An Unborn Hero

Rose sat at a desk in the room she'd been given at the palace, more permanent accommodation for the party not yet having been found. A book was open in front of her, and a small amount of her attention was devoted to turning the page whenever a light blinked.

Kellela and Hayedalf shared the room next door, and had—after Hayedalf spent some time soundproofing the place very thoroughly—kicked Mystery out into Rose's room to read up on [Telepathy].

The rest of Rose's attention was spent pondering the spell everyone had been trying to learn earlier. She hadn't personally taken part—having a class that couldn't learn spells and an insufficient mana capacity to cast it even if her class had let her—but had at least been paying attention, and had carefully memorised her own personalised chunk of the activation phrase.

"Aster Blue..." she mumbled to herself, feeling out the alien words. Apparently 'blue' was the colour, and 'aster' the type of flower her costume was based on. They were all named like that; a type of flower followed by their colour. Aside from Rrillandral, presumably because Mystery hadn't known any green flowers.

No-one had been able to cast the spell. Perhaps Rrillandral's pronunciation was off, distorted by decades of language drift; it wasn't as if Mystery was able to hear properly, so she couldn't point out if anyone got it wrong. More likely, though, was that they didn't understand Mystery's image.

Rose didn't really understand it herself. Friendship and justice? Grace had certainly been able to pull her weight despite not starting off as anyone's friend, although Rose had to admit she was working at improving matters now that she knew she was stuck in the team. Justice? That didn't really seem right either; the spell had never been used to enact 'justice', only in self defence.

Although, there had been the experimentation too, which had resulted in a weaker form of the spell. Mystery had spelled out the spell's description, and it did confirm acting to defend and protect boosted it. Also that evil actions ended it, which explained what happened to the assassin. But that seemed to conflict with the activation phrase; enacting justice generally wasn't a defensive action.

The activation phrase also mentioned that magical girls existed to slay demons, which was equally odd. No-one had ever mentioned heroes coming from worlds with demon populations.

"Mystery, did Earth have a demon problem?" she asked.

A red light flashed above the book.

"Then why do you have... uh... 'magical girls'?" she asked, trying to use the English phrase. Rrillandral had translated it as 'young female mages', but Rose was certain she was missing some sort of nuance.

The light flashed red again.

"Wait, what does a 'no' mean there? You don't have magical girls?"

Mystery flashed with green.

Rose blinked in confusion, which Mystery attempted to answer by drifting over to a bookcase, flashing white over each book in turn.

"Books?" asked Rose. "Magical girls only exist in books?"

Mystery flashed green.

Everything clicked into place in Rose's head. Magical girls weren't real. They were like the stories she'd read as a child, of noble knights slaying dragons and rescuing princesses. They'd prattle on about true love and whatnot, the knight and the princess would get married, and everyone except the dragon would live happily ever after. Nothing more than romanticised fiction.

Rose had believed those stories, for a while. Once she'd grown up a bit, she'd questioned how the knight and the princess knew they were in love before even meeting each other, and then a couple of years more had been enough for her to learn that no single knight would be capable of taking down a dragon. More recently, thanks to Grace, she'd learnt that whether the princess loved the knight was immaterial; if one did happen to single-handedly slay a dragon, the royal family was damn well going to order the princess to marry him whether she wanted to or not, simply to ensure that such a powerful warrior was bound to their kingdom.

In reality, if a dragon kidnapped a princess, no-one would consider a rescue because there would be no means to reach the dragon before it ate her. Nevertheless, the kingdom in question would send an entire legion of the army to slay the dragon, because a monster capable of kidnapping princesses was too dangerous to leave to its own devices. The evil beast would still be slain, but it wasn't such a good story. Good stories generally didn't involve princesses being eaten.

Not that a real dragon would go after princesses in the first place. They would just raid whatever village happened to be nearest their territory, and eat the commoners. It wasn't like princesses tasted better. But again, a kidnapped commoner didn't make as exciting a story as a kidnapped princess.

"That's what we are... Stories..." she muttered, thinking about it. So these 'magical girls' were like that brave knight, transplanted into the real world. He'd shout about love a lot, because that's what was needed to fulfil the story, but in reality, he was simply fighting an evil monster to save a princess. Not a [Hero], but still a hero. "No wonder the outfits are so impractical... They're designed to look good in a painting, not for real people to fight in them. I wonder how strong we could be if we reworked the spell with some actual martial knowledge? I can't wait until Mystery has a couple of years at the royal academy under her belt."

Rose continued to ponder, idly flipping another page of the book each time Mystery flashed her light. She had to admit, the thought of being a character from one of those storybooks held some appeal. They never needed to deal with politics. If she'd earned the [Royal Pervert] achievement just for flipping Grace's skirt, what achievement would the knight from the story get for kissing her? Achievements rarely cared about context. The skirt flip had got her into trouble despite the monster army, and rescuing someone from a dragon was no excuse for extorting a kiss.

Something inside Rose snapped, and she stood back up, determined to try it even if it was supposed to be impossible.

"For friendship and justice, demon slaying magical girl Aster Blue, transform!" she shouted, then laughed, twirling as the light she should never have been able to conjure blossomed around her.

The corniness was the entire point, and embracing it was the only way to form the required image.

"Grace is never going to be able to cast this spell," she giggled, just before the light show vanished and she dropped to the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Unfortunately, despite being the first to understand Mystery's mindset and somehow managing to trigger the spell despite her class of [Apprentice Swordsman], she still had nowhere near the required amount of mana to cast it.

"Well, this is boring," commented an [Inspector], leaning against the city wall.

