An Unborn Hero

Mystery watched helplessly as her magical girls were tossed through the air like rag-dolls. There was no panic yet, though; [Sense Vitality] proved that none of them were seriously hurt, and there were still no demons visible in the vicinity. Yes, the ground suddenly seemed to be missing, but magical girls were always happy to jump off a building or two. A mere fall wouldn't kill them. They weren't in imminent danger.

Instead, she flew downwards, checking out the cavern that had opened up beneath them and hoping to give them an extra second of warning of what they would face. She was just in time to witness a dozen grotesque brown tubes burst through the rocky walls and floor, each one a metre across, the protruding ends opening up into circular maws lined with dozens of rows of teeth.

"... Giant worms..." she telepathically shouted back up.

Rose responded with a rain of swords, but the debris sent airborne by the explosion meant that she couldn't see where she was aiming. She took out a couple of worms by chance, but most of her shots were misses.

Thankfully, the number of worms were small compared to the size of the cavern, and no-one fell directly into their waiting jaws. Kellela came closest, but kicked off a shield summoned in mid-air, pushing herself away from the waiting monster. The others managed to recover their balance in mid-air, against all reasonable physics, all landing gracefully.

The worms leapt from their positions, trying to dive back into the rock, but they found their way obstructed by shields, or they were grabbed out of the air by vines, or stabbed or exploded. In a few more seconds, everything was once again peaceful, the silence only interrupted by the pattering of soil and fragments of rock as they returned from their brief trip skywards.

"That was a neat trick," complimented Rose to Kellela. "Doesn't that mean you can fly?"

"Maybe? Never thought to try it before."

"I think we have more important things to discuss!" exclaimed Grace. "Seriously, Rrillandral, what the hell is going on?!"

"I... have no idea..." she admitted. "Nothing like this has happened before!"

"Our mission hasn't changed. How do we find the egg?" asked Hayedalf. "Assuming that fake was the correct size, the real one can't exactly be easy to move or hide."

"It eats mana and burps out miasma. Mystery should be able to..." she started, before Mystery interrupted.

"... Above...!" she telepathically exclaimed.

The group looked up.

Rose said a rude word.

Too late they realised they'd fallen into a near perfect cylinder, too deep to jump out of. No overhangs to hide under, but also no way out. Fish in a barrel, except that instead of a gun, the demons had brought a dragon.

"Heart Shield!" cried out Kellela, summoning a giant heart-shaped shield above the group, protecting them from the lance of flame as Rrillandral desperately tried to sprout some handholds up the walls.

"It's too rocky! I can't get us out!"

"Let me!" shouted Rose. "Sword rain!"

A stream of swords thudded into the walls, deeply embedding themselves into the rock. The girls leapt from one to the next, while Kellela's shield flickered under the strain.

"How long can it keep this up?!" complained Grace. "Doesn't it need to breathe?!"

"Dragons have very substantial lungs," replied Rrillandral.

Thankfully, substantial didn't mean unlimited, and the dragon did indeed pause. With their vision no longer blocked by the inferno, that meant the girls could see the dragon and sky once more.

Not much of either, admittedly, on account of the way their view was blocked by an enormous flock of giant moth-like monsters, dust raining down from their wings, filling the air above the pit.

"... A demon... riding dragon...!" exclaimed Mystery, spotting the first one of their mission.

Grace reacted, launching a purification wave into the air. The dragon took more height, taking it out of range.

"That must be why we've only been attacked by single types of monsters so far. They were keeping so much distance that they couldn't give complex orders," said Rrillandral.

"Nice to know, but how does it help us now?!" screamed Rose, a mere second away from jumping into the cloud of suspicious dust.

"Midnight moths. They secrete a dust that sends victims to sleep. Hayedalf's enchanted accessories will protect us."

"Not for long!" replied Hayedalf. "They need time to recharge between attacks. They'll work for a few minutes at most for continuous exposure."

"We run, then. Back the way we came!"

"... More demons...!" exclaimed Mystery, spotting congealed lumps of miasma approaching the clearing through the dust of the moths.

"Where?"

"... Everywhere...!"

"Can we burn this dust?" asked Kellela.

"No. It's not flammable. We need wind magic!"

"None of us know wind magic!"

"Back into the pit?"

"That would be suicide!"

"... Watch out..." cried Mystery, picking up even greater concentrations of miasma. A shower of high-speed pebbles pelted the girls, Kellela failing to get a shield up in time. Thankfully, while they had speed, they lacked mass, failing to do any real damage, but it was obvious the goal of the demons was to keep them trapped in the cloud of dust.

A goal made doubly obvious when the second dragon strafed the ground in front of them with flame, once again foiling their attempts to flee.

The demons themselves kept their distance, staying well out of Grace's range.

"I'm sorry," said Rrillandral. "I led us straight into a trap. They aren't supposed to be this... intelligent."

"Mystery, are there any gaps, or are we completely encircled?" asked Kellela, with just a hint of desperation.

"... Surrounded..."

"Help me kill the moths!" shouted Rose, who'd been spending the time productively skewering as many as she could, something that would help in the long term, but in the short term, each time a sword ripped a wing even denser clouds of dust burst out.

"I feel sick..." commented Grace, launching another purification wave. It was noticeably weaker than her last, and didn't come close to reaching any demons.

"Use your mana for healing. Can you protect us from this dust?"

"I can heal any effects once we're out of it, but I can't protect us while we're inside it!"

They made further desperate attempts to escape, but the pair of dragons continuously encircled them. Whenever Kellela attempted to shield them from the flames, the demons would take advantage to fire missiles at them to force them back.

