your guns drawn, but you weren't really expecting to be using them to take care of this, anyways. Your magic is suited to fights like this significantly better, after all.

So you go ahead and blast an icy wind at the goblins once more, testing the waters. This should hopefully disable the critters and-

(Mana at 50/130)

The big one, tentatively labeled hobgoblin, based on what the Puchuu told you about these creatures, roars, loud enough you can't make out the sounds of the forest behind you, and when your wall of frosty air reaches it and the goblins arraying themselves around it, they seem to be weathering the cold much better than the ones you used it on before, only shivering and falling to the ground all over as a low fog builds up.

The hobgoblin just snorts, its breath white as it disperses around its head, and when more of the little green creatures filter in, it simply points towards you, shouting something in its guttural language.

The goblins charge and slip on the ice, except they don't actually stop, gleefully impaling themselves on your spikes as their comrades trample along.

Are they trying to simply throw more of themselves at you until you run out of spikes?

Alright, and with that, you're outta here. If you can't take out the big one, and it can keep the small ones functional, there's no way you'll just wait for them to overrun you.

So you book it. Just, turn around and run. You're still fitter than you were before becoming a little girl, and you're perfectly content to let the goblins cull themselves against your traps. You can return another time, prepared and with a better plan.

The goblins, of course, begin howling like mad, renewing their efforts, but the hobgoblin just barks and as you run out of the cave, you can hear the sound of shattering ice. Looks like it's already getting started on removing the traps you set.

A shame, but at least they'll be busy with that, buying you ample time to get the hell out of dodge.

Doubling back the way you came, slowly getting a little winded after all this running and moving around today, you still make a quick stop at the site of your previous ambush, hefting up the by now slowly thawing body of a goblin.

Your Puchuu did mention it could tell you more the more information you got it on various monsters around, after all, and since it looks like you'll be dealing with goblins for a bit longer...

Lugging this little shit all the way out of the forest will be one hell of a bitch, though. You aren't looking forwards to how all your muscles will feel like tomorrow.

People are giving you more than a few odd looks by the time you finally arrive back in town, mouth open just the slightest bit and flushing with sweat, not to mention the corpse of the ugliest green midget ever you have slung over your shoulders, carefully pointing its underside away from you (seeing one dead goblin crap and piss itself was quite enough for you without it landing on you, thank you very much), but nobody seems to be making a big deal out of it, so you just proceed on, wary of missing the timing and your portal to the Overcity closing for the night with you on he wrong side.

Once you're back in the otherworldly stillness of the place, you beeline straight to your base, way too tired for this shit right now.

"You're back, chuuh," your Puchuu greets you. "And you brought a dead goblin, puchuh. Any reason why?"

"You said you'd help me look into monsters," you explain, "and even if goblin corpses aren't worth anything, I want to be prepared for the next time I'm facing these things."

"Next time, chuuh? Am I to assume there's still some in the forest, puchuuh?"

"Yes, there was a cave infested with the things. I killed a decent amount- thirty, maybe forty of them, but then a big one showed up, and I couldn't disable it with magic as it was," you say, justifying yourself. "When it had the other goblins rush at me straight through the field of traps I'd set, I figured it was time to get out of there, they would've simply overrun me otherwise."

"Chuuh, if that's how it is, that's how it is," the Puchuu somehow shrugs with its cat-like body. "Can't kill monsters if you're dead, after all. Anything else you brought back, chuh?"

"I made a few pictures of the traps the goblins set around their lair, most sharp sticks with something smeared on them and pitfalls and the like. A few tripwires, too."

"A good start, chuchuh. What can you tell me about the big goblin, chuuh?"

"It was about thrice the height of the other goblins, with a darker coloration and wielding a giant club likely made by hand," you rattle off what you can recall. "It was commanding the goblins, to the point they obeyed without hesitation, and smart enough to order them to die to my ice spikes so the rest could come rush me when I managed to dodge the goblin it threw straight at me over my trapped field. Maybe also some kind of strengthening for its subordinates?"

The Puchuu just gives you a dubious look, so you elaborate. "I could disable most of the goblins easily enough, but once it roared out loud, they just so managed to move even after I nearly froze them to death."

"Chuuh," the Puchuu ponders. "Valuable information, chuh. Come on down, then, and we can dissect the body you brought with you."

"Actually, could we do that later? I'm, uh, really tired," you deadpan.

"Suit yourself, puchuh."

The laboratory down in the basement is actually surprisingly expansive, sterile white tiles covering several rooms filled with all kinds of sciencey-looking equipment. "How did you even set all of this up? Especially without thumbs?"

"Trade secret, chuuh. Now, if you would put the carcass over here, puchuh?"

Over the next hour or so, you learn far more about a goblin's body than you ever wanted to, the Puchuu insistent you use the scalpel, bonesaw and other more 'hands on' pieces of equipment it has down here while it handles the magic scanner, blood analysis and the like, pointing out details and interesting parts you pay attention to all the while.

For one, goblins are fairly close to humans, anatomically, with spindly, long limbs and a proportionally bigger set of heart and lungs inside their chests, aside from the obvious green skin and the pronounced facial features- pointy nose, chin and ears giving them a distinctive, ugly look.

The magic, though, what ittle of it they have? That's all in their balls. Literally, the Puchuu is basically going crazy over immediately recording everything it can make out as it holds the scanner, a complicated-looking device with lots of slashing lights and what you're fairly sure are a few gems scattered all over it, over the dead goblin's genitals.

