The villainous magical girl's daily mission is to find fault.

Chapter 585 The Giant Bird That Burns the World

Guangzhou Heroes Association, rooftop terrace.

"The magical girls all like to meet on the rooftop, and I think you were the one who started this habit."

The girl in azure leaned against the railing, gazing at the girl in red who was looking up at the starry sky not far away.

"...Is that so?"

After a brief moment of reaction, the girl in red turned to look at the person not far away and calmly answered.

"Absolutely. You probably don't know what kind of image you have in the eyes of your juniors. You should know that even your formal attire style is imitated by many juniors in the red-clad category, let alone this kind of everyday behavior."

"Really? There are actually younger people imitating my style of dress?"

"Look, isn't that the red zircon from Hong Kong? Even the length of its skirt is the same as yours."

The azure-blue girl casually tossed over a divine stone, which the red-clad girl caught. She looked at the group photo of the Port City Aquamarine Squad on the light screen, with the red zircon standing out prominently in the center.

"Come to think of it, it really does resemble my formal attire."

After tossing the Divine Stone back to the azure-clad girl in the distance, Red Rose continued to gaze at the distant, boundless starry sky and whispered:

"You also received Chi Xue's message? Garuda has appeared in Rongcheng."

"Yes, this is probably the first time she's encountered something like this," the azure magical girl nodded in response.

"It's all thanks to her. After retiring for so many years, she encountered a behemoth-level opponent when she made her comeback, and she even managed to banish the opponent."

"Exiled directly to the Astral Plane?" Red Rose looked surprised.

"Yes." Mercury shrugged.

"The problem that Xin Yuehu and Chi Xue are currently facing is very troublesome - Garuda is trying to break into the real world again, but it is blocked by Xin Yuehu's mental image world. It is currently invading the mental image world and pulling people into the dreamlike mental image everywhere. We don't know where it is hiding."

Hearing this, Red Rose opened her mouth slightly as if to speak, but then, as if remembering something, she narrowed her eyes and murmured to herself.

"Judging from your expression, you must know something," Mercury said.

"...I know some things, but I'm not sure if what I know applies to the current situation." Red Rose nodded.

She walked to an open space, grasped her wand, and drew a magical barrier on the ground, summoning a huge magical light screen to show Mercury a photograph of a dark starry sky.

Mercury peeked out.

"The Andromeda sector, I've been there before," Mercury calmly brought up the subject. "Why are you showing me this? Are you trying to test my knowledge of star sector divisions and feature identification?"

"Who told you to look at this? Look at the bottom left corner," Red Rose complained irritably, pointing her wand at the area in the bottom left corner of the picture.

Only then did the latter notice that this star chart was somewhat different from the ones he remembered seeing during his astral travels: the positions of the stars had changed, the constellations had shifted slightly, and in the almost completely dark area in the lower left corner, there was a bright star that seemed to be burning fiercely—

Bright star?

The number of stars in the astral plane is not fixed. New stars are ignited and born every moment, while supernovae explode and die. Passages to other worlds are constantly opening and closing, maintaining a dynamic balance.

After repeatedly confirming that there was absolutely no "bright star" in his memory here, and that it was impossible for such a brilliant golden star to suddenly appear without warning in the past few decades, he finally realized the meaning of the red rose.

"...You're kidding, right? This couldn't possibly be...?"

"Garuda"

Red Rose whispered the word that could silence everyone.

"To be precise, this is an egg laid by Garuda."

"Unlike most other behemoths, Garuda's true appearance is unknown. Countless scholars have dedicated themselves to investigating its existence in the astral plane, but so far no one has been able to truly see its specific appearance."

"A learned master of astral biology proposed a hypothesis that Garuda's essence is amorphous, and it may be an astral existence formed by the aggregation of chaotic concepts, which means that it must rely on 'cognition' to maintain its existence."

"And the way it maintains this cognition is by laying eggs."

When the image is enlarged and the bright golden star is magnified to its maximum size, the shimmering halo around it obscures its detailed features, but it is still distinguishable from the other stars around it.

"...Is this theory reliable?" Mercury pressed.

"I'm not sure, but that master has put forward quite a lot of hypothetical proofs, which is currently the most authoritative speculation." Red Rose didn't say much, leaving the credibility to Mercury to think about himself.

Another long silence followed.

That bright golden star wasn't particularly conspicuous in the night sky, but once you noticed its presence, you couldn't help but observe it.

"Who are currently being dragged into the dreamlike mental imagery?" Mercury pressed.