"I don't feel well," panted Rose, swaying slightly on her feet.

"It's over..." sighed Rrillandral. "We've failed..."

"You're really going to give up?"

Rrillandral sighed, then looked to the skies. "I suppose I can try to take a few of them down with me. Hurry up, I'm absolutely busting for a wee!"

"What the hell? You think you have time for a..." started Rose before the sky split open.

"Always wanted to try that spell," yawned Rrillandral, her eyelids drooping not from the poisoned dust, but from mana exhaustion. "Could never... never... justify the... collateral damage."

She fell face first into the dirt.

"I... I don't want to die," sobbed Grace, her healing magic fighting a desperate losing battle against the dust.

"Pretty..." muttered Hayedalf, already half-asleep, staring into the sky where a hole had opened up. A circular patch in the middle of the blue daylight sky through which the black, cold expanse of space was visible, and in the centre of it, a ball of burning red, growing brighter and larger every second.

"Sorry... Mystery..." whispered Kellela, before she fell, Hayedalf toppling on top of her a second later.

Rose, holding a higher level of [Robust] than either of them, staggered over to Grace. "We have to... have to..." she stammered.

Grace peered at her with delirious eyes, clinging desperately to consciousness with the aid of her magic, but still with one foot firmly in the land of dreams. "You..." she said, smiling happily. "I wanted to see you..."

"Snap... Snap out of it..." Rose managed, dropping to her knees.

Grace leaned in and kissed her on the forehead, then fell over.

"Interesting memory to die with," thought Rose, taking one last look at the sky where the growing ball of fire had approached enough to resolve into a dozen meteors, and then collapsing, the last of the five to fall.

"... Rose...!" psychically shouted Mystery, ineffectually. "... Grace...! Mum...! Dad...! Rrillandral...!"

There was no response.

Immune to the effects of the dust on account of her lack of lungs, Mystery had no issues maintaining her wakefulness. Alas, there was nothing she could do to help.

"Why didn't I learn healing magic? Or teleportation? I should be able to just teleport them all out of here! Come on, if there's one ironclad rule about magical girls, it's that they don't lose! Wake up!"

She watched on helplessly as both demons and meteors approached.

Not all the demons approached; a good four-fifths of them fled, running from the falling doom, but it only needed one to end the lives of the sleeping girls. Rather, it didn't need any. Multiple tons of falling, burning rock would solve that problem without the aid of demons.

Mystery was thus rather surprised when the pair of dragons dived in, positioning themselves protectively over the magical girls. She was even more surprised when a demon that looked like some sort of skeleton cultist flared with miasma, creating a dome-shaped, blood-red shield over the entire group. More demons cast what was obviously defensive magic, protecting not only themselves from Rrillandral's last spell, but also all five magical girls.

"What?" she thought, when she noticed one of the demons was staring directly at her.

"I'd say 'nice to meet you', but it really, really isn't," said a tiny demon, an evil fairy-looking thing with a single black wing, as the first meteor became a meteorite. The demon paused as the colossal boom passed, while a dumbfounded Mystery stared in confusion.

ding

Achievement unlocked: [Monster Slayer VI].

"I'd appreciate it if you would sleep now," he continued, in the brief break before another ton of rock collided with the ground.

ding

For a spirited, if pointless, effort, [Lightning Bolt] advances to level 6 and [Fireball] to level 5.

Seeing no advantage in fleeing back to Kellela rather than dying here and now, Mystery threw all of her mana into her spells, to no effect whatsoever. The tiny demon simply ignored her magic, not showing a single burn as a result.

"So uncooperative," sighed the demon before raising a hand, and Mystery's world was suddenly full of pain as bad as when she'd first snapped her tether. Unable to bear it, she fled desperately back to Kellela, taking refuge in her foetus, where the pain abruptly cut out.

ding

For remaining functional in the face of debilitating pain, [Robust] advances to level 29.

"Sheesh, what was the demon doing to cause agony like that through [Pain Tolerance]," thought Mystery. "Or, more importantly, why did they rescue the girls from Rrillandral's spell? Aren't they trying to kill us? What the hell is going on?"

In Flinel, a messenger burst through a door, ignoring the protesting guards. The [King] and his aides looked up.

"Sometimes, I wonder why I bother with doors," he sighed. "Not quite sure what I'm paying those guards for, either. Well, what is it?"

"Our scriers report a cast of [Meteor Storm] in the middle of the demonic forest!"

The [King] fell to his chair, his legs suddenly unwilling to carry his weight. "... Grace," he whispered.

A similar scene played out in the Vale of Myllearn. The [Monarch of the Vale], who had been busy reading a report on the zycrian attempts to learn a usable form of [Magical Girl Transformation], was interrupted by a messenger knocking on his door. He received the message politely, pointed out that there had been no world notification about the death of a [Hero], gave the instruction to maintain the watch, and dismissed the messenger.

Someone would have needed to be watching very closely to notice the thin dribble of red trickling down his fingers, his fists clenched tightly enough to drive his nails through his palms.

Elsewhere, other kings and leaders received the news. Without their children personally involved in the conflict, there was less emotion involved, but there was still plenty of fear. Orders were given to redouble the watch on the forest, to call up reservists and prepare for war. Everyone knew what it meant to cast [Meteor Storm]—an epic rarity, over-imaged spell with a range substantially less than its area of effect.

The spell's description didn't even mention how it morphed as its level increased. There really wasn't any point.

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) (29/50)

>> 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) (6/10)

- Fireball (U) (5/20)

>> 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 VI (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