*
The metallic claw reaches over, it was clearly an imitation of a monster. It was easy to tell even with Kaori's eyes alone, yet things were easily more complex than having triggered just another trap. It grabs at her neck in an instant, its speed is fast but it didn't have much grip strength due to focusing on speed. Compared to an A grade magical girl, it was like a playful strangle, perhaps a C grade would actually die from it. But clearly that is not its purpose, these are defences layed by The progenitor in hopes of eliminating them, something so half-assed won't even be able to kill B grades.
Needles pop out of its gleaming metallic palms, injecting anti magic into Kaori's veins. She could also feel the immediate increase in heat inside the claw as her neck begins to get burnt. It was about to explode. With the anti magic inside her entire body, it was difficult to activate her skills, if it had the same amount of firepower as the nuke it would inevitably end her.
At that moment, a blinding light converges towards her... She had forgotten that while she carried her vacuum blade in one hand... Paridia was tucked under her other arm. Paridia used [Noble Vapour beam] to gather the light towards them to form a shield while Kaori begins to use her first skill to force the anti magic out at a sluggish pace.
*BOOOOM!!!!!!!!*
An explosion that detonated beyond the normal hearing range of humans, despite their enhanced hearing all they heard was something akin to a burning barbecue. It was rather surreal to compare it with their sight as a red mass expands and engulfs everything next to them save for the area behind Paridia's light shield. It seemed that the light produced by the explosion was being absorbed into the shield to reinforce it, and since it was daytime she could endlessly reinforce it. What Paridia was worried about was the radiation.
"How do we deal with the fall out." (Paridia)
She mouthed off to Kaori under the chain of ear piercing bellows surrounding them, before using light to trace the radiation warning symbol. Kaori looks up at her while laying on her arms, using her lips to convey her words.
"It's okay. " (Kaori)
Then she brings a thumbs up just in case Paridia couldn't read her. While she was a novice in reading lips, Paridia would be more experienced in this regard. But it was just good to use body language for caution. She wasn't worried about the radiation at all. The magic gene that is rarely expressed in humans allows them to awaken as magical girls, naturally it had to make them resistant to high levels of magical particles, which would be no different than radiation.
All magical girls have some innate resistance to radiation as a result. The question was whether the progenitor somehow found the threshold of a magical girl's tolerance and somehow exceeded it. Conventional nuclear weapons wouldn't be able to affect them, so it would be something beyond.
***
Then it's my turn... If I hold off the removal of the anti magic, I can barely squeeze out some use of my first skill to repel all radiation away from us.
A strange squirming feeling welled up my chest and traveled to my throat, as if a spider was climbing up my trachea and brushing its hairy feet against my cilia.
"HURGHH!!!!"
I hurl out a chunk of blood as I flexed my fingers, activating my first skill. A familiar pain that I haven't experienced in a very long time crawls into every nook and cranny of my veins, it's been circulated so thoroughly it's almost no different from my blood... But as a magical girl I could still identify it and use my first skill to remove it... It would be akin to removing the individual threads of a haystack one by one until there was no more hay.
I worked my mind off as I focused on pushing away the radiation in all 360 degrees. My well had a sufficient amount of magical particles to pull this off. For the first time in my life, I felt that I had more than enough magic fuel in my well, but my output was having problems. It was like squeezing out a large amount of water out of a small tap. No matter how hard I try, the tap's diameter would stay the same and the amount of water that came out would only be so much. So even if I tried my hardest here... 1% output... That was the estimate...
In the next moment, a large storm cloud blows over our faces from the ground we were lying on. A small tapping sound resounded afterwards as a single arm carried the hugging mess that we were, lifting us off the ground. Immediately, a bellowing boom echoed next to us before reaching the far reaches of its influence, opening my eyes by blowing away the wind with my first skill I saw a comforting figure.
It was Myuu, she had picked us up right after she landed next to us, blowing sand all over the place before slamming her spear into the ground with most of her strength. The spot where she rammed the spear in had solidified into a large chunk of glass as an enormous crater of a few kilometres surrounded us.
With her final skill that she told us about, [Grail of the centralised nebula], she now had the ability to store magical particles over her normal limit and powerup indefinitely with time. Though she still has to maintain her final skill with the original magical particles in her own well, which run out eventually. She also runs the risk of disintegrating her magical circuits and short circuiting her last skill, which would cause the gathered magical particles to blow up.
Well, it's not so different from my own Magia Retainment: perpetual. The only difference being that my magic isn't able to fry away my magic circuits or lose control, but it gathers magical particles at a far faster rate than Myuu's skill does. It's the quantity itself that pose a danger. Since magical particles don't occupy physical space I can continuously fit them into my body.
However, with that much magical particles exceeding my well, my will stat cannot catch up and control all of it directly. Rather I am controlling it via my first skill by using it as a proxy to determine the set paths that the magical particles travel. If I mess up the pathing and the magic collides, it may explode and cause a chain reaction of more explosions inside my body.
