*
He thrusts his blade at her head, the rogue dodged with much effort while pushing her left palm up to block it. He cuts into her left palm but ultimately misses her head.
A weird sensation enters his blade, but he has no time to inspect it. The opponent has only become more dangerous up close. He grips it at an angle to deflect the next attack from the rogue's bat, it bounces off with a clang as he shifts his body forward, entering her personal space. He wouldn't be pushed over any longer, invade and destroy. She didn't have enough space to swing her bat back up to an attacking stance, so she had to attack from the side while Harald strikes from the front.
Making use of this chance, he thrusts forward at her head. Once more, she dodges it. But this time she didn't have much room to breath as the blade barely missed her face by a hair's breadth. It split her cheek skin open as a small spurt of blood was released from the cut. She swings her bat from the side to smash against his frail body, but since she couldn't position properly, her attack's strength had diminished significantly. A tinge of pain travels through his head as the bat hits it head on. Even so, it had enough power to send his vision spiralling into darkness.
Barely retaining his consciousness, he cuts her down. His blade had extended into a failed thrust just now, but he didn't bring it back before she struck him at the side of his head. So he pushed down whole Galadyn throws explosive stones at her back. A flurry of erupting light engulfs the background behind her as he puts enough strength into his blade to cleave her flesh.
"Ghh!!? It's not sharp?! But.... I can keep going... Ahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!" (Harald)
A portion of the blade's edge had deformed as if something melted it away, but it was magically reinforced steel that could cut anything apart. Even temperature and fluid. Even when deformed, he would push through with all his strength. After all, that is his sole purpose. The blade slips through the flesh at once, finally shattering through her magic defence and physical defence, her augmentations gave in and he drew a wide diagonal arc down her body, from her left shoulder to her right hip.
Blood poured into the air like an out of control fountain, spraying with the pressure of a hose and ferocity of a snake.
"Heh. Hehe. Heheheheheh!" (Rogue)
Her arm was already on his neck before he gained any awareness of it, his focus was mostly on his attempt to cut through her flesh, so it resulted in his peripheral vision being more muddy and obscure than usual. A burning sensation seeps into his neck before coursing through his mind, excruciating details of agony swam through the ocean of his conscious as if vaporising his psyche.
"GUAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!" (Harald)
"Second skill [Sensation of history]. " (Rogue)
"Haaaghhhhaaaaggghhhaaagghh!!! " (Harald)
"... Kuhagh!??!!!" (Rogue)
She finally lifted her fingers from Harald's neck that seemed to be almost crushed. There was a blade that went through the centre of her torso from the back...
His vision had been badly shaken from the pain and torture, the surrounding blood vessels around his neck had all burst. Into an ugly mess, and if it had continued any longer the bones might have been revealed. A close call, he was saved... Behind the rogue was... Leman.
".. Y-your alive..." (Harald)
He picks up his blade, wiping away his tears with his other hand. There was more than just tears as a multitude of bodily fluids coated his face and body. His regrets, his disappointment in his own weakness, his anxiety, his fear. They act like grime upon his willpower.
"Focus on the battle, now that Leman's here, we're finishing this." (Galadyn)
He walks past Harald without a hint of hesitation in his footsteps, his very gait exuded overflowing confidence as he strode nearer to the site of battle. Leman ripped out her sword from the rogue's pierced heart. She had been preparing for this day, initially the rogue attacked the workshop while Harald wasn't around. Ultimately Leman escaped by the skin of her teeth. How she did so was a story for another day.
The rogue crouched down with her palm pressed tightly against the gaping hole in her chest. The problem with the heart being the body's weakness was that it pumped blood throughout the entire body, in other words piercing it would eject blood at super high pressures. In order for magical girls to be so augmented and powerful, naturally their hearts were proportionately enhanced to keep up with their bodily functions.
In other words, their blood pressure may be so high that their regeneration cannot patch it back up. This self defeating effect diminishes as the magical girl goes up in combat effectiveness grade. Piercing the heart was fatal for pretty much every C grade, and even for many B grades. The rogue was not one of the rabble.