"I'll show you the list later. There aren't many people, but they used a method none of us had ever thought of to probe Garuda's existence: they overlapped countless chaotic mental worlds to form a dimensional defense similar to a protective shield, which may have confined Garuda to the dimensional rifts formed by these mental worlds."

"What a brilliant idea! I bet it came from that little fox Inari, and maybe Kokoro contributed a lot as well."

"How did you know?" Red Rose blinked, a little surprised.

"Is there anyone in the world more cunning than her and Xin Yuehu?" Mercury stopped looking at the photo and turned to walk to the railing to look at the bustling city night view of Suicheng.

"But you specifically called me here not to talk about this, right? So, what new information have you gotten that you need me to verify?"

“…………”

Red Rose didn't say anything, and with a wave of her wand, the magical screen switched to another image: the half-egg shell copied by the Hero Association.

She explained in detail the plan of Xin Yuehu and Inari, as well as the dreamlike image of finding the eggshell and turning it into a speed race in the card game racing game. Mercury was stunned and couldn't figure out what it was all about at first.

"What's this?"

—He even uttered a line that seems to be very popular recently.

"The Hero Association pieced together what they found in the stronghold built by Garuda in the dream vision, but no one knows what it is."

"Having traveled through the astral realm for so long, do you have any recollection of the patterns on the eggshells?"

Upon hearing this, Mercury noticed the seemingly irregular black patterns on the eggshell and quickly zoomed in on the image, examining it closely from different angles.

She neither nodded nor shook her head, her eyes revealing a hint of confusion and surprise as she stroked her chin, lost in thought.

"Half an eggshell...that means the thing inside the egg has 'hatched,' which isn't a good thing..."

"But this pattern... no, it's missing the most important part of the upper half. I'm not sure what this pattern means, but I can give you a few of the most likely possibilities."

"I know a collector who has collected many rare items from the astral plane and other worlds. He travels to many different worlds and collects all sorts of wonderful and interesting gadgets. Among them is a fragment of an eggshell with black patterns that looks a lot like this."

"According to him, the fragment was an unhatched egg laid by Garuda in another world. The people of that other world believed that the egg was the source of the disaster that fell from the stars, so they united to break the egg and kill the unhatched bird inside."

"The blood shed by the little bird polluted a large area of ​​the surrounding land. Its silent lament before its death aroused the wrathful revenge of Garuda. Countless cities were reduced to ashes in the raging fire and the attack of shadow monsters."

"The collector traded a bag of biscuits and water for a fragment of an eggshell from a scavenger in the city ruins. The scavenger said it could protect the holder from attacks by shadow monsters... and it proved to be true."

Mercury did not reveal the scavenger's final fate, nor was there any need for further explanation.

"Among all the images and objects related to Garuda, the 'egg' and the 'eggshell' are two extremely dangerous things side by side."

"I just didn't expect that when Garuda invaded the mental world, it would also generate a corresponding 'egg' in that world. Is there some kind of special connection between them...?"

"—An egg that failed to hatch?"

Red Rose suddenly realized what Mercury had just said, repeating his words with a sharp look in her eyes.

"You just said that the people from another world broke Garuda's egg, which is why it angered Garuda?"

"That's just a story I heard. I'm not even sure if that old man is trying to get me to spend more star coins to buy his goods. You should carefully verify whether it's true or not..."

"I think this story is true," Red Rose said softly, and Mercury's voice stopped abruptly.

"...What makes you think that?"

"intuition."

Mercury was at a loss. But he had absolutely nothing to say to Red Rose's words; her intuition was so accurate that he wondered if she possessed the same kind of precognitive magic as Inari.

"Following this logic, if a world can only attract Garuda's attention through an 'egg,' then who was the first person in the present world to witness Garuda?"

"This... Chi Xue? She banished a projection of Garuda last time."

"No, not Akashi. It's someone else, an ordinary person we've overlooked."

Mercury paused for a few seconds, his brow furrowed, before replying:

"The little bird Inari mentioned, the winged person Sasha...?"

"She said the little bird was an abandoned egg that was hatched and adopted by a pair of sparrows—ah."

After a soft exclamation, the rooftop fell into dead silence.

Only when a dark cloud drifted in from the horizon, and more gloom shrouded the starry sky, and the first raindrop shattered into tiny droplets on the rooftop, did the two magical girls finally speak up about that terrible possibility:

"Garuda's egg—"

"—It was hatched more than a decade ago."