An Unborn Hero

At the start of the battle, Zyfyl'p continued to grin to himself, even as his own forces were decimated at the outer wards. It didn't matter; he had plenty to spare, and he could see the defences weakening. They would shatter in mere seconds. He could still feel his target—an uncomfortable itch that he couldn't wait to permanently scratch—waiting inside. They hadn't come all the way to the outer barrier, but neither were they fleeing. A challenge to come and take them.

The grin widened to the extent that 'ear to ear' would have ceased to be hyperbole, had he had any ears.

He watched the outer barrier crumble and the horde charge inwards. Another barrier. Pure cowardice, but his prize was still waiting just inside. They still didn't flee, and he respected that, even if he despised those who hid behind walls, unwilling to fight properly.

And then they fled.

The grin vanished in an instant as he prepared to command his army to chase, but he hesitated, wondering what they were doing. They weren't running away, but around. Remaining just inside the defences, when they could have run straight through the middle.

And even then, they were running the wrong way. The closest town was to the east, but they were running in the opposite direction. If they wanted to flee, that was where they should be heading.

Zyfyl'p suspected tactics. The bad kind, where people used their heads in completely the wrong way, thinking with them instead of bashing them against things.

No matter; he would let them move as they wished. Let them execute whatever devious scheme they had devised. Let it fail, and then crush them.

He sensed his target as they skirted around the edge of his army, and as their goal became clear, the grin reappeared. Far from fleeing, his target was willingly coming to him! A hand stretched to the back of his neck, but hesitated as he tempered his excitement. After all, he had no evidence his target was strong. If they were, why would they need protectors, or to hide behind wards and walls? They may not even be coming to fight. They might want to surrender, or worse, negotiate.

They would need to be tested. To be judged worthy before crossing blades with him.

He was still very much of the opinion that any problem that couldn't be solved by having a wyrm eat it wasn't worth solving, but in this case, the wyrm losing would prove that there was no problem.

He ordered his wyrm to feast on their living flesh.

"What in the seven hells is that?!" screamed Kellela, summoning a barrier that the wyrm crashed through without even slowing.

"Iron ranked. Iron! I fight goblins and wolves!" yelled Rose, launching a wave of projectile swords. They clattered off its scales, again without it even slowing. It gave no indication that it had even noticed.

"Dragon?" suggested Grace, firing off her wave of white light again. Just like last time, it had no apparent effect whatsoever.

"Dragons have wings," replied Hayedalf, using his magically enhanced strength to throw an exploding stone the distance. This time, the wyrm did notice, but ignored it, considering the attack unworthy of attention. "Some sort of sub-dragon? Like a wyvern?"

The enormous monster rapidly closed the distance, while the squad of magical girls could do nothing to stop it. As ordered, it snapped down with its jaws, its maw easily large enough to admit the young girls whole.

The group dodged, each leaping in a different direction, covering tens of metres in a single bound.

"Woah!" exclaimed Hayedalf as lacy frills fluttered behind him. "When did I get so acrobatic?"

"Whatever that was, keep doing it!" shouted Kellela.

"Argg!" screamed Grace, desperately holding her skirt down as she landed in an attempt to preserve whatever little modesty she had left.

Back on Earth, magical girls were generally portrayed as having major mobility advantages over whatever monster-of-the-day they were fighting, and were often particularly adept at dodging. That was for simple narrative reasons; they couldn't win too quickly, or a story would be boring, so their opponents had to get some attacks in. Since those attacks often involved tree trunks, cars and an occasional building, tanking a hit stretched the bounds of believability, even with their magical protection. Thus they dodged.

It was a fact for which the group of temporarily young girls would be most appreciative, were they aware. They hadn't noticed so far, either because their battles had ended quickly, or in the case of their methodical testing, because their new abilities and instincts were masked by the weakened form of the spell.

The wyrm looked around in indecision, trying to decide which of the four to chase. Rose and Hayedalf used the opportunity to launch new projectile attacks, again to no effect, although the boom of Hayedalf's exploding stone did at least cure the wyrm's indecisiveness. It turned and charged straight at him.

"Hayedalf!" screamed Kellela, which wasn't helpful in any way, but was the sort of thing people were supposed to shout in that situation.

Hayedalf, for his part, was looking contemplative. He tightened his grip around another stone as he charged it with his power, then shifted his weight to one foot as he prepared to leap.

"Get out of the way!" yelled Kellela.

He didn't, waiting until the open jaws were heading down towards him. Then he leapt. He didn't, however, take his stone with him.

The jaws snapped shut. Then they opened again, very quickly, and somewhat wider than their musculature and bone structure normally permitted. Some amount of smoke rolled out.

"Nice!" shouted Rose as she charged at the wyrm, assuming Hayedalf's attack would have stunned it and determined to somehow take advantage of the situation.

The wyrm was, alas, not stunned. It was very angry, but that was not a fact that aided Rose in any way. It spun its head around, apparently trying to eat Rose, but misjudging the effect of its damaged jaws. A pink barrier briefly flickered between the pair before the enormous head smashed through it and straight into Rose, batting her like a baseball and sending her sailing over the battlefield.

"Grace!" shouted Kellela instead of 'Rose', in a fit of originality. "Check she's okay!"

The wyrm roared, rearing up onto its hind legs and thrashing its head from side to side.

"Looks like I got it good, but now what?" shouted Hayedalf, keeping the volume up to ensure the separated party could hear him. "I doubt I'll get it like that a second time. Should we run?"

"It moves too fast for us to outrun, and even if we could, we still have to get the demon. Do you want that thing coming at us from behind while we fight?" answered Kellela.

The wyrm landed again, but no longer directed its fury at Hayedalf, instead staring in the direction of Rose. With its head closer to ground level, Hayedalf and Kellela could both see the sword stuck into one of its eyes, Rose having got a successful attack off just as she was struck.