Apparently, goblins, while short and stumpy with penises to match, have the ability to keep on producing sperm ex nihilo, their balls never running out of spunk and potentially capable of reproducing with pretty much any kind of creature, though that feature rarely comes into play as human females are magically compatible with most monsters anyways. Still, goblin pregnancies also tend to result in litters of several goblins, from three to eight, from what your Puchuu can tell you, because of this, lasting for about two to three weeks before the mother can be impregnated again.

That's... actually fairly terrifying. And, talking to your magical mascot advisor, also likely the reason there were so many goblins in and around that cave- they have to have taken at least one female and are actively breeding her.

Turns out it doesn't matter if the vast majority of your species dies within the first two months of life when the rest can move on to evolve and keep on breeding more fodder at this kind of pace.

Taking a second shower (necessary, after just how deep you just stuck your arms into a goblin), you ponder what you shall be eating later, as well as what you should do tomorrow. You've done some good work today, you'd say, culling a good amount of goblins and becoming acutely aware of fields in which you're lacking so far.

Really, no way you were going to be able to fight that hobgoblin in that situation, so you made the right choice in retreating, even if it sounds like you've also condemned some poor woman to being raped for even longer.

Them's the breaks, really.

Practicing with your guns, you think you're getting the hang of using them slowly but surely, hitting the targets you set up from random everyday objects you gathered from nearby houses, from crappy toasters with too-small openings to lamps whose designs you didn't like.

Hey, if you're going to live here, may as well live well, and that means taking only the best for yourself. You actually have a proper toaster in the kitchen now, with four breadslots that can fit a decent amount each. All it took was looking for a bit.

The Puchuu, on the other hand, has been staying down in the lab while you were busy looking for little improvements like that in the nearby Overcity, only coming out now as you finish up giving off well-aimed shots.

"Chuuh, what will you be doing today, puchuuh?"

"Mostly training," you answer, lowering your weapons. "No other way I can defeat that hobgoblin otherwise, after all."

"Chuuh, wouldn't have taken you for such a musclebrain, chuchuchuh. Or magicbrain, given what you're most likely training, puchuh?"

You narrow your eyes. "Explain."

"Chuuh, you have other ways to defeat it, if you just think a little, puchuuh. You could get something to deal with it, like a bomb, or grenades, puchuuh! Or you could concentrate on other monsters for a while and get yourself a magic weapon of some kind, chuh."

"I see," you respond. "I'll still keep on training." Like hell are you about to suddenly just do everything the black cat tells you to.

"Suit yourself, puchuuh."

It is after a long and intensive day of throwing around all your magical energy that you return to the base for the 'night', having taken only a short break to throw together some pre-prepared meals you took from the nearby buildings, that you see the Puchuu again, the animate plushy coming into the kitchen when it becomes obvious you're spending some time inside as you drag a chair around with you to get everywhere.

You don't really sweat anymore, a fact you suspect you have some level of subconscious ice magic to thank for rather than being a magical girl in general, and you don't really feel sore or exhausted physically. But mentally? Well, you did just spend all day concentrating on something as hard as you could. Which is the excuse you will make for engaging the little creature in conversation, by which you mean ask it what you could do.

"You mentioned other monsters in the area when we last spoke," you begin, making sure the noodles aren't getting mushy. "Mind elaborating?"

"Not at all, chuuh. There are several confirmed monster types in town, puchuh, and they all need to be taken care of one way or another, chuuh."

"There are confirmed sightings towards the north of the city, puchuh, of giant insects- but not the ones you found in the Overcity, chuuh. These ones are ground-bound and have been digging holes around the old storage areas. They may or may not be related to the big nest infestation, chuuh, but for now they are just a small number of significantly larger bugs. Chuh."

Well, so much for avoiding giant bugs for the time being, after all.

"There is also mundane news of street lamps being 'repeatedly vandalized' along several streets, chuuh, which most likely means a monster's doing it. Why or how I dunno, but it has been noted to happen at night, so that is probably the right time to investigate the affected areas, chuh."

Oh, a mystery. Because not knowing what you might face is such a wonderful way to go.

"Lastly, there has been a lot of mana released in certain neighbourhoods towards the eastern edge of the city, near the old hospital, chuuh. Old hospitals are creepy."

They are, indeed. "Thanks for the info," you say out loud, interrupting the Puchuu's monologue. "Now if you'll excuse me, dinner's almost ready."

Because of course you're still getting hungry as a magical girl. In fact, you're downright voracious at times, a child's body needing decent amounts of calories to grow up well.

On the one hand, coming to the scene of the latest crime and following the straight line of broken lamps back towards their beginning first thing in the morning seems at least marginally dangerous, considering the culprit may be hiding in plain view and relying on the veil to stay hidden during the day, but, according to the Puchuu, there haven't been any particularly higher rates of deaths or accidents to be noted in the area this lamp thief has been active in, so it is at least somewhat unlikely it is going around savaging pedestrians, least of all on the open street.

And yes, 'lamp thief' is very much the correct term; the street lamps haven't been sprayed with graffiti or even broken, as one might imagine by the term vandalism, no, they're outright broken off, their upper halves nowhere to be found.

"Puchuuh!" Your Puchuu exclaims. "Whatever has been doing this has been going on for a while, chuuh, one street lamp per night. If the records are right, anychuh. That seems more the work of something that needs to gather them, or perhaps light sources in general, chuuh, and taking them as targets of opportunity. Either way, chuu should be able to find it by simply waiting at night, if the pattern repeats."

Approaching one of the broken lamps closer by leading forwards where it sits on your head, as though riding you, the Puchuu takes a closer look at where the streetlamp simply... ends. "This has obviously been done with magical means, chuuh, so it isn't just a physically strong monster. Expect your target to be capable of magic in some way, puchuuh, and likely to an extent it prefers to use it over brute force. Or else it has a gimmick of some kind, needing to break these lamps in a special way for some reason, chuh. If nothing else, keeping it from doing so may weaken it, puchuuh, or make it angry."

