*
She has no magic, so why was she able to use her first skill? The world counteracted any magical properties that she had, her infinite stat became ungraded, and her capabilities were now painfully human. So why was she still able to fight so well and so quickly? It was a testament to how well she trained her body, yet the magic shouldn't be the same so... It deeply puzzled Vegaltari.
Usually her enemies would accept the forbidden fruit and embrace the false utopia that was this world, or they would retain their wits and die from being unable to use magic... Their magical particle content should be 0, so... It was 'perfection'. It broke a single rule before being negated by the world. She was allowed to use her skills. It took everything she had to conjure these simple water constructs, but they were functional nonetheless. Most enemies who were capable, like the destroyers, could bypass some rules and do the same. However, she still didn't expect it. It was rather irritating how her carefully set stage was being eroded by sheer violence.
This is a shame, a disgrace. Hiding in a dirt hole inside her own world. Scurrying around like a mole, using rocks to fend off her toll. The ground opens up a distance away and rises, bringing her back to the surface. An iron sword is firmly in her grip, a rule was set. 'Forge yourself into the finest steel upon contact with the owner of this world.' As such, the iron in the ground congregate and refined itself with some coal, heat and pressure. A blade of durable steel that would slice wood apart like butter, a magnificent tool of war. She tightens her grip, letting out a sliver of her anger.
But she cools down her mind, retaining her composure. Her eyes see clearly, her heart beats quickly but calmly in a controlled manner. Her adrenaline has gone high and her muscles warmed themselves up in preparation for battle. She runs in with a speed not any slower than Barius'. The pressure of her water isn't high enough, Vegaltari swings preemptively, it was in good measure since her range is shorter than the spear's. The water spear was thrusted forward at a blinding speed but parried back with her steel blade.
Vegaltari steps closer, taking a wide swing. Barius dodges to the side and bents her knees to duck lower. The blade leaves a shallow cut on her chest, a scathing pain intrudes into her flesh and body. Her nerves are on fire and the adrenaline isn't doing much to quell it. She washes the wound out and drowns it in water, creating a field of water around her at all times. It was hard for her to breath, but it would slow down and reduce the lethality of Vegaltari's sword.
She stands with a staggered gait, still mollifying herself over the pain. But her eyes were kept on Vegaltari, gauging her opponent's next move. She frequently fights in her own water, she could probably fight at the bottom of an actual pool without her magic. The opponent's blade slips into the wall of water containing Barius' body, it's only slowed by a small margin due to the muscle strength of Vegaltari, but it was enough for Barius to quickly dodge and swing a punch into Vegaltari's face.
Vegaltari eats the punch and moves back from the impact, holding her cheek to caress the pain. The water wall explodes, exposing Barius to the air, some of the water left more shallow cuts onto Vegaltari's skin. But the light stinging from the pain is what makes her feel even more alive, it keeps her well and conscious from Barius jaw shattering strike. Barius runs up to her, bending her torso low she launches a cross with her right arm. Water rises down her arms and drives around her wrist, rotating rapidly into the shape of a saw as Vegaltari dodges the punch, the saw expands horizontally threatening her flesh even if she avoided the punch.
Vegaltari drops a foot and goes to a low kneel, before spinning backwards to create more distance. She gazed cautiously at Barius as she regained her breath at the sight of the giant water saw on Barius ankle. This was a world she had created, yet she was the one who felt cornered... Barius closes the distance, feinting a punch with her left arm, she rotates her wrist backwards and grabs at Vegaltari's arm before pulling her closer.
Barius then slams her right knee into Vegaltari's torso, but at the same time Vegaltari knew there was no way to avoid getting pulled without wasting too much time. So in a last ditch attempt, she decided to even out the playing field instead. As she was pulled into Barius' knee, she swung her right arm and smashed it into Barius' face. They both fell back onto the ground and did their best to get back onto their feets. Their bodies were battered and bruised, visibly much slower in recovering their stance than before.
Barius who was hit in the face, used her core muscles to pull her whole body weight up, enlisting the help of her arms to push herself off the ground. Vegaltari's upper torso was crying out in pain, so she slammed both her arms into the ground and bent her knees, jumping back into a standing position. She hunched slightly to curb the pain, while Barius kept one eye closed the whole time, wincing from her own injury.
Barius formed a spiky gauntlet and threw her fist with it. They wouldn't allow each other to rest, not in this high stakes environment. Vegaltari wasn't capable of dodging effectively anymore, so she slid her body forward and slightly out of the way, while pulling her left arm up with a bent elbow to block to punch. The gauntlet grazed her arm and left a deep cut with one of its spikes, but Vegaltari ignored the pain and crept even closer. She then used her leg to propel her body upwards, launching an all out uppercut on Barius' jaw.
A pole of hard water forms itself inbetween Vegaltari's fist and Barius' Jaw, steeped at an angle that would either deflect the blow or take the brunt of it. Vegaltari either stopped her attack or punch the pole. Not letting this chance go, she slammed her everything into the pole and enhanced her power with her own magic. Localised anti-gravity around her fist, a destructive and repulsive force field of dark grey that would pulverise anything in the way. Their magics collided, the water flowed faster to increase its pressure, but the pole being horizontal massively decreased the high pressure's ability to stop kinetic energy.
