A Guide to Humanity’s Extinction

”Xia Zili... what was her Superhuman Codename again?” Ke Mingqing searched his memory. ”Magical Girl... Yu Hua?”

He pulled his phone from his school uniform jacket, opened the browser, and typed the keyword ”Magical Girl Yu Hua” into the search bar.

The site automatically corrected his search term, changing it to ”Magical Girl Ember.”

The page flashed white. After it refreshed, a cascade of related videos filled the screen.

”Is it really this crazy?”

Ke Mingqing raised an eyebrow, his lips parting unconsciously.

The Magical Girl Company had either neglected public relations entirely or tried and failed to control the narrative. Public opinion had completely spiraled out of control; right now, every video thumbnail and title on his screen oozed with deep-seated malice.

The top video had over ninety million views. Its title read:

—[A Murderous Magical Girl? The Impact of Becoming a Magical Girl on Minors. With Superheroes Around, Why Do We Even Need Magical Girls?]

The video’s thumbnail showed a girl in a black gothic dress hovering before a bloodstained high-rise. Her head was bowed, her expression chillingly stern, her straight black hair and skirt whipping in the wind.

”Murder?”

Ke Mingqing muttered, letting out a low scoff.

Based on the memories implanted in his mind, he found it incredibly hard to picture Xia Zili killing someone. No matter how wildly puberty hormones raged, they couldn’t turn a child into a murderer, could they?

Curious, he tapped into the video and first checked the upload date.

The incident had happened a week ago. He recalled that Xia Zili hadn’t come home that day; she had claimed to be crashing at a classmate’s place, and no one in the family had been able to reach her.

Ke Mingqing still didn’t play the video, instead scrolling down to the comments.

The comment section had been completely overrun by mockery and furious accusations. The sentiment was almost entirely one-sided—the vast majority of people were using the incident to bash the China Magical Girl Company for its lack of discipline, harshly condemning Magical Girl Ember’s actions as a terrible influence on minors.

The sheer scale of this verbal crusade was nothing short of a massive cyberbullying campaign.

If the person at the center of it all had weaker mental fortitude, reading this might ruin their appetite for days. Even worse, it could drive them to jump off a building.

Ke Mingqing stared expressionlessly for a moment.

”The super-human species panel mentioned that a magical girl who kills might corrupt into a ’witch’...” he mused after some thought. ”Aren’t all of you afraid that cursing her like this will turn her into a witch who comes back to slaughter you all?” With that, he played the video.

The footage was filmed from the rooftop of a villa. The gothic-dressed girl floated in the night sky. She raised the umbrella in her hand, and her black-gloved finger pulled the trigger.

With a deafening roar, a beam of grayish-black light blasted from the umbrella’s tip, striking a towering figure. It was a criminal with six arms, wearing an evil spirit mask—looking like an Asura.

The beam obliterated the very top of the high-rise, and the criminal’s figure exploded into a mist of blood. Blood cascaded down like a waterfall, staining nearly the entire building red.

The glass curtain wall was sheared open by the crimson tide, shattering in an instant.

In that moment, thousands of glass shards rained down like a storm, every single fragment reflecting the gothic girl’s bewildered yet resentful face.

She hovered there in a daze, the umbrella in her hand lowering.

It took her a moment to finally look down at the screaming crowds on the streets below, meeting the tidal wave of gazes sweeping up toward her.

The people stared up blankly, their eyes filled mostly with terror and shock.

Her dangling bangs shadowed her eyes, making her expression impossible to read.

She raised the umbrella over her head. The tightly furled canopy bloomed like a black rose, carrying her up into the night sky.

Soon, she melted into the deep darkness.

The video ended there. Ke Mingqing stared at the blood-drenched building on his screen. ”You two, father and daughter, really have the exact same way of doing things.”

He locked his phone and pulled up his Player Friends List.

A small notification bubble hovered above the name Kuroki Hitomi, displaying a ’1’ to indicate an unread message.