Well, that is... helpful?

"Mhm, I should look into light refraction," you mumble as you dig out your weird otherworldly smartphone, already connected to the internet as it is. Weirdly enough, though you don't have any access while in the Overcity, it seems to always have internet whenever you're in the real world.

"Why's that, chuuh? Chu planning something?" The Puchuu asks while jumping on top of your head.

"Just an idea," you explain, "but if I could somehow refract light from other sources in a way that makes it seem brighter, I could lure this lamp thief to a location of my choosing."

"Good thinking, chuuh! Just make sure not to..." The Puchuu trails off as a man in police uniform approaches you as you walk through the streets, smiling down at you.

"Hello there, young lady! Isn't it a bit early for you to come out and play?"

Well shit, you fucking knew this would happen. Time to improvise!

"Mommy said to go away and stay gone until she was done with today's boyfriend, so I'm being a good girl." At the stunned silence, you nod to yourself. "She also said not to talk to anyone yesterday, so please pretend I wasn't talking to you, Mister Policeman. I don't want more owchies."

With that, you're off, darting away into the streets and alleyways of the city, using the man's surprise to your advantage.

"Good thinking there, as I chuu'd. Now where were we?" The Puchuu picks up the earlier conversation.

"We were about to return to the Overcity before the portal closes until the evening so we don't have to spend all day over here," you say. The nerve of some people, really.

You have, for the longest time, had the strangest feeling in the back of your head, as though you'd forgotten something intrinsic to yourself. Like how to drive a bike, how to use a toaster, something like that.

Figure your surprise, then, when it all comes back to you just as soon as you sit down and take a moment to really think about it.

Runes. Runes for days. Runes to do anything you- well, not anything you want. You can't exactly create a goblin destruction engine that automatically drives goblins into extinction while you sit at home and sip some tea.

Or a debugginator or something like that.

What you totally can do, though, is imbue certain effects into objects by physically carving certain symbols into them. The strange part is, the same symbol may mean different things when in a different context, such as a different type of object, surface of the same object or even different time of the day you are applying it.

That's not to say runes are random- they're just a very, very precise kind of science. On the upside, although the process of carving them is just as important as what rune you're using in itself- doing so has all sorts of importance- and thus takes time, more so depending on how many runes you're carving and how complicated the end product is supposed to be, using runes has... pretty much no additional costs.

WIth enough time, you can turn literally any object magical by carving away pieces of it in the right pattern. Depending on what exactly you are trying to achieve, some may need additional mana to trigger their effect- a wand of fireballs only fires when it's supplied with enough juice- others are always active in some way, working passively or even storing power for later, to be used or withdrawn for other purposes.

Theoretically, you could create a wand of fireballs that gathers traces of mana from its surroundings, storing them and allowing, say, one cast a day before it needs to sit somewhere and recover its energy.

All that said? You do get the acute feeling that pretty much anything you make like this is going to be inherently... inefficient. When you will your mana to be ice, it just is. If you were to craft a bracer that could replicate your own feats, it would take dozens of times as much mana to get anywhere, not to mention the diminished control and precision.

Still, though, a powerful addition to your arsenal... as the fist-sized stone (your fist) you have been tracing symbols into with a minor exertion of will while thinking this through can prove.

Because it is glowing. Decently bright, too, although that's all it is doing. That said, you have a lamp thief to catch, so something a little brighter than the usual street lamps might be just what you need, especially when put inside a little construct of ice designed to refract its light as much as possible.

You force a little smile onto your face, against its natural tendency to remain mostly blank. This is great news!

"Hey, Puchuu?"

"What is it, Jacqueline?"

"I think I just figured out runecarving."

A small explosion sounds from the basement, followed by a rumbling you would normally associate with lightning, before the Puchuu bounds up the steps leading downwards. "How exactly, what can you do, how fra can- chuuuh..."

Seeing your first piece of work, you have the distinct impression your Puchuu is slack-jawedly staring.

"This is great news, chuuh! Imagine the possibilities if your abilities lend themselves to varied expressions in this! I must take notes, chu-huh!"

You just smug at it.

Well, you have a fancy new toy and, more importantly, can think of several interesting applications for it, from mostly mundane and fun to horrible, horrible ways in which you may inflict painful deaths onto any creatures that may come and try to rape you otherwise.

Yes, you can, in fact, think about it. It's a valid possibility that may come up, which is why you are working so very hard to avoid it. You... haven't exactly gotten used to being a little girl now, in body if not in spirit, and going to the toilet where you have to deal with your privates is still weird.

But hey, you aren't experiencing a minor panic attack every time you picture yourself in any kind of actual sexual situation, which is... good? You'll just treat it as a good thing.

Anyways, back on topic. Carving the right runes into pieces of rock should, in theory, allow for an explosive release of gathered magical energy, thereby creating what may be called a 'magical bomb'. Fairly simple in theory, it still involves you controlling a bunch of ice you're keeping just sharp enough through magic scratching and slowly carving away at its surface.

And yet, it doesn't take all that long for it to work. You can literally see the magic slowly beginning to gather around it, condensing from the surroundings to arm your little trap, set to blow the moment any magical signature that isn't that of the magic that filled it initially (aka yours) approaches.

In other words, a bomb that slowly charges up and goes boom the moment something magical comes close. 'Magical' like goblin testicles, but not like any mundane people.

Perfect, in other words, to litter this damn forest you're standing in front of with. Certainly a good way to spend the evening, if nothing else.

