*
"How do we go about this?" (Grail)
Her words seep gently into Kaede's mind, echoing her intent with clarity. Her incorporeal body resides inside Kaede's magical circuits, the veins that carry magical particles through her body and facilitate well regulation.
"... Can you read the stars? If what I know of The Great Disaster is right, it has drastically reduced light pollution. Even a telescope is not necessary to view stars nowadays." (Kaede)
She puts her foot down, having decided on what was necessary and what wasn't. Being in the middle of nowhere, every bit of energy saved was important. Despite Grail-chan giving her enough magical particles to transform, she was still incredibly low on fuel. She barely passes the threshold needed to transform and recover. But the injuries from the battle with the progenitor haven't worn off in the slightest, so all her magical energy is being directed towards healing her body.
"To get our bearings first huh...? Did you forget something?" (Grail)
She didn't immediately think about the orientation of the direction that they were facing. After all, she can't see anything outside Kaede's body, and she would rather not see anything inside either. One could say she was closing her eyes, though it would be closer to say she has the cure to her own blindness but is not putting it to use.
But sensing that Kaede had stopped and listening to her question sparked Grail's mind. She had certainly acquired most of the knowledge that Myuu held, while retaining her own sense of self and ego in the process. She could calmly differentiate herself from Myuu's existence while drawing from her knowledge... After all, Myuu was already dead.
"Hmm?" (Kaede)
Her mind blanked out like an empty chalkboard, causing her to instinctively leak out an embarrassing groan. A slight cherry blush crawls over her cheeks.
"I need a body... More specifically I need eyes to see the stars and find the North star. Right now I'm closer to a magic parasite than anything else... " (Grail)
Seeing her partner being so hopeless, Grail decided to spell it out herself.
"You're in mine right now, right? Just take it and get it over with... I don't have knowledge pertaining to recognising stars." (Kaede)
She returned a quick and curt reply, hoping to mask over her embarrassment.
"I... I just feel hesitant in taking your body's senses. You'll be blind for a bit since your eyes will be sending information to me instead." (Grail)
Fortunately, Grail was considerate enough to ignore it. The knowledge about the stars was very rudimentary knowledge, Myuu wasn't some kind of enthusiast after all. What Grial inherited from that wisdom was so insignificant it could be called trivial. Staring at the sky, she began looking around. Her vision had gone from total darkness... More like she didn't have vision before but now colours were flowing into her mind like beautiful flowers blooming on a canvas.
"H... How long will it take...? " (Kaede)
"... Please wait just a bit more." (Grail)
Her words trail softly in the cool night air, like a mother telling her child a bedtime story. Grail scrutinises at the stars as much as she can.
" In the meantime, how about I tell you a story? One about Myuu and stargazing..." (Grail)
"Okay..." (Kaede)
"Hmm hmm... Let's see... It was one of her wishes as a kid, she wanted to go stargazing with her future lover. 'It would be romantic', she thought with a pure heart. Moreover, she can use it to find the North star, so in case she got lost she could use it to reorientate herself.
One day, she saw this kid in school that she took a liking to. A fleeting infatuation, transient as her wishes. He was really good at stargazing himself... She wouldn't be able to impress him at all if they decided to watch the stars. So it unfortunately brought an end to this hobby of her's. She stopped finding an interest in the stars and moved on.
Oh... There it is... We're somewhere Southeast of Central. So if we're looking at the North right now... Then central is in the Northwest. Let's begin walking there. " (Grail)
Returning her vision, Kaede went back to the helm of the body. Her chest felt tight and her shoulders trembled for a split moment but she quickly held her breath and regained her composure by pressuring her own lungs. She tried to exhaled as quietly as possible, releasing air out of her lungs at a very low rate, causing the exhaling time to extend quite a bit. Grail couldn't see, nor could she feel Kaede's condition. She skillfully concealed it by making as little noise as possible.
*tap tap*
She began walking towards the direction Grail pointed at before she left her eyesight, it felt strangely difficult to make conversation now. Her footsteps lightly made tapping sounds as they traverse the barren land. The desert was bombed by Paridia's magic, so the magical elements resulting from the attack had vanished.
The attack wasn't of a physical nature and didn't really interact with physics once it was finished. So the only influence that the magic had on the environment was the simple destruction caused by the explosive kinetic energy rained upon the desert. It heated the air and melted through the ground as a result, the ground had already cooled during the battle and become solid smooth black stone. For an example, if it was nuclear magic, the resultant radiation would only last as long as the user casts the magic.
The tangible silence continues on, as if words had been caught up in Kaede's throat, refusing to release them. She then tenses up, it lasted far longer than usual so even Grail noticed this time.
'... Grail-chan's vision was always pitch black like that, so why...? Why couldn't I even endure 5 minutes of that without trembling in fear? Her... Her story really served to calm me down a bit, but all it did was suppress my fear momentarily...' (Kaede)
"Oi, are you sick? You've been acting a little weird now, you shouldn't push yourself while we're still in this stone desert..." (Grail)
"I-I'm fine... Just a little tired, I'll take you up on that offer and rest a little." (Kaede)
She sat her legs down slowly, forcing herself to relax. With so little magic that she could barely keep herself transformed, her stamina may as well only be slightly larger than a humans. In her current condition, she had maybe around 2 times the amount of stamina a human would have. Coupled with her magic directed towards healing her injuries and staving off her hunger and thirst, her stamina was reduced to significantly less than 2 times. At that point, she would only match up to a human athlete.
