*
If it's here, it should be safe. My eyes cloud over as thoughts wander off into the sky. Discomfort urges my body to shift around, rocking the seat that was holding in my stature's micro-rampage.
Hmpf, the staff here should be plenty capable considering they were teaching the next batch of their magical girls. They would be assigned here based on both their abilities to teach their successors and guard them at the same time. We're all probably going to be used as soldiers.
Lessons dragged on as the teacher's fervent lectures expound on various concepts from our curriculum while battling with our boredom. Picking up a habit from middle school, I had the routine impulse to stare out the window from my seat in the classroom. The milky grey and white of the vibrantly lit underground labyrinth of a base emphasised the covertness and vastness of this location.
As I mainly commute in this urban-like environment, the walls at the border of this base seemed to be lined with massive holes, more specifically, tunnels that branch out randomly into unexplored areas. Well, they were unexplored for me, and maybe not for others. I really knew too little about this base, perhaps familiarising with the infrastructure would aid in potential urban warfare. Anyway, I'm not remotely close to becoming a soldier, I can think about all that complicated stuff and memorise the geography later.
On the surface it may look like paradise due to there only being magical girls here, but this place may have just been more of a boot camp than a place for education. Test and comprehension standards were high, as well as expectations and competitiveness. Honestly, my future seem really bleak with how I only have the physical ability of an average teenager, not to mention how my muscle mass dropped in my now useless magical girl form.
It was very disheartening at first, so I distracted myself with the double-edged blade of hard work. Well, I really only did the minimum necessary, such as learning how to put on my new uniform, and the picking up of some of the basics of magic theory in the textbook provided.
As if splashed with a wave of cold water, my heart skipped a beat and I swiftly returned my attention to the dull colourless board at the front of the classroom. You could say all the students here were pretty much rivals, but a day of education like this was just that, mind-numbing boredom. Magic had really revolutionised how this underground base worked, or maybe it was the skill of one person managing the security of the whole place.
And so, there was some form of magic that helped picked up on other forms of magic, and security personnel would then be sent there to manage the situation. What it basically came down to, was that a small team was managing the traffic of people and the safety of everyone here. That was why even a fight is an event that would only occur extremely rarely. Excitement was only found in things such as outdoor expeditions, on-site touring, and training.
Even the adrenaline inducing splendor and risk associated danger of training was robbed from me. Mainly because I would die in a single hit. Even the previous lowest grade recorded, E grade meant that the person had Strength 20 times of an average human. My grading of F was a bit of a discovery considering readings don't come up when using the magic tool on non-magical girls, but that was what the doctors had concluded after doing some test on me while I was asleep.
To surmise the grading system that I had just learnt in class, way before I started daydreaming, these letter gradings were given as a measure of strength between magical girls. E-tier was given to those possessing a quality that is 20 times the capability of an average human, D-tier was 100 times, C-tier was 800 times, B-tier was 4000 times,and A-tier was 100 000 times. Each grade being exponentially stronger than the previous one, though it was a system formulated by people, so it isn't perfectly exponential and had fluctuations in order to suit its purpose better.
The S-tier was not touched upon and the notion of any tiers being above A-tier was quickly abandoned when the teacher, Jein sensei sensei decided to tell us just that.
"There is nothing above A-tier!... Refrain from pursuing this topic, I would hope for you to keep your childish delusion of grandeur to yourselves. There is simply nothing more powerful, nothing that could hold that much power in such a small body. A is the theoretical limit and B would be one of the highest one may see in life. C would be slightly higher than the average magical girl as the bell-curve distribution statistics largely reside around there.
It is possible for one to train an E-tier stat into a C-tier stat, going even further into B would be a rare occurrence, extreme devotion or talent. There have been records of people going into A-tier before too, but methods that lead to such power have been lost. Some still retain that much power, but they largely do not know how they attained that power other than attributing it into talent. My goal is to turn all of you into C-grade magical girls! Or at least have the knowledge and motivation to become one. "(Jein sensei)
This must be one of those things, where they secretly hide the existence of higher beings such as S-grade magical girls. If A-tier stats were 100 000 times, what would S be? Such thoughts sent shivers down my back, as if electricity that was somehow cold ran through my back muscles on purpose. I honestly don't want to think about what would happen if that enemy, Ray wasn't so cocky and held back on me. I won because of a support and a skill that acted on the environment itself. I'm sure if I had used normal attack magic, her magic resistance would endure it.