"What will you be doing today, chuuh, Jacqueline?" The Puchuu asks after a good night's sleep, a shower and a bit of stretching for you, yourself busy handling kitchen implements on a counter that's just a little big too high for you as you prepare breakfast for yourself.

Some eggs and toast is all you're doing, really. Not like it takes more to get you happy.

"Training during the day, mostly with my magic. The better I get with it, the less likely I end up dead or worse in short order. Maybe experiment with runes a bit, too."

"Make sure to come down to the lab, puchuuh, I would gladly help you with that!"

"Sure, sure. Afterwards... Guess I might as well use this," you say, juggling the glowy stone you made in one hand for a moment, "to lure in whatever it is that's going after the street lanterns. Chances are decent I can just run from whatever it is if it's more concerned with the lights than me, after all."

"Chuuh, chuuh. Good initiative, I see," the Puchuu approves.

"Duh," you deadpan at it, flipping the eggs.

The issue with protective runes, you quickly find out once you and the Puchuu get to work on figuring them out, is just how many of them there are to choose from, as well as the sheer amount of compatibility issues keeping you from just adding all of them at once to a sufficiently large object.

Possible applications range from giving someone an invisible protective shield that can weather a set amount of damage before becoming functionally useless, protective forcefields that make it harder for attacks to reach the user all the way to what amounts to charms that make the wearer more likely to avoid harm through sheer happenstance, and anything and everything in between.

And so here you are, having to choose...

What you settled upon, in the end, was the most reliable option you could think of.

While you are pretty good with your magic, you feel, using it as the tool to decisively take out monsters as far as you are concerned, you are still physically... stronger than you physically should be, really, but far from strong enough to defeat the monsters you've faced to far.

That is to say, you're all kinds of fucked if any amount of, say, goblins, manages to get their grubby hands within reach of yourself. To counteract that to at least some extent, you now wear a small, hollowed-out stone with a thick and sturdy thread running through it, making it a decent necklace that projects an invisible and intagible forcefield around yourself... that becomes less intangible selectively for any actual attacks coming your way.

It's really just a small amount of force, but it should suffice to buy you that critical moment to get the hell out of dodge.

Staying up late isn't necessarily your favorite pastime, wasn't even before you turned into a kid and became much more susceptible towards sleep deprivation.

You've always been a creature of habit. Routine is your friend. Yes, sure, you will likely have to get used to irregular hours, but you can't expect to be doing so within a few days.

Which is why it completely makes sense you made sure to take two bottles of coke along on your stakeout. You tried some earlier, and while you can't be sure whether it is your new age or body or whatever, you discovered that you really like sweet things now.

But still, you're only drinking this stuff for the caffeine!

Anyways, here you are, your little backpack pilfered from an Overcity building filled with your provisions, the glowy stone and a handful of exploding pebbles, your new necklace securely tucked under your choker and your guns on the ready underneath your dress.

You are optimally prepared with the resources available to you at this time and surely, there is nothing that could-

"Hello little girl, isn't it a little late to take a walk?" The same officer as last time bends down a little to look at you. "Wait, aren't you-"

"Gottagobyedumbpeoplesaywhat?"

"What?" The perplexed man says, looking after you as you run away. Phew! With your luck, you're sure he's some pedo or something. Anyways, on to the actual reason you're out in the real world this late.

Getting the ice casing around the pebbles you have enchanted takes a bit to get right, but that is, after all, exactly why you came out early, having left more than enough time to do this properly.

At the end of it all, you have a series of concave and convex lenses made of ice all bound up in what amounts to a ball about the size of your head, a steady shine coming off of it and lighting everything around it up.

All that remains is to grow a bunch of ice to mimic a street lantern, hopefully close enough to one your lamp thief will go straight for the somewhat brighter shine... and promptly trigger the handful of pebbles inside it.

Now all you need to do is wait nearby, so you cut through the nearest little alleyway and look around for a fire escape, soon finding one and climbing up to the roof of the two-story building.

Now all you need to do is wait, which is what you got the bar of chocolate and the coke for.

When it happens, it happens fairly quickly, from one moment to the next.

You lost patience observing a mostly empty street two hours in, wasting the time by slowly going through you food and drink and browsing the internet on your WhiteView smartphone, idly wondering just how much of the weird shit out there is really monsters and magical girls and whatever else there might be getting up to some kind of hijinks, but when the area under your rooftop perch becomes drastically darker despite the lamps shining as they should be, you instinctively look at the time displayed at the corner of your phone before looking down.

Midnight, down to the second.

On street level, a conspicuous darkness is spreading around, small dots of light moving through it slowly, as though torches carried by a group of people. When they reach the area under your decoy, they suddenly change course, moving around and upwards as the monster rides a seemingly physical wave of shadows.

An enormous, black wolf with shaggy fur and the stolen lamps sticking out of its body looks at your decoy, the darkness rising up to sever the pole of ice you created and bringing its upper half towards the creature's maw, where it swallows it in a single bite.

A weak glow can actually be seen travelling through its stomach and tail, faraway cracking sounds as though from a frozen pond in the middle of winter just barely audible before your bait ends up in the very tip of its tail, the appendage vaguely reminiscent of entwined braids holding it up inside the thing's body for a moment, power cables or transmission lines connecting it to the stolen lightsources.

The glowy creature howls, the pain of losing a chunk of its tail obvious as it thrashes around, splattering black blood that looks more like liquid darkness than anything else from its missing limb.

Taking the opportunity for what it is, you gather your power, sending a blast of winter down at it. Snarling, the wolf looks up at you, having sensed the surge of magic. Thats said, it doesn't lunge or jump up at you, your magic having shown its effect; the monster tries to move, but its shadowy bulk stays grounded, bleeding darkness in every twitch.

