An Unborn Hero

Sir Reginald Doombringer The Hundred And Ninth was having a bad day. That fact had nothing to do with his name, which was completely deliberate; he'd paid quite a lot of money to a temple to have his boring given name changed to that, mostly because he thought it would look good on his wanted posters. Of course, the temple couldn't grant him a peerage, so 'Sir' was actually his first name, 'Ninth' his last, and ' Reginald Doombringer The Hundred And' just a collection of middle names.

The problem with getting your name onto a wanted poster was that it not only required doing something to sufficiently piss off the local guard, but they also needed to know who did it. That kind of flew in the face of his occupation, which was, ironically, [Faceless Assassin]. As such, he'd thus far failed to achieve his dream. He'd been thinking of printing out some of his own, but that somehow felt like giving up.

Now he suspected he'd never get the chance. He'd known this mission had stunk before they'd even left Karn's Vigil, but when they'd arrived at the site and found double the advertised number of guards, the stench had become so overpowering that he'd voted there and then to turn back.

The senior member of their order of assassins had overruled him, claiming the number of guards didn't matter. They had single-use enchanted items that could inflict direct damage and a wide variety of status effects. They'd planned to hit Kellela with them all in a surprise attack, and if that wasn't enough to kill her, distract the guards with a frontal attack while a lone assassin made a stealth attack from the rear.

Most of the items had failed. An explosion had been deflected by a magical shield, although it had heavily wounded the surrounding guards, exposing Kellela to further strikes. Clouds of poisons, anaesthetics and paralysing agents had been ignored outright. The one that had finally broken through was an esoteric device that froze the victim's mana, which was such a rare affliction that Hayedalf hadn't thought to create defences against it. The effect caused complete physical paralysis as a side effect, but would only last a minute or two. Enough that a frozen heart and lungs would be damaging, but not enough to guarantee it would be fatal, especially since they had a healer at hand.

Having the highest level [Stealth] of the group, Sir had been pushed to the backstabbing role to finish the job. The opposing healer had worked on their target, and on another girl that had stupidly run up to her the moment the fight began, but hadn't been able to reverse the effect on either. She did seem sure they would recover, though, which made Sir's job all the more important. Harder, too, given that she'd healed all the injured guards.

He gripped his dagger, only a few steps away from his target, and then everything went wrong.

His entire body tingled pleasantly, but he knew better than to think that just because something wasn't painful or uncomfortable it was a good thing. A thought that was reinforced when his black armour started glowing. He ignored a ding from the system as he earned the [Personal Light] sub-skill for [Stealth]; it came too late, and his target's guards had obviously seen him. Taking advantage of the element of surprise, he swung downwards with his...

His hand was empty, the dagger nowhere to be found.

A guard stabbed forward with a short sword, and Sir desperately dodged backward, his steps not taking him back quite as far as he expected, and each footstep resulting in an odd squeaking and inexplicable jingle. On top of that, his balance was thrown strangely off. He felt very front-heavy.

Luckily for him, the guards failed to take advantage of his discombobulation, and instead were staring, open-mouthed.

They also seemed... taller.

Sir paused, attempting to take stock of his situation. He'd been hit by... something. It hadn't felt like an attack. In fact, he felt great. It shouldn't be possible to feel stronger, but somehow he did. His body felt as light as air, and he knew he could bound over to Kellela in a single step faster than the slack-jawed guards could react.

But there was still doubt at the back of his mind. Why had everything suddenly grown? And what were the black lumps at the bottom of his vision?

He looked down.

"What the..." he exclaimed, breaking his professional silence with an uncharacteristically high-pitched voice. He stared at the two new hemispheres sprouting from his chest, covered in something shiny and black. The same black material coated quite a lot of him, tightly clinging to his skin and squeaking as he moved.

