*
Hiding under a screen of blended light, it took an absurd amount of concentration to focus the right colours around me. A jarring obstacle to this was that I couldn't bend it too much or too little or the colour tone will change, even a slight difference could catch Triney's attention.
As magical girls, our superficial human flaws usually get eliminated. Stuff like being myopic or having a sickly body is cured when we transform into a magical girl, and things like eyesight and hearing are even enhanced further. The higher the endurance stat, the more significant these 'corrections' become. As such, Triney over there with an S grade in endurance will have eyes so sharp they can pierce through my camouflage by the slightest deviation in colour tone.
It becomes needless to say, I shouldn't make a single bit of sound or movement as well. While I am safe in this arrangement, I can't attack her or she'll be able to link the direction to my location. It was a terrifying game of cat and mouse that staked my life. With this... Nothing will be done. I have to attack anyway.
So the biggest issue here is to find a way to attack without revealing my location. I grasp my fist together, resolving myself once more. If I want to search for Gerald who was kidnapped, I can't just hide here and wait for help. I have to clutch at victory and crawl my way through if I have to... Gerald was there for me back then... If I don't repay her back... How could I live?
This is why... Even if I'm scared of dying... I think even my life is not worth keeping if Gerald is not around, so I'll throw it away and abuse it until the last drop. As long as I get to save her... I promised her after all.
I increase my concentration, my will power struggles to keep up the camouflage but I have to exceed my capabilities... If I want to hide and attack at the same time. I point at her with my left hand shaped like a finger gun, then I shot a thin but dense stream of white light at an insane velocity. I leap forward while bending the lights around me to camouflage me, it was extremely taxing and felt like I was pushing the earth around to cover me with my mind alone.
Although it was magic, the control needed was simply of another dimension... Didn't Kaori master such control at some point? She was able to rapidly jump from point to point many times, confusing the enemy with just her wind alone. She can also bend light to a small extent but her forte lies in wind and vacuum instead.
I would wreck my mind pondering on how she got used to such movements so fast, as they require precise awareness and execution of magic on the spatial coordinates. Even a tiny slip up would slightly change her trajectory and disorientate her, making it a very risky move. Was it her talent? Or perhaps a passive?
Unlike normal skills, passives cannot be observed. So to some, their passive may be turned into a weapon. For example, mine is the immunity to light. In practical terms, light based users like me can't harm each other and are usually immune to flashbangs. Blinding attacks become an expected occurrence, and some of our moves are quite predictable in exchange for having more power.
A transparent glass like film appears in mid air around Triney, absorbing the light bullets that I shot at her. Another characteristic of light users, our attacks reach closer to the speed of light as we put more magic into it. While it is the maximum speed, the speed grows really fast compared to other magic. Other magic can exceed this maximum at some point, though realistically they won't due to the magical girl's capabilities.
...However it stops becoming strange when the magical girl is A grade and above. While exceedingly rare for A grades, it's not like it doesn't exists at all. For S grades, it was very common to exceed the speed of light in some way or form, even if it's not combat related. They simply have that much energy, combined with their high energy efficiency and conversion to skill phenomena, what is usually their most proficient skill escalates to divine heights.
Now to get to the main point... What the hell is protecting Triney from my bullets? I've rapidly shifted locations while holding up the camouflage, so I should still be okay, but she wasn't even looking... She simply had a barrier already activated and ready to intercept any projectiles. Or maybe it was geared more towards light attacks...
Light isn't usually something that can physically harm someone, it's only harmful when magic is used in it. In other words if someone could deal with the magic, it stops becoming harmful. Though that goes for a lot of things, if they can reduce the magic in their opponent's attacks, they could make any attack too weak to affect them.
I use the territory I've covered, my Oblivion Magia to shoot bullets from other directions. Starting with 5 bullets from the same direction... How do I say this? Triney is absurd. After the first bullet got absorbed, she became more alert and sliced the other 4 into nothing. Then she threw her sword accurately at where I conjured the bullets at... This is way too scary...
Anyway, testing is over. I've already known her capabilities were high above mine. It wouldn't be surprising if she could track where I conjure the light bullets and pretend to only react to them after the first bullet. I must really be careful here, any wrong step would end in my lost. For now... I'll shoot from every direction!!!
... Ti- no, finale of annihilation!
From all 360 degrees, light bullets were rushing towards Triney. Most of them were the disintegrating white, but had some red and blue mixed in. Red usually makes the target go insane by accelerating their mind but not their body or magic. It forced them beyond their usual function, exacerbating small deviations and errors such as unwanted imagination and intrusive thoughts, spiralling their mind into insanity. But for a magical girl, a mental attack magic like this is easy to resist with their innate magical resistance or their 'will' stat.