Before the creature can do anything else, you nail it with a sharp piece of ice across the side, the impact spilling even more black blood across the ground. Your quarry gives you a hateful look, inhaling deeply for a moment before howling again, the lamps on its back beginning to blink and grow brighter as they sway wildly.

A surge of shadows seems to go through the giant wolf, its wounds patched up and not bleeding any longer by the time the three street lamps sticking out of its back it is using for this stop giving off their ominous light.

More concerningly, another three lamps give off bright piercing beams of light, firing up at where you stand on the roof. One goes wide and disappears into the night sky, one impacts the brickwork under you and gives off crackling and crumbling sounds as it probably burrows into the stone or something.

You say probably because you are kind of preoccupied by the one beam that hit you before you could get to cover, the entire right side of your stomach giving off a piercing pain as a hole is shot straight through it, the light exiting on your back and continuing on its course.

This is going to sting in the morning...!

Ignoring the searing pain for the time being, you concentrate on continuing the fight, stretching out your right hand to fire another chunk of ice right into the wolf's eye, your left busy trying to hold the gaping hole through your body closed as you watch the creature fall, the darkness covering the entire street slowly dispersing with its death.

Looking around, there is surprisingly little destruction to go around, only a lot of unnaturally black blood and that one light-blast impact marring the area, beyond the already cut-off lamps from previous nights, anyways.

So, here you are, with a hole in your side that's actually slowly closing as you watch, the urge to retch at seeing your internal organs squirm briefly overcoming you before you look away.

Holy hell, that was... an actual fight.

Dragging the body of your foe back to the portal you've been using is, irritatingly enough, the hardest part of this whole thing, even as you actually can do so, the monster strangely light in death, if not in life.

It has to be said, you don't like how all of this turned out. Sure, you did the best with what information you had at the time, even making preparations specifically targeted at exploiting the unknown monster's extremely regular behaviour, but in the end, it just wasn't enough.

This wolf thingy still managed to not get nuked into oblivion before it realized where you were, and any attack on your person is one attack too many. Sure, you can just regenerate any wounds you take, but you still aren't exactly a fan of pain.

That you suffer, anyways.

Anyways, here you are, dragging the carcass through the streets and relying on the veil to avoid any notice of consequence. Once you're at the portal, the way there long and excrutiatingly slow, you just have to wait a couple hours or so for the thing to open again, keeping yourself occupied with the rest of your rations and your internet access.

Turns out its almost shadowy hide is actually pretty comfortable to sit on, at least.

Dragging the corpse through the portal takes some doing, mostly to position it just right, but before long you have it in the Overcity, continuing your march through almost entirely quiet streets.

The Puchuu, of course, awaits you at the door of your current base, already knowing you are coming through mystical Puchuu senses. Or maybe just the noise you're making as you quietly curse the wolf, yourself, monsters of all kinds and, of course, goblins.

Especially and always goblins.

"What have we here, puchuuh?"

"Can we please not?" You ask, your voice long-suffering and exasperated both. "I've been awake literally all night to even find this thing and I'm about to crash."

"Chuuh, of course. I will bring this specimen to the lab to await your awakening while I conduct preliminary tests, chuuh!"

You're about to ask how it is going to do that, given there's no way for the giant wolf itself to so much as fit through the door, not to mention the lanterns sticking out of it, but... honestly, you don't give a fuck.

"Sleeep."

You feel like you haven't slept a wink by the time you awake, sweaty and with a light headache that takes a bit of turning inside your bed to recede, but thankfully you made sure to have plenty of water in your attic bedroom, so you can just hydrate while you await your return to effective sapience after yesterday.

What eventually drives you out of your bedchamber is, of course, hunger. For some decent breakfast, though some of the random cereals you stocked up on for just these occasions will have to do for a start.

That said, what awaits you in the kitchen is, of course, the Puchuu.

"Chuuh, there you are. I have done some preliminary analysis, and based on its results I can confirm the monster you fought is a glowwolf, puchuuh, a semi-rare breed of monster that grows in strength through stealing light sources and adding them to its own body. They have become much more dangerous in modernity thanks to the existence of street lamps, the only thing limiting them being their frail bodies and limitation to one assimilation per night, chuh."

"Gad's geat ang all," you mumble, your mouth full of cinnamon-y wheat, "gud how bare are they?"

"Fairly rare, puchuh, unless they start breeding, in which case they tend to regularly spread through the surroundings. Best case, someone somewhere got sloppy and the situation will be solved in quick order, chuuh, otherwise expect more every few months."

"Wonderful," you sigh, having finally swallowed. "So, what'll we do with the body after we take a closer look at it? You mentioned goblins are worthless, which implies anything else might be more useful."

"Chuuh! There are several possibilities open to you compared to other girls, chuh, thanks to my own talents. I can support you in carving off magically strong body parts and transforming them into useful equipment through several processes and possibly runes added by you, chuh, or we could be a little... creative, chuchuchuh, and transplant certain... body parts onto yourself, chuuh! Not a common procedure, you understand, but potentially extremely powerful! And out here in the boonies, nobody can stop us from experimenting, chuchuchuh!"

The Puchuuh mumbles that last part, but you just so happen to understand it just fine. Maybe some sort of internal strife keeping it from doing what it wants freely? Either way, you're not exactly looking forwards to playing guinea pig for it, and transplanting monster body parts onto yourself sounds like the kind of thing that ends up with you going insane and having to be put down or something.

"Or you could always sell the body, chuuh, to one of the Minters scattered throughout the Overcity. It is a lucrative business to my understanding, puchuh, and an easy way to gain coins. In fact, here!" Throwing a pair of disks onto the table (somehow), the Puchuu makes a little backflip before coming to stand once more.