[Kuroki Hitomi: Are you okay?]

[Ke Mingqing: Still alive. But the day they find out players exist and start a carpet search of the house, I’m dead meat.]

[Kuroki Hitomi: Why don’t you run away from home and come to my place?]

[Ke Mingqing: That would only drag you down. My body’s biological father has a very unique status. With his investigative skills and network, tracking me down would be a breeze. Once he finds out we’re both players, we’ll be doomed together.]

[Kuroki Hitomi: Then what do we do?]

[Ke Mingqing: Take it one step at a time. No one in this world knows about players yet, so my situation is safe for now. Maybe... I can fake my own death right in front of them later to get away, though that’s probably not realistic.]

[Kuroki Hitomi: We can only go back if we complete the mission, but... Exterminate Superhumans? There are so many freaks in this world, it doesn’t sound realistic at all. Are we just waiting to die?]

[Ke Mingqing: Who said anything about waiting to die? If the system gave us this task, it definitely provided us with the means to do it.]

Ke Mingqing sighed, closed the chat panel, and glanced up.

[Gradually unlocking a series of player functions. Please wait... The ’Skill Shop’ is now open to you.]

[Players are ranked from Lv.01 to Lv.50. You begin with 5 starting skill slots, and an additional slot is unlocked every 10 levels—capping at Rank 50 for a maximum of 10 slots, allowing you to equip 10 skills.]

Ke Mingqing looked toward the upper right corner of his vision. A new ’Skill Shop’ option had appeared.

He raised his finger, about to open the skill shop. But right then, a gentle call drifted up from downstairs, slipping through the crack in his door:

”Zili, Mingqing, come down for dinner.”

It was his mother, Xia Wenna.

”Alright, let’s see what other monsters and demons are hiding in this family,” Ke Mingqing muttered. Taking a deep breath, he rose from his swivel chair with the resolve of a man ready to fight to the death. He opened his door and headed downstairs.

He glanced into the kitchen.

His mother, Xia Wenna, was already forty-five but still looked incredibly youthful. She had a beautiful face that could pass for a young woman in her twenties; the years had barely left a mark on her.

In the original owner’s memories, Xia Wenna was a natural airhead—naive, simple-minded, and cursed with a terrible memory.

Rather than a mother, she acted more like an overgrown child who constantly needed looking after by her kids. And ever since Ke Mingqing could remember, Xia Wenna hadn’t worked a single day outside the house.

Her biggest daily tasks were raising the children and doing chores. Once she was free, she would just sit on the couch and watch soap operas. Xia Wenna’s absolute favorites, however, were documentaries: ”Animal World” and ”Super-Human Species Classroom”.

Perhaps fools really did have their own kind of luck, as Xia Wenna had lived a peaceful, smooth life all these years without any major hurdles. Of course, this was partly because his old man had protected her so well.

No matter how Ke Mingqing looked at it, the woman in his memories and the woman standing before him was completely ordinary.

But right at that moment, a super-human species panel materialized above Xia Wenna’s back.

[Superhuman Codename: Alien Colonizer Z12235]

[Type: Extraterrestrial Lifeform]

[Danger Rating: ???]

[Superhuman Profile: A colonial vanguard sent from the planet Fangongta. Her mission is to settle on Earth, infiltrate human society under the guise of an ordinary person, and collect data on Earth’s super-human species to ensure the success of a future invasion plan.]

[Currently Known Weaknesses: ???]

Ke Mingqing froze in place, a chilling dread seeping straight into his spine. It took a while for his brain to process what he was seeing.

”You’ve got to be kidding me... Terrifying Crow-man, do you have any idea you’re being used as an alien sperm bank? So all these years, you’ve been sleeping with an alien and feeding her data to help invade Earth? Other people are just national traitors, but you skipped that phase entirely and evolved straight into a planetary traitor. I guess that’s one way to go down in history.”