An Unborn Hero

"And that concludes my report," finished the voice of a youthful girl, the source hidden away in a deep hooded cloak despite the fact she was indoors, seated at a desk in her room in Karn's Vigil's only inn. It wasn't exactly a tourist town, so accommodations were limited.

"I see," replied another voice, this one emanating from an earring, placed on the desk in front of her. "So they have already discovered this generation's [Hero]. It seems that this cycle will be unusual in many respects, but I don't believe it changes anything for us. You may continue your mission as usual."

"... But the [Hero] is a girl?"

"Pah. If the only 'evidence' offered for that was 'intuition', then I'd rather believe our thousands of years of history. The administrators pick men more than nine times out of ten. Anyway, it doesn't matter even if it's true; you know better than anyone how heroes tend to be more... open... than the local humans. But if you want to keep your distance, there's always the next cycle. And the next, and the next. I know you want to keep your streak up, but you needn't succeed every time. Your only orders are to keep an eye on events and direct them away from the Vale. Anything beyond that would be appreciated, but is your own choice."

The first voice sighed, the expression of its owner inscrutable in the shadows.

"Well, it certainly wouldn't hurt to meet this new [Hero]. From the sound of things, she's certainly... unique. I can make further decisions later."

"Then I wish you luck."

"Thank you, father."

A dull glow from the earring faded away to nothing, leaving it looking completely mundane. A hand extended from under the cloak to grab it, then disappeared into the depths of the hood to reattach it, briefly revealing a lock of green hair draped over a strangely pointed ear.

"Girl or boy, I'm hardly going to seduce a [Hero] that hasn't even been born yet," the voice muttered, though there was no longer anyone else around to hear it. Nevertheless, despite the muttering, she had an excited smile on her face. "Still, it looks like this cycle will be even more interesting than I expected. Now, what's the easiest way to detect a soul that's using [Astral Projection]?"

A rather large group of people trudged the road between Karn's Vigil and Hayedalf's farm. Hayedalf and Kellela were a given, and Rose was following them, taking her duties as a party member of the unborn [Hero] seriously. Platus and Melody were following too, unwilling to let their daughter strike out alone and hence swapping out their inn room for Kellela's offer of accommodation. And then there was the squad of ten guards, the [Lieutenant] at their head.

As large as the farm was, it didn't have spare beds for that many, so they brought food, tents and bedding of their own, each soldier with a towering backpack on their back.

Alas, those bulky, heavy backpacks hampered their reactions when a swarm of gigantic, skeletal wasps burst through the treeline, flying directly at the party.

Each wasp was two feet in length, an elongated skull attached to a sharply curving spine, with twisted ribs forming a facsimile of a more usual wasp shape. The wings were thin bone plates, buzzing at high speed but not shaped in any way that should be capable of generating lift. Six bones poked out, making a mockery of legs; they had no joints and could never be used for walking. And, at the base of the spine, facing forward thanks to the curvature, a long, sharp-tipped spear of bone poked out.

"But wasps aren't vertebrates," was Mystery's first thought, doing her usual balancing trick on Kellela's head. "Heck, wasps don't have internal skeletons at all. Those things are stupid. Who designed them?"

Then she stopped, having picked up on their speed and compared it to the rate at which the soldiers were shedding baggage and drawing weapons. The monsters would arrive first.

Platus was yelling something she couldn't understand while hefting an axe. Melody drew her sword. Rose closed in on Kellela, shouting something Mystery did recognise; her name.

It was obvious what she wanted, so Mystery complied. Magical girl Aster Blue would once again save the day.

Alas, there was a difference between Kellela when she was safely hidden behind wards with a mana detection spell active, and Kellela with a swarm of impossible wasps flying at her. And they really were at her. The entire swarm was ignoring everyone else in favour of targeting the panicking [Court Mage]. As a result, transferring mana to Mystery was the last thing on her preoccupied mind.

The spell fizzled, and Mystery had just enough time to watch Rose's expression change from anticipation to fear before her levitation failed and she dropped right through Kellela's head, thankfully landing back in her embryo.

ding
For once more failing to account for your limited mana pool, [Increased Attributes] advances to level 6. I'd like to make a point about repetition and madness, but if you keep levelling this skill, I guess you will start succeeding casts eventually.

