An Unborn Hero

The [Lieutenant] inspected the still-mummified intruder, who had turned an interesting shade of blue overnight. The assassin himself had fallen sullen and still, aside from the occasional involuntary shiver.

"Guild of assassins," declared the [Lieutenant], pointing at a tattoo at the base of the intruder's spine after rolling him over. "Looks like someone's put a hit out on you."

"Uh... Perhaps my knowledge of the border lands is somewhat lacking, but, putting aside his choice of targets, is a guild of assassins... legal?" asked Hayedalf carefully.

"Heck no. Of course not! But... they're something of a joke, to be honest. A bunch of low-levelled failed adventurers, attracted by a big payday, without considering that if they can't fight goblins in a forest, they're probably going to do poorly against people, too. It's a shame whoever runs the place has been so slippery. The grunts that actually get caught, like this guy, all get that mark, to 'identify each other', they're told."

Hayedalf peered at the tattoo, the magic within being easily visible to his [Enchanter's Eyes]. Yes, the assassin had walked straight into a ward and been seen by Mystery, but the enchantments involved seemed too complex to have come from a joke organisation.

"There's way too much magic wrapped up in there for it to be a simple ID. Let me guess; he tries to talk, he dies?"

"Not to start with. He tries to talk, his tongue liquefies. He tries to write, his hands necrotise. He tries to blink out a message... Well, you get the idea. But yes, he keeps trying, he dies. And of course, try to remove the tattoo and he still dies."

The assassin remained still, but his air of sullenness had morphed into one of terror. With it having dawned on him that he'd bitten off far more than he could chew, he'd felt reasonably certain he could escape his situation by turning coat and selling information on his employers. Apparently, that wasn't an option.

"Turn him over to a licenced mind reader?" suggested Kellela.

"Nope, that would kill him too. This isn't the first member of that order that we've caught in the area, and we've failed to extract useful information from any of the others no matter what we tried. I believe the plan was to simply execute the next one in as painful and public a manner as possible to discourage future recruits."

The assassin shivered again, this time for reasons other than temperature.

"A second guard party will be arriving this morning. Once they do, we can spare a few men to transport him back to town."

"I don't want to give up that easily... I'm sure I can analyse that tattoo. You're saying someone put out a hit on us? We need to know who and why. We're supposed to be dealing with demons and monsters, not people."

The [Lieutenant] signalled to Hayedalf, walking away from their prisoner. Confused, Hayedalf and Kellela followed.

"We'd love you to take another look. If you can work out how to remove it, great. The [Commander] will be your friend forever. But let me warn you that if he thinks anyone is trying to remove it, he dies."

"Well, that explains why you didn't want to talk in front of him. Okay, I'll take a look. Quietly."

He did so, keeping an eye on their prisoner under the pretence of ensuring he didn't escape. Not a great excuse, given that they'd abandoned him for hours overnight, and he obviously trusted the magical bindings.

Meanwhile, Kellela joined Rose and Melody in a barn they'd repurposed as a workshop. As Hayedalf had claimed, her method of dealing with stress was to dive head-first into her work. No longer employed as a researcher at Rumah Magika, she had to come up with her own projects, but that was hardly a disadvantage. Researching a brand new spell was far more interesting than the paperwork they'd saddled her with back in the capital.

"Here's the last one," said Platus, dropping a lump of iron, which collided with the floor in a cloud of dust.

"Thank you," said Kellela.

There was an awkward pause in which nothing further happened.

"I think they're waiting for you to leave, dear," pointed out Melody.

"... Don't I get to watch my own daughter?"

"No!" exclaimed Rose, chasing him out. "This is embarrassing!"

"Right, now that he's out of the way, let's measure our baselines," declared Kellela, attempting to pick up the lump of iron, failing miserably, and moving to a smaller one.

After a busy couple of hours, all three members of the group had measured their sprinting speed and endurance, push-ups, sit-ups and carrying capacity. Surprising no-one, Kellela came last in every physical measurement, with Melody way out ahead and Rose occupying the middle.

"Okay, now how do we ask Mystery to... you know?" asked Rose, looking around as if expecting the [Hero] to have suddenly burst into visibility.

"Mystery?" called out Kellela. "Please can you cast that spell?"

She made vaguely dome shaped motions below her waist, trying to indicate a skirt.