The blood that spilled from her mouth dries at the edges of her lips, leaving a slight pinkish tint on the surface of her skin.
"... Did... Did you think you would win if you killed me...? This isn't a game, this is... Retribution. To the Sanctuary, to everyone." (Rogue)
The rogue was filled with bitter memories unbeknownst to anyone else. Her voice was calm and composed, but that was merely because it contained unseen amounts of energy and rage. All her broiling emotions were hidden under the surface, none of it would ever leak out, at the same time it felt as if it sapped the atmosphere of warmth. Their surroundings felt colder as she stared at them with resolute eyes. She had a large gaping maw in the centre of her chest where her heart was supposed to be, but she was still completely fine.
"It's a decoy...?" (Galadyn)
His tone dropped as fear permeated his enunciation.
"Tch- e-" (Galadyn)
It sounded like time was slowing down before their eyes, but that was only because Leman and Harald were adapting to the shift in their perception of speed. They were thinking and moving faster to battle, they had always been doing this since the start but Galadyn who was a normal human didn't forsee that his words were slowing down in their perception.
Usually this was fine, even when slowed down the magical girls could fully process what he said. Their transformed augmented bodies had minds that could process such things. This was unless the information was cut off from them, which would be the most prevalent occurance, since they are in the middle of battle. Leman and Harald couldn't reach him in time, Galadyn was too far away.
A hand reaches out from the darkness that surrounds the entire field, wrapping around Galadyn swiftly. With a swift motion, it digs out a chunk of flesh near his lower ribs. Leman reaches Galadyn first and pierces the black fog with her blade. As if time sped back up to normal, a guttural cry of anguish filled the battle ground.
"... Swallow this." (Leman)
It was a magic chip made by Leman, she predicted that this would happen and made healing items with her hammer and monster materials. It was crude and there was no aesthetic or tasteful sense to it, it had been completely optimised for its recovery effect. It was a squirming cube with a few veins. Leman practically shoved it down his throat, forcing it past his gag reflex as it disintegrated in his throat.
There was no pale light like what would be shown in games. They visibly watch his flesh bubble from his wound and multiply until it formed a tumor like structure that was large enough to cover the wound. Originally it was for Harald and her to use, she didn't know a normal human like Galadyn would be here, but she wouldn't question. There was no need nor time to do so.
The hand immediately receded into the vision impeding fog. Harald had gotten used to it, but to Leman it felt like her conscious was repeatedly getting attacked by irrational emotions. They seep into her head like poison, drowning her clear thoughts with mud. The rogue runs out of the fog with her bat. She comes charging with her practiced stance, waving it above her head to carry out a heavy blunt force strike.
"That's likely a decoy, we have to break out of this, Leman." (Harald)
"... I can't all I can do is rapidly heat things into the next state, making metal and monster materials molten." (Leman)
She dodges the decoy with a back step as Harald decapitates it from behind, vanquishing it.
"Why? Can't you melt away this... Territory of hers...?" (Harald)
"It's... It's like an Oblivion Magia. Only A grades and above can use this universal magic technique, it pulls the targets in with the user into a seperate dimension. This dimension overrides magic defence, making it possible to use skills inside the opponent's body. " (Leman)
They parry the next hit from the rogue, her bat was unable to move an inch forward as her arms struggled. Leman kicks forward into the rogue's abdomen, causing the rogue to lose her balance. Leman then stabs her body with her own magic weapon before the rogue fell.
"... She melted the tip of my blade. She has some kind of corrosive skill, why hasn't she killed us yet with that? " (Harald)
"... She's only C grade like us, maybe B grade at best. This isn't a real Oblivion Magia but a product of her skill, yet it mostly acts like one by isolating us from the real world...