"Eyes. The inside of its mouth. Anywhere else it doesn't have scales?" shouted Hayedalf.

It was the voice of Rose that answered. "Any orifice will do! Just pick one! Ears, nostrils. Hell, shove one of those exploding stones up its butt!"

Grace gave a sharp intake of breath at the rude word, but in a great showing of adaptability and tolerance, refrained from commenting.

"Rose, are you okay?" shouted Kellela.

"Amazingly, yes. That should have turned me into paste. Thank goodness you were right about these costumes protecting from bludgeoning. I might have to revise my opinion of Mystery's fashion sense."

"Please wait to reevaluate your world view until a giant monster isn't trying to eat us!" screamed Grace, as the wyrm charged at the pair.

In her panic, Grace let off another of her white blasts, which as usual did nothing.

"Stop wasting your mana," said Rose, jumping back to her feet with no sign of injury. Despite Grace's rush, she'd found nothing wrong with Rose except some bruising.

It was another helpful feature of magical girls that when they did take attacks, they rarely suffered such inconveniences as broken bones, internal bleeding, or other such maladies. Damage was represented by bruising, or their costumes getting dirty, or some pained noises as they struggled to stand back up. Aside from that, they could usually get beaten into unconsciousness with no serious medical repercussions. Despite Rose taking a hit that should have resulted in cracked ribs even through the protection offered by her magically armoured dress, she would have been able to rejoin the fight even without Grace's aid.

The wyrm snapped down again, this time having got its jaws back under control, but Grace and Rose dodged. This time, there was no indecision, and the wyrm immediately chased Rose. Again and again it snapped at her, and each time she dodged. She launched blades into its open maw, but they achieved far less than Hayedalf's assault, and only served to make it angrier.

"It's too big! I'm throwing toothpicks at it, not swords! I'm going to run out of mana long before it runs out of blood! Hayedalf! You need to blow it up again!"

Hayedalf didn't respond.

Kellela threw barriers under its feet, successfully causing it to stumble, but that only served to slow it down. Grace couldn't do anything, the powers granted to her by Mystery completely ineffective, and her usual skills not being based around offence. Rose could only run around and dodge.

"Hayedalf!" she repeated as she dodged another snap of the wyrm's jaws.

Straight into a tree.

"Oof!" she exclaimed as the air was knocked out of her. The battlefield had been mostly clear, but she'd underestimated the amount she was moving around while dodging, and hadn't been regularly checking behind herself.

The wyrm, sensing that its opponent had just made a fatal mistake, stalked forwards gleefully, opening its jaws wide and twisting its head sideways. Its neck shot out like a spring as it prepared to bite down on Rose and the tree trunk alike. Layers of pink barriers appeared between Rose and the rows of sharp teeth, despite the way Kellela knew it could bite straight through; she simply had nothing else she could try. But the jaws never closed. Instead, its eyes crossed, and it made a weird, strangled whine.

Rose took the opportunity to duck and roll, getting out of her dangerous predicament, but the monster still didn't respond.

And then the noise came. It was an interesting noise; loud, explosive, and wet. If someone had bad wind, but was too polite to release it, and instead just let it build up and up until they physically couldn't contain it, and then it turned out they also had the runs, and that someone had carefully positioned a megaphone directly beneath their posterior, then it might have sounded something like the noise that came from the wyrm.

A spray of brown and red erupted from beneath its tail, leaving a stain on the landscape twice the length of the monster. And then, very slowly, it fell over sideways.

Rose watched with a degree of morbid fascination. "I... didn't expect you to take me literally," she admitted.

"I didn't have any better ideas," shrugged Hayedalf, whose costume unfortunately didn't include gloves. His nails were wrecked, and his wristbands now brown instead of black. For maximum effect, he'd wanted to push the explosive in as far as possible, so the stains continued past the bands, onto his forearms and then up the sleeves of his dress. Even his shoulder was a mess. "Let's just slay this demon and get home, so I can spend the next year in the bath."

"Yes, can we please get this over with," agreed Grace. "You smell bad."

ding

For using it to take down a mighty foe, even if some dignity was lost in the process, [Magical Girl Transformation] advances to level 16.

Achievement Unlocked: [Monster Slayer V]

Monster Slayer V (Epic)

You have single-handedly slain a monster of rank 5, or played a significant role in the defeat of a higher ranked monster. Grants a 100% experience bonus to all combat skills, a 25% boost to offensive and defensive abilities when fighting monsters and a 10% boost to physical abilities.

Mystery released the metaphorical breath that she would have been holding, had she had the ability to breathe.

"Phew. That was scary! But it was the first, proper magical girl battle they've had, if I ignore what happened at the end. The way they were all jumping around like that! Ah... I only wish I could join them. I know I'm getting achievements for helping, but it's not the same. Only... why was that dragon-thing trying so hard to eat them alive? It had massive claws, so why didn't it use them?"

Unknown to Zyfyl'p was the fact that if only he hadn't been so explicit with his order, the [Hero] would already be dead.

μ̵̼͉̐υ̴̡̽̿σ̷̭͓̃̀τ̸͉̤̾̆ή̶͎̱͌ρ̸̤͕̏̿ι̷̬̾͜ό̸͈ (Human)

Age: -8 months

Occupation: Hero (L)

Skills:

- Soul's Eye (U) (29/80)

>> Sense Vitality (U)

>> Sense Soul (R)

>> Sense Mana (U)

>> Sense Light (C)

>> Sense Sound (C)

>> Pierce Illusions (U)

>> Sense Miasma (R)

- Astral Projection (U) (20/60)

>> 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) (16/30)

>> 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 V (E)

- Curiosity (U)