Blue slows one down physically, at worst it would cause a normal person to be completely rooted to the ground. For a magical girl, it was still unexpectedly useful even if it didn't immobilise them. It could still slow their reactions or mess with the timing of their physical movements, causing a slight confusion that would impact the fight more significantly. In the first place it all came down to timing, timing that had to be airtight and calculated or a slight gap would form and allow the enemy to escape.
How it all worked... Was that the light carried a special property, a mental attack. They didn't physically affect their target, but in fact made them stop moving or go insane of their own accord. One could say it was a highly specific form of mind control. The thing was that even with all these efforts, Paridia had been going at maximum output from the start. Yet Triney showed no signs of letting up. She was continuously using her Oblivion Magia to increase the heat around Triney, after a certain point of overloading the light spectrum and making the area blindingly white, adding more light to it was the same as adding more heat. It couldn't get any more brighter, only hotter and more radioactive.
Yet Triney stood still, as relaxed and cool as a slab of butter. She didn't need to do much, she was simply fending off all that excess energy and destruction with an equally powerful barrier. She had that much magical particles, and they weren't going to waste either. Through her countless years of research, one could say that she learned the perfect method of controlling magical particles. Whether it'd be manually or assisted by a tool, it would essentially take years for her to actually run out.
She wasn't appointed as an Arcmaiden solely for her age, without HuoLi's final skill, Triney would have been the strongest. Kanou was unexpectedly on the weaker side for the Arcmaidens, despite her abnormally cheating primary skill.
"... It took five minutes but I finally found you. Haa~ the problem with visual type perception is that if you carpet bomb my eyes with unnecessary info, it becomes harder to spot you." (Triney)
Her head creaks towards my general direction and her body begins to move towards me at a steady pace. With what she mentioned, it seemed that she could somehow see heat values of her surroundings if she lays her eyesight on it. Since I filled her surroundings with more heat continuously, it was as if I was making a smokescreen of values. But if I go according to this logic, she shouldn't be able to locate me...
.... Was it a coincidence that she found me? It also took her 5 minutes to do so, did she need to use that time to find me somehow? For now, I began to run away while showering her in blue and red light to confuse her, for some reason I still wasn't able to damage her a single bit. Not even the tsunami of ultraviolet radiation was able to touch her... Her barrier seemed to also resist radiation, it was quite annoying.
In a way magic could be said to be a form of radiation, with our 'will' stat we magical girls also have an innate resistance to radiation, so perhaps she was even able to endure it easily without her barrier. In any case, I can't let my guard down here. She was beginning to move at her own pace against the flow of the battle that I've forcefully taken over, staying calm was paramount. I also have to make a new move and bring the battle back to my own pace, or I would get defeated rather quickly.
Sadly, my power isn't as versatile as Kaori's or Myuu's that it can make a new technique just to fit the situation. Light is versatile by normal standards but what the hell is a gradient?
Anyway, I continue to put distance between us, but she was still able to discern my general location. Even though there was so much heat output by my Oblivion Magia, she could still locate me. That meant that it may have been a trick, she might not have a visual way to find me but instead she was using some other supernatural sense that scanned the entire area. Something like magical particle perception. While we can't see magical particles, we can feel the places where there are magical particles. The sensitivity of it depended on the person, but since I convert it into light a lot, I have a more sensitive than average sense for magical particles.
Inevitably, she reached my location in the next moment, her speed usurping the lead as she vertically bisects my body with a heavy slash... In the next instant... I haven't thought of any new techniques that can act as countermeasures... So I use a rather simple and reliable technique I already knew.
I bent the light forward and stood right behind the illusion I created, that was what she bisected. I was barely out of reach... It was pure luck that she decided on a vertical bisection instead of a forward thrust as I was only right behind the illusion, I would have gotten stabbed if she thrusted it normally. Then I converge the light that I have been continuously creating in my Oblivion Magia... Into a single dense and slender blade. If the dispersed explosive and thermal force was not able to bring down her barrier, then the only hope left was to concentrate it into a small dense weapon and hope it was powerful enough.
I stab into her stomach right as she bisected the illusion, her irises swung within their lids and turned their attention to me. Immediately, a feeling of overwhelming danger engulfed my mind. I stabbed her below her line of sight and used the surprise brought by the illusion to create that gap. But if I had aimed for the head... I'm afraid her reaction speed which is drastically faster than mine would react to it. In other words, the stab was also meant to be a surprise attack covered by another surprise attack...
Miraculously, it sunk into her flesh... But what is this... Resistance... It was as if I was shoving a needle into a rock... Despite my new blade's fierce power, it was easily repelled by her flesh itself... Her endurance stat is insane...