"Payment for the monster elimination, chuuh! Two bronze, which is decent for a night's work factoring in the other rewards, puuh. Do with them what you will, you can gather more to strengthen yourself or create longlasting enchantments in an instant, chuh!"

Dealing with the glowwolf's future is an issue you can thankfully put off for a bit yet, deciding to take a closer look at the body first. Sure, this will eat into your day, but honestly, you've woken up so late, it doesn't make that much of a difference anyways at this point.

So after a continued quick breakfast, you join the Puchuu down in the basement lab, already mentally preparing yourself for what you know is to follow.

The glowwolf, due to its peculiar biology, is not only capable of adding light sources to its body by essentially swallowing them, it also grows a series of nerves and strange tubes through them as they are assimilated, the Puchuu excitedly taking notes as you pry one of the repurposed street lanterns open.

Of further interest is also the rest of its body, at first glance appearing similar to an actual flesh-and-blood creature, as the Puchuu remarks, though its organs and flesh have a strange, almost ethereal consistency to your touch, darkening and spreading wisps of shadow on touch. A defense mechanism, apparently- spreading their weight into shadowmatter to avoid as much force as possible.

The bones, unfortunately, are rather unremarkable, though the fur retains a variant of this strange effect, holding onto darkness wherever it may be found and 'releasing' it on touch- or command, under the monster's control and a lot more tangible, if what you saw and your Puchuu's guesses are correct.

Last, but not least, the teeth, mouth, throat and digestive tract of the creature are significantly more durable than they should be, likely to faciliate the swallowing of light observed by you.

Last, ugh, and least, its genitalia resemble that of a normal wolf or dog, with a tapered shape, a knot and balls. Of particular note is that the knot and balls give off a low level of ambient light, though aside from this fact, it is just a fairly big doggy dick simply due to the overall size of the creature.

Also, you feel really dirty about having touched it, even through two layers of gloves.

"... Alright," you finally say after thinking about it, having painstakingly added any information your Puchuu can give you about this new kind of monster to the little bestiary you are putting together on your weird smartphone, in addition to the pictures you took on the sly both before the fight started and a few good shots of the body afterwards, just to get everything.

"What, exactly, could I get out of the body in terms of direct use? Transplants, useable parts, that kind of thing?"

"Chuuh, the nerves and piping for magical energy could be useful? Couple with an eye's retina, they should allow you to gather and project light similarly to the donor's abilities, chuh. Oh, or the genitalia!"

You fight the urge to facepalm with all our might. "Why, exactly, would we transplant wolf genitalia on me?"

"Many monsters channel parts of their powers through them, chuh. Think of it as an inheritance ritual, each new generation of monster being granted a fraction of the previous one's might through the tool they are created with, puchuuh."

"Great... Just great." Well, looks like that's a thing now, huh. "Any magical items, like you mentioned?"

"The fur might confer some amount of umbrakinesis, puchuh, and the stomach lining might be useful for creating a magical container of some sort, chuuh. A basic bag of holding?"

"Yes, please, dragging corpses around is extremely difficult for me."

"Chuuh! If you want to undergo both procedures and harvest the rest, the leftovers won't bring in much additional money, but if that is alright with you, we can begin immediately, puchuuh. Just take the bonesaw and the hacksaw and follow my instructions."

Doing as you're told, you almost grimace behind your emotionless mask of a face. This will me both bloody and disgusting, even moreso than the autopsy beforehand, not to even mention the thought of hacking out this creature's groin so you can for all intents and purposes steal its penis.

But you want that power, and maybe having a dick again will make you feel marginally better about your overall situation while you're at it.

Maybe.

It is, all told, a lot to get done to harvest any and all useful parts you can get out of the oversized, wolf-like creature, especially as you then need to cut the leather, help the Puchuu in applying various weirdly-smelling chemicals to both it and the stomach lining you removed and, of course, cut certain runes into the tough skin.

That said, you can get it all done, which sees you lying down on what turned out to be a retractable hospital bed the Puchuu had hidden away in one of the walls.

"Now just breathe in very, very deep, chuh, and when you wake up, it'll all be over," is the last thing you hear as you trail off.

When you next come to, everything feels weird, you have a weird taste in your mouth and something is wrong with your vision. Confusedly looking up, you see an eyeball held aloft in the air, an array of funny lasers and threads winding around and inside it. "Whoops, I lied, not everything over, chuuh. Back under you go!"

When you finally awake for a final time, both your eyes are clear, with none of the shackles you briefly felt holding your limbs in place. You aren't even feeling weird or raw anywhere, which you're taking to be a good sign.

"Puchuuh!" The black cat makes, sitting on the ground next to where you're getting up. "Surgery was a full success, chuh. All new and improved parts are present and should be functional, puchuh."

Looking around, you can't help but feel a little weird as you feel the light hitting your retina. "Eye coloration is changing to black, within expectations as the light is absorbed, chuh. Can you feel your new genitalia, chuuh?"

Instinctively looking down, you wince when you realize that certain new parts of your anatomy are rubbing against your thighs, slowly coming 'online' despite feeling numb.

"Chuuh, all within expected parameters. Here is the coin the leftover parts were sold off for, feel free to get used to your new modifications for a bit."

With that, the Puchuu is gone, leaving you alone inside the sterile walls of the lab with a slowly hardening, bright red and very pointy boner beginning to lift your skirt up, the ridiculously short front of it not helping. Lifting it up entirely, you can see the entirety of your new genitals, a huge doggy dick and heavy balls hanging below its knot.