"Dammit!" she would have yelled, had she had any vocal cords. There had been a squad of soldiers there, but they were slow to react, and the swarm had been big. A few dozen of the wasp monsters, at least. Perhaps more were still pouring from the treeline. There were Platus and Melody, who had reacted faster, but could two adventurers deal with the swarm before any of them reached Kellela? Mystery had no idea what the monsters were, or how powerful they were. She had no idea how strong the soldiers were. She had no information available with which to calculate the likely victor.

If she had recognised the monsters, she'd have known she was asking the wrong question. They didn't need to reach Kellela.

At the least, she knew from [Sense Sound] that the fight was still ongoing. And then she picked up a different sound, something she didn't recognise at all. She'd have put it in the biological process bucket, if not for the way it was far louder.

There was also the way [Sense Vitality] had just shown her surroundings drop from a vibrant scarlet to a dull red, and it continued fading as she watched, accompanied by a sound she did recognise. A scream. She quickly thought up the prerequisite pattern of sounds and cast [Light].

One of the monster's bone stingers was stabbing through the womb, missing Mystery by an inch. Even at the speed the monsters were travelling, they wouldn't have reached Kellela that quickly. They could launch their stingers as projectiles.

"Bugger that," thought Mystery as she drew harder on Kellela's mana. Just because she was stuck indoors didn't mean she couldn't cast [Magical Girl Transformation]; all it did was limit her choice of targets.

The demon Xry'kl smirked from his vantage point, hidden in the trees. He had little respect for his colleagues and their blatantly inferior strategies. Zyfyl'p was... reluctantly acceptable. It was certainly true that overwhelming brute force could win any battle, but it was inefficient and slow. Zyfyl'p was still less than halfway out of the forest, thanks to his insistence on finding powerful monsters on the way. And the less said about Fylith, the better. She'd left the forest long ago, without even a single monster in her retinue. Demons should fight by, well, fighting. Not by employing guile to avoid the need for a fight completely.

No; speed and surprise were the key to an easy victory. A small group of monsters, not necessarily the strongest, but stealthy, manoeuvrable, and able to launch an unexpected attack on unwary enemies.

He watched the swarm of bone hornets fly into range of the party and launch their barrage of stingers at his target. The stingers were single-shot, and the monsters would be practically defenceless once their weapons were consumed, but none of that mattered. As long as his target died in the first strike, why should he care if the bone hornets were killed by the survivors? This was an assassination, not a war.

The smirk turned to a frown as the first wave of stingers bounced off thin air. The bone hornets were finely honed assassins. Their stingers were sharp, as hard as metal, and had innate enchantments to increase their penetrative power. Not to mention the deadly poison, that meant even a small scratch would be deadly. And yet some sort of transparent shield had sprung into existence around the human female and had deflected ten of the projectiles.

How unfortunate for her that he had twenty more.

Another wave hit, and the shield cracked. The third and final wave struck, and the shield shattered. The force of it breaking deflected many of the sharpened bones, but three struck home, piercing into the woman's torso. Xry'kl's smirk returned as he imagined the effects of the necrotic poison, her flesh blackening and dripping off as she watched, leaving her as much of a skeleton as the monsters who killed her. It was only a pity that she wouldn't survive long enough to watch the entire process.

The male who was obviously her husband would, though. His screams of despair would be invigorating.

And then the smirk faded once more as the poison did nothing. Xry'kl had no knowledge of all the protective enchanted items she was wearing, but it was becoming obvious that she wasn't a target as soft as he'd assumed from her lack of armour and weapons. Perhaps the wounds she'd taken would be fatal, but why risk it? He ordered his monsters to continue their attack. Even with their stingers spent, they could pierce their targets with their legs.

Kellela fell to her knees, screaming as she grasped at the tail of a stinger that was running through her lung. She pulled, her scream spluttering and dying as her lung filled with blood instead of air.

