*
It's gold curved hilt contrasted greatly with its light sucking black handle, gleaming in an arc with every swing that the progenitor executes. Materialising my void rapier once more in a rush, I swung a desperate parry as I landed a feet onto the ground, to immediately shift my positioning and footwork.
"It's useless. You can't hurt me if I simply dodge all your attacks." (Progenitor)
A forest Green spear and a long sword of light flew towards the progenitor as I pour my strength into another parry.
"Don't forget about us!" (Paridia)
It was true that she was far faster than I was, the first attack that I landed was simply due to her confidence in her barriers. But in the end I have to land a hit to hurt her in the first place. 5 weapons clashed at a single point, but not only was her speed absurd, her strength was also stronger as it matched up to all 3 of us. It may even be stronger than that, there was no telling with that smiling expression of hers.
*klakklakklak!*
Sparks flew off as the weapons continued vibrating against each other, causing friction that heat up the surrounding air in an instant. With a single particularly blinding spark, the air around combusted as magic shock wave byproducts flew in every direction, gouging numerous large tunnels into the ground. Paridia's earlier Oblivion Magia had already disintegrated every wall and ceiling around, so they had continued to fight under the afternoon sun. At this point the desert had become even more of a hellish environment than it was before.
But... Why isn't my Oblivion Magia working? It should be bending the laws of flow, her attack shouldn't be able to travel in a straight line like it is doing now... If I had to guess, we know about her ability to give and take skills. So if we assume she had every ability imaginable and the stats of an SS grade, we may be able to prepare for it.
Usually one wouldn't want a horribly messy arsenal of skills, and using each and every one of them one by one would be too troublesome. It's safe to say that she accesses the skills she collects through one of the usual 3 skills from the traditional system of only having 3 skills max. Perhaps that library skill can also do the 'collecting' part as well as the 'using' part.
We have no clue what her second skill is, because well... I suppose we aren't strong enough to necessitate it. Then let's deal with her primary skill first, the library skill. When thinking about it, there's nothing stopping her from using all the skills she's collected at once. So there's possibly a 'combine' function too. It ends up with a few skills we can predict. [Perfect defence] [Impeccable attack] [Unrivaled martial arts] [Supreme constitution]. They sound simple but they contain an unknown number of effects we don't know about.
Her [attack barrier] was likely something similar or something she happen to find. It blocks any attack, meaning any movements with the slightest hint of harming the opponent will be stopped. Well, my rapier moves through anything though, it didn't really pierce the barrier, rather it move through it and moved away the tiny area blocking it. Like a hole puncher. It didn't physically break the area that it made direct contact with, but moved it forward. There are such loopholes like this due to the infinite possibilities of magic. Admittedly, it isn't what I have in mind when I think about magical girls, but it will do.
Releasing her blade from the clash and jumping back, the progenitor prepares her next move. Our weapons strike the ground as soon as she released her blade, we had exerted all our power into our wrists so it happened before we noticed it. Our weapons sliced softly into the floor like butter before we pulled our arms back up, the energy from our attack ended up erupting the ground under us as the resulting residual shock waves had penetrated through the earth's crust and released the mantle.
White and orange hot magma burst through the floor and began swallowing the floor. An Oblivion Magia was suppose to be able to isolate a battle away from the space and time of our world, so how did this happen? One may ask. Our combined attack... It pierced through space and ruined my Oblivion Magia.
A brilliant cardinal red light begins to gather around the progenitor. A predictable effect of [impeccable attack], instant magic casting and defence penetration, perhaps the ability to damage 'souls' as well to prevent the reincarnation cycle. If going on the defensive won't do anything...
"!?" (Myuu and Paridia)
They panicked and chose to put faith in my Oblivion Magia to deflect the blow, but contrasting to her defence, her attacks likely have resistance to my 'movement' skill in the form of a resistance to deflection. Well, I'll put a stop to it one way or another. Since defence won't work, the only option left is to attack. As soon as the red light appeared, I leaped to the air right under her, my fingers gripping tightly onto my void rapier.
I've only handed my weapon like a one handed broad sword, I didn't really have experience with handling rapier as I just categorised it under 'sword' and moved on. But this is a manuevre that isn't characteristic of a broad sword, due to the thinness of the rapier only can I do this. My wrist curves around her shoulder and strikes at her temple with the rapier.
Following my example, a volley of vine spears charged at the progenitor from the opposite direction, while a beam of white light exploded forth to meet the red on. Paridia will try to delay the red beam while the two of us will focus on the progenitor to make her call it off by force. I use my Oblivion Magia to ensure none of Myuu's spears hit me as I continued to thrust at her with my rapier. I pierced through her defences, but due to her last minute movement it looked like I was just slicing through thin air. She had wonderfully dodged both our attacks and began counterattacking.
Fuu~ 1000%
When the stats of a magical girl shows up as SS on the measuring magic tool, it meant that it was impossible to quantify them. When it's unquantifiable, there are a few possible reasons as to why. The general assumption is that they possess a quality that makes their stats infinite. When it's infinite, it definitely cannot be quantified. If it's a imaginary number, it also cannot be quantified. If it's concealed, it's also unquantifiable.