Mystery hadn't wanted to taint her flower-based magical girl series by applying it to an enemy, nor had she wanted to spend time designing something, even if she'd had the time available to spend. Instead, she'd gone for a zero-effort, basic villain. She hadn't given him a dress at all, costuming him in a black latex leotard and matching opera gloves, with black leather thigh-high boots and an eye mask. He didn't even have long hair, sporting a black buzz-cut instead. The only nod to decoration was a spade-shaped cut-out in the leotard below his neck. Then, after giving a little more thought to the matter, she'd added a leather collar and cuffs, decorated with bells, in case [Magical Girl Transformation] didn't break his [Stealth]. And finally, to make it doubly obvious he was a villain, she'd added a small pair of demonic horns.

Yes, she'd given him huge, unphysical breasts too, but only because attaching massive, heavy, non-functional mounds of fat to an enemy was clearly a good tactical move, and not at all for any other reason.

Sir poked the aforementioned lumps of fat, which jiggled unrealistically beneath their rubber prison. "What the..." he repeated. There were some interesting signals coming from his crotch area, too, but before he had the chance to investigate, a particularly loud clang of steel meeting steel reminded him of his mission. A quick probe revealed all of his weapons had gone missing along with his dagger, but it didn't matter. He didn't need weapons. He knew that all he needed to do was weave his fingers together like this, and pour in his mana like that...

A bullet of pure darkness formed in front of him, the attempted attack finally bringing the guards out of their stupor. It didn't matter; they were too slow. Everyone was too slow. Sir cracked a wicked grin as the feeling of power surged through him. With this power, he could be the new master of the assassins' guild. He could...

There was a crack as the magic shattered. The overly breasted girl vanished, replaced by a disorientated middle aged man. Three blades pierced his torso before he could react to the sudden loss of his short-lived new abilities.

Magical girls did not use their power for evil. It was a rule so fundamental that it was written right into the spell description.

ding

You have literally put the 'girl' into 'magical girl', upgrading [Magical Girl Transformation] with [Gender Bending]. Level cap of [Magical Girl Transformation] increases by 10.

For increasing the scope of its alterations, [Magical Girl Transformation] advances to level 13.

"What sort of mascot applies a magical girl transformation to a villain just to draw attention to them?" thought Mystery. "I guess I've lost any right to complain about Mum and Rose experimenting on themselves."

Another glance around revealed the rest of the battle was going well, with the assassins falling one after another. Her soul burning again from the damage of [Astral Projection] overuse, Mystery returned to her embryo, trusting in the professionals to finish the battle.

For the first time in a little while, she wasn't bored while waiting to recover. She'd never considered recruiting men for her magical girl squad before, but now her eyes had been opened to new possibilities. Metaphorically, anyway; she still lacked any real ones. But her eyes weren't the point. The point was that she had new designs to make.

It would be a bit mean to actually use them, at least without asking first—even Mystery wasn't that obsessed—but that was no reason to limit her imagination. Something in a gothic lolita style would match Hayedalf's midnight-black hair perfectly. It was just a shame she didn't know of any predominately black flowers. Maybe there was something that grew in this world? She'd need to keep an eye out.

The [Lieutenant] panted, having personally slain two of their attackers.

"Is that all of them?" he demanded, looking around.

His subordinates barked off a round of affirmations that no-one could see any still alive.

"How's Kellela's condition?" he asked of Grace.

"The effect is wearing off. I imagine she'll be a bit stiff for a while, but she's not harmed."

Kellela groaned, feeling very harmed indeed. A minute without a circulatory system was not a pleasant experience, even if it was unlikely to lead to permanent damage even without magical healing.

Rose groaned back, in no better condition than Kellela. A few of the guards who'd been caught up in the effect echoed her sentiment.

"Okay, I thought the tattoo was oddly advanced, but that proved it. With equipment and numbers like that, how can you possibly view them as incompetents who aren't a threat?" demanded Hayedalf.

"That is... a good question," admitted the [Lieutenant]. "I hope someone back at the garrison can offer an explanation. For now, how was your progress at getting our prisoner to speak?"