By this point, the soldiers had joined the fray, and Platus and Melody were cutting down monsters at a prodigious rate. Even Rose was holding her own; with their stingers spent, her baseline iron ranked strength was enough to deal with them. The monsters would be dead in seconds. That much didn't matter to Xry'kl; they were expendable, and the attack had been a suicide run to start with. It wasn't supposed to last more than a few seconds. But if his target survived, it would all have been wasted. The monsters swarmed Kellela, not caring how many of them were cut down from behind.

Kellela glowed.

Kellela stood, but despite moving from knees to feet, she failed to get any taller; she seemed to shrink as she moved, but the shining light hid all but her silhouette. She grabbed the remaining pair of stingers, one in each hand, and pulled them from her body in silence, tossing them to the ground. Xty'kl stared on in incomprehension, without a clue what was happening.

"I will not let you touch my daughter," came a voice that sounded almost like Kellela's as the glow faded, revealing an uninjured child no older than Rose, her pink pixie cut floating in a non-existent wind. "No. I'm sorry. That was wrong. I should have said I will not let you touch anyone."

She waved a gloved hand and a dozen translucent pink spheres flickered into existence, one surrounding each of the surviving monsters, which bumped against the walls ineffectually, each trapped in a private magical prison.

That was fortunate, because a couple of soldiers had dropped their weapons in surprise at the transformed Kellela. Her dress was pink, again with yellow highlights. The sleeves were longer than Rose's, reaching almost to her elbows. She had the same sort of decorated white gloves, albeit not fingerless. The stockings were lower, ending beneath her knees. The dome-shaped skirt was composed of fewer, wider petals than Rose's, and provided less coverage, giving glimpses of pure white beneath. The petals themselves were gradated from white to pink. A pretty lotus flower decorated her short but vibrant hair, belaying the anger that still showed on her face.

Kellela closed her fist, and the spheres shrunk with it. There was a loud crunching, and then silence.

"Is it my imagination, or has it suddenly got cramped in here?" complained Mystery, back on the inside. "And what's happening? Dammit, why can't I see outside? Mum's vitality seems to have recovered, that spiky bone has gone, and everything has gone quiet. Does that mean we won?"

ding
For winning, [Magical Girl Transformation] advances to level 10.
Achievement Unlocked: [Monster Slayer I]

Monster Slayer I (Common)
You have single-handedly slain a monster of rank 1, or played a significant role in the defeat of a higher ranked monster. Grants a 10% experience bonus to all combat skills.

"Hey! That was blatantly an answer! You just answered me! All that pretending you couldn't hear me, and you were listening all along!"

No further messages came.

Spoiler

μ̵̼͉̐υ̴̡̽̿σ̷̭͓̃̀τ̸͉̤̾̆ή̶͎̱͌ρ̸̤͕̏̿ι̷̬̾͜ό̸͈ (Human)
Age: -8 months
Occupation: Hero (L)
Skills:
- Soul's Eye (U) (23/70)
>> Sense Vitality (U)
>> Sense Soul (R)
>> Sense Mana (U)
>> Sense Light (C)
>> Sense Sound (C)
>> Pierce Illusions (U)
- Astral Projection (U) (18/60)
>> Sure Navigation (U)
>> Uncontainable (U)
>> Tether of Will (L)
- Robust (C) (17/40)
>> Hardened Soul (R)
>> Secured Mana (U)
>> Pain Tolerance (C)
- Stealth (C) (3/20)
>> Camouflage Vitality (R)
- Magical Girl Transformation (R) (10/20)
>> Age Correction (R)
- Light (C) (6/10)
- Increased Attributes (C) (6/20)
>> 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)

[collapse] Announcement Here's Lotus Pink's character design. I think her expression does a great job of capturing her mature/motherly attitude despite her age regression. And the overly long ribbon, just begging for a demon to grab it and yank, does a great job of capturing how ridiculously impractical Mystery is being. >.>

And once again, please consider joining the patreon and help me make artwork a regular thing. (I do have some more lined up, but they won't be ready in time for the appropriate chapters. I'll post them whenever they're done.)