She can't kill us so she's planning to wear out our willpower first. We need a way to break out of this. " (Leman)
"... Don't you have a second skill? It's likely centered around black smithing... Use it on my blade. " (Harald)
" All it does is add effects! " (Leman)
For the first time since they met, Leman screamed in frustration. She ran in here to save him, yet he wasn't able to do his job of killing the rogue properly. He was using her prided blade while she used an inferior copy, yet he wasn't able to protect them effectively. They were both running out of patience in this hellish landscape of endless attacks, there was a limit to things one could do under such duress.
"... I've left my scabbard outside to absorb the rogue's mountain of gold and loot, so that I kept getting stronger as the battle went on. Add an effect that erases memory and cognitive function." (Harald)
He calmed down and spoke gently. But his voice carried an unseen power that seemed to blow away all uneasiness. 'Just follow my order and everything will go the way we want.', his voice seemed to screamed at her heart.
"..." (Leman)
She continued to hesitate, her heart waving between her pride and her life. She chose her pride.
"Second skill, [Glorious blessings destined for paradise]." (Leman)
She built an inferior blade, but it would power her up to a high C grade, an exclusive fruit limited to her own efforts that no one else could bear. Spending her entire magical girl life collecting the corpses of monsters just to use it all like this, she practically melted everything she could get her hands on into one single super allow. A jet black blade with a metallic sheen and a glowing brown silhouette. No matter how much effects she added to it, the weapon would be able to endure it. A miraculous composition that could only exist because of the parts she obtained.
Desert wyrm's scales, steel crane feathers, phantom panther's hide, lethal stinger's thorns, gamorilia bithorn's tusk, vegnis slyne's venomous fangs, armadonus' wings, hazer erebimia's gills, desert canno's claws, gigant meverworm's hyperaortic arch, flagindtalia's beak, yugere's fur, paliothyne's hypermagia core, throkialedene's cranium.
There were many more in the mix, but in this one aspect her own weapon was way superior to Harald's. It might offer a lower multiplier to her augmentations, but it offered more versatility. She could set any effect as long as it was something she knew existed, in other words she had to know the mechanism of the magic circle and memories the magic circles of other skills.
She swing once and the ceiling breaks in half with a glass like shattering noise. She spins forward, cutting everything around her down. Aoe + minor memory shatter effect. With Harald's hint, she now understood why she was undergoing constant assault by foreign emotions. The rogue's magic materialises the rogue's memories into reality, this space is inside the rogue's memories so it wasn't that the rogue was sending weaker decoys on purpose, rather it was because the rogue couldn't physically enter her own memories and conjure something as strong as herself with magic.
But now the space was unstable, if Leman would take care of it, Harald wouldn't mind not having the enchant on his sword. All that mattered was the result, he had received plenty of charity and Galadyn was knocked out from the pain. Now this was his role. He could finally feel his connection to the scabbard even more strongly than before.
"Resonate, full power usage." (Harald)
His body vanished into a flash of light, his augmentations had hit a new peak. Things had been leading up to this moment, his preparation could finally show the results of his patience. He starts with a few wide swings which miss due to the rogue's agility. Despite giving all he had, the rogue still had a little edge to squeak out some dodges. But he pushed her into the corner that he wanted to, limiting her space to move. Suddenly it felt like the 2 walls were closing on her, blocking her escape.
He ends it with a full powered throw. A black mud converges on the point of impact, covering the rogue.
"When dreams become tangible, there are no longer any dreams." (Rogue)
The black mud swallowed the ground in an instant, as if diffusing through the ground and engulfing the entire building. Leman arrives in time, her blade cleaves through the mess like a distant light in the far off tunnel.
"DO NOT HESITATE!!!" (Leman)
Making use of the opening made by Leman, Harald thrusts through it with his sword, channeling all his might and magical energy into one final attack. It cleaves through the rogue's facial flesh between the ridge of her nose then into her skull and mind. His adrenaline had masked his mind of all distractions... Including the hole made in his heart by the black mud.
His body glowed brilliantly, before dissipating into magical particles...