An Unborn Hero

Across miles of the border of the demonic forest, spanning the area around Karn's Vigil, ten-thousand members of the Flinellian army waited. They were accompanied by the adventurer volunteers, lined up behind a wide moat and abatis.

"I feel ridiculous," said Platus, trying for the hundredth time to push his petals down. Just like the previous ninety-nine times, they sprung back up the moment he released them, pointing nearly perpendicularly from his waist. As long as he stood completely still, he remained a couple of inches safe from indecency. Alas, that held only as long as he stayed still.

"If it helps, you look ridiculous, too," replied Melody, checking her gear. Given the plan, that didn't take long; her gear consisted only of a couple of healing potions, a mana potion and one small vial of emergency hair dye.

"You look exactly the same as me," pointed out Platus.

"Yes. Yes I do," sighed Melody as she tried to disentangle her long, blue hair from where it had got entwined with her skirt petals. "How long till contact?"

"The faster moving monsters should be..." started Platus, before he was interrupted by a horn sounding somewhere to their left. A few seconds later, one sounded to their right, and before long, a constant series of blasts started up from all around. "... arriving right now," he corrected himself as a group of wind-wolves burst from the tree line.

"Right," said Melody, her completely impractical blue dress belying the serious expression on her face and the magically sharp sword in her hand. A sword which she pointed at the incoming wolves. "Sword rain!"

A dozen rapiers materialised in the air and rained down upon the group of monsters, the blades piercing through their hides. And, along the line, thousands more copies of Aster Blue did exactly the same thing, the newly formed magical girl corps effortlessly decimating the initial wave of monsters.

"I still think shouting the names of moves before using them is bloody stupid," growled Platus. "But they insisted the info from the Vale could be trusted. Sword rain!"

"And I'm absolutely certain that every individual living upon this planet with any actual combat experience agrees with you. Alas, this spell was created by someone who doesn't have combat experience. Sword rain!"

The surrounding soldiers, more professional than the adventurers and so not engaging in pointless banter mid battle, nevertheless allowed themselves small grins as they likewise repeatedly shouted, "Sword rain!"

When larger monsters began to emerge, the mages at the back launched their magical bombardment, softening their targets. The need to conserve mana for the drawn-out conflict prevented the use of anything too powerful or wide-scale, and some of the hastily thrown together magical girls corps, like Platus, found their attacks struggling to pierce the monsters' thicker hides. Others, like Melody, who had skills dedicated to wielding rapiers, found that they synergised perfectly with the Aster Blue [Magical Girl Transformation]. An advantage that only increased once they started earning far higher ranked [Monster Slayer] achievements than they'd otherwise have been capable of, boosting their offensive power yet further.

And then the magical girl related sub-skills came pouring in.

As ever, the forces deployed from the demonic forest lacked in intelligence. Had the charge been led with the stronger monsters, a horde of wyrms bursting from the forest, they'd have trampled the defensive line. Instead, they led with the weakest, giving the combatants a chance to acclimatise to their abilities, and then for those abilities to snowball.

"Dammit. Why didn't I insist that Rose use axes?" complained Platus as his wife accelerated.

ding
Achievement unlocked: [Famous Spell Forger]

"Huh?" thought Mystery, as the notification distracted her from the scene playing out in front of her, where the party of magical girls was confronting some sort of evil queen in plush red and black robes. A group of elves in goblin masks gibbered around in front of her, making rude gestures at the magical girls, which may have had more to do with their real feelings than anything triggered by [Cosplay] or [Skit].

A substantially larger group of elves was watching from tiered seating, the inane displays attracting so much attention that, far from moving somewhere private, they'd relocated into an actual theatre. Not all the watchers were Leaf Green facsimiles, but a substantial portion were. All were struggling to hold in riotous laughter.

The faux queen, who was one of the original trio of guards that Brylyndril seemed to delight in tormenting, flashed them a rude gesture.

The magical girls themselves were handling the attention remarkably well, the [Royal Corrupter] having successfully shifted their senses of what constituted 'normal' so far off-kilter that all five were able to successfully treat the situation as a vital part of their training. Yes, they still had issues—mostly when [Cosplay] wore off, taking with it the associated feeling that short revealing dresses were what they were supposed to be wearing, and cheesy lines about love and justice were how they were supposed to speak—but that just led to Grace wanting to keep [Cosplay] up indefinitely.

... And also to another snide remark from whichever deity was spying on Mystery about causing addictions in the kingdom's youth, but at least the snide remarks came with levels attached. [Cosplay] had gone up by four over the previous few days, along with another couple each of [Translate] and [Telepathy].

Perhaps it wasn't just one deity. Perhaps there was a theatre up there, too, with a bunch of gods and goddesses chewing popcorn, watching Mystery's antics on a big screen.

Mystery attempted to banish that image from her head by checking up on the new achievement.

Famous Spell Forger (Epic)
It takes a talented mage to forge a new spell, but a truly great one to create something usable. You have not only done so, imprinting a new idea on the world's mana and successfully making it reality, but your spell has spread, seeing extensive and meaningful use across the world's races. You have earned the recognition and respect of mana, boosting your capacity and regeneration by 100%. Spells you create gain a 300% bonus to levelling speed and operate as if your level was 20 higher.

"... Guess I was wrong to question moving this to a theatre," thought Mystery, drawing an incorrect conclusion about what had triggered the achievement. While getting Mystery the achievement by spreading the spell throughout the Vale was a part of Brylyndril's plans, the elven usage wasn't quite as meaningful as within Flinel.

"Your reign of terror is over, foul fiend!" shouted the cross-dressed Hayedalf, his expression completely serious.

"I suppose [Cosplay] did just get a ten-level boost. Has that affected him already, or do I need to recast?" pondered Mystery, her attention drawn back to the show, where the goblins were now lying slain on the floor.

"Probably need to recast," thought Mystery, spotting two of the goblins were still obviously breathing, and another one kept sliding an eye open to look around. As acting dead went, they were pretty rubbish.

"Never!" screamed the queen, gesturing grandly at the sky.

The magical girls dodged nothing whatsoever. Mystery guessed it was intended to be some sort of lightning spell, but to those outside of the effects of [Skit], it wasn't at all obvious. "I need a special effects sub-skill," she thought.

"You have my pity," said Grace, and everyone watching could tell that she really meant it, for reasons that went beyond any sort of script. "All that anger. All that hate. I'll take it all away."

Grace approached the evil queen, who backed away fearfully, miming more spells.

"Heart shield!" shouted Kellela, waving her hand as she did when summoning barriers.

Grace just kept walking.

"No! Stay away!" screamed the evil queen, his back hitting the wooden wall of the stage.

Grace stopped in front of him and wrapped her arms around him in a hug. "There, there," she said. "Purification wave."

The queen went limp in Grace's arms and the crowd started applauding.

"Meh. I suppose that was okay, but there wasn't much of a story," thought Mystery. "Plus, it needs special effects. The queen really needed an outfit change at the end there. With him collapsing like that, it looked like Grace killed him when she was supposed to just purge the evil and turn him back into his original uncorrupted form."

Mystery paused for a moment, hit by another burst of realisation.

"... Magical girls usually rehabilitate the big bad, and they never outright murder them. If they do need to die, it must be self defence. So wouldn't getting them to smash an unhatched egg be... kinda bad? It would be completely against the image, and from what that elderly elf keeps saying, that would weaken them."

The group on stage glowed as [Cosplay] expired and their outfits rearranged themselves. Grace's eyes went dead as the events of the previous half hour replayed themselves without the filter of either [Cosplay] or alcohol.

"It's okay," whispered Rose, used to