"Can't you... I dunno, make some sort of telepathic connection? Or generate an illusion to show what you want? When I first heard you were a [Court Mage], I expected... I dunno... more magic."

"I'm a bit specialised. You want a spell to search for a bit of information in a large library? Feel free to call on me. You want a fireball? Ask someone else. Ironically, I'm supposed to be good at search magic, so not spotting Mystery was embarrassing. I'm just no good at searching inside... myself... Ah!"

Fortunately for the impromptu research group, Mystery didn't need much in the way of prompting. The way the three of them had been methodically working through exercises and writing down results was a pretty big clue what they were up to. As a result, Mystery was ready and waiting to activate the transformation. Albeit not exactly willing.

"This is an abuse of their transformation privileges," she complained to herself. "Magical girls transform to protect people. They don't subject their magical girl forms to experiments."

She didn't let her objections stop her, though, obediently casting [Magical Girl Transformation] on Kellela. After all, Mystery was as interested in the results as they were.

Rose watched with a touch of envy as the white glow enveloped Kellela, her form shrinking as her age regressed back into the magical-girl-appropriate range.

"Me next! My turn!" she burst out, before realising she was letting her anticipation get the better of her, her envy quickly subsumed by embarrassment.

"Given the short duration of the spell and the substantial mana cost, it would be more efficient to work one at a time," said Kellela as the glow faded. She made another attempt at lifting the heaviest lump of iron Platus had brought in, and... failed miserably once more.

"Hmm? I could have sworn I was stronger than this last time. I mean, I didn't exactly measure, but I didn't have any issues dragging that bugger through our house last night..."

Of course, Kellela didn't know the full wording of the spell. It had taken on Mystery's full concept of what magical girls were, and magical girls did not transform to experiment on themselves. The spell wording specifically stated that the boost was larger when acting to defend and protect. Casting it for no reason like this greatly reduced the effectiveness.

Thankfully, working through the entire series of exercises—which required Mystery to renew the spell several times—showed that the boost wasn't zero. It couldn't even be called insignificant.

"Well, it's certainly an effective enhancement spell, but, somehow, I expected more. I suppose the full heal during the transformation makes it significantly more valuable, as do the additional abilities it apparently grants."

She waved a hand, summoning up several rectangular barriers.

"Please would you test their strength?" she asked Melody.

Melody drew her rapier and stabbed lightly, piercing them easily.

"Again, not as effective as I would have hoped..."

"No, something's wrong," pointed out Melody. "I fought those bone hornets yesterday. I know how strong they were, and they were capable of exerting more force than I just did. Yet they didn't even leave a scratch."

"Weird. The mana drain feels the same as yesterday, so it's not as if Mystery cast a weakened version of the spell. Maybe there's an extra condition to it? The [Rage] skill of a [Barbarian] increases in effectiveness as they get angrier, so maybe this skill grows in power with... fear? No, that makes no sense; I was frightened fighting the bone hornets, but not last night. Last night I was just angry. Maybe it grows with any emotion?"

"We can get at least one more data point," suggested Rose, hinting that if no-one minded, she would quite like to have her turn, thank you very much.

"Very well," agreed Kellela. "Mystery?" she asked again, this time pointing at Rose.

Rose sprouted a wide smile as she was enveloped by light, twirling as her armour melted and flowed around her, then giggling as it blossomed out into her Aster Blue costume.

Then she noticed the odd looks Kellela and her mum were giving her, and blushed again.

"It really is indecent," commented Kellela, inspecting Rose carefully. "The petals of the skirt are not long enough, and there are gaps. Twirling like that, I could see everything."

Rose's blush intensified. The modesty of high-fashion wasn't something she cared about, or even knew about, but that didn't mean she wanted to show off her underwear to any spectators.

"At the very least, it should include an underskirt."

"Believe me," said Melody, taking pity on her daughter, "when you're waist deep in monster guts, an ogre trying to insert its club into your head and a crowd of goblins trying to insert their sex organs into any available orifice, even if they have to tear new ones to make space, what you look like is the least of your worries."

Kellela blinked at the graphic imagery.

"But what we do care about is armour," pointed out Rose, still not a fan of the costume, even if she was very much a fan of the perks it brought with it. "I mean, I can do this." She held out both hands, materialising a pair of swords. "So it's obviously designed for melee combat. How does she justify the lack of armour?"

"Maybe everyone in Mystery's old world had dexterity builds?" suggested Kellela.

