A Guide to Humanity’s Extinction

"Xiaoli..."

Owl Judge stared at the photo on the screen, murmuring silently.

In that moment, the deep, dark moonlight swelled and fell around him like the sea at high tide.

He raised a hand to his metal mask and took a deep breath.

Under his deliberate suppression, the restless moonlight quickly cooled, leaving behind only fang-like scratches along the corridor's walls and windows.

He knew he needed to calm down; otherwise, he risked exposing his position.

Fortunately, a gale raged outside, and the storm quickly masked the slight commotion.

Before long, absolute silence returned to the pitch-black corridor.

Amid the pouring rain, Owl Judge lowered his head, the V-shaped light strip on his mask flickering.

[Ke Linye: If I find out you're joking, I'll slaughter you too.]

[White Jack: If you kill me for her sake, you'll definitely regret it.]

[Ke Linye: ?]

[White Jack: Why don't you come over here and see if I'm joking? Miss Xia Zili is lying on the ground right now. If you want to save her, hurry up and bring Miss Zero over. I'm not counting on that old man Zorro.]

Owl Judge stopped looking at his phone and turned his head.

He looked through the window toward another distant corner, where a figure in a black kimono was currently standing guard—Sorakagehime, that was her name.

At the same time, on the rooftop of a high-rise directly above the kimono-clad girl...

A sudden flash of lightning illuminated a girl in a pitch-black bodysuit, casting her silhouette in a startling white.

Owl Judge tilted his head back, watching that figure from afar.

Ke Linye and Xia Lingxue had planned to strike the enemy's central stronghold together after dealing with their respective foes. White Jack's job was simply to stall until the two of them arrived.

Since Ke Linye had finished his work, all that remained was to wait for Xia Lingxue to finish hers.

As for Zorro, the old man had stated from the beginning that he didn't want to get too involved with Death Crow.

He claimed he was getting old and only wanted to save his remaining energy for those damn bastards in the Superhero Roundtable Council, so he was only responsible for helping them stall some of Death Crow's members.

At this moment, Executive Zero stood motionless atop the railing, looking down at Sorakagehime from above, waiting for a chance to strike.

And that peal of thunder was the perfect cover.

She descended from the sky like an ice dancer, gliding upon a path of frozen rain as she plummeted straight toward the kimono-clad girl.

Owl Judge watched this scene quietly, with no intention of stepping in to help.

He knew there were very few people in this world who could defeat his sister.

What he really needed to worry about now was his other sister, the one he hadn't paid much attention to.

Through his mask, Owl Judge glanced at the photo on his screen and thought, 'If Xiaoli became a magical girl two years ago... that was the year Xia Lingxue also entered university. We rarely went home during those two years, so is that why we didn't notice?'

...

...

Heavy rain poured down, battering the desolate, forgotten wasteland. A massive, rustling din blanketed the world.

In a corner of the ruins, Sorakagehime leaned against a vending machine.

Cradling her scabbard, she closed her eyes in the storm. She stood as still as a statue while her black kimono fluttered wildly in the gale.

A Shadow Warrior's keen senses were like a seamless spiderweb. The moment anyone approached the abandoned building, she would instantly detect them.

A moment later, Sorakagehime suddenly felt a chill pressing down from above.

She snapped her eyes open and looked up.

In that very second, a girl with an icy aura, clad in a pitch-black bodysuit, plunged from the sky against the moonlight, hurtling straight toward her.

The falling rain in her path completely froze, transforming into countless tiny ice spikes that rained down on Sorakagehime.

Executive Zero. On his way here from the port, Lorenzo had exchanged intel with his members and mentioned this figure to Sorakagehime.

According to the leader, this bodysuit-clad girl was very likely also a mythic vessel.

Sorakagehime still remembered what Lorenzo had told her inside the building: if she encountered the enemy, she must avoid combat and report the intel back to him.

Lorenzo had entrusted her with sentry duty precisely because he trusted her adaptability.

Therefore, she chose not to engage. Instead, she immediately blurred into an ink-like silhouette, attempting to meld into the swaying shadows at her feet.

However, before Sorakagehime could sink into the shadows, Zero reacted.

Manipulating the rainwater into a cloud of ice dust, Zero swiftly froze Sorakagehime's lower half.

Sorakagehime flinched. Her legs abruptly lost all sensation. Her only escape route had been sealed off.

The next moment, she threw her head back as the ice-laced gale whipped her short black hair.

Rain lashed her face. Staring up at that aloof, freezing silhouette, she realized almost instantly that she and this opponent were simply not on the same level...

Sorakagehime's eyes hardened. Since there was no retreat, her only option was to fight to the death.