"Better than having an unending queue of people, all of whom will be grumpy by the time they reach the gate on account of having waited hours for their turn."

"True. Thankfully, I'm off-shift tomorrow when the backlog will turn up."

"Oh? But I heard from the maintenance team that the landslide was worse than the scouts reported, and it was going to take three days to clear. Aren't you on a double-shift on Friday?"

The [Inspector] swore.

"Hey, wait. You might be in luck; isn't that a person approaching?"

Indeed, someone was walking towards the gate, a large sack slung over his shoulder.

"On foot? But with the road closed, there's nothing out in this direction."

"Probably walked around the city from one of the other gates to avoid the queue."

The guards waited for the visitor to arrive, then ran through the normal entrance procedures. Or, at least, they tried to.

"ID?" requested the [Inspector].

"I'm not here to enter. Just to drop this off," said the visitor, keeping his distance from the guards.

"This isn't a mail-room, lad."

"Perhaps you should see what it is first?" he replied, pulling the sack down to reveal the burnt head of Fylith. Thankfully for the visitor, the horns gave away the fact she wasn't human, else things may have gone very badly for him.

"Is that... a demon?"

"Yes. Unconscious and thoroughly restrained, but you still might want to get her somewhere more appropriate, quickly. She probably has some interesting information to spill, given that I found her prowling around the area."

The pair of guards looked at each other, then very quickly decided the incident was above their pay grade. Alas, neither them nor their boss had any skills capable of piercing the disguise of the visitor, nor of perceiving that which was hidden inside the sleeping demon's dreams.

"It appears to be nothing more than a serious case of mana exhaustion," stated the [Doctor], who had been summoned to examine Rose after Mystery had flown out of the room to seek help.

"How? She's an [Apprentice Swordsman]. She can't cast spells."

The [Doctor] shrugged. "All I can tell you is what I see. She's unharmed and will wake up on her own in a few hours. I suggest you ask her yourselves what happened once she does."

"... She..." came a whisper on the wind, only a single word audible before the whisper phased back out into the background.

"Uh... Did anyone else hear that?" asked Grace.

"I believe Mystery is starting to get the hang of [Telepathy]," answered Rrillandral.

"Seriously? It's completely unfair how quickly heroes learn skills."

"Actually, she's fast even for a [Hero]. But yes... I must admit to some amount of jealousy over the speed of her progress."

"I wouldn't have thought it was the speed you'd be jealous of."

Rrillandral didn't answer. The elvish curse on skill levelling—bestowed on them by the gods to prevent their immortality, and hence infinite grinding time, unbalancing the system—wasn't something that was common knowledge among other races, but as royalty, Grace had heard it mentioned. The elf's silence was enough to confirm it as true.

"In any case, since we're all together, now would be a good time to mention that we have accommodation sorted," continued Grace.

Hayedalf peered at Rose. "I was half-expecting her to open her eyes and chime in with a questioning 'we', unconscious or not."

"Well, yes. I... uh... thought it best that I stick with you."

"... Tsundere..." came the whisper again, almost causing Kellela, who still had [Translate] active, to choke.

Grace huffed, strongly suspecting she was being mocked. Nevertheless, the party were soon riding a carriage to the upper class residential district, Rose's snoring body occupying an entire bench.

Mystery took the opportunity granted by the downtime to read through her messages.

"I can't believe I got so wrapped up in that book I didn't even notice the dings," she thought as she scrolled through. "I'll admit, the opportunity to learn to talk to people was worth getting excited about, but still..."

For applying them to successful communication, [Light] advances to level 12 and [Translate] to level 3.

For working your way through a dense and dry textbook, [Translate] advances to level 4.

"[Translate] jumped three levels already. To be fair, I've been casting it a lot; the duration sucks. Hopefully more levels will help."

Through effort, you have unlocked the [Telepathy] skill.

"Yes! Not that it seems much use for talking yet, but the book did warn that it would need ten levels or so before people could reliably pick up what I'm trying to say, and even then I'd need to speak slowly."

Achievement unlocked: [Studious].

"Hmm? Where did that come from?"

Studious (Common)

You have taught yourself a new skill not through tutelage, but simply by reading about it. Boosts reading speed by 10% and provides a slight improvement to memory of read texts.

"Ah, right. [Curiosity] gave me a reading boost, too, but having to use [Translate] more than cancels it out. As does needing to rely on someone else to turn the pages for me. Speaking of..."

Mystery glanced over at Rose, who, despite the promises of the [Doctor], was looking rather pale. She stirred in her sleep, squirming in time with whatever dream she was having.

Mystery (Human)

Age: -10 months

Occupation: Hero (L)

Skills:

- Soul's Eye (U) (32/90)

>> Sense Vitality (U)

>> Sense Soul (R)

>> Sense Mana (U)

>> Sense Light (C)

>> Sense Sound (C)

>> Pierce Illusions (U)

>> Sense Miasma (R)

>> Multi-focal (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) (19/30)

>> Age Correction (R)

>> Gender Bending (R)

- Light (C) (12/20)

>> Heterochrome (U)

- Increased Attributes (C) (8/20)

>> Mana Storage (U)

- Investigation (C) (2/10)

- Cosplay (U) (1/10)

- Mana Absorption (U) (2/20)

>> Drain Mana (U)

- Translate (U) (4/10)

- Telepathy (U) (1/10)

Achievements:

- Early Bloomer II (R)

- First Skill (C)

- Journeyman (U)

- 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 II (E)

- Monster Slayer V (E)

- Curiosity (U)

- War Veteran (U)

- Royal Audience (C)

- Diligent Hero (L)

- Studious (C)