That meant that my magic skill wasn't the wind itself, but something that controlled the wind. The first time I used it, there was a vague feeling like I was using the magic like I was breathing air. If I want to activate it, it activates. It may not seem like a bad thing, but what it doesn't show at first is the lack of control. Like breathing, if I breath too fast or too slow, my performance in menial tasks may be affected.
Same with my first skill, a completely vague and feeling like an unscratchable itch would find its way down my heart when I use my skill. I don't know how to control it, and it's simply because I don't understand what it is. I only know that my power is related to wind, but not which part or factor of wind am I exactly controlling.
Anyway, my halted development of my combat power aside, there was an unexpected difference between the 'tier' and 'grade' of the magical girl grading system. Tier referred to a specific statistic of magical girls, mainly physical, endurance, speed, will, well. Grade referred to a magical girl's magical girl effectiveness level, in which they are judged based on the stat value of the majority of their stats and how well they deal with threats like monsters and enemy magical girls.
First of all, physical refers to the amount of physical strength a magical girl is capable of dishing out on their enemies, it may defer in tiring based on the body part since some parts of the body are simply stronger than other parts, say the left leg could be weaker than the right leg depending on the person.
Second was endurance.... Which was.... Enduring. It is as its name says, the ability to take an attack without dying.
The third was the top speed, how fast one could move at while fighting their enemies. Maintaining oneself at top speed is very arduous and exhaustive, so it may not be a reliable tiring system. There is also the fact that many people generally dwell around E-C tier for their speed, as people rarely have the motivation, time, effort or talent to nurture it. Compared it to say, magic, which has much ease in training compared to it, speed was simply too difficult to train.
The forth was 'will', it dictated one's magic defense ability and expressed how much one could resist mental attacks as well. The will also helps to reduce the effects of debuff and curses, intangible things that negatively affect one's performance.
And finally, the last one was 'well', it is 'well' as in the water well that one drew water from. Also it was the last explained stat so it should be quite obvious as to what it is, the amount of magic one can store in their body. Even if magic worked on one's surroundings, a magical girl mainly uses the magical particles inside their body as fuel to activate their magic skill, which then translates energy into phenomena.
That was the basics and the gist of the lesson I learned today. Reading ahead in the textbook, the rest were just various classifications of magic and their effects. The reason why these magic are classified that way are also stated in the textbook, so I guess those are also important.
"Hey~hey~, have you already memorised everything? We have a test at the start of next week~ Isn't that too quick? I don't want a test~" (?)
This was my seat neighbour, the classroom tables were laid out in a 5 by 5 manner with 10 empty seats in case anymore were to join us. Awakening as a magical girl just doesn't happen everyday, a batch of 15 like this was in fact already quite a large yield for this relatively small region in the Eye God Sanctuary territory. Our faction was officially named the Eye God Sanctuary, while there were many offshoots that arose from the great splitting and had adopted different names.
In any case, this region was too small and the governors managing this area concluded that joining the rebellion was not beneficial in any way. Despite the great splitting spawning many mini countries around our border, they were far too small and some have already collapsed or seem to be on the verge of collapse. Only 2 or 3 may actually survive and develop into an actual country, the reason being that all the magical girl's in this asiatic region pledged allegiance to the Eye God.
Anyway, my seat neighbour's name was Playful Myuu. The adjective being in her name was quite weird, but it showed up that way in the analysis magic orb given to me by Kanou-san. Digging further for details may offend her since she replied with "Can't you read?", when I asked. She was giving a big smile, but I felt that her closed eyes weren't smiling at all, so I drifted the conversation away from that. She greeted me first and was asked about her name due to my skepticism at the 'playful' surname.
Yeah... It was probably my fault.
"Un. I've already memorised them since I had nothing to do before school started, I did some revision yesterday... Is that weird?"
Being careful in my speech, I decided that this cute facade could suit me when interacting with others in my magical girl form. I looked up with upturned eyes, probing for a reaction. Initially, she seemed to have froze for a second but it was probably my imagination. Sweat poured down her temple as she reassured me with a worried tone.
"No!... It isn't weird, so don't worry about it... Well then, now that break's over, let's focus on lesson..." (Myuu)
Her neck cranked around like an unoiled machine as she returned her attention back to the front of the class. As she had mentioned, our little break was over and so was our chat, Jein sensei had also returned with a bit of foam appearing above her lips and under her nose.
I think I'll just ignore the foam and focus on the lesson. Myuu found out I was faking a cute act? Nah, it must be your imagination.