*
With the Veil of infinite pressure causing Ledia to plummet into the abyss, her combat dress and flesh was being eroded away as she tried to resist the attack and fly upwards to no avail. She had been firmly pushed down and only got more damaged as she tried to resist. It was a constant application of gradient that forced everything in a downwards motion, there was no physical escape for Ledia.
The only way out of this predicament was to do something just as absurd with her own magic. She summons the sea of crosses once more... And launches them at the Veil. A border of yellowish white pushes against the black titan pouring down on her existence, the white expands even more and tries to match against the black. At the same time... The large mass of black light was also expanding this whole time and growing stronger, it wasn't a simple attack that would just let Ledia off so easily.
The sea of crosses grow without reserve, like a colony of bacteria covering more area effortlessly. She felt like she was pushing against an impossible mass, facing more strain and pressure than the titan atlas ever will... As a mass of light bore pressure heavier than the mass of the entire universe's over and over. In the mythology, the titan atlas was cursed to uphold everything there was and ever will be, but this was more than everything there was and it only continued to grow disproportionately and only became harder to manage as time went on.
It felt like she was a faint tiny spark in a vast dark and cold sea where the sunlight couldn't reach... She needed to go beyond her usual capabilities... She needed to surpass the normality. The Veil envelops her in its darkness while her sea of crosses conjured in resistance was like a fleeting lantern. At once, large swathes of these lights vanish. The Veil attack had only just hit her her opponent wouldn't let her rest, Kaori alternative's attacks reach over from a range similar to the length of the observable universe.
They extinguish many of the crosses, only for the energy to be swallowed by the Veil and dispersed into nothing with its pressure, then continue to carve up her body into countless pieces. As if putting her body through a grinder, she split into countless chunks of flesh cubes, blood disintegrated under the Veil as her flesh also fade out of existence, dissolved into a homogenous paste...
Absorbing the remaining crosses, she used them as extra boost for her regeneration. Concurrently, the Veil was matching her body's rate of regeneration, the extra attacks by Kaori's rapier were leaving substantial wounds on her body, not only amputating or decapitating her, but also slicing her up into smaller and smaller pieces like a blender. In tiny pieces, her body has more surface area to volume ratio, hence higher requirements to regenerate even more. That's why cutting into tiny pieces has always been a staple method to deal with immortals, it slows their regeneration and allows the application of other sealing methods by buying lots of time.
Though it's unfortunate to end up on the side of getting cut up in all of this. Her final skill summons allies, her second skills allows her to surpass limits... But this time no amount of surpassing herself is going to help with this predicament. The issue with a battle between gods is that... Even if Ledia surpassed Kaori alternative right now, Kaori alternative can simply do the same and surpass herself.... Rendering the previous limit obsolete... Her skills are nearly all useless against god magical girls, the exact opposite of Arasovi...
It was quite absurd that Kaori saw potential in her to be the hope of their world against the destroyers... When all she has brought about so far... Is a convenient ability to sought help from others who live in the same universe. Everyone was holding their own... Except her... That's why she switched places with Kaori when she couldn't handle Arasovi's authority. She chalked it up to a bad match up. But now she can't match up against Kaori either...
Incompetent. Ordinary. Supernormal. Amateur. She was easily held back by many factors that were too inherent to her character, the only way she would get rid of any of these traits... Would be to go insane. She was driven into a dark corner, and... Her view was about to go dark at any moment. Hahah... What happened to her own haughty attitude... What happened to the rebellious spirit she held against fate for thrusting her into this mess...
Was she wrong? She was certainly weak, then was it impossible from the start? Despite coming this far, despite ostensibly being the hope of this world... Despite trying her best, throwing her fear away and running in blind into everything... Even though she reached her fingers as far as she could muster into the darkness, while suppressing her fear of whatever lurked inside there... It was still not enough. Her third and second skill didn't help at all, despite her initial belief. All of her attacks have been her looking for new ways to apply her first skill in a desperate fashion. It matched the life and death struggle--induced innovation that Himei wanted... But even that was not enough.
Virtual world deployment, virtual prediction, quantum substitution, equivalent exchange.... 4 techniques and nothing to show for it... Nothing that would turn the tide... Her ego... Was crumbling while she fought, witnessing her confidence and strength decline in real time... No, her strength didn't decline, it simply fell behind. Her view went completely dark, her eyes were slashed apart and dissolving into the Veil as well. She was no longer sure what body part she even had left, since she couldn't feel anything anymore. Was she finally dead? Was she finally free?
Could she leave it to the others to save the world and her father in it? She was a beacon of hope with no hope for herself, a candle burning on both ends, a torch that burned brightly but would soon become unusable. A transient flag that marched the endless possibilities into reality, but could never dwell in those possibilities herself...
... Was it really okay? Is it fine to leave things as they are? After... Coming this far! After everything that she went through, was this what she really wanted to accept as the conclusion?!
