*
You... You were suppose to fall into despair and become vindictive... You were supposed to kill me...
Then surely you would be strong enough to protect everyone else in this world..." (Kaori)
Huh? Protect the world? Her? Is this a joke...? The whole point was to make her strong enough to surpass Kaori...? Protect from what?! In the first place...!
" y... You think you can decide on your own?! You think i have the guts to kill?!!" (Ledia)
She starts crying too...
"... I don't know... I'm lost.... But I know one thing. I will save you... From myself. Congratulations, you've defeated me without lifting a single finger. Watch out for the destroyers. " (Kaori)
She kept her promise. Summoning her rapier, she drove it into her skull. Unaugmented, it crushed through bone and slid in without effort. Eventually she stopped moving, her previously standing body collapsed onto the ground like a doll, letting blood flow everywhere. A grotesque puddle formed by her body.
Finally, she was done. All without fighting or evacuating. The condition to free her from the time loop was to kill Kaori, she was the one to set up the magic yet she couldn't override it? So she killed herself to free Ledia... Because the Ledia in this timeline dared to go up to her, talk to her, get to know her... And pleaded to be saved. It was so simple, yet so absurd.
And the cryptic message at the end... 'Watch out for the destroyers'.... Was that who she was fighting? Plural, a group of enemies...? Were they also battle ship themed? What an awful name, it made little sense to her how it was all related...
But if Kaori's primary concern was a group of enemies called the destroyers, and that she couldn't beat them on her own but needed someone stronger... Why go out of her way to form this time loop mess... Just to torment her? Even if Ledia defeated Kaori, how would she be so sure that Ledia would fight the destroyers for her...
She kneeled next to the corpse that was once burning hot, it was translucent and fading out of existence, she could tell it was decomposing into magical particles... Her body was purely made out of magical particles, there wasn't any organic matter at all... Are the corpses of Gods all like this? Where they return to the universe completely without leaving anything behind... That's why there was absolutely no evidence of God in the world, because they returned and became one with the world... They were here the whole time...
Though this goes against the faith of the Vermanian sect, rather than the universe being the corpse of one God, it is the corpse of countless Gods. Just like humans, they come about then fade into obscurity once their life was over... The current 3 God magical girls were said to be long living and having lasted for thousands of years, The Eye God, the Dragon God and the pope saintess.
But to a modern person who only learnt of magic's existence after The Great Disaster broke the law of magical girls, these individuals had all appeared spontaneously. They came about all of a sudden, they weren't some preestablished existence that everyone knew off. They might as well have just been born and everyone would be none the wiser.
To Ledia, she does not place much faith in these existences. She was just an ordinary being that met the maliciousness of one. Even then, Kaori kept her promise and killed herself... It was nonsensical to process all of that... What the hell happened here, who are these people... What should she do...?
A woman in a black coat appears in front of her, the coat had etchings of gold, highlighting and decorating it to look similar to a shrine maiden's outfit. Underneath was a revealing yukata that bared some of her clavicle. Her hair was a bright white with numerous highlights of gold, and on her forehead sat unnatural wrinkles akin to a third eye.... A third eye... It was...
"... What the hell... Leaving her mess around like this. Lucky I'm here, there's no telling what evil people could commit with the corpse or a God, it'll be absurd." (Himei, The Eye God)
Now that the time loop was over.... Himei was able to respond... Kaori has somehow kept out he ritnerference until 12 pm, her presence was proof that the time loop was no longer around.... Then, would Ledia get executed here...? Surely... Kaori was a great asset to the Sanctuary.
"... I do not know what the child sees in you... The difference between us is vast, she uses her magic to accurately 'deduce' and 'determine' what happens next. I use mine to look at the future... But what exactly is the future? There's too many futures for me to sift through, in fact there was an infinite amount of them.
She saw some potential in you that I could never have realised, otherwise I would have scouted you already... But... I can see the past clear as day, because only 1 past has gone by... " (Himei)
She gives Ledia a hearty hug, the closer she got, the more Ledia realised she was taller and more voluptuous than she might look. The softness of her clothes' fabric pressed into Ledia, wrapping her warmly like a winter coat on a cold day. Was this meant to be consolation? For the torment she's been through... For The Eye God still had some compassion for her citizens...
"... I also see what happened to her. Haa~ even if I can observe and understand the reason why people do things, it's still irritating as hell to deal with people. But I guess it's not something people can runaway from, other than by killing themselves...
The destroyers are beings of legend, myths passed down for thousands of years. They are fairy tales even among the God magical girls, but it seems like that child has met them and met an unseemly end.
Don't worry, Ledia. They are a scary bed time story that God magical girls tell each other to deter one another from playing with time. It's not something, you who are infinitely insignificant to them, should care about. " (Himei)
" But Kaori... She... " (Ledia)
"... It's not even something I can deal with. If you really want to do something, you have to be prepared to throw away your life. You have to trace the destiny that that child laid out for you, then surpass her, if you want to save her.