"Give me a moment to help Kellela into bed, then I'll get back to it. An hour, maybe."

"I swear, Mystery is an apt name. For every question that gets answered around here, you guys raise ten more."

Kellela froze back up in Hayedalf's arms as it finally occurred to her that the name Mystery would be official. At the time, she'd intended it as a nickname, but Mystery was her own flesh and blood. The name would have stuck in her status. Kellela quietly made a mental note that one of the first things she needed to do after Mystery was born would be to visit a temple and get it fixed.

Thankfully for Mystery's sanity, Kellela's idea of a 'fix' differed somewhat from Sir's.

"Well, that didn't go quite as expected, did it?"

Fylith glared at Xry'kl, the pair of them hiding out in the forest to watch the assault. "I can hardly claim responsibility for the ineptness of humans."

Xry'kl smirked nastily, the opportunity to reflect Fylith's words back at her almost worth the fact that their target was still alive.

"No, but you chose to use them. The failure is the same."

"Failure? But did you not say that it's not a failure if we learn something from the experience? I would say we learnt something very interesting this time."

"Oh?"

"Did you not see the assassin that tried to attack from behind? This time, he transformed into a little girl, at a point where our target was completely immobile. In fact, no-one appeared to cast anything, yet it was obviously against his will."

Xry'kl hissed, the point being a valid one. "This 'daughter' she referred to... Is that the one casting the magic? We're missing something here."

"Perhaps. But perhaps it doesn't matter."

"Oh?"

Fylith turned to face the depths of the forest. "It seems Zyfyl'p is almost here."

"True. Destroying absolutely everything may be crude, but I have to admit the effectiveness."

And deeper in the forest, an entire army of ogres, wargs, bone chargers, armoulphaunts, rot horrors and worse things marched, slithered or smashed their way forwards, clearing a path through the trees as they went. Wyverns flew overhead and carnivorous worms tunnelled through the ground. And behind them all, driving the army forward, four metres of muscle-bound demon stood with arms crossed atop the head of a wyrm.

He'd heard the word 'tactics', got as far as learning that it meant using his head, then promptly abandoned the subject. He already knew how to use his head; his thick skull and strong horns made it perfect for bashing things with.

In his opinion, if a problem couldn't be solved by having a wyrm eat it, it wasn't worth solving at all.

μ̵̼͉̐υ̴̡̽̿σ̷̭͓̃̀τ̸͉̤̾̆ή̶͎̱͌ρ̸̤͕̏̿ι̷̬̾͜ό̸͈ (Human)

Age: -8 months

Occupation: Hero (L)

Skills:

- Soul's Eye (U) (28/80)

>> Sense Vitality (U)

>> Sense Soul (R)

>> Sense Mana (U)

>> Sense Light (C)

>> Sense Sound (C)

>> Pierce Illusions (U)

>> Sense Miasma (R)

- Astral Projection (U) (19/60)

>> Sure Navigation (U)

>> Uncontainable (U)

>> Tether of Will (L)

- Robust (C) (18/40)

>> Hardened Soul (R)

>> Secured Mana (U)

>> Pain Tolerance (C)

- Stealth (C) (3/20)

>> Camouflage Vitality (R)

- Magical Girl Transformation (R) (13/30)

>> Age Correction (R)

>> Gender Bending (R)

- Light (C) (8/20)

>> Heterochrome (U)

- Increased Attributes (C) (7/20)

>> Mana Storage (U)

Achievements:

- Early Bloomer II (R)

- First Skill (C)

- Apprentice (C)

- Survivor of Zarklaxxos, the Arcane Infernal (R)

- I Broke The System, And All I Got Was This Lousy Achievement (E)

- Astral Explorer I (R)

- First Spell (C)

- I Broke The System Again, And Now The Administrators Hate Me (E)

- Spell Forger (R)

- Demon Slayer I (R)

- Monster Slayer I (C)

- Curiosity (U)