And so, an unexpected scene unfolded: like a gecko severing its tail to survive, Sorakagehime suddenly flourished her pitch-black katana, slicing right through her frozen feet in a single strike.

Anyone else would have hesitated before cutting off their own legs, but why would a person on the verge of death worry about that?

Amid the swirling ice dust, her blood and her severed feet, still clad in wooden clogs, sprayed into the air.

Sorakagehime didn't scream in agony. For one thing, such pain was barely worth mentioning to a Shadow Warrior. For another, the frozen nerves in her lower half were already numb.

Even with her feet severed, she hardly felt a thing; it only registered as a sudden emptiness below.

Suddenly, she closed her eyes. In this moment, absolute silence claimed her world. The rustling rain stopped. The howling gale was no longer restless. It was as if the entire world had gone blank.

She entered a state of empty clarity, completely forgetting herself.

A surge of shadows burst upward like a furious tide, launching her legless body into the air. In this instant, the fragile, glass-like girl almost transformed into a black falcon.

Raising her sword, she let out a screech and charged at the enemy above her.

The sky darkened. The curtain of rain flowed in reverse, all the water surging toward the heavens.

Between inverted heaven and earth, a falcon woven of shadows and cold steel soared into the sky. It lacked feet, and the tip of its blade formed its beak, yet it remained aloof, fierce, and swift.

But right at that moment, a fiery red phantom limb materialized beside Zero's right arm. And the right hand of that phantom limb was tightly gripping a rippling flaming sword.

Sorakagehime stared blankly.

One second earlier, it had been absolute, biting cold, making her feel as if she were standing on the frozen tundra of Siberia. The next second, the heat flared so intensely it felt like she had been hurled into the mouth of a volcano.

The wind and rain howled, yet the moment they touched the flaming sword, they vaporized into billowing steam. The firelight briefly illuminated the pitch-black ruins, instantly burning away the curtain of rain and the lingering ice.

And then, she slashed downward.

Crack—

A remarkably crisp sound echoed in the rain, and the pitch-black katana in Sorakagehime's grip shattered. Her kimono was scorched and torn apart, and the shadows shrouding her quietly faded away.

In the instant the flaming sword fell, the falcon forged of shadows was cleaved in two.

This scene felt incredibly natural. In the face of an absolute gap in power, there was no suspense at all.

Just as a stray cur could never defeat a ferocious tiger, no matter how desperately it fought.

'At the very least... I have to let him know there's an enemy here...' Sorakagehime thought, forcing herself to make some noise.

The shadow-forged falcon tried to let out a piercing screech right to the bitter end.

Yet in the next second, she watched the swirling ice dust form a spherical barrier outside, enclosing both her and Zero within it.

It was like sinking into the deep sea; even the wind and rain were blocked out.

Zero had seen through Sorakagehime's intentions from the very start. Her full-strength shout couldn't pierce this layer of frost, let alone the pouring rain outside.

At this moment, the entire world fell into absolute silence. In this horrifyingly cold space, she had been stripped of her right to send her voice outward, and she could no longer hear a single sound.

Sorakagehime plummeted.

She quietly watched her body split in two, ultimately burned away by the roaring blazing fire, turning into a cloud of burning ash that scattered on the wind.

It looked like a flurry of red snow.

In the second she closed her eyes, a myriad of scenes flashed through her mind like a revolving lantern.

From childhood on, she had merely been raised by the sect as a killing machine. When assigned a mission, she killed decisively; when without a mission, she endured various forms of training that could only be described as torture.

The Shadow Sect only adopted orphans. To them, an orphan's background was the cleanest, making them the easiest to groom into loyal Shadow Warriors.

At the age of thirteen, she still possessed no sense of self. To the sect, she was nothing more than an obedient puppet.

But that year, a young man came to Yingfan Mountain.

He was a foreign youth who called himself The Pope. He had a pair of grayish-blue eyes, so profound they seemed capable of piercing through the entire world.

Behind the young man stood a group of figures, each radiating a distinct aura. One was a pirate clad entirely in red, one was dressed as a cowboy, another wore a Western-style butler's uniform, and yet another looked like a grand stage magician...

Lorenzo looked straight at the sect elders and calmly said, "One of you killed a member of our Death Crow. I want to know... who it was."

Hoping to settle the matter peacefully, the elders ordered her to step forward.

Lorenzo raised his eyes to look at the petite girl in the black kimono, and he couldn't help but pause in mild surprise.

He raised an eyebrow. The situation seemed to have exceeded his expectations, and a trace of confusion flickered in those calm, grayish-blue eyes.

