An Unborn Hero

ding

For zapping a bug, [Lightning Bolt] advances to level 4.

Mystery employed [Empathy] to psychically beam happily as the charred bone hornet fell from the air, crashing into the corrupted forest floor with a dull thud.

"Nice shot," cheered Rose.

Rrillandral was less enthusiastic. "Something is wrong," she sighed.

"What's up? Going to complain that we shouldn't be seeing monsters that weak this deep into the forest?"

Kellela shuddered slightly, remembering her first encounter with bone hornets. She certainly hadn't considered them weak back then.

"No," answered Rrillandral. "Well, yes, that's true too, but not my point of concern. We can explain the strange monster distribution on the forest not yet having returned to an equilibrium since the recent exodus. What concerns me more is that we haven't come across a single demon, yet no demons were reported joining the attack on Flinel. Where are they?"

"In the centre of the forest?"

"That's where they usually live, yes, but they must know we're here. Given that they travelled all the way to the Flinellian capital to attack us, why are they ignoring us now that we're right here, in their forest?"

"You suspect a trap?" asked Hayedalf. "A large-scale ambush?"

"That... would not match their previous behaviour. Demons are self-destructively individualistic. They do not work together. In every previous cycle, they've attacked one or two at a time. Very occasionally three or four, but never more than that. Yet I can think of no other explanation."

"... Are you saying we're going to be attacked by a hundred demons all at once?" asked Grace.

"I do not know. All of my experience is useless here. Nothing like this cycle has happened before."

"Maybe they're just scared?" suggested Rose with rather more optimism than was warranted. No-one replied.

The group continued on cautiously. Mystery scouted ahead, but failed to find anything, and the group continued to approach the heart of the forest. The miasma grew denser, becoming physically tangible, as if the group were pushing their way through rancid soup rather than air, but however unpleasant, between achievements and Grace's ability to purge it when required, it wasn't dangerous. Monsters continued to attack individually, freshly spawned and inexperienced. Nor had anything of a particularly high rank appeared, creatures such as dragons having had insufficient time to form.

ding

For your successful scouting duties, [Soul's Eye] advances to level 42 and [Astral Projection] to level 25

It was, as far as was possible for an outing in the middle of the demonic forest, peaceful. A fact which only caused Rrillandral's disquiet to increase. And so, after the third night in which their sleep hadn't been disturbed once, she signalled everyone to wait as they packed up their camp.

"We're half a day's march from the demon lord, and we're still yet to meet a single demon. We don't have the strength to deal with a large-scale demon attack. We need to decide what to do."

"What can we do? We can only trust that Grace's purification is able to deal with them, however many they may be."

"Indeed. We have few options. Even should we abort our task, we must destroy the demon lord at some point; we would merely be delaying the confrontation. All I can suggest is that we try to move quietly, with Mystery handling all communication telepathically. I'll use [Stealth] and scout ahead. Everyone keep your eyes open, with every sense you have active, esoteric or natural."

And so the group began their final march. Mystery watched carefully for anything unexpected with her array of [Soul's Eye] sub-skills, but didn't spot a thing. At least, until Rrillandral's soul—clearly visible through her [Stealth]—suddenly vanished, seemingly sucked into the floor.

"... Trap...!"

ding

For a psychic shout, [Telepathy] advances to level 17.

The group immediately dropped into a fighting stance while Mystery flew ahead, discovering why she hadn't spotted the faintest traces of mana. Rrillandral had stepped into a simple, non-magical pit-trap. Rrillandral was struggling at the bottom, tangled up in a rope net that had apparently been lain across the top of the pit.

"... You okay...?"

"Get me out now!" hissed Rrillandral, sounding panicked and ignoring her own rule about psychic communication only. Even if she could send back to Mystery, they were still limited to Mystery's speed.

The extremities of Mystery's vision started flickering in greys, and she decided 'now' was indeed the optimal time for a rescue, casting a precision [Lightning Bolt] on the rope as she tried to free Rrillandral without setting her on fire or electrocuting her.

ding

For a flashy rescue, [Lightning Bolt] advances to level 5.

The grey flickering intensified, and a swarm of bone hornets came into view, curving through the air between the dead trees. Between all the trees; the girls were completely surrounded.

Shouts came from the other four as the bone hornets launched their stingers, attacking from every direction at once. Kellela sprung into action, single-handedly blocking more than half the missiles. Rose deflected more, parrying them from the air, while Hayedalf and Grace were reduced to dodging.

Even with most blocked or dodged, a few impacted the girls, but they were safely deflected by Hayedalf's protective charms.

With the wave of projectiles dealt with, Kellela started crushing the monsters, while Rose launched projectile rapiers at them and Hayedalf tossed exploding stones. The flock was destroyed in seconds.