Vegaltari's fist smashed through the pole and swam into Barius' jaw, rattling her mind inside her skull countless times in a single moment. Oxygen was cut off and she would faint at any moment, crowning the victor... Water fills her mind... It physically occupied her skull and supplies dissolved oxygen. Her mind restarts the next second, Vegaltari was in close proximity, so Barius thrusts her left leg forward. Vegaltari was sent flying a couple metres, clutching her stomach as she crawled back up.
A rock falls from the sky... No, it might be more accurate to call it a small meteor. It was meant to take out Barius, but she could feel the clouds evaporating above her head, even more so it radiated so much heat that the air rumbled and blazed from a large distance away. A large pillar of water rises from the ground and pieces the sky, splitting the meteor in half and raining meteor fragments across the land. Their magic was rising, their physicality...
The augmentations were returning. Have they taken too long to fight here? A miracle saved for 1 in a 10000 occurs, a product of reoccurring evolution, an expression of this gift. A dark grey light rises from Barius' feet and wraps around her whole body before shooting into the vast sky above. A similar light that was white in colour frayed like tassels and coiled into 3 helixes around Vegaltari's body, before joining into 1 and exploding into a similar pillar of light. Their magic has now exceeded that of a witch's capacity and reached the threshold for transformation, E graded magical effectiveness, magical girls who stand on both the start and end of their journeys.
The numerous scratches, broken bones and mangled flesh have begun to repair themselves. Slowly, but surely. A human body in this condition wouldn't even be able to recover, they were technically malnourished and lacked too much to repair themselves. But now that their body could accept magical particles as a substitute for repair material and energy, their wounds were rapidly vanishing, clearing their fatigue as well. Streams of water flew from the sky and ground and gathered to form a blade of water with unbelievable pressure in Barius' hand. Now they were jam packed with magical particles, enhancing the lethality of the water, the water's velocity and pressure, and interaction with the world.
Interaction between magical constructs and the natural world is a significant matter to define when using magic. Some magic can pass through physical objects, some cannot. Whether it would be because of the magic's nature, or the object's or any other factor that could alter this interaction, it was paramount in combat and the amount of magic available affects it. Now the sword would roughly react with the world like a solid, cutting through any material on earth like butter. It was now comparable to the core of a star, yet it was weightless because it supported its own weight.
The world was growing weaker... No, the world had always been this strong, it was simply stagnant while the magical girls grew beyond the world. It could no longer completely challenge their augmentations. Soon the gap between the world and their powers would only grow incomprehensibly large. The weight go the world rested on Vegaltari's shoulder, her yearning for a palace of peace, a haven of paradise... It has only grown stronger! The clouds rubbed together and produced lightning with the friction, a non figurative strike by the wrath of God descends upon Barius. She creates a trail of water and increases its density to draw the lightning from her body, forming an arc of water above her head.
There is no forgiveness, neither was there animosity. Vegaltari operated purely on grievance, her regrets for her world, her regrets for her cowardice... They propel her ever forward, her law creation ability allows her to defy her own world without effort, while the world itself had also begun to part ways for her. She cleaved space in half, drawing a line through reality from her own perspective. Distance was no longer relevant, the universe was split in half via the line she drew, no matter how far Barius was it would affect her.
Her body was bisected, bleeding from the point of bisection. A dark crimson line crawled down her torso from a certain point at a certain angle. As if there was a hula hoop of blood above her waist. Beyond infinity, beyond the concept of space... A transcendental power that ignored all magical logic and correlation. In other words, it was the pure concept of a cut that would apply in any time, any space, regardless of circumstances or history. Numerous lacerations form over Barius body, splitting her into mincemeat-
The mincemeat were connected by a loose thread of magic. To be perfect... To be perfectly functional even after being grounded into powder, that was the phenomenon at work here. Complete immortality that allowed her to live and fight even while being in millions of pieces... The magic threads pulled every bit of her body back together... After bits of her flesh accumulate and form a fist that struck Vegaltari by surprise. The rest of her body joins back together after Vegaltari was struck.
A 'perfect' warrior can perfectly replicate their opponent's moves... Through sheer violence, that single punch tore through all of Vegaltari's body and turned her into paste. Barius was once again cut into numerous pieces, as a storm of random flesh bits, her leg reformed first and strikes with a roundhouse kick. Vegaltari was sent flying, with the stats of an E grade, her wounds weren't healing as fast as when she was a god magical girl. Her bones were still broken and creaking from Barius' attacks. Her thoughts rushed to formulate a plan for victory, but it seemed that everything would simply be crushed under perfection.
Her movements, her thoughts, her will, they seemed to all be countered. Whether it was a coincidence or not, a side effect of 'perfection' or simply Barius' competence, it didn't matter, it didn't change the fact that Vegaltari was being beaten down.
"When it came down to it, I have to use my final skill anyway." (Vegaltari)