"M-Monster!" the fairies screamed, retreating. The enemy was clearly beyond anything they could defeat. "Black dog monster! Barghest, the fairy eater!"
Barghest could no longer speak. Her muscular body swelled and melted, transforming from a tall, heroic female knight into a terrifyingly twisted giant black dog!
"Run! Run! Leave the city!" Fairies scrambled for the gates but found them mysteriously closed from the inside, impossible to open. "Damn it, why?!"
"This is bad!" Oberon dragged Fujimaru and Da Vinci-chan, hypnotizing a few fairies with phosphor powder before hiding in a sturdy building, cautiously watching outside. "How could this happen? Fairy Knight Gawain is one of the Three Great Calamities!"
"Wait, you mean the Great Calamity that happens every thousand years?!" Fujimaru was shocked. She'd heard the story from Oberon and the fairies—nothing terrified them more than this.
"If that's the case… what about the curse calamity we saw in Norwich?" Da Vinci-chan asked after thinking a moment.
"That was just a prelude," Oberon shook his head. "That was more like a mass of Mosses, but Barghest is different. She is the Beast Calamity."
"So we can only watch this all happen?!" Fujimaru said, unwilling.
"No choice," Oberon said with frustration. "Because of the curse's appearance, our troops are scattered. Mash isn't here, and neither Da Vinci-chan nor I are frontline fighters…"
Fairies fled in all directions, looting and killing each other in the flames and despair. Fang Clan fairies mimicked the black dog, tearing and eating humans, only to be killed by humans with iron weapons.
Barghest, now the Beast Calamity, walked Manchester's streets. The earth burned wherever she passed. Every fairy she met, she captured and ate—no exceptions.
As time passed, fewer and fewer fairies remained. Some Fang Clan fairies escaped through secret tunnels, fleeing towards Gloucester.
Now, in Manchester, almost all fairies—whether loyal to Barghest or rebel resistance—were dead or dying. Only the giant black dog's howls remained.
"…Hide here. I'll go check the situation." Sensing something was happening, Oberon shrank to moth size and flew out a skylight, vanishing, leaving Fujimaru and Da Vinci-chan behind.
But as they wondered how long they'd have to hide, something unexpected happened.
"Massive magic reaction!" Da Vinci-chan stared at her device. "Over Manchester—this pattern… it's Queen Morgan's teleportation magecraft!"
They ran to a spot with a better view. A dense magic cloud gathered in the sky, sparking with arcs of lightning. The black dog below sensed it too, roaring furiously upward.
With a strange boom and a flash of light, two figures appeared in the sky.
One was a young woman with long red hair streaming in the wind; the other wielded a giant shield and wore slightly revealing armor…?
Wait, a giant shield?
"Da Vinci-chan, Da Vinci-chan! Isn't that Mash?!" Fujimaru gaped, pointing. "Wasn't Mash imprisoned by Queen Morgan?!"
"That's definitely Mash!" Da Vinci-chan checked with a telescope. "But her spiritual output is way higher than before—almost top-class servant level. What's going on…?"
Barghest saw the two, gathered her magic into a dark cannon, and fired.
The shield-wielding girl—Mash—immediately rushed in front of Aoko, raised the shield, and blocked the attack head-on.
A huge explosion sounded, but when the dust cleared, Mash and Aoko were unharmed, proving Mash's strength.
"Barghest," Aoko's voice was clear and steady, reaching Fujimaru and Da Vinci. "Rest well. Treat all this as a nightmare."
As soon as she finished, Aoko dove rapidly from the sky. Barghest fired several more blasts, but Aoko dodged them easily.
"Is that… Sister Aoko?" Fujimaru said in surprise, recognizing her after she descended. "Why is she here? With Mash?"
Da Vinci-chan had forgotten to tell Fujimaru, but she wasn't certain the woman in the sky was the Fourth Magician. She'd only met her at a Singularity before and couldn't be sure if this Aoko was Aozaki Aoko from her memory.
Aoko and Mash now closed in on Barghest. Aoko sped up, dodged the last attack, then reached out and pressed her right hand to the burning black dog's forehead.
Fujimaru and Da Vinci-chan, watching from afar, felt the world pause for a second as Aoko touched Barghest. The world grew strange as if someone had cut out a piece of time—like editing and deleting a scene from a movie.
When they came to, the giant black dog was gone. Lying naked, beautiful, and muscular on the ground was the unconscious fairy knight Gawain—Barghest.