Her first skill began to conjure energy and rebuild her body from the ground up, first the soul then the flesh. The soul is an incorporeal body expected to reincarnate when the body fails, but becoming a god has already sent any possibility of entering the cycle of reincarnation out... That is, as long as she lives. To become a god, she needs the audacity and regality of one. Not some self defeating and subservient thoughts, but the arrogance to defy all.
Himei has too much humility, she was effective as a trainer but not as a role model. But another individual she's been observing as a while... Was Kaori. Whether it'd be the local Kaori or the alternative Kaori... She was the most arrogant piece of shit that Ledia knew, the perfect person to emulate. As long as she had some capacity to think... As a lunch as even a single particle of Ledia remained... She will use her primary skill to build her body from the ground up... And she will build it better and stronger.
The underlying foundation of the virtual world was that her first skill handled the convertion of energy such as light energy and sound energy to create illusions. No matter how much she tried, she couldn't create split matter... But she could create more magical energy and fuel herself... She can rearrange her magical circuits and remodel her soul to be more efficient... She can use Kaori as a role model and... Surpass humanity without a single care!
Her body regenerated, by using magic energy she guided her own regeneration. Even so, the Veil was formidable. It kept breaking down her body as she rebuilt it. Over and over... Break down and rebuild... Like muscles splitting apart and growing back stronger to endure more stress in muscle training... Her body became grew stronger... Strong enough that her base stats were now SS grade, there was no more atlas armour, but merely Ledia. Just Ledia and her entire being, soaring through values without end, a true god with unmatched Selfishness and an ego worthy to be called a ruler of the universe.
Her rebuilt body was similar to her previous, but she had undergone some changes, if magic energy represented the blessing of the almighty then it was almost as if the almighty was commemorating her change. Her combat dress had changed. Her jett black hair remained shoulder length with two sharp edges like a head garb that surrounded the back of her head, but two distinct thin strands of hair extended to her back and then to her feet like two lashes. Near the end of the two lashes and the curtain of hair above her clavicle, her hair transitioned to a bright sky blue.
Her white jacket with vibrant blue outlines had also changed into a larger white coat that reached her feet with loose belts hanging along the opening edge, and there were new lapels. Traces of gold and red complemented the saturated sea blue high lights, decorating her white coat with an intricate design of interlooping lines and shapes. Her ash pink dress had also changed to a new look. There was now a grey belt in the center of her waist, her dress had changed to a hot pink hue which seemed far more vibrant than ever before.
On the minor side of details, she now had a white collar decorated with intricate frills, a ribbon and some flaps, like a crown of snow. On her legs were some black boots, they didn't have any particular feature that stood, only that they seemed sturdy and give an atmosphere of formidability.
She didn't need to abandon her normality, there was no use throwing away a part of her self to save the world, not that it would guarantee that she became stronger. Rather wasn't everyone abnormal in some way? She can't sequester all the blame in her normality or sense of values. She simply had to continue as she had always done, embrace it and push forward stubbornly.
"Tch... Another awakening... What the hell... I'll finish you off even so." (Kaori alternative)
Yeah, this was the reaction she expected. If Kaori alternative didn't have the haughtiness to believe she could finish Ledia off, despite this second awakening like phenomenon, then she wouldn't be a Kaori anymore. Did that mean that Kaoris were strong because they were all egotistical and absurdly arrogant? Maybe. Her thoughts fly faster and faster, it felt like... Yeah, it felt like she had finally caught up with the rest.
A familiar sneer blossoms over her lips, her eyes narrowed provocatively at her opponent, though her opponent didn't seem to care. Kaori alternative... Was familiar with a battles between gods after all, she repeatedly challenged Arasovi until she ended up in this state... That's why she looked a little different from the local Kaori. Not that this was a detail that Ledia would care about, to her they were both almost the same. She raised her arms and spread them violently like an eagle, and then plunged her body against the Veil itself.
"...?!" (Kaori alternative)
She was rather appalled at the sight. After the awakening, Ledia's body was already tough enough to resist the Veil simply by standing there but... Now she was doing something pointless... She was attempting to lift the Veil. She was fighting an infinitely pressurised curtain of light that only grew stronger as time passed. First she fought with her rate of regeneration, now she fought with her physical strength...
It was completely meaningless objectively.... But it held a lot of meaning to Ledia herself. It was a large mass of black light larger than the size of galaxies and approaching the size of the observable universe, but it was also simply an obstacle that she must overcome... So that never again would she fall into that spiral of self doubt.
She never really gave any credence to Kaori's claim that she was essentially the hope of the universe, she only looked upon it and reflected at her failure whenever she encountered trouble she could not overcome. Maybe it was true and she was some sort of messiah that would save the universe, or maybe it was false and she was simply getting high on her own fumes. Honestly... She couldn't treat it seriously. It sounded so cartoonish, so separate from her current reality and her mind full of anguish and suffering. And she will continue as such, rather than some stupid and vague concept of hope, she'd rather bring in victory into reality with her own knuckles and fists.