In other words, no matter how much I power up I can't catch up to her no matter what. It was a fundamental difference in our combat ability that can not be bridged normally. So we have to use conceptual magic, anything adhering to a concept can approach the trait of being absolute. In other words, if we rely on magic with vague wording such as 'you become one with the concept of air', we can go beyond the physical plane and stop relying on such mortal limitations like having speed.
"Let's stop playing games." (Progenitor)
Disappearing from her spot, she reappears a few metres away behind us.
"KAGHHH!!?!!!.... How?! I've severed all your limbs and scrambled your brains in that instant. No matter how it goes, you guys still have not achieved infinite speed regardless if you have broken the light barrier or not." (Progenitor)
"[Grail of the centralised nebula], everything is returned to the previous state by verifying my existence throughout the multiverse. " (Myuu)
" [interweaving world of the one that confines], I draw on the universe to fill in the gap left by my dead body. If only you had HuoLi's final skill that simulates the concept of the universe's end. " (Paridia)
" Oblivion Magia, World of Wandering Fate. The gradient of fate is twisted and bent, reorienting the direction of my own fate and redirecting all the damage back to you. "
One way to defeat an unbeatable opponent... Is to use their own attack against them and hope for the best. Honestly, I was thinking that it might not even affect her. That last effect I mention... It was basically half a lie. Technically it redirected my fate by preventing me from dying, but it doesn't affect anything vague like fate. It was just an exaggeration... Hahah...
In truth, it actually takes the entire computational power of the Oblivion Magia to calculate the damage that she would do to me and reflect it onto her being, it does so by altering its flow and forming a perfect reflection on her attack. This ends up causing her magic to not leave her body and instead attack it. Her resistance to attack deflection wouldn't work if it's deflected before she even attacks.
*Crack!*
Shit, the calculation was beyond what the Oblivion Magia could handle. If it couldn't manage, the recoil of the effect I just activated was likely to cause the Oblivion Magia to implode. Since we are inside the Oblivion Magia, it'll look like a chain of explosions erupting though. Looks like it'll be a one time use per battle thing then.
With blood dripping down the ends of her lips, the progenitor gazed at me with a subtle contempt, her eyes conveying a knowing look. "Heh!" (Progenitor)
"Tch!"
As far as conceptual attacks go, I suppose that's as far as I'll reach. I'm counting on you, Myuu, Paridia.
"Second round! Oblivion Magia, Primordial wrath." (Paridia)
As if on cue, this time she deploys a much smaller Oblivion Magia.
"Concentrated fire!" (Paridia)
Seeing as she was about to attack, the progenitor proceeded to vanish from her spot once more.
"UAAAGGHHHH!!!!!" (Progenitor)
A pillar of light sprouts from the ground around a hundred metres away. It seemed like she had expected the previous carpet bombings that Paridia kept threwing out. I don't think the attack would get through her barrier anyway so her running was unnecessary, but she did so likely to be safe. In the end it was another failed attempt.
" Be confined, be imposed upon the mortal limit. This was an idea that I drew upon Kaori! As I am the 'world' that confines you with the Oblivion Magia as an extention of my existence, face the inevitable impermanence that every being in the world faces. In other words! The concept of no longer being! WORLD ERASER!!!!!!!!!!!!! " (Paridia)
Strangely, the pillar of light shifts and bobbles a little, before it teleported to another location that was in its previous vicinity. Then it teleport to another location, after that it splits into multiple pillars of light. Simultaneously, 50 pillars stretch off into the cosmos, as if they were a building a bridge to an unexplored heaven. We didn't bother to watch that spectacle and busied ourselves with our magic preparation instead. Myuu had been constantly charging her spear up with more and more power while I begin planning my next moves.
At the rate that things are going, it looks like conceptual attacks can and will affect her... But the matter of the fact is that she has survived the attack I sent already. Not to say I don't have faith in Paridia's amazing new technique, but it was simply the reality that the progenitor... In all the centuries she lived would be aware of and be able to recover from conceptual attacks.
100 000%, my body naturally isn't able to contain this much magic normally, that's why it's a number as big as 100 000%. It seems that I've subconsciously built artificial magic veins outside my body with my first skill. Similar to normal veins, it meant that I could now transport magic outside my body and back in as naturally as breathing. While other magical girls would first have to take control of the magical particles before using them, this extra step made quite the substantial difference.
In other words, I've assimilated with the environment. While my radar passive skill allowed me to observe all kinds of data and up to a large range of 100 km at that, it never allowed me to observe the flow of magical particles to this precision before. Every tiny channel, route and insignificant quantity is now visible to my brain.
The surprise was that I could process all of it, I guess using this passive for this long would make me naturally attuned to sifting information now. Even if I could access an abundance of information, choosing the right one was another important skill to cultivate for this technique.
I've always thrown away the excess information, but maybe now it can help us in some way...