"But it's no good for that, either. Wide skirts and long hair are terrible for mobility. Terrible for any sort of fighting, really. It just doesn't seem practical."

Practicality was something that Mystery had never really stopped to consider. After all, when was practicality ever a consideration in anime, where reasonable physics would require many protagonists to own bodybuilder-sized neck muscles just to support their hair? Then again, an Earth historian would look at Rose's leather armour and similarly laugh their heads off. "Armour made from leather? What's that supposed to do? Either it's so thick that you can't move, or else it won't offer any useful protection. Just get yourself a thick, padded jacket, or if you want decent protection, get some steel."

Such historians had never had to deal with monsters and their tougher hides. Swing a sword at a cow, and the cow would have a bad time. Swing a sword at a warg, and you would have a bad time.

Swing a sword at some of the larger occupants of the demonic forest, and they wouldn't even notice.

Suffice it to say, common sense was not at all common, and varied dramatically between universes. Maybe there was one out there somewhere where engaging in melee combat wearing frilly blue dresses was a perfectly logical thing to do. This was another part of the reason why heroes normally had their memories restricted for the start of their lives. It wasn't just to give them a chance to absorb the local language, but also the local common sense.

Of course, the whole discussion was itself based on a small bit of common sense that didn't apply to Mystery. Both Earth and Vyluurn fully agreed that frilly blue dresses provided negligible protection. Mystery disagreed. After all, magical girls routinely took blows and magical attacks that would require any normal girl to be scraped off the landscape with a shovel. In Mystery's mind, magical girl costumes provided amazing protection. Even better, they followed bikini armour logic, protecting areas that weren't covered by anything.

Magic was amazing at filling in logical gaps.

"Maybe we should actually test that?" suggested Kellela, who was, thankfully, a professional researcher. She grabbed one of Rose's skirt-petals, rubbing it between her fingers. "The material feels like satin? Maybe a type of silk? I've heard of some monsters that produce silk. If this is something from Mystery's home world, it might have unexpected defensive properties."

"Wait, you can't stab it. What if it doesn't repair itself between casts of the spell?!"

"Then best to find out sooner rather than later. Perhaps we can find some way to repair it. If the first time you find out is in a fight with a demon, you'll end up fighting naked."

Rose blinked, decided that as impractical as her costume was, she'd prefer it to fighting naked, then handed a petal to Melody.

It proved surprisingly resistant to being stabbed.

"So... low-end leather armour? But surely it can't protect against bludgeoning."

"The mana in it was resisting the damage," commented Kellela. "If the defences are magical, it probably protects equally against all physical attacks. Not only that, but if this is a weakened form of the spell, as we suspect..."

Rose looked down at her dress once more, suddenly feeling a lot happier about her frills.

Meanwhile, Mystery was feeling somewhat happier about this abuse of the sanctity of magical girl transformations on account of a number of message boxes.

ding
For taking part in research of an unknown spell, [Magical Girl Transformation] advances to level 12.
For repeated spellcasting, pouring in your own mana even if you topped it up with another's, [Increased Attributes] advances to level 7.
For reading written notes and observing magical experimentation, [Soul's Eye] advances to level 27.
For getting so distracted by science that you completely forgot about your time limit and pushed your soul to its absolute limits, [Robust] advances to level 18 and [Astral Projection] to level 19.

There were more notifications, but Mystery didn't stop to read them, instead rushing back to her body, the burning sensation of her degrading soul suddenly pushed to the forefront of her attention.

"Can I have a go?" asked Melody, watching her daughter get close to her own performance despite the reduced spell effectiveness, and feeling a little jealous. Alas, Mystery was no longer there to answer.

Spoiler

μ̵̼͉̐υ̴̡̽̿σ̷̭͓̃̀τ̸͉̤̾̆ή̶͎̱͌ρ̸̤͕̏̿ι̷̬̾͜ό̸͈ (Human)
Age: -8 months
Occupation: Hero (L)
Skills:
- Soul's Eye (U) (27/80)
>> Sense Vitality (U)
>> Sense Soul (R)
>> Sense Mana (U)
>> Sense Light (C)
>> Sense Sound (C)
>> Pierce Illusions (U)
>> Sense Miasma (R)
- Astral Projection (U) (19/60)
>> 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) (12/20)
>> Age Correction (R)
- Light (C) (6/10)
- 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 I (C)

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