*
"Is that all you've got? Bound by your physical limits? Like that, any god magical girl can do you in. Did you know how many other god magical girls I had to kill to survive?" (Zedicia)
"Physical limit... What are you talking about... Of course this won't be all I have... Myuu! Paridia!"
They hesitated to enter the battle seeing that every attack is transferred back to me. My brain was overrun with calculations for the damage transference, so it wasn't exactly able to think straight. Skills, they are intricate patterns of magic circles or magic circuits that detail a phenomena. They reside in the body and evolve along side humans, but are only expressed when a human awakens as a magical girl. That's why magical girls only start off with a single skill, then increase from there.
Skills translate these details of the phenomena into reality by passing the information of the details into magical particles. Magical particles that I'm controlling not with a gradient, but forcefully moving with my second skill at a high cost to my well. In other words, the damage transference technique that I've created was simply to deflect her magic towards her before it's translated into actual phenomena. So when the magic activates and the phenomena appears, it's already hitting her body.
Her magic is more clear cut. It reads the damage on her body and exchanges the damaged parts with mine. She's not really transferring damage as she is exchanging our body's cells. Since it's done by magic, her body cannot recognise the foreign cells and won't attack them, so there isn't a risk of transplant rejection.
Though the magic will eventually wear off and the magical girl's superhuman regenerative abilitive which includes the immune response of white blood cells will kill off and replace those foreign cells in an instant. It just won't happen during the battle.
Seeing as that was their cue, it hasn't been long since they last attacked. It felt like a long time under my enhanced perception speed, but it's actually only been half a minute. Wielding her vine spear with fierce vigour, her body moves with optimal coordination, control and strength. With her second skill, [Extreme body governing], Myuu was able to artificially control her own life force or 'soul' into performing at further heights.
Since it's artificial control, she was able to see the excess movement and wasted energy in her battle style more accurately than anyone else. For people with relatively same speed stat as her, fighting her would feel like she has a higher speed stat then the tool shows. It helped sped up her training and refined her body, faster than anyone else. Her spear aims straight at the progenitor's head, it was filled to the brim with magical particles, something that hasn't happened before.
It was only with her last skill [Grail of the centralised nebula] that gave her access to controlled magical particles from other universes, that she was able to acquire enough to revive the full power of the Sagian Miltreu Ancient Vine Spear. As an ancient plant that bathed in the magical particles of and adapted to ancient monsters far beyond humanity's comprehension, it naturally evolved to have skills of its own. The entire time it had boasted [reinforce] and [pierce], only now that it had been completely revived did it unlock its own final skill.
The ancient plant or rather part of the ancient plant, the vine spear didn't really have much of a will of its own. It was used like how Myuu was using it now, as a weapon. But rather than a spear, it was used like a javelin. The main plant body launched it like a missile and had countless quantities of them hidden under its body compartments.
The main body was a bunch of vine spears coiled up tightly like a rope and an exceedingly long length that could cross the moon. It coils together like fibre with super tensile strength and shapes into a giant tree the size of a 1 storey house. But that was the smallest size. The final skill was [Union], it could duplicate itself and combine. Other than a defensive mechanism, the vine spear also served as its seed. It starts off with minimum magical particles reinforcing its body at the start of its life, and collects more magical particles and reinforces itself further to grow. At the end when it can no longer be reinforced, the final skill is activated.
A bunch of vines burst through the ground, flying into the sky. Their lengths extend into the light blue expense without pause, the motion of the vines was so fast that it looked like a trail of green light that stretched from the ground to the moon. When it stopped, it was the size of a mountain, the desert was no longer in sight and we were now standing atop the summit. But it was way different from the actual plant in ancient times. Rarely do they get to blossom or grow to such large proportions. Moreover the biggest difference was... Myuu's final skill applied to it.
The basis for her attack plan, her final skill overwriting over other things with her own existence, converts what is present in reality into herself. So if she releases the reinforcement on the spear and get it obliterated, her final skill can bring back the spear into reality by overwriting the universe. She replaces whatever is in front of her busted up spear with a repaired version of the spear, this can allow her to get through the progenitor's defence.
The point of her vine spear blooming was that a single spear alone couldn't do much, but if she shot a barrage of them like a gatling gun... She'd be able to get through the enemy's defence just fine, and even damage her. With the size of an entire mountain-
It vanishes. But it was part of her plan. She released all of its reinforcements, so it became as fragile as an actual plant, where it follows the same rule of conservation of mass as normal living organisms and collapses under its own weight. It cannot output enough energy to lift itself and crushes its base under its own pressure. With a swing of her wrist, Myuu busts up the mountain size vegetable corpse, causing it to vanish from sight.
"Phase 2, [Grail of the centralised nebula], overwrite. " (Myuu)
The actual purpose of her final skill, to bring her back from a state of total destruction. To revive something from nothing, a super complex creation mechanism. Now, to replace back the entire column of air that was originally the mountain sized plant, with the plant itself. Writing the progenitor out of existence.
