*
Everyone is dead. Do something about it. Isn't that... Way too absurd? Why put all of this onto me? Why put all of this onto a single person? I harp on and complain in my mind while clashing my rapier against Zedicia.
I wail and moan about all of the absurdity and how I cannot accept this, but in the end whether I accept the burden of humanity or not it does not change anything. I know it best, there's no one else left to accept the burden. That's why it's been passed on to me. If only it was peace time, if only there was a safe way to cultivate magical girls without throwing them to their deaths like this.
If Hikari has made it all he way to Barius, South Africa, Europe and half of Asia is gone. It's unlikely they would keep their end of the promise and spare north America, nor is there any chance the Union could fend her off without any God magical girls to protect it. The last protector of mankind was me and only me... I can't do anything about it, I can't bring back people from the dead.
In the first place I've only done a single thing all this while, it is what I do best and the only way to move forward at this point. As usual, I fight. Fight as Kaori, fight as Kaede, fight as the saviour of saviours, fight as the king representative of humanity, fight as a magical girl. It sickens me how everything has turned out like this. Only bad news, bad news and bad news.
But what can I do now? You know, for someone who keeps getting into fights with magical girls and constantly thinks about a way to defeat their enemy... I never actually get any better. I am always in a rut, in a horrible state, injured, cursed, disheartened. Haa~ It's getting too tiring. Let's just fight it out with our fist. No more flashy moves, it's okay. I'll do this the old fashion way.
I teleport behind Zedicia and slice with my rapier, I easily miss my target but promptly shifts into another position without stop. Clash, clash, the collisions reverberate throughout my rapier screaming to be let go. My flesh cries out, but as usual I don't listen. There is no more easy way out, no 'sure win' strategy that would bring the maximum amount of happiness, no convenient naive plan that brings the least loss and max gain. Anyway, that's Barius thing, topursure efficiency.
With fast movements and strong fingers, I tightened my grip as as I swung my rapier and strike multiple times in one attack, plastering her claw gauntlets with more than a single blow. It slowly impacts her wrist and elbows. She can use her entire arm to block and I would be disadvantaged... Had I only been using my arms solely like an amateur.
My legs dance through the air, leg work like a swan swimming through an immense storm brought about by nature ravaging seas. My body does not feel light in the slightest, my heart is heavy with regret with grief. It's something I cannot throw away, something I cannot escape. But I fight, it's all I have left.
I teleport behind Zedicia, swinging my rapier overhead. She follows up with her own teleportation, but I swiftly pivot my legs and turned my whole body, adding all my weight into the momentum to parry. Just as quickly as I reacted to her counterattack with superhuman prowess, I pull away the rapier allowing her attack to past through, then I slam it into her once again. Pulling and slamming, I treat it like a club even if I try to dress it nicely... I am a savage, an uncivilised neanderthal.
I jumped back, giving the illusion that I had teleported away. She quickly realised I was still here, using normal movements. But before everything I process, I jumped forward and slashed relentlessly. Every single movement is for the sake of attacking again. I will never let you breath again. Running sideways, I swung my rapier left and right, pull back then swing again, raining blow after blow from every angle. It was easy for Zedicia to turn and block, but with infinite stats, the one moving with more velocity instead of staying still wins.
Cracks appeared in her claws. They would regenerate instantly, but I wasn't about to waste my efforts. My fingers secured the handle of my rapier as my grip tightened, I can attack instantly... In the instant of my previous attack, before the instant of your regeneration! Firing multiple stabs, the cracks spread throughout the gauntlet then it exploded into fragments. I stepped closer, the Pommel end of my rapier was also a blade, I don't have to hesitate so I slam the Pommel against her head.
She turned her hips like a pugilist and fired her fist into my torso as my Pommel hit her face. Her single strike destroys my lungs and shatters my diaphragm, as well as sending me flying away. In the end my Pommel made a shallower cut than I expected... Yet it still tore a hole deep enough in the ridge of her nose for me to fit a finger. I spat the blood as I challenged once more.
Of course she was more skilled in combat, it has taken all I have just to meet her on equal ground. But with this grief that cannot be passed on to anywhere else, I strike with all my life, all my soul put into it. Even if it's not enough, I'll do it over and over again. No more resting, no more giving you time to think your life could resume. If conceptual attacks can get reversed, but I can counteract the damage inversion, then I will finish you off the old fashion way.
I'll jam so many holes in you that your regeneration gives up. I step in, my legs give me so much strength, my arms ache whenever my muscles contract, because I'm pushing myself as I'm pushing her. Nevermind being a magical girl, I'm going at maximum speed, at an infinity beyond the infinity with my sheer will. I'll push myself so much both our regeneration cannot catch up. There's simply no other way you've left for me, this is your fate that I will now impose upon on you.
With a single step, I teleport behind her. My control over this realm has gotten so much better, I skillfully arrive behind her, weave inbetween her counterattacks with a few more steps. It was like dancing between the raindrops of a fearsome drizzle. It looks impossible, but my body was somehow doing it right now. Then there's no need to question it. Just strike, strike and strike.
