*
Blacking out, I later woke up without any sense of time. But it didn't matter how much time had passed, our mission didn't change as long as there was a possibility to save Gerald. There was also the much more pressing issue of waking up in an unfamiliar environment. Picking my body up from the ground, I pressed my arms against the floor in order to support my weight followed by my legs. Hopping up, I stretched with a few punches and kicks in order to wake up my sleeping muscles. I'm barely able to function like this without the sense of touch, because I'm constantly circulating magical particles in my body. It's akin to my body becoming a puppet and my faint controlover the strings has been what was carrying this far.
I first notice that none of my comrades were nearby, before I inspected my surroundings. Nothing but grey, rather than the colour grey this room wasn't as disorienting as the white room. It was a natural processed stone grey that lined the walls with intricate carvings and a smooth surface.
It looked a little old as some dust had somehow gathered in this enclosed space, but 2 unchanging doors stood at the front of the room with even more familiar textures. The frames of the doors were coated with magical engravings, with one door bringing in magical particles into the room and the other taking it away.
The one on the right was the one that brought in the magical particles, maybe that was where the dust particles came from as it. Was what initiates the circulation inside this room. But with no one to clean this room, it had gotten this dirty. Faint signs could be seen to be carved on the walls by the side of the doors, each conveying different messages. The one next to the door on the right said 'Respite', while the one on the left said 'Challenge'.
.... This was one of those huh... Just giving 2 choices... The thing was that I couldn't exactly trust the signs... What if someone switched them earlier? Not that I can see how someone could shift the places of carvings... Ah! Whatever, would this really matter? I was already deep in enemy territory, even if the The Eye God stands in my way, I can no longer falter. The best scenario is for all 5 of us to work together in taking her down.
Grinning at the doors, I walked towards the one that said 'challenge'. I gripped my fist tighter as I observed my skin before stepping in, despite the countless fights and training I went through it was still as smooth as a newborn. I guess that was the one of the good parts about being a magical girl, no calluses on my beautiful skin. Time to face them, the final bosses. Greeting me on the other side was a navy blue marble floor that stretched out as far as I could see. There was no roof nor were there any walls, just a dull greyish horizon with a little tint of blue due to the reflection of the floor.
On the other side was another magical girl. A voice rings out in my head as I observe her from head to toe.
"You have chosen 'challenge'. If you win, you will have a higher chance of achieving of what you desire, if you lose you will die. This is the final challenge of your prolonged journey, brace yourself, magical girl Kaori." (@##?!#$#)
She had light grey hair bordering on white, much like mine. It showed her growth speed in training, but as magical girls get exponentially stronger at the higher grades, it was also natural to have grey hair become lighter once we were stronger. It meant that we would be able to train at the same pace as when we were at lower grades, the training speed was only 'faster' because our advancement in grade was also exponentially harder.
She wore a light pink coat that reached to her hips, they covered from her shoulders to her wrist and were quite baggy like haori, they were decorated with poppys that blended into the haori like water painting. Under the haori, she wore silver leather armour that covered a thin black suit that fit to her skin, an array of medals and badges adorn her leather amour followed by a few tools on the utility belt.
The silver waist guard was attached to a translucent cloth that wrapped around the back of her legs to the side of her hips, and below her leather chest armour was a pitch black skirt that covered her body suit. At the bottom, she had small black shoes with black straps and socks. Below her back shoes was a full layer of sharp light blue crystals that made the sound of glass colliding with every step.
Title: Arcmaiden of the South, Maiden of retribution, Kanou Lagia Fila
Magical girl effectiveness level: S
Perimeters:
- Physical: S
- endurance: S
- speed: S
- will: S
- well: S
***(Kanou)
"Fight Kaori and win or face the dissolution of the south zone." (@#@$-ye God)
I took a step back subconsciously, the words caught in my throat as if a cage has been placed there. My eye lids twitch a little as composure gradually returned, but it didn't change what I just heard. Rather than fear, I felt pity for Kaori. For some reason she had pissed off The Eye God so now she has gathered the arcmaidens to individually face her party.
I won't spare any mercy, it was over the survival of the entire south zone after all. Now that I'm trapped here, I can't exactly get all the residents there to evacuate, not that it would be possible to move such a large amount of people without facing food problems. A good portion of the populace will starve to death or die from sickness, even if it was less than half it was still a lot of people
A group of S grades would obliterate a group of A grades, so a 'chance' was given to them by The Eye God by pairing them into individual fights instead... But this was no chance, it was an execution. The S grade... Doesn't automatically mean the magical girl's respective stat is 1 000 000 times of human potential, it only means they crossed the threshold of 1 000 000. Meaning that 5 000 000 or 7 000 000 000, all would be displayed the same way as S grade.
