So, it and its companions, with the help of those humans, mastered the Remnant Beasts' power and could even transform into Remnant Beasts themselves, unleashing fighting abilities far exceeding those of the past.
This group of Fairies, with a determination to fight to the death, along with the Remnant Beasts brought by those humans, launched a surprise attack on the center of power in the Magic Kingdom—the royal court.
At that time, Semi could never have imagined that this very assault would become the cessation of the war between the realm and the inter-dimension.
Twenty years had passed, and the war had already been recorded in the history of the Magic Kingdom as the "Garden Defense Battle."
The outcome of the war was a pyrrhic victory for the Magic Kingdom and a crushing defeat for the "Rebels," that is, Semi and the other inter-dimension Fairies.
Semi could no longer remember when it lost consciousness on the battlefield.
It only remembered charging forward relentlessly, stepping over the bodies of countless comrades, just to get through the "Garden" to reach the Rose Palace, desperately wanting to swing its claws at the figure on the throne. However, its consciousness fell silent amidst the seemingly endless battles.
Later, it woke up in the arms of a Magical Girl.
She was a Magical Girl who had also participated in the war—Semi knew because in a haze, it remembered having wounded her true form before passing out. The injury was so severe that not even the Magical Girl's powers could heal it, causing her to lose an arm forever.
Yet this one-armed Magical Girl secretly hid the unconscious Semi on the battlefield and took it away from the Garden.
The one-armed Magical Girl hid it in her home, evaded the royal court's search, and cared for it as if truly keeping a pet. She knew Semi's name but insisted on giving Semi a nickname, calling it "Kitty."
Semi didn't understand.
It didn't understand why, although they were enemies and it had even injured her arm, they should have been sworn enemies. But the one-armed Magical Girl didn't kill it; she even chose to shelter it.
Semi had asked her about this, but the Magical Girl's answer was "I don't know."
The Magical Girl and the Fairy, who should have been enemies, thus lived together peacefully in the Magic Kingdom.
This time was probably the happiest in Semi's entire life.
The one-armed Magical Girl appeared somewhat indifferent but was in fact very gentle and delicate. She took great care of Semi, not only seeing to its needs for food and drink but also taking Semi to see various landscapes in the kingdom that were unseen in the inter-dimension.
They climbed every mountain within sight, crossed every river they encountered, and then, upon reaching their destination, the girl would always hold Semi with her remaining arm and sit together with it in places that were like fairylands, silently gazing at the sky in a daze.
Each time , Semi would remember what Big Jack had told it long ago, and Big Jack was indeed right. Here, it discovered many beautiful things it had never experienced before, and its life felt meaningful for the first time.
But happiness is always fleeting, and soon, a change occurred again—this time, it happened to the one-armed Magical Girl.
—Because of the incurable serious injury that left her disabled, significantly affecting her combat capability as a Magical Girl, the Magical Affairs Institute, after deliberation, decided to retire her.
And retirement meant taking away the Heart's Gem, effectively ending her career as a Magical Girl.
Since the girl was injured in the Garden Defense Battle and had merit in protecting the royal court, the Magical Affairs Institute offered her very generous retirement benefits: not only wealth that seemed inexhaustible but also a secure job away from the front and even priority for her future children to obtain the qualifications to become Magical Girls.
For a normal person, this might not be a problem: after all, someone severely disabled can no longer fight properly, so it would be better to retire and enjoy a peaceful life. But the one-armed Magical Girl didn't think so.
She didn't want to give up her identity as a Magical Girl.
No one knew her true thoughts, only that she rejected the proposal from the Magical Affairs Institute and refused the retirement process.
However, the kingdom also rejected her refusal, insisting that she should retire. After several unsuccessful attempts at communication, they chose the most drastic measure—forced retirement.
When Semi watched at home as the one-armed Magical Girl was taken away by the kingdom's personnel, it could do nothing, because she had already instructed it to hide well and not to show its face.
It watched the girl being escorted away, and only after the sound of footsteps had faded did it dare to crawl to the window and gaze at the trailing Magic Power in the sky.
Semi sat by the window, neither eating nor drinking, as still as a sculpture for three days.
Those three days seemed very long, but to it, they weren't actually long because during that time, its mind was empty, not thinking about anything, its body feeling like an empty shell.
After three days, the door to its home was opened.
Semi rushed to the door at top speed to greet her, wondering how to comfort the Magical Girl who had lost her Magic Power and pondering how they would live from now on.
Then, it saw the figure it was so intimately familiar with standing at the doorway, though the previously empty sleeve had been filled again.
The one-armed Magical Girl—or rather, the girl who had once been one-armed—stood at her own doorstep, her simple and somewhat naive Magical Girl outfit now covered with sinister patterns, and a pair of vertical pupils floated silently in the pitch-black eyes.
On her, there was a scent that was incredibly foreign to Semi, yet also very familiar.
It was the scent of the Remnant Beasts.
That day, the girl cast aside her original Magical Girl codename and acquired a new one called "Black Cat."
To Semi, that was also the day it ended its not-so-long tranquil years and returned to the Interrealm, beginning a life of drift and turmoil anew.
Only this time, on the road of wandering, there was a companion.
The girl joined an organization called "爪痕", led by the former Gemstone Scepter of the Magic Kingdom, a figure with an astonishing background, and the girl, by virtue of her strong talent and combat power, became the deputy leader.
The girl would often hold Semi, just the two of them, sitting in silence, but they no longer looked at the beautiful blue sky of the Magic Kingdom. All that was left in their view was the endless yellow sand of the Interrealm and the Blue Moon that would quietly float there every night.
It was only during such times that the girl would softly share her dreams with Semi—she wanted to build a truly beautiful and equal Garden; a place with no wars, no oppression, and no distinction of status, where everyone except the Remnant Beasts could live and work in peace and contentment.
And at those times, Semi would listen quietly to her dreams.
Despite having suffered many wounds, the girl still harbored many beautiful illusions about the world and aspired to establish an ideal kingdom.
And Semi, it hated the Interrealm, despised this desolate land that it could never escape, the so-called "homeland"; it hated the kingdoms, hated the courts that had injured Big Jack and then the girl, yet still remained haughty and aloof.
But within its heart, there was another voice; it still yearned for the land of the Interrealm that carried the emotions of countless Fairies; it still longed for the beautiful and touching natural scenery in the kingdoms; it was still curious about the peculiar civilizations created by humans in the Material Realm.
It, too, wanted everything to be better.
So, the girl's dreams had become one with its dreams, even if it didn't know when that happened.
With these thoughts, Semi opened its own single eye.
Yellow sand gathered beneath its feet, and the pitch-black night mingled with the sandstorm, looking like a canvas smeared with ink and trampled upon, leaving only filth.
And the Blue Moon, that very Blue Moon which had become a symbol of the homeland, was now soaked into this filthy canvas.
This was its "nest" after transforming into a Remnant Beast, yet even the nest was branded deeply with the mark of the Interrealm, as if seared by a hot iron.