But I don't need to see the future to know your answer... It's already awakened in your heart hasn't it? The same kind of heroism that that child holds. " (Himei)
"...! " (Ledia)
She ponders for a bit, but as she watches Kaori's corpse fade out of existence she made up her mind. She turned to Himei and nodded strongly. If that was the only way... If it wasn't to kill but to save... Then maybe an ordinary person like her could do it. If she could somehow undo this suicide and give her a sense of security... If she could have been strong enough so the time loop wouldn't have been necessary in the first place...
Destiny... Kaori can lay out destinies, so naturally she can read them too... No, if she can read destinies, it comes to stand that she did not need to 'create' a destiny but merely 'find' one that had the potential to beat the destroyers. She read the future of everyone on earth and arrived at Ledia as the one human or the best human to defeat the destroyers... Then... Even though she was tormented and sickened by the time loops... She still had a magical amount of faith in humanity. She will trust Kaori's judgement and trudge through.
To erase all the worthless, needless tragedies. To correct Kaori's mistake and give her a hard scolding.
"Eye God sama... Please... Help me save Kaori." (Ledia)
Just as she did for me, despite all she's been through with the destroyers and the time loops. Her frustrated pained expression in every time loop, Ledia wanted to twist it up and turn it into a smile. For the girl who wanted to be a hero was also pleading someone else to be her hero. Then there's no choice is there? The only way forward now... Was to do it.
There isn't much time is there?
"How much time until the destroyers arrive?" (Ledia)
"... About an hour. Heh, looks like your time loop is gonna continue on for a little while longer. You definitely can't beat them in one try. A little different from hers, delayed activation, [Perception dances under the sole observer of the universe] . This will superimpose the reality that you return to 12pm. You will brief me on the issues and we will train you in this one hour before the next battle.
Don't worry about telling me about the destroyers or anything, I can observe every time loop. Your job is to remind me what loop we are on so I can observe the correct one. That is, if you lose of course. " (Himei)
" Thank you, because I definitely need your help if I'm going to trace the destiny deduced by Kaori. Then we'll revive Kaori, point it in her face and teach her! " (Ledia)
" Good! We'll need you to first unlock your second and third skill, as you unlock more skills your Oblivion Magia gains new possibilities as well, so we have to verify that.
Last but not least, combat sense. You ready?" (Himei)
" Yes! " (Ledia)
***
Eventually, 1 hour had quickly passed.
A hole opens in the sky, like a massive ravine in the earth but only in the complete opposite direction. Within the hole that stretched in the patterns of webs like cracks lining a rock's erosion, there was only jett black. A void devoid of warmth and light, staring at down at every inhabitant of the world with an intrusive gaze. At once, the entire world felt unsafe. 'The end has come', that was the mutual feeling shared by everyone.
It was finally time for Ledia to step up. With Himei's guidance, Ledia just managed to break into S rank. With her first skill acting as a perpetual motion machine, generating exponentially more energy each round, then converting it to magic energy to augment herself... She broke past her initial limit of A grade.
There was an existing limit because her skill allowed the conversion of energy from magic into heat at a good ratio that generated more heat than how much was put magic was put in, then to convert it back to more magic than there was before. It was conversion and manipulation. But specifically speaking, the degree of manipulation is weaker than Kaori's [Hollow calamity] that was specialised in manipulation and had no conversion function.
In other words, it was akin to forcing a bucket to hold more water than its capacity dictated. The excess water spills out instead of staying inside, Himei taught her to practice conversion instead and increased the efficiency of the conversion ratio through better magic manipulation. But the base ability of the bucket to hold water has not increased, she had done something more akin to compressing the water further so the bucket held more water molecules but had the same amount of volume.
With her S grade states, she paints the sky in red instantly. [Heat sets the entropic destiny]. Converging a continent's worth of heat into a singular core, a false sun at her fingertips, she launches it into the large crack in the sky.
The heat swirls around a sphere of pure blinding white, flashing rays of brilliance into every direction as the surrounding air continuously expands and contracts. Due to the volatile changes in the air, it looks like reality is shifting around like a liquid, confused about how it should be. Light was refracting in swirls and loops, creating an assymetric kaleidoscope of a chaotic sight.
Ledia's hair and jacked frayed into the air, pushed away from the spear in front of her as it repeatedly expands the air nearest to it to produce a violent gale. Her ash pink dress looked slightly more vibrant under the dazzling light, but was nonetheless still dull like a nice shade under the summer blaze.
Flicking her wrist and striking at the air in front of her with her right fist, the destructive sphere of heat flies into the black crack. For a few seconds, the world was silent.