Meanwhile, the group of villains behind him exchanged glances before bursting into boisterous laughter. They spoke among themselves—"Lan Zi, that idiot, actually got killed by a little brat?" "Don't tell me he got ambushed on the toilet. A man's at his most vulnerable when he's taking a shit." "Oh man, if I'd known, I wouldn't have brought him liquor. I should take a piss on his grave instead."

At the time, Sorakagehime stood alone, quietly positioned in front of over a hundred other Shadow Warriors who were also killing machines.

Isolated and helpless, she hung her head in a daze, awaiting the judgment of these villains. She felt like a lamb, a sacrificial lamb. Yes... from the moment she was born until now, she had never once been given the right to choose.

If possible, she wouldn't have chosen to be born...

If possible, she wouldn't have chosen to be abandoned by her parents...

If possible, she would have preferred to starve to death on the streets rather than be taken in by the Shadow Sect...

If possible, she wished the sect elders hadn't pushed her out at this moment to serve as a peace offering.

After a moment, the youth known as The Pope walked over.

With the sunlight behind him, the young man's face was cast in shadow. Sorakagehime lifted her head and quietly gazed into his eyes, those grayish-blue irises as deep as the midnight sea.

He looked at her calmly and slowly spoke:

"We have a rule: if someone can kill one of our members, they can take their place and become one of us."

Lorenzo paused. "So you have two choices now. The first choice is to join us and replace the man you killed. The second choice is to stay here and continue being a tool at others' beck and call."

Sorakagehime stared at him blankly.

That was the first time in her life she had ever been given the right to choose.

And she knew she didn't have a second option. Perhaps she had longed for this day to arrive, but she had waited for so long that her anticipation had long since been replaced by numbness.

"I'll go with you..." the girl said softly after a long pause.

"Welcome to Death Crow. I hope you can become someone useful to me," Lorenzo said. He reached out, patted her hair, and turned away.

To this day, Sorakagehime still didn't understand why Lorenzo had chosen her... perhaps it was because she was young and showed potential? Or perhaps it was because she had killed the man named Lan Zi?

It wasn't until a month later that she learned Death Crow never actually had that rule. Lorenzo had just made it up on the spot.

Had it been anyone else, they would have likely died right there. Lorenzo had simply taken a liking to her.

For the first time in her life, Sorakagehime felt unique. For the first time, she felt different from the other children who were raised as killing machines.

She felt proud of herself.

At dusk, after bidding farewell to the sect elders and walking down the mountain, Sorakagehime kept her head down in silence. The girl's pale face was bathed in the sunlight.

For some reason, the bamboo, flowers, and grass on the mountain that she used to see all the time suddenly felt entirely novel.

"What is your name?" Lorenzo suddenly asked.

The girl fell silent for a long, long time. "I don't have a name... The boys here are called 'Shadow Warriors,' and the girls are called 'Shadow Maidens.'"

Lorenzo suddenly stopped. Standing at the edge of the cliff, he gazed westward as a ray of sunlight spilled through a gap in the gorge.

The girl blinked and followed his gaze. She saw a sky as clear as washed glass, the setting sun hanging high above. The girl's clear eyes were illuminated by the halo of light.

And within that dazzling sunlight, Lorenzo said to her:

"Sorakagehime. From now on, this is your name."

In the years that followed, she gradually came to understand the meaning of 'freedom'.

Even though her actions consisted of wandering the world with a bunch of lunatics, burning, killing, and pillaging... even in such an absurd and unforgivable life, she had indeed witnessed sights she had never seen before.

To her, this was already a miracle akin to divine grace...

Because only here was she no longer treated like a killing machine.

Because even a villain like her had a savior of her very own.

The torrential rain poured down.

The world was a hazy expanse of gray.

Sorakagehime's figure continued to burn as she plummeted.

'I'm sorry... I couldn't do anything for you in the end.' The girl slowly closed her eyes. Soon, her body dissolved into ashes of woven red and black, scattering like a swarm of butterflies.

The moment she finished her enemy, Zero retracted the phantom limb of the mythic vessel Fire Giant Surtr and dispelled the barrier.

The wind and rain howled once more, lifting her cold hair.

She found cover to hide in, then raised her head and looked toward the other distant building.

Through a window, Owl Judge held up his phone and gestured at her.

Zero raised an eyebrow, quickly understanding his intent. She pulled her phone from her bodysuit and glanced at the lit screen.

[Ke Linye: New intel. Can't verify its authenticity yet.]

[Xia Lingxue: Did you let him get away?]

[Ke Linye: Are you kidding me? Who do you think you're talking to, my dear sister?]

[Xia Lingxue: Then what is it?]

The person on the other end hesitated for a moment before sending the message.

[Ke Linye: The magical girl Ember... might be our sister.]

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