*
She leaped high into the air, a single rapier pointed forward. Then it extended, and branched. Shooting off into countless branches, piercing every bit of surface area that it could, it skewers the entire field of cherubis.
A single blade splits into 3,then each blade splits into 3 more, and this continuously takes place. There is no chance for humanity to coexist with other intelligent species... Humanity can't even coexist with itself, so I suppose it all depends on the dynamics of power. For example... If the other species were drastically elss powerful than humanity, to the point they become slaves or pets... Then it might be possible. After all, pets are an example of coexisting with another species. But no intelligent being would willingly submit to such a one sided relation.
In any case, it was just too difficult. It was also impossible, at least for the present population of demons. They were the demons that ranged back to quite a long time ago, the ones that held a grudge against humanity for taking the top place as the planet's rulers from them. In the end, Hikari swallowed all of them up and used them as fuel for her existence. There's no coming back, she ingested them body, soul and all.
She had been slicing them apart too fast, they haven't had the chance to use magic, so they started to glow with a white light as they surfaced. That was their innate magic, monster magic was usually more blatantly in tune with their biology. In other words if their horns were their main weapon, their skill would enhance that horn in some way, it's way more intuitive and obvious than magical girls. But... These are parasitic monsters, cherubi. There's no telling what skill they would use. What skills would a parasite use? Something to do with parasiting? Or the host's skills?
She wouldn't want to find out, but it wasn't possible to stop them due to the sheer quantity of them releasing their skill right as they surfaced. White beams of burning light, B grade... Likely a skill from the ant colony. Each individual beam is somewhat weaker than average, they are not an energy based monster so the magical particle to energy conversion is bad. The premise of this skill is the colony... They can rain light towards the sky even right before they surface.
They take aim, soon the sky was filled with white. Sand disperse and disintegrate, vicious heat energy that ate away at everything it passed through shot at her body.
"... [The gap of impermanence is a cage], kneel." (Kaori)
The light stops just 2 metres short from her body, an obloid barrier covers her body. She froze the air so nothing could pass through it. Even under high pressure it would not move. She can apply the opposite to her rapier, an enchantment to make her rapier pass through barriers by moving the protective layer away. Though it would take a lot of magic, on par with an Oblivion Magia.
She spreads her magic over the light, specifically her second skill 'movement'.
"... I should try out using it on my body. I already use [Hollow calamity] to reduce air resistance and to direct my body... I never considered [the gap of impermanence is a cage] because of its high cost, but it might be more powerful." (Kaori)
Anyway. She waved her hand forward, and the light shot back in all directions. Some of the cherubi were burnt, but most suffered minimal damage from it. Figures, this attack was only effective in a many vs one situation, and even then if you got into such a situation, that one must be very strong and still likely ineffective...
While she stood in the air thinking things over, another wave of white light was shot at her.
"Enough of this. [Hallowed bridal judgement], Veil of Determinism." (Kaori)
White light wraps around her body, but this light originated from inside her body rather than from the monster's attacks. Then it cracks like glass and blows away like snow, leaving behind a dress of pure white. The chest area was similar to a bunny girl's, but added layers of frills to cover slightly more skin. Intricate embroidery decorates the edge of her dress, giving it a more 3 dimensional feel.
She decided to name the transformation as [Hallowed bridal judgement] and called out the technique that she used countless times during the battle with Zedicia. A large colum of black light propels from the sky and slams down on the white light shot by the cherubi, like a large boot crushing ants. It effortlessly scatters the white light and plummets even further to land into the nest.
It crushed everything it passed through and stops just short of the bottom of the nest. Under the pressure exerted, every cherubi in the vicinity had been reduced into paste. The excess pressure breaks down every compound into their bare constituents then into plasma. She retracts the Veil, it really did stop just short of the bottom layer. She had intended to glean some information by seeing just how many of the little mobs surface from the ground to fight her.
Their population would be an indication, seeing how they don't burrow far laterally but they do so deeply. The entire nest was like a massive mass of magical particles on her radar, squirming around and endlessly moving. So she estimated their height and sent pure pressure from her veil straight through the ground, the soil might have hardened and became a deep crater, but everything was compressed from the earth to monster matter, and then broken down. She then opened a hole in the centre to peer into it.
" Ugh.... Scuttering around... At times like these, I wish my power was fire instead..." (Kaori)
Ah, wait, there was that. - divine flame-, the white fire that she used to try and get rid of Hikari's Disaster form. Being a gigantic flesh wave reminded her of zombie movies, so she thought to use some sort of fire at that time. Pointing at the hole she made, she flicked her wrist and shrill screams began such that it could be heard from a distance away. The fire was spreading, she could tell with her radar that it instantly exploded and expanded far and wide. At the edge of the universe, all of these attacks could be let lose as it wouldn't affect the infinite void that was that sub realm.
But here in the normal world, she's having a little difficulty controlling the Veil of Determinism and the Divine flame. It persists in her conscience that she should conduct damage control lest she ruin the earth and turn it into unrecoverable ruins...