It's also possible that the patching has a set limit that I cannot observe unless I cross it and find out the hard way when it fries my organs. But most of all, with that much energy enhancing my body, I could become a pressure cooker.
Turning around, she extends her hand out to us.
"Are you alright?" (Myuu)
She brushes back a strand of hair that fell when she looked down at our immobilised state, sweat dripping down the side of her temple.
"... Yeah."
I pressed my arms against the ground to lift my body and Paridia up, getting back into a standing position I asked about the current situation. While we were initially on a roll, we crash into an unexpected trap. It was multilayered which I hadn't encountered before... Well, making excuses now was pointless. It was something that couldn't be avoided if I think deeper about it, the sand was practically a sea of missile silos, it was impossible to observe a single deviation.
Perhaps there were even multiple of these, and I simply only got hit by the most recent one. A difference in trigger conditions could be the key... But if the enemy could set up such devastating traps, then they would try to make as many as possible to run us haggard before the battle.
I breath a sigh of relaxation, the vapours of my breath warming my nose under the desert sun. With this little magic control, it was nearly impossible to use my second skill and I was unable to even activate last pace. Magia retainment was out of the question. It was incredibly troublesome with a timer placed on us. The conclusion of the meeting with The Eye God. We had to kill the progenitor within a day in exchange for obtaining her location.
"Should we wait some time for you to get the anti magic out?" (Paridia)
"... Nah, it's fine. Maybe I could even use it to my advantage."
"... Is that so? Then let's go. I found some traces of concrete and life after bombing wide enough of an area with my spears. " (Myuu)
Following Myuu, I checked each of my muscles to see if they were in working order despite the anti magic coursing through my veins. I pulled my muscles here and there before settling down, my Jaws dropped as I looked at my surroundings. True to her words, Myuu really left the desert as a land full of craters. As we walked closer down one of the larger craters, the stench of blood didn't escape my nose. It seems that her carpet bombing did have some effect. The only way blood could smell this strong is if there were an entire pile of corpses in their corridors.
After we met up with The Eye God, we were healed up as part of our contract... So it was even more absurd that I fell victim to anti magic again. But I felt like even 1% was enough for me to handle the B grades with ease. I had gained so much experience along the way, that magic had nearly become irrelevant in my fight capabilities if I were to fight with the small fry.
Entering their base, only some of the lights work, as a result there were entire chunks of darkness along the way and the remaining areas were only dimly lit.
"Ah... I sense a lot of magical energy at another place and carpet bombed it extra hard. It must be their reactor that was supplying their lights with energy..." (Myuu)
Ignoring that Myuu tried to kill a giant mass of energy, which was potentially one of the higher ups by herself, we continued making our way down the hallway. There were numerous doors along the way, likely leading to smaller facilities, but our goal was nowhere near there. It was easy to tell with our sense of magic, the environment around us was too light to contain a strong enemy.
*Fwshhh*
An unfamiliar sound fills my ears as a door opens up. A person with less presence than a magical girl... In other words a normal human appeared. She had long black hair, she wore some kind of equipment similar to a modern infantry uniform that was completely dark blue with large grey bars covering certain areas.
She must have sensed that I was weak, perhaps she knew about the anti magic. So she rushed at me the moment that the door opened. Even at 1% operation, I was well above a B grade. My normal stats have gone up to A grade, compared to the others I was at the bottom of the barrel. But compared to a normal human, I was anything but.
That was the surprising bit, she had gone beyond the bounds of humanity. A normal human who could move faster than me for a single moment, they would end up as red paste on the wall, but for a moment they could reach me. If anything, I could just rely on Myuu or Paridia to deal with this... But I guess it was a matter of pride.
For a tiny instance, she likely used blood magic to boost herself up to an A grade. It was undoubtedly a suicide attack, but they went through with it seeing that I was vulnerable. She held a magic item in her hand in the shape of a small blade the size of a kitchen knife, charging at my back. My passive wasn't blocked, so I had already know that she was in the room as well as many others who were lurking around...
It was mind boggling how they found these many people who would throw down their lives for the progenitor. But in the end it was all futile, after all I had regained my memories.
It was part of the deal with The Eye God. It tied up all the loose ends desirable for myself. I take back my memory and get the location of the progenitor, in exchange she etches a curse on our bodies that would kill us if we don't kill the progenitor within the day. It was a race against time. So I had no time to worry about these small fry.
Jumping backwards, I used the assailant's superior speed against her and crushed my elbow into her torso, puncturing her lungs and sending her arms flailing back. I must have hit all the air out of her lungs as she took a sharp wheeze afterwards before she stopped moving. The blow to her torso had taken all her momentum despite the fact that only her speed was boosted to an A grade... Meaning her endurance was the same as that of a squishy human's. Her bottom half became paste as predicted, and she stopped moving shortly after.
But this was troublesome, her comrades came out one after another. Numerous B grades and a couple of A grades at that. To have this many personnel on a desolate unknown base... We would have noticed if they transported this many people here... Something else was going on...