There isn't any seam connecting it to your crotch that you can tell, smooth skin making it look like it was a part of you all along. Even your- your- your vagina underneath remains unchanged, though you don't stay on that for long.

Picking up the distressingly skimpy fur underwear, you discover that it is pleasingly comfy, as well as capable of keeping your bone down there in check. Even if you're basically clothing your also distressingly young body in the skin of a creature you murdered not that long ago.

It is, as you have already long learned, one thing to be able to cast a spell while concentrating and taking your time, especially so with your spell to just create ice on demand. Which is why it actually does take you quite a long time of refining your handy little spell to conjure and launch a piece of pointy ice into a bigger and (hopefully) better version of doing the very same thing except with a much bigger and marginally pointier piece of ice.

Seriously, you had to have been at this for easily five hours by the time you're satisfied with the end result, but the sizeable spears of ice bored into the dumpster you dragged next to the house as target practice do promise to do the job you're thinking of.

Your acquaintance, that one fucking hobgoblin, is surely still awaiting your next visit, after all. Would be a shame to disappoint him, wouldn't it? And you even have a whole bunch of new presents for him...

Even if, as you idly note, your new dick keeps on rubbing against your underwear, making moving around as you keep on shooting away kind of uncomfortable. Not enough to really stop you, though, and as you discover, the black-ish rod actually does retreat into a sheath of some sort when you dump a bunch of ice into your panties, the glowing orb of your new setup dimming a little even as the balls underneath start shrinking.

Which is even more uncomfortable, but at least you aren't getting hard all the time anymore. As such, time to go through the portal and go take a look at the forest. Everyone hates unfinished business.

Your sweep through the forest is fairly uneventful, all things told, as you keep away from the streets and make your way around the approximate location you remember the goblin cave to be in.

On the way, you do manage to find a few of the ugly little things, just out in the woods in ones and twos. Not much of an issue, really; with the rate you can just recover mana, you can easily nail each of the just under a dozen things to the nearest trees with huge spikes of ice, your newly enhanced spells making easy work of the goblins dumb enough to be out here.

Best guess, they're probably looking for food or something, given the occasional animal corpses you see them carry around. Surprisingly enough, though, they also seem to be omnivores rather than carnivores, as you can observe them eating berries and nuts every now and then.

Side note, shooting goblins in the dick with giant ice projectiles will never cease to be fucking funny.

Unfortunately, all of this wide, sweeping searching also means you are taking quite a lot of time, as traversing the forest in the evening is kind of a pain, not to mention the need to find any goblins out and about. Sure, your magic detection trick does help a bit, but it's even more of a pain to even find the little things. So yeah, this is all taking a lot of boring walking around, plus the occasional snack break.

Your magic bag may only make things a little lighter, but it's still great for bringing along water and snack bars.

Well, here goes nothing. Taking out the few rune bombs you managed to make while you were busy walking around, you drop them around the entrance to the cave you found the last time around, the blasts hopefully alerting you of any potential stragglers you missed that might otherwise catch you from the back.

The cave is still dark and dank, so you pull out your smart phone to light the way, having downloaded a flashlight app earlier.

It doesn't take long for the critters inside to sense you, most likely seeing the light, and after just a few goblins screech and jabber like they usually do, curiously without attacking blindly for a change.

The reason does quickly become apparent, as a huge goblinoid creature lumbers out from deeper inside. Looks like they've learned from last time, and decided that it doesn't matter how many of their mooks they send after you.

You and the hobgoblin look each other in the eyes for a long moment.

The stalemate is broken when you hold out a hand, gathering mana and firing it off in another ice lance headed right for the creature you're about to murder.

However, just as it's about to impact and hopefully crush one of its legs, the hobgoblin turns around, kicking off of the cave wall behind itself and briefly touching the ceiling as it pushes down again, the sharp chunk of ice completely missing him and instead nailing a goblin that came to see what was happening against the loose stone behind it.

You, on the other hand, have a surprise hobgoblin to the face to deal with!

You try to jump back, but the series of events simply happens too fast- by the time you're in motion, he's already halfway at your position, an outstretched arm missing you... only for a knee to hit you in the chest, throwing you backwards and making an unpleasant cracking sound.

Biting your teeth, you push yourself to your legs, now far too close to the fucker for comfort. At least you can already feel your regeneration kick in, though.

Well, shit just went tits up. You, of course, immediately cast your strength-sapping cold spell, watching as your foe bares his teeth and fog escapes his fanged mouth, shivers running through his muscular frame.

Before anything else can happen, you trigger your implanted eye, the light captured inside turned inwards and healing yourself, your breath coming much easier after but a few moments. It's really too bad you need a good light source or something to charge this thing, but even so, it's actually coming in handy.

The hobgoblin's answer, perhaps predictably, is to roar, again, the deafening sound making you wonder if it wasn't a sonic attack or something.

But no, it is the same thing that allowed the fucker to keep its minions in the run after your spell should have frozen them solid. This one's breath is still fogging, but it seems to be functional still, if nothing else.

Which sucks, mind you. There goes your chance of just executing this fuck from the dick upwards.

Your ice lances, on second thought, really do hit like fucking trucks, all things considered. And combining that level of force with a sharp point, well... The hobgoblin you're fighting can attest to just how devastating that kind of thing can be for a living being.

When it hit him, it didn't just pierce the ugly monster; it positively ripped through it until the ice was lodged inside the sternum about halfway in, carrying the bulky creature backwards for a good bit until it lost momentum. With a resounding crash, your nemesis, for however shortly it may have existed, slams against the cave's back wall, its inner organs more liquefied than anything else.

"Gob... buh." With these last words, the hobgoblin, finally, expires.