Grace wasn't idle, either. "By the light of my heart, I will dispel all evils. Purification wave!" she shouted, bursting with the strongest wave she'd managed thus far. In the denser miasma of the forest's heart, it didn't travel far, but it still created a sizeable bubble of untainted mana around the four magical girls, and proved no invisible demons were nearby.

Mystery continued her attempts to untangle Rrillandral, finally freeing her from the net. "I've never seen demons set traps in the forest before," she hissed, sounding terrified. After a second of thought, she jumped first out of the pit, and then up into the branches of the nearest tree. She leapt from canopy to canopy back to the others, but remained hiding in the tree.

"Mystery?" whispered Kellela. "Where are you? We need to talk."

"There's no time for slow [Telepathy]," countered Grace. "What do we do now?"

"We should sprint to the demon lord," suggested Rose. "Get there and destroy it before they can react."

"... Pit traps..." pointed out Mystery. "... Caught Rrillandral..."

Rose paled. "That wasn't just a random monster attack?"

"Where is Rrillandral?" asked Grace.

"... Above you..."

"... Don't want... to reveal... location to... demons..." Rrillandral communicated telepathically, not making a sound to give her position away, and leaving Mystery to forward the message. "... Not random... Too many... to have... spawned since..."

"They were monsters a demon had control over since before the attack on Flinel," said Hayedalf. "But there are still no demons nearby?"

"... Not that... I see..." replied Mystery, triple checking. With the miasma in the area purged, any thin wisps of miasma left behind by a demon should have been obvious. Hiding would need stealthiness beyond Lilith's. Considerably beyond, given that Mystery had levelled [Soul's Eye] since then.

"Keep going, carefully. Snap a branch off a tree and poke wherever we're about to step?" suggested Rose.

"We'll be travelling too slowly!" hissed Grace.

"What choice do we have? To blindly run into every trap the demons have laid? They still don't seem to want to attack. Perhaps they were hoping those monsters would chase us into the pit?"

"Then why did they attack from every direction? They should have just come from behind."

"Come on, we can't waste time," said Hayedalf, grabbing a long, thin branch. "Let's get going."

The group moved forward, tracing furrows into the soil before them. There were indeed more pits, and it wasn't until they'd passed some number of them that a loud roar sounded from behind.

"... So now they're going to chase us into the traps," sighed Rose as a group of three wyrms smashed their way towards the group.

A group which was far stronger and better prepared than they had been on their last encounter with a wyrm.

"Stand your ground. We kill them before they reach us," ordered Hayedalf, pulling some smoothly rounded stones from a storage ring.

"Your evil plans end here! Sword rain!" shouted Rose, launching a wave of swords with pin-point accuracy at the eyes of the monsters. Charging as they were, heads bobbing, half the swords missed despite the exceptional aim, but this time they pierced into their scales. Exploding stones followed, the loud detonations echoing throughout the forest as chunks of scale and flesh were blasted from the monsters.

One of the monsters fell as the other two continued their charge, splintering trees and raining sharp stakes of dead wood at the combatants. Kellela ignored them, trusting in Hayedalfs charms to deflect mere wood, and instead focused on preventing the wyrms from reaching them. Her barriers, combined with a sudden burst of plant growth, caused a second to trip and fall, its momentum leaving a wide rut in the forest, before another exploding stone to the head ended it.

The third ploughed on, crashing through Kellela's barriers and avoiding Rrillandral's vines. Alas, it wasn't only the magical girls that were stronger. These wyrms were not bound by the foolish orders of Zyfyl'p, and the last one swiped at the group with a claw the size of a wagon.

A well-aimed sword flew into an eye, piercing through and striking the brain behind, but the claw didn't stop, not needing further input from the lobotomised wyrm to continue its heavy swing.

"Shield of love!" shouted Kellela, summoning another of her heart-shaped shields in its path.

The claw failed to break it, rebounding, and the final wyrm fell down dead.

"Let's go," she whispered, and the group once again began feeling their way through the pits.

Further waves of monsters attacked and were repelled, none managing to inflict a single wound on the magical girls, but still not a single demon showed themselves.

"How much further?" asked Grace.

No-one answered.

"Rrillandral?"

There still was no response.

"... Rrillandral...?" repeated Mystery, perfectly capable of seeing the elf moving from tree to tree above them. Despite staying hidden, trying to avoid giving her location away to anyone, she'd been doing her part in the fights, summoning vines from a distance.

"... What's their... plan...?" she responded.

"... Monsters...?"

"... No... Attrition... Ask Hayedalf... if charms... will last..."

Mystery repeated the question.

"... Yes..." he answered, using Mystery's [Reciprocity] to share the sensitive information, instead of talking out loud. "... Only used... one fifth... basic shields... Used nothing... stronger..."

