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

Chapter 696 The Message Brought by the Wind

The Hero Association's monitoring room was in complete chaos.

The on-duty hero urgently dispatched all nearby drones to conduct a thorough search of the surrounding area, but they couldn't find a trace of Hyacinth. Even using a magic detector, they couldn't find any unique magical fluctuations that belonged to her.

"North Wind One! Please respond!"

Nightingale lay on the radio, calling out to Hyacinth repeatedly, but the channel only echoed with her own voice; she received no further response from Hyacinth.

She seemed to vanish from the world in an instant; even Meteor's psychic abilities couldn't detect which space she was in—or rather, this space didn't exist in Meteor's perception at all.

"What exactly happened? Why was there such severe interference all of a sudden?"

Qianmu rubbed his swollen eyes, suppressed his psychic abilities, sat down in a chair to rest, and asked his colleagues.

"The frontline investigation team's drones are collecting telemetry data, but they may not be able to get complete data," Messiah said calmly, as she directed the frontline personnel on her command terminal.

"Chimu, you should also know that our research on magic is very superficial. In addition, Hyacinth used a magic suppression item from Kokoro, so the possibility of collecting relevant data is extremely slim."

"Yes, this is troublesome." Qianmu sighed, feeling that the dizziness caused by the magic interference had recovered a lot, and then he opened his eyes again to look at the people in front of him.

The nightingale continued to call to the hyacinth, while Messiah stared at the command terminal, his brow furrowing deeper and deeper, which did not seem like a good omen.

No one knows whether Nightingale's plan will work, but at least it has taken its first step successfully: Hyacinth has indeed disappeared with a whole bunch of the magical gadgets she got from Heart Moon Fox.

As for where she disappeared to, and how she will find the people involved in the three disappearances at that location...

"...Shh...shh..."

suddenly.

As Nightingale finished another call and waited for a reply, a piercing noise came through the communication channel.

Normally, everyone would assume that Qi Yun, who was maintaining the communication channel, had been slacking off for a while and was sitting there dozing off. But when everyone looked at her, they only saw the energetic hero in work clothes sitting at the table drinking a beverage.

"...Why are you staring at me?" Startled by the sudden stare, Qi Yun blinked a few times, put down her coffee cup, and asked, puzzled.

"You weren't sleeping, were you?" Messiah asked.

"What are you talking about? The energy drink your Wuyi gave me, I took one sip and it was like I was on steroids, how could I possibly fall asleep?" Qi Yun retorted mercilessly, and even showed the people in front of her the drink in the cup that didn't look like coffee.

Meteor quickly teleported behind Nightingale, and Messiah rushed to the communication terminal in a few steps, turned up the volume a few degrees, and listened carefully to the fluctuating hissing interference in the channel.

This time, Qi Yun also realized what was happening and quickly turned around to check the psionic communication coil on the windowsill, her eyes sharp.

"The terminal hasn't been tampered with; that wasn't interference," Qi Yun said. "Increase the search frequency; don't limit yourself to a narrow area, use the full bandwidth!"

Upon hearing this, Nightingale hesitated slightly, while Messiah swiftly reached out and turned the knob next to the terminal to its maximum, listening intently.

The hissing noise gradually grew louder, triggering the terminal's interference filtering code. A sound hidden within the interference gradually became faintly audible.

The sound was fragmented and indistinct, but the nightingale's magically enhanced hearing still picked up a few key words, which she quickly jotted down on the paper at hand.

【Nanshan, Nanshan... I am... Nobuko...】

[...There is nothing here...]

(Strong interference)

After a few seconds of silence, Qi Yun rushed to the windowsill and searched along the frequency band of the location, trying to find the direction of the source of the blurry signal.

No matter how she adjusted the direction of the communication terminal, the signal strength did not change, the interference sound remained, and it even completely masked the sound of the hyacinth at one point.

"Why isn't the signal changing? Where is she?" Qi Yun was completely confused and had no idea.

If a dish does not change its signal when it rotates 360 degrees, it means that the signal source is in a strongly shielded location and cannot be accurately located.

But the nightingale squinted, murmured to itself for a while, and then spoke aloud:

"If it's Hyacinth, she should be using the communication grimoire stone that Heart Moon Fox gave her right now..."

"...Ms. Qiyun, could you point the receiver towards the sky?"

Qi Yun was stunned for two seconds.

Does Nightingale not know the specific principles behind her psychic abilities? Theoretically, she could use adjustments to her psychic abilities to... well, let's just do as she says first. After all, magic and psychic abilities are completely different systems, so what if it actually works?

Thinking of this, Qi Yun loosened the fixing pin of the receiver, adjusted the antenna angle, and pointed it straight to the sky.

A miracle happened.

The previously noisy interference suddenly subsided, and the sound of the hyacinth became clear and distinct. Messiah hurriedly turned down the volume to prevent the people next to the terminal from experiencing tinnitus from the loud noise.

[Nanshan, Nanshan! The hyacinth is calling to Nanshan! Can you hear me?]

Hyacinth's voice was extremely anxious, almost screaming into the microphone.

Even Qi Yun didn't know what the principle was—her psychic ability was clearly collecting electromagnetic waves from all directions, and adjusting the receiving direction was just to help her concentrate, so how did this situation occur?

After pondering for a long time without finding a solution, Qi Yun decided to attribute it to "maybe this is magic," and turned to walk to the terminal to listen with the other heroes.

"I can hear you, hyacinth," the nightingale replied.

There was a pause of a few seconds on the other end of the terminal, and then Hyacinth's big face appeared on the video call screen, with tears streaming down her face and snot hanging from her nose, looking like she was frightened.

[Waaaaaah, you finally replied to me! Waaaaaah!]

I thought I was going to disappear forever, waaaaaah!

Seeing her teammate crying so hard, Nightingale's heart softened, and she gently comforted her:

"Don't worry, we've been looking for your location the whole time. Were you using the Heart Moon Fox's Divine Stone communication device?"

【yes】

Hyacinth wiped away her snot and tears, rallied her spirits, and answered earnestly.

[Hey, you know what, this thing is actually pretty good. I don't know where I am, but I didn't expect the signal to be so clear after I connected.]

"Enough with the small talk, since we can make a video call, let's quickly check our surroundings," Nightingale calmly made her arrangements.

Hyacinth stood up. It looked like she had been huddled in a corner trying to make contact, with a magic shield generator set up around her, as if she was afraid of encountering some monster.

But when it pointed the Divine Stone's camera at the surroundings, Nightingale and the others stared intently—

It was a dimly lit grassy playground with the school building standing next to it. There were no lights or students in sight. Apart from a few scattered sports equipment and some desks and chairs that shouldn't be on the playground, you could also see some magical dust floating in the air.

Ordinary people cannot see magical dust, but under the photographs of the Divine Stone, even ordinary people like Meteor Qiyun, who have no magic, can see these faintly glowing dust particles.

"……Wait a moment."

The nightingale squinted its eyes.

"Isn't this... Rongcheng College of Arts and Sciences...?"