During a late-night experiment, Nako accidentally spills a concentrated batch of the potion onto a pile of discarded, low-level magical cores. Instead of dissolving, the cores fuse together into a —a shapeshifting creature driven entirely by the desire to consume magical energy from living hosts.
The story culminates in the deep basement of the Institute, where the monster has begun to create a "Fragment Hive." Nako must decide whether to destroy the creature and lose her research or find a way to purify it back into its base components.
The monster escapes the lab, and Nako realizes it has a unique, dangerous trait: every time it captures someone, it uses the "Instant Fragment" magic to drain them of their willpower in seconds, leaving them blissfully incapacitated while it grows stronger.
to resist the monster's instant-drain aura.
Nako must navigate the different sectors of the Institute to recapture the monster before the board of directors finds out. Along the way, she has to:
Nako is a brilliant but scatterbrained alchemist working at the , a facility dedicated to researching "High-Efficiency Magic." Her latest project is a potion designed to instantly extract the essence of a person's magical potential—colloquially known as the "Instant Fragment."