Yes... This shouldn't be too strange right? She knew it was insensitive to have such fears, but her body was telling her otherwise. 'Perhaps, I'm just weak... Did the progenitor also weaken my courage?' There would be no answer. It was both a blessing and a curse that Grail-chan couldn't connect to her brain directly and read her thoughts.
"Haa~~~ Maybe, I'm just stressed out. I would say things are moving too fast if not for the fact that I would have died if I didn't move any faster." (Kaede)
"Mhmm... Perhaps so. But I think... We would face plenty more challenges in the future. So it'd be great if you were to grow stronger now. We need to take revenge on the progenitor, don't we?" (Grail)
"Yeah!" (Kaede)
For now, her thoughts can't trail on to somewhere else, she has to concentrate on her current survival. Before the battle with the progenitor, she had used her Stick, the twin demonic horns that facilitate the usage of her skills automatically, to extract the anti-magic. There's a far easier way to use it that would aid the current situation.
There's essentially a massive hole in her well at the moment, the progenitor's magical particle dispersal had busted a hole through her well through sheer difference in ability. She needed to patch this hole up or even her transformation would come undone. When that happens, she may starve or thirst to death on the spot.
Kaori's will stat was too low to resist the magic that the progenitor casted... Well, the difference between S grade and SS grade is infinite, so there was no solving that. SS grade, infinity meant a neverending potential, despite having such an absurd stat God magical girls usually still need to charge up their magic to reach infinite. This time may look like an instant for normal people, but there will always be an infinitesimal difference between God magical girls. In other words when God magical girls fight, it's like gambling on who is faster.
What exactly is the well? Usually, it would refer to a pit where water is drawn from. It was usually located near villages, though that use has died out in urban areas. Instead, an entire sanitation and sewage system has been built to provide and facilitate the transfer of water in cities. This use well is similar to the use when referring to magical girls, it is a pool of magical particles that magical girls draw from in order to power their skills. They act like oil or petrol that fuel the activity of cars.
Magical girls have to absorb magical particles from the environment into their well thought their magical circuits, this process is passive and doesn't require any concentration or voluntary response. It was akin to breathing. Once the particles have gathered in their well, the user is able to exert conscious control over the particles with their will and funnel them into their skills, intricate circles of magical particles with complex emblems and symbols that detail phenomena. These circles as well as the circuits and the well do not occupy physical space, but they are located in the body.
A magical girl's regenerative powers do not cover their these areas. In the first place, usually even magic focused skills won't have an effect on these things. Any attack would pass through them, as if only thin air was there. In other words, the hole in Kaede's well was pretty much permanent. She could only mitigate the effects by using her Stick to reverse the flow of the leakage and use the hole as a new way to absorb magical particles. It still cost magical particles the maintain the Stick, so it wasn't smooth sailing at all.
If she didn't deal with the leakage, she wouldn't be able to store magical particles in her well properly. If she did, the Stick would have a cost to maintain and that would impede her accumulation of magical particles as well.
Skills exist as magic circles, and there are numerous copies of them in the body. So having a few damaged didn't affect her at all. Skills and magic circuits would recover over time unlike the well. Unlike the well, which is more of a location where magical particles accumulate rather than a magical organ, skills and circuits are similar to organs or proteins in which they are expressed by the genes in the body.
In other words they can recover... But they recover at the normal speed that a human recovers at. In other words, it would be a really long while before she saw any change, perhaps even longer than it takes to escape this desert.
Even if they return to a city, there's no guarantee that anyone would help them. If it was the southern region, she would be able to find the labyrinth and contact the magical girl medic in the local hospital there. But that was too far away.
"... The Stick is helping somewhat, but it's not too reliable. If you were to fight and activate your skills, it would be at a deficit. Fortunately Paridia razed down the surrounding land in a large radius, there shouldn't be any monsters or bandits that could have survived that. " (Grail)
" Ughhh... This hole is really taking a toll on me now that I've walked this much... The progenitor has a skill that can target these metaphysical things... That's just too absurd! And irritating to boot! " (Kaede)
Every step felt like there was lead in my shoes, they trudge on this smothered wasteland. Unable to bear the silence any longer, kaede decides to maintain a conversation.
" So... What do you want to do after you fulfill your mission? The mission to protect me... Since there is no instruction to stop me in my vengeance against the progenitor, then your mission should include killing the progenitor, right?" (Kaede)
Sometimes she could read Grail's emotions... More accurately, Kaede was making accurate guesses from a mix of her memories of Myuu and contextual clues. Right now, Grail was acting too human. The emotions she was currently going through... Was a messy mixing pot various feelings. They don't mix well together and may sometimes contradict, but they were... Unexpectedly natural. After all, she was a newborn ego, but it seems that Myuu was able to heavily influence her which aid in her development.
"Will I still exist after I've finished my mission?" (Grail)
That was the wrong reading. Her heart sank to the ground and the world was engulfed by a pin drop silence. A soft ringing sound echoed in her ears as she, Kaede processed those words.