I'm a magical girl in the future

Chapter 52 The Final Chapter of Future Time and Space

This is one of the few hospitals that is still in a relatively safe location.

In this world that has long since lost its color, the last resistance organization, like a candle flickering in the wind, maintains the fragile order that remains.

Noah simply sat quietly in the chair.

Lying on the hospital bed in front of her was her younger sister, Qin Xiaoling, who had been in a coma for 12 years.

That incident shattered her life, and indeed the world, into two irreparable halves. The price of being pulled back from the brink of death was a perpetual slumber.

Xiaoling became a vegetable.

Despite this, Shen Zixin, also known as Noah, did not give up.

The chances of a person in a vegetative state waking up are extremely slim, but why can't we look forward to it?

Qin Xiaoling, lying in her hospital bed, is biologically a 30-year-old mature woman. Her "brother," however, appears to be an 18-year-old girl.

Qin Xiaoling never woke up again.

As Noah's last remaining family member, he was also her final source of emotional support amidst this despair.

However, this hope must now be severed by my own hands.

The door to the room was pushed open, and a figure walked in. She deliberately kept her footsteps light, as if she was worried about disturbing the brother and sister's meeting.

"...So, you've finally made up your mind?"

Wang Tingshi walked to Noah's side, her gaze also falling on the peacefully sleeping life.

Noah didn't turn around, nor did she move, completely ignoring Wang Tingshi's arrival. After a long while, she finally spoke slowly—

"...Old woman."

Noah's tone was anything but polite.

"If I take Lynn's magical girl core and use its energy, can I really travel through time?"

Wang Tingshi's expression remained unchanged; her gaze was still fixed on Xiaoling.

"Theoretically, it is indeed feasible. Previous analysis and experiments have confirmed this; your ability to travel through time and space is indeed possible, and you have no doubt about it."

Wang Tingshi adjusted her glasses and continued explaining—

"However, our understanding of the concept of 'time' is ultimately limited. What impact your return to the past would have on history, the outcome... we don't know yet. The best-case scenario is that the 'dynamic timeline' theory holds true. In that case, you only need to kill Yi Luoxin before all the tragedies occur... then everything we've experienced will be completely corrected. But what if—"

"You've said these things a million times already, there's no need to repeat them."

Noah interrupted Wang Tingshi. Her gaze remained fixed, showing no deference to the other woman.

This idea was proposed as early as the initial stages of despair.

Noah, who possesses the ability to "travel through time," has been confirmed by the remaining research institute of the Civil Defense Bureau to have the potential to do so. Thus, a crazy plan was born—to go back in time and eliminate the mastermind behind everything, the magical girl named Yi Luoxin, before she gained power.

This sounds like the ultimate, and most perfect, solution.

However, if Noah wants to activate this ability, she needs at least a magical girl core as the driving energy.

Doing so would be tantamount to sacrificing a magical girl.

The "core" is the materialized essence of a magical girl's life and soul. Once removed, its host will inevitably face true and irreversible death. Moreover, it cannot be extracted from a magical girl who is already dead.

Therefore, to execute the plan, we either need to find a magical girl who has lost consciousness and is unable to resist, or we need to find someone who is willing to sacrifice their life for the plan.

The researchers' madmen even proposed a plan to capture magical girls who had already "fallen" and forcibly extract their cores. However, battles between magical girls, once they begin, often quickly escalate into a life-or-death struggle. Capturing a magical girl is far more difficult than simply killing her.

Even if they succeeded after great hardship, under the circumstances at the time, the priority was always "how to restore them from depravity," rather than treating them as a consumable.

Ultimately, because Noah herself opposed this plan, which required "sacrificing her companions," the plan was shelved indefinitely.

Until now.

Until all her companions, except Noah, had fallen. Until only she, the last magical girl, remained in the world, along with a few ordinary people clinging to life.

Failure is only a matter of time.

Therefore, the plan that Noah had once found unacceptable resurfaced in her mind like a curse from the abyss.

And that magical girl who could become a "sacrifice," looking across the entire world, there is only one left—

Noah's gaze returned to the hospital bed. There was that incredibly familiar face, which had been asleep for twelve years.

"...You have already sacrificed too much."

In Wang Tingshi's voice, it was impossible to discern whether it was praise or pity. She seemed to see through the hellish struggle in Noah's heart.

"To get this far, to make this decision... you are truly remarkable."

However, what seemed like a comforting remark infuriated Noah.

"Did you come here specifically to... mock me?" Her previously calm voice finally betrayed a hint of barely suppressed anger.

"No, that's not it." Wang Tingshi shook her head. "I'm just... here to give you my final support."

"Oh? Support?" Noah sneered. "At this point, what can you lot hiding in the rear give me?"

Wang Tingshi did not immediately respond to her sarcasm, but silently took out something that looked like a tablet computer and handed it to Noah.

"...A formal dress?" Noah finally shifted her gaze from Xiaoling and glanced at the item being handed to her.

"The Ritual of Copying All Things. You should have one more slot left in your ceremonial attire, right? Take it. Inside, you'll find all the information in our database up to this point."

"Including all known magical girls from the present and past eras, their personal information, ability descriptions, battle records... and the weaknesses we have painstakingly deduced."

She shoved the "board" into Noah's hand.

*

Information that can be made public now:

*

The Ceremony of Copying All Things

Category: Artificial Costume

Level: E

Holder: Noah

Description: Resembling a tablet in appearance, it is essentially a high-capacity portable hard drive + e-reader, with an internal space of 1024 YB (equivalent to 1.126 × 10^15 TB, approximately 1000 times the total amount of data on the global Internet in 2020). Of course, this is just the storage capacity; the actual files stored only occupy less than 1% of the space.

Before this Mystic Code was given to Noah, its internal files already contained storage for all books, electronic documents, and scanned copies of paper books from the future timeline, as well as all audio, video, game, and application files from around the world. The Mystic Code holder could also write documents inside, a convenient function that recorded events, much like an automatic typewriter helping to write a diary.

Its greatest value lies in its record of information on all magical girls to date, including personal details, ability details, and corresponding weaknesses. However, this Mystic Code itself has no combat ability; it is essentially just "a book containing a lot of information."

Furthermore, despite being an information recorder, it lacks a "retrieval function," simply and irresponsibly importing "all the information in the world" into it. Although it has a reading function, its readability is extremely poor.