Mystery pondered the situation herself. Rrillandral had obviously been caught completely off guard by the demons' behaviour, but Mystery lacked her millennia of experience of how they were supposed to behave, so lacked the same biases. She also lacked any sort of military training or local knowledge. Using waves of monsters to deplete their protective items sounded reasonable to her, if the demons didn't know they had so many. Attrition of a different sort, drawing the magical girls into a running battle that continued until they all collapsed from exhaustion, would be another option, but if so, they shouldn't have waited until they were so close to the demon lord.

They were less than an hour away, even at their reduced speed, still without any signs of a single demon.

Lacking any other options, they kept going, fighting groups of monsters until the demon lord's clearing came into view, an egg-shaped black mass towering over the trees.

ding

Achievement unlocked: Veteran of the Corruption.

"... That's the... demon lord...?" asked a confused Mystery as they approached it and her [Soul's Eye] gave her a good view.

"Less questioning, more blasting!" exclaimed Rose.

Grace was one step ahead of her, already half-way through casting her purification wave. It rolled across the clearing, impacting the egg and purging the miasma in its entirety.

"Did it work?" she asked.

"... It's not... alive...?" continued Mystery, still confused, her esoteric senses able to see straight through the shell. Not a single wisp of vitality was visible within.

"Yes!" exclaimed Rose, taking that as a declaration of victory. Yes, the rules of being a good magical girl meant that they couldn't deliberately kill it unprovoked, but it was hardly their fault if it died from a single shot of Grace's ability.

"... No... Was never... alive..."

Rrillandral was suddenly there, discarding her [Stealth]. "Hayedalf! Bomb it!" she shouted.

He did, blowing a hole in the side of the egg. Cracks spread across the rest of it, the entire thing loudly shattering and collapsing in a pile of shards.

A few bits of black debris landed in front of the girls. They looked suspiciously wooden. Very much like the dead, black trees, in fact.

"What?" asked Rose. "Don't tell me it hatched already?!"

"N... No..." stuttered an utterly dumbfounded Rrillandral. "They moved it. The egg is always here, in this clearing, but they moved it! They made a fake!"

With the role the demon lord played in the mana and miasma cycles of the forest, tracking the egg would not have been difficult, but the thought that she would need to had never once crossed the mind of the elf. Even when it became clear the demons were behaving abnormally, she'd never stopped to consider that maybe the egg wouldn't be here. Millennia of biases were not so easily overcome.

Alas, she wasn't given the chance to reevaluate her world-view, because at that point, the entire clearing exploded.

Mystery (Human)

Age: -9 months

Occupation: Hero (L)

Skills:

- Soul's Eye (U) (42/100)

>> Sense Vitality (U)

>> Sense Soul (R)

>> Sense Mana (U)

>> Sense Light (C)

>> Sense Sound (C)

>> Pierce Illusions (U)

>> Sense Miasma (R)

>> Multi-focal (R)

>> Sense Spirit (R)

- Astral Projection (U) (25/60)

>> Sure Navigation (U)

>> Uncontainable (U)

>> Tether of Will (L)

- Robust (C) (28/50)

>> Hardened Soul (R)

>> Secured Mana (U)

>> Pain Tolerance (C)

>> Strengthened Will (U)

- Stealth (C) (3/20)

>> Camouflage Vitality (R)

- Magical Girl Transformation (R) (23/30)

>> Age Correction (R)

>> Gender Bending (R)

- Light (C) (12/20)

>> Heterochrome (U)

- Increased Attributes (C) (11/20)

>> Mana Storage (U)

- Investigation (C) (5/10)

- Cosplay (U) (11/20)

>> Skit (U)

- Mana Absorption (U) (11/30)

>> Drain Mana (U)

>> Conduit (U)

- Translate (U) (10/20)

>> Two Way (U)

- Telepathy (U) (17/40)

>> Reciprocity (U)

>> Empathy (U)

>> Guarded Mind (U)

- Lightning Bolt (U) (5/10)

- Fireball (U) (4/20)

>> Multishot (U)

- Wall of Light (U) (1/10)

- Energy Resistance (U) (7/10)

Achievements:

- Early Bloomer II (R)

- First Skill (C)

- Adept (U)

- Survivor of Zarklaxxos, the Arcane Infernal (R)

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

- Astral Explorer II (E)

- First Spell (C)

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

- Famous Spell Forger (E)

- Demon Slayer III (E)

- Monster Slayer V (E)

- Curiosity (U)

- War Veteran (U)

- Royal Audience (C)

- Diligent Hero (L)

- Studious (C)

- Pioneering Guider (E)

- Royal Pervert (R)

- I Couldn't Stop Breaking The System, And Now I've Been Smited (E)

- Royal Corrupter (E)

- Blessed of the Forest (C)

- Artefact Wielder (R)

- Veteran of the Corruption (R)

Artefacts:

- The Vale's Finger