"..." (Myuu)
The plant revives as planned, but the progenitor simply stays put. There's no change to her. She didn't vanish out of existence as planned. The attacker could only be left dumbfounded. No words could describe the subtle dread she felt from the progenitor's presence. Simply looking at the sight of her sent chills down Myuu's spine, shivers that crawled through her skin and wrapped around her nerves. Her fists clenched tightly in fear, any semblance of control over the situation had been extinguished.
She wasn't so inexperience that she would lose composure and start going wild here. But she knew for a fact that her role was done. Paridia simply turned towards me. Her eyes didn't convey much, they seemed to be dull and insipid. As if they lose the energy to even convey fear, which was clear enough considering she stopped moving. Did she think pretending to be an object will cause the progenitor to let her off the hook?
In a way, she's turning to me for the solution huh...
"With SS grade speed, I can weave between the world itself and dodge any attack. I could have done this from the start. It'll even look like teleportation despite having no such skills in my library. It was simply unneeded." (Zedicia)
I see, this was the end. If we couldn't take her down, The Eye God would kill us anyway. So that was the catch, she was an enemy even The Eye God herself couldn't subjugate. So why would we have any chance ourselves? It was an entire joke, an entire play for the entertainment of the gods. It's sickening, the realisation of this betrayal, its repulsiveness would stain my tongue and mind until I die. I got too ahead of myself.
For an instant, I no longer had my vision. Everything was beyond pitch black, hidden under a veil that couldn't even be reached. I don't struggle, I can't struggle as it wraps around me... Strangely enough, I hear a distant voice. I... After everything I went through, I at least wanted to rest at the end. Just what could disturb me beyond the grave? No, if I was beyond the grave would it truly be like this?
Not to get into details, I wasn't particularly religious. The only gods that I believed in were the god magical girls that were distinctly real, they shaped the human world right after The Great Disaster after all. I even saw The Eye God and made a deal with her. The deal... What was the deal again?
For some reason, I can not trust her to make such a simple contract akin to an assassination request. I can't remember about anything that happened on the day of the deal, there's no way that I know everything. Something has been hidden.
***
I open my eyes. With her infinite speed, it was a walk in the park for the progenitor to blow our heads open and finish us off. So the fact that I could perceive light... Myuu, she would be the one person who could survive without her brain. Her final skill would be triggered automatically. It seems that she had activated on me as well... No, this was a newly formed mind and body. Am I still me?
I have no time to think about it. I twisted my neck to face the direction of Myuu. We were all faced down lying on our bellies. If she revived me... Did she have another idea?
When I looked over... My world was turned inside out. Why... Why was I the only one to have my head intact... Her head had been blown clean off, the heat from the opponent's attack mended off the wound closing off the blood. Her skin has lost colour and was already bloating. The progenitor was nowhere to be found, just how long had passed?
Since the Eye God hasn't killed us.... No, did dying earlier cancel the contract? It could have been any amount of time since then... All I could hear was the desert breeze in a land of smothered rocks and glass. A glaring wind like the rage of the earth pours incessantly over the debris formed by our battle. Bottomless pits and uneven ground were numerous in the vicinity.
And... I was too distraught by their headlessness that I didn't notice they had untransformed as well... I found out by looking at my sleeves, they were an entirely different colour... At this rate, I would die to the weather after some time. The magical particles in my well were too low to transform... I'm grateful for the extra time you bought me Myuu... I'm sorry I couldn't do anything for you.
My life's memories flashes before my eyes. Fighting the Arc maidens, annihilating the cult bases, training with Palmicia. Fighting off the generals from the Grundo alliance and the Illnoia Administration, running away from another such general... Doing our new jobs in the field of security, passing the test to get licensed as a magical girls. Getting kidnapped to the Illnoia Administration... Entering the educational institution for magical girls in the labyrinth... Meeting Kanou...
Why can't I remember about anything before that? My memories... They only extend to as far as when I first awakened as a magical girl... I've... Been living in the present all the way until this moment... So I didn't notice that my memories from before The Great Disaster were gone... As if the rug had been pulled from under my feet. I lose my balance.
I... There's so much going on, I can't make sense of it all!! W-what the hell am I supposed to do?! I can't beat the progenitor, I can't bring my friends back from the dead, I don't have any memory of my family from before The Great Disaster... Are they... Are they doing well?
I grit my teeth and my fist, having gathered enough rest I wanted to at least stand up for once like a human being before I starved to death. I don't have enough magical particles to transform into a magical girl or maintain the transformation. I'm stuck. I've reached a dead end and likely lost a bunch of things on the way here. I can't even tell how much I lost because entire chunks of memories are gone. It's all too confusing, too despicable, too unbearable.
Lifting myself off my feet, I staggered a few steps backwards before tripping. Falling on my face, I realise my legs were too weak to even support my own weight, I couldn't stand anymore... I look at the tiny writing on the ground, likely covered by my lying body before I stood up.
'Reach my body.'