This was a magic tool used since ancient times, that's why there was basically no shortage of it. It was reliable and its accuracy eclipsed that of the primitive magic tool that we modern magical girls developed. The one we developed had lower thresholds for C, D and E grade but otherwise couldn't even erect anything above. It would just malfunction, so we just gave those out to newbie magical girls to conserve the amount of the ancient power trackers.
It was unthinkable for any of these magical girls in Kaori's party to awaken as S grades in the last moment, doing so was so incredibly rare. After all, even with our almost 1 billion population, there were only around 10 of us spread throughout this faction. Other factions had even lesser S grade magical girls, but also less land to protect.
In the first place, one doesn't 'awaken' as an S grade, that would be so ludicrously rare they may as well be a god magical girl. No, we all trained to get to where we were. Training forces our body to rebuild over and over, increasing our stats each time. It was similar to how normal humans build muscle, but even more extreme due to our natural regenerative constitution. It also meant that we had to face insanely hard resistance just to improve.
Every time, I see the same dream. I walked endlessly after escaping from that facility only to bump into The Eye God. At that time she didn't obscure her appearance as much, the only fickle obstacle between my sight and her face was a thin mask made of magic. It was ironic... I escaped her facility only to be working for her right now... I spent the better part of the year I had in governing the south zone investigating into it after all.
No matter what I did... The evidence pointed to The Eye God being that person... And that person being alive the entire time... Even though I was so convinced that she was dead and didn't think she was The Eye God at that time. I only knew she had something to do with the progenitor from the fragments of ramblings that I heard from previous fights between them.
Long before The Great Disaster... The Eye God was doing these horrible experiments in search of a way to artificially awaken magical girls... It was because she had developed a dependancy on a person called the progenitor who found magical girl subordinates for her, she wanted to be free from that. Who knows how long she spent doing those disgusting experiments or how many people... Lost their lives there. There was no mercy, miss a single step and there was no surviving.
.... It wasn't as if I could do anything about it either way. Without having gathered enough power yet, I have to continue gaining The Eye God's trust before finding the chance to avenge them. Those without a name, those who had lost their name, those that would never be remembered again... One day, when I'm not so insignificant... I'll strike. That was what I had been working towards the entire year and more, even if I have to sacrifice a few other magical girls, I wouldn't bat an eye on it to achieve my goal.
.... Kaori... I'm sorry. I was really interested in this kid, her skill had so much potential. It wasn't the usual mundane control of some element like fire or water, it was a concept like gradients. Gradients had the ability to affect the movement of certain substances like wind, dissolved substances and last of all, magical particles.
Magical particles that are activated after aiding a magical girl in fueling their skill always return back to the environment to refill on energy from the surrounding magical particles... Gradients had affected both its excretion from the magical girl and the recharging of the energy it held.
This was the potential she held, and sure enough she's using it to fight me right now, even though it's still barely insufficient to thwart me with. Even if the magical particle was 'activated', no one knew where the energy went or where it came from. Just like the answer to where energy came from, no one knew where magical particles siphoned energy from to hold so much fuel for magic.
After converting it into magic phenomena, and the magic phenomena dissipates after use, a portion of the energy disappears. That was the only way to describe it, the energy conversion was not equal, the residuals of magic phenomena were significantly lower than the amount of energy used to power of the magic, sometimes there weren't even any residuals at all. Yet, even after thousands of years, maybe even a few millennium passed by and the energy had not run out.
We conclude that before The Great Disaster, their atmospheric magical particles held exponentially more energy than they did in the present, and this total energy that resides in the world is depleting as time passes. That is the common knowledge known to the public, where the contradiction remains unchallenged. However a select few had already come to discover the truth.
Despite the timeless nature of magical particles, without time magic we can only access these inferior magical particles in the present. So everyone concluded that it wasn't the amount of energy that depletes, but the access to the energy. Following this conclusion, for magical particles to exist across time would mean that the access to its energy can deplete infinitely, subsequently it became known to only a very small group of magical girls that magical particles held infinite energy in order for this to be possible.
I'm sure Kaori had discovered this in one form or another, however her use of this technique proves that she's not aware of its possibilities. But that's fine, it works in my favour. I will win and put an end to this, I will discover my own route to access this source of infinite energy, Apeiron. It's... Really a waste... To kill who is essentially the gate to Apeiron. Perhaps The Eye God has noticed... Perhaps she feigns ignorance for a reason. Maybe she possesses her own key to Apeiron. Maybe that was how, the name I am most familiar with-Eliad Ariculus ascended into The Eye God.