*
On 18th August, 11508, at around 8pm... Isolated to a single street of the culture mini zone in residential zone 2A an explicable phenomenon occurred. Usually the law of magic would protect the comprehension of normal humans, causing them to subconsciously avert from supernatural phenomenon, but this case was unlike a self-concealing Trace Event or a magical girl's attempt at stealth.
Within 2 minutes, a giant tree grew taller than the surrounding buildings, bearing itself for all to see above the rows of retail stalls. The magical energy was not only able to rapidly suck out ambient magical energy from its surroundings, but it was able to solidify into a scarlet black material. At a glance it was emulating the bark of trees, but it isn't something axes can hack down.
It would take nothing less than crashing an entire car to split open the outer layer. Bullets would get lodged within, making it extremely inefficient. Incendiary would only harm the user as it isn't flammable, weapons that make use of heat are especially inefficient. The material composing this tree might just have an extremely high heat capacity, nothing magic can't do anything about.
However she had a bad hunch about this. Heat capacity? When did magical phenomena stay so simple? This thing... This tree, it was using something similar to a skill to stay so sturdy... When a magical girl does it, it's called a skill, a term coined from video games. When the world does it, people call it a physical law and try to explain its mechanism. The only difference was that the mechanism of magical phenomena vastly differs from physical law.
The law of magic conceals supernatural occurrences from the lives of normal people, and causes 'Event's to occur so that Trace attacks aren't detected, and are reversible... It's main function is likely to obscure the mechanism of magical phenomena, making it indecipherable or inexplicable.
All in all, it was an extremely inconvenient situation. She exposed magic to the outside world, making it difficult for others to thwart her out in the open, as they wished to keep themselves hidden. The culture mini zone was promptly cordoned off before the day ended, the surrounding police forces were officially activated to deal with the situation.
While there is a judicial body, police forces, and a central governing body... There is no greater military forces. With no enemies to use it on, there wasn't a necessity to maintain the upkeep of an army, a police force was sufficient for the small time crooks. Beyond the confines of the numerous residential and commercial zones that lay the earth... No one else was there.
The result was an impasse, reveal yourselves and eliminate the obstacle to many lives... Or simply leave it be. She was absorbing magical energy at an absurd rate that would suggest an A grade or higher... One could say it spanned multiple A grades, but no one would justify if it constituted a new grading level for Lastia's arbitrary way of rating enemies. At the same time, she hadn't killed anyone. In fact, she made it difficult for Traces to form in the wild, since she was absorbing so much ambient magical energy.
No one knew how magical energy worked, other than the fact that they regularly 'recharged' at a constant rate throughout their life. People could vaguely sense that magical energy is consumed and expelled in a lower energy state, from the sensations in their body alone. Yet, the environment never seems to run out, the closest concept that normal people had to magic energy would be 'aether'. A universal medium theorised to be the conduit for light back in the past.
"... I guess It's less work for those of us in the outskirts." (?)
A magical girl that did not reside in the same school carries out their duties in the dark. While she kept her personal life hidden from other magical girls, she seldom interacted with any at all, often keeping to herself. It was the fact that this tree was too peculiar that she was drawn to investigate it and its effects. It seemed like a Trace encounter, yet no 'event' occurred. That either meant... It was a magical girl, or the Trace hasn't killed a single person yet.
It was better to be safe than sorry, excising it or doing a preliminary investigation to see if excision was possible, was the primary goal here. She stood in the open, right outside the entrance of the culture mini zone was rows upon rows of houses. It was only the very evening of the day the tree grew, it had become more than 20 stories tall and was as wide as a shopping mall.
While the area was cordoned off, inevitably a crowd had gathered right outside. One could still see the tree high in the sky from afar, there wasn't any point to cordoning too large of an area if the aim was to obscure public view. A military outpost was temporarily set up in that zone, with most of the free space used to attach personnel.
Countries... It was an archaic concept used to describe a large group of people restrictively defined to a land mass. It was present in some detail within the culture mini zone, a vestige of the past before the familiar present. There are no factions or countries now, the largest most populated zones consist of the residential and commercial zones. Void of conflict, and minimal taxes present, characterised by a decreasing necessity to innovate and increasing fuel efficiency.
Humanity has achieved a high enough level of efficiency that people are satisfied with this stagnation. The 6 lettered goddess... It took a couple of years for the lone magical girl to discover her name was 'Eterna'. She had no one who was close to her, no particular attachment to her home, digging into the underworld posed almost no risk to her as a magical girl and investigator.
"... I must be the strange one for appreciating things that push the border of normalcy, like this tree.
We live in her perfected world, like a little sheltered garden. I'd prefer if peculiarities like this show up, giving some hope of change. " (Evaria Gladiose)
She murmured softly into her coat. The only thing that always changes is the seasons, but even that is a mere cycle that she wouldn't accept.