I slam my rapier straight through her defences, a glass like shattering echoed in my ears as I pierce her brain multiple times. She smacks my face with a hook, throwing me into the ground. I roll for a bit before jumping back up, slamming my rapier into her follow up attack that she tried to launch to keep me down, then jumped away to a safer location and more stable stance.
Step, hop and pierce. She strikes with maximum reach, putting all of her strength into her wrist subsequently the rapier's guard. All of the force is channeled to the rapier's tip with the help of her first skill, with this I don't need to learn how to properly use weapons if I can always channel the centre of tension and strike with it. But of course, it helps to know the actual technique. With some assistance, I stab into the target.
She summons another gauntlet and throws a punch the rapier, causing a tense collision in the centre. Our bodies locked into the throwing stance as we vyed for supremacy. My body heats up, my arm got tired from the constant pushing and swinging, but I cannot let up in a fight. I must finish this. Excruciating pain filled my arm, but nothing could beat the grief that was shower onto me like meteors. Nonstop! I lose and lose and lose! Nothing can ever top that kind of pain! An unbearable smear to my pride as a magical girl, and an unbearable pain arising from the loss of loved ones...
My tears gathered up, wetting the edges of my eyes as I glares harder. Push! Push! Don't give up now, you have to win! Even if this doesn't end the battle, you must defeat her. You must punish her. You must destroy her for everything she has done. I put my other arm onto my gripping arm and leaned all of my body weight onto it, pushing with both legs.
I'm practically hanging onto my rapier like a monkey hanging onto a tree branch, my head has lowered to be next to my rapier where my arms were gripping. Zedicia also follow up by leaning all her body weight into her punch, transforming it into an overhead punch while leaning against her locked shoulder. She looked like even her head was pushing against the air in front of her.
"kgjhh Tch...! [Fate trickles down the mud]" (Zedicia)
"USELESS!!! EVEN IF YOU KEEP SWITCHING OUR POSITIONS, I'LL CLIMB BACK UP!!!" (Kaede)
Her magic activates. While it has the effect of creating miracles and funneling good luck and a fortunate fate to the user, while imparting bad luck and predestined disadvantages to the enemy, in actuality it was no such lofty thing. At its base, the skill operated on its own system, not some borrowed phenomena like 'fate' or 'destiny'.
It operated on its very own basis of 'Charisma'. Charisma was the value given to the advantage that one has in battle. So the winning side has more 'Charisma'. What her skill did was to funnel all of that into the user. So what Kaede was inadvertently doing by resisting it... Was to reverse it back without the use of any skill or magic.
"... WHAT THE FUCK...?! HOW?!! WITHOUT... ANY... MAGIC...? " (Zedicia)
"FATE... IS DECIDED BY OUR ACTIONS... I'LL TAKE IT BACK EVERYTIME YOU STEAL IT FROM ME!!!" (Kaede)
By constructing a system where 'charisma' can be transfered, Zedicia inadvertently created a 'gradient' where 'charisma' can travel on its own. But it wasn't solely out of the first skill [hollow calamity] that allowed Kaede to recover. It required a strong will, more than a mountain's worth of resolve to change fate, to change the entirety of one's predestination. It was akin to working towards a particular career all of your life, then derailing it by choosing another job and to properly put one's all into pursuing the other Job. Money, happiness, melancholy, anger, wishes, dreams, aspirations, every aspect of a human's life... The person has to be willing to throw all of it away.
'Including the current dream that I'm living out... to be a magical girl...!'
If the person was willing to uproot their entire life in this manner, then it was the same as changing their destiny with their own strength. Screw determinism, as long as a possible future was able to be snuffed out of existence, then it was considered the same thing. Otherwise, it would make no sense... But it was a combination of both this strong will to resist against fate and her first skill that subconsciously brought back her 'charisma'.
And this momentary shock that her skill was made useless in front of her... Stunned Zedicia. *PING!* Her rapier shatters the gauntlet like glass and stabs into her arm, then it burrows straight through. I arrive behind her, like a missile that shot past its target... But this time it properly went through it. My left palm is opened, as if grasping at the air behind me as my right arm held my rapier in the air.
Behind my figure was another, one with a large chunk in their torso that reached to the neck and waist, and it had a missing arm. With a single swing, her head was lopped off.
There's the problem of regeneration, then there's the issue of categorising life. If she can revive herself even if her body is completely atomised, how do I get rid of her? One was her physical body and the other was her spiritual body. Technically speaking if the soul was real, it should be a spiritual body, but something so vulnerable shouldn't be so easily let out.
In other words, a god's soul should be different in that it's stronger, or perhaps it has an invincible shell called the spiritual body. The spiritual body that we all know off that is basically a body completely formed from magical particles, acts as a container for the soul. Then I should just destroy the spiritual body, the soul will go back to the cycle of reincarnation on its own or go wherever it goes when someone dies.
But as god magical girls, we've long destroyed each other's mortal shell. Our spiritual bodies merely imitate our actual body. In other words the destroyed body here was already the spiritual body. It can't be atomised since it's not physical...
It has to be destroyed by pure magical energy. A large rapier with the diameter of 50 metres strikes at Zedicia's damaged body from the sky.