The rest of the cave is fairly unremarkable, save for the goblins inside it you slaughter with great relish and methodical application of ice magic combined with brutal stomps on their balls.

This job does come with perks, you just have to learn to enjoy them.

A few traps your oddly keen senses help with, otherwise you'd have had issues especially in these low-light conditions, but as it is, the worst of it really is the stink and the garbage lying everywhere, discarded packages, destroyed pieces of whatever objects these goblins stole or robbed... and, of course, their feces.

Goblins, as it happens, are very disgusting creatures. You suppose there's a reason the Puchuu gave you the impression they're commonly treated like cockroach infestations- to be eliminated as soon as possible.

They do seem to practice at least some measure of organization, possibly enforced by the hobgoblin whose body you left where it was, several little rooms dug into the cave with distinct uses you can intuit. One seems to be a sleeping chamber of some sort, one is where they store (rotting) food, one is storage for anything else... You make a note to come back there in a bit, as you glimpsed the shimmer of coins scattered inside in your crappy smart phone light.

The last chamber you come upon, though...

Contrary to the other rooms, this one has the trappings of some kind of worship or something along those lines. Paint on the walls depicting primitive stick figures, old and fragile bones scattered throughout the space and what looks like some kind of altar, made of humanoid bones and sullied by what you think might be dried, old blood.

And before it lies a dead body of a monster, its bulky form half again your own height even as it can't keep itself on its legs, its eyeless head not only enormous, but also currently with an opened maw and revealing exactly how this insectile creature would deal with anything foolish enough to get near it.

You do wonder where the goblins might have found this thing, and how they even defeated it... though you can guess, based on the smashed legs and sharp wood wedged inside its exoskeleton.

Oh fuck, you just realized, but... you'll probably have to go twice to ferry both this thing and the hobgoblin back to the Overcity, won't you?

You sigh.

The Puchuu is, predictably, happy. "You are already proving a hundred times the use of the last girl, chuuh! Goblin nests aren't the easiest to uproot for a fresh girl, after all, chuh."

Actually getting back into the Overcity required you to spend the night inside the goblin cave, which, while disgusting and truly, truly not something you relished, but a whole bunch of ice to surround yourself with kept it somewhat tolerable, at least.

Anyways, once the alarm of your phone woke you up, you bitterly cursed for a bit beneath your emotionless mask of a face for a while before you got up, starting on the arduous task of carrying the two bodies of interest back to the city.

It was neither easy nor quick, your magic bag helping, but not enough. Both of the monsters you brought back are fucking heavy.

"Would you like to begin the autopsies straight away, puchuuh?"

"Only way I can decide what to do with them later, I suppose," you agree. "Just give me half an hour to get some breakfast in me."

"This looks to be the same kind of insect I told you about towards the north side of the city, puchuuh, they're commonly called eartheaters. Probably intruded on the goblin's territory and was defeated there, chuh. You can see the way they live almost entirely by their jaws and their stomach contents, chuuh."

"That's nice," you deapan, noting everything down on your smartphone. "So what could I get out of these two corpses, realistically speaking?"

"Well, the hobgoblin is still a goblin, despite its strength, chuh," the Puchuu makes. "Best I can think of is transplanting some of its stomach to you to let you eat virtually any organic matter with little to no danger of sickness. Or its penis, of course, chuh! It may convey a part of its strength and tenacity to you. Of course, the body itself should fetch a pretty penny, too, chuuh."

Walking over towards the giant bug you dragged all the way here with half of its body sticking out of your magic bag, it continues. "Eartheaters have some interesting quirks to them, chuuh, such as their strangely potent sense of smell or their tremorsense, puchuh. Their jaws, as well, are intricate enough I could reshape a few parts to add to your own, giving you a bite attack, chuh! Their penises seem to be too specialized to be of use, though, unless I were to replace your entire lower body with-"

"Pass," you say, interrupting it. "I would like to retain the ability to walk through doors, if nothing else." Seriously, how does this Puchuu keep on getting these giant monsters down into the lab?

"Suit yourself, chuh! Aside from that, maybe you could fashion a weapon from the jaws, or replace your underwear with armor made from the exoskeleton, puh?"

"Can't I just... use the stuff as actual armor?" You ask.

"Puchuh, your magical girl outfit will damage anything you try to wear over it over time, chuuh, so it would become useless fairly quickly and probably break when you need it the most. These things just have a way of happening, chuh?"

Lovely.

"Chuuh, the eartheater was dead for a while, so its magical power apparently dissipitated a good bit, chuh," is what the Puchuu tells you as it flings its ears towards you, a small sack of cloth with nine coins inside landing on the table you're eating a more expansive breakfast at.

"I didn't really fight the thing, so I guess that's okay?" You ask as you receive the money, making a note to add it to your stash later, once you're done eating and all.

"You might want to look into using the coin you have on hand at some point, chuuh, whether to strengthen yourself or to create useful tools for battle," the nosy little cat says as it jumps onto the table.

You just continue eating.

"Also, it seems whatever was in the old hospital is still around, chuuh, or at least is still taking victims. That leaves the bugs you already know about, puchuh, as well as one more new monster you should know about, chuuh."

"What, is the universe ensuring there are always at least three crises for me to worry about?"

"I've heard of stranger things, puchuuh." When you just remain silent, the Puchuu continues. "The biggest public park in town has been giving off unusual mana readings lately, chuh, and the vegetation in the area has been strangely vibrant over the past few days."

"How do you even find out about things like that? Like, is it just some magical Puchuu sense?" You ask. Because it had to be asked at some point, how would it even know that last bit?

"Regular walks and paying attention to my surroundings, of course. Chuh."

You demonstratively continue eating.