Every now and then, ruins of modern civilisation were still being dug up for past resources. As she stood now in her divine form, every one of her casual attacks and techniques were the equivalent of a nuke... If she didn't consciously held it together, the Veil of Determinism might expand freely and cover the sky black before crushing the Sanctuary into the ground. Oh well, that's what self control is for. She was given permission anyway. For this nest, she was essentially a delete button.
She dropped down swiftly, the monsters watched as she obeyed the laws of gravity. Under their enhanced vision, she was practically a feather gently swaying down in a feet down orientation that cuts through the air. Their bodies glow with white to shoot the hot energy beams at the slowed target. Her barrier once again captures all of the light and shoots it back, then as the tip of her toes makes contact with the ground...
She vanished from their sights. With a 10 kilometre long rapier, she rent everything around her in half and extinguished the fire. The fire decomposed their corpses and converted all surrounding matter into magical particles, not even blood was left behind, just scorched earth. The principles of the fire was like a virus, endlessly replicating with someone else's energy and resources, an inspiration from Hikari's disaster form.
On her radar, a large signal rapidly closes the distance between them. Her fire had expended all the magical particles in the surrounding area, the particles are all activated now, in other words, used fuel. The only source of unused fuel would be the elites and the Queen who had somehow survived the attack. An elite class drops from the soil above, they somehow survived the Veil of Determinism and dug their way here.
Black light forming continuous spikes slam against her flesh but break into pieces. This must be the second skill of their species, a form of biting the enemy with magic, from a distance away. A yellow liquid is also shot by the elite class cherubis, melting through the soil dust in the air as it rushes towards Kaori. It falls on her barrier and... Began leaking through. She disables her barrier and shoots a ball of white fire, causing a blinding flash a light and a subsequent explosion.
"?! Anti-magic natured corrosion... It melts through the magical particle structures that hold barriers together..." (Kaori)
It should be related to the mouth skill that bites from a distance away. The elite class was an evolved form of the lower mob cherubis, it wouldn't be strange if their second skill had additional effects as long as it was related to the jaw. Ingestion type skills such as a corrosive effect was quite common for evolved monsters.
But she had already entered divine form, it was enough to dodge, and kill in one move. The elite class cherubis explodes with seemingly no cause. The queen arrived at the sight of the explosion with the other elite class cherubis, no one was around. Other than the low hum continuously emanating from the rotation of their body parts, the area was utterly silent, almost palpable. It squeezed at their instinctual hearts. Something was here, but no longer around? Where did it go?
At the corpse of the single elite class that was sent ahead as a scout, there were multiple slash marks carved deep into the ground, the attack was too powerful for the elite's body to remotely contain and it carved into the ground without any hindrance...
"Elimination..." (Kaori)
The other elites split in halves, a surreal sight for the queen. The final skill was one meant for spawning more cherubis, so it wasn't as if she needed a mate, and she could sustain and birth another colony as long as she survived. This meant that her survival was the highest priority for the species. With the same consistent parent, there was not much evolution as genes were passed down minimally from the same source.
The only evolution was the ascension to elite classes and potential ascension to new Queens, but that would take the equivalent of multiple colonies worth of spawn coalescing into one being. In other words it took too long for there to have been more than 1 queen, at least in this continent.
"Incomplete..." (Kaori)
She appears in front of the queen, swinging her blade towards the ground at her side, throwing off the blood that had gathered over its surface. It was viscous and coated the rapier's thin structure, the corrosive acid inside the bodies of the elite did a decent job of hindering the rapier's cutting edge so the blood and fluids could cling onto it, but not good enough to prevent the blade from slicing clean through them. Rapiers aren't meant for slashing, especially with how Kaori's is built as thin as a thread, but it still did the job.
Now, the remaining question. Why won't the queen die? Multiple slash marks appear over the queen, but they quickly vanish as if they weren't there. Kaori bisect the queen cleanly, her blade passing through the entirety of its body. She turns around a jumps back, wary but completely fine. An S grade with the amount of magic she has... And... Immortality.
The final skill is biological manipulation... It can be used for spawning but also regenerating. Let's say it has limits because it's not really biological manipulation but a magic that is similar and looks like it. The origin is spawning, the expanded effects that deviate from its original usage under a skilled user... Would be healing one's own body by 'spawning' one's self.
"How do I deal with this... The fire didn't eradicate the colony because she was constantly spawning more minions to direct the fire away from herself...
And I tried decapitation earlier, as well as a little blending of the brain... But it didn't work. " (Kaori)
In any case, it didn't present a danger to her in her divine form. In her perspective, the queen is standing still, yet everytime she cut its flesh it was regenerating instantly...
" Let's just kill it with fire. The fire is meant for situations like these..." (Kaori)
Another enemy with incomprehensible regenerative ability, dealt with. The fire begins with burning through the outer layer, then the inner layer. As the skin was regenerated back, the fire that has already reach the inside does not extinguish, now it burns everything at once. It was as if the queen was an image from a projector, the ones that would be used on whiteboards in school. The projection flickers rapidly and eventually stops.
"Psh... Queen eliminated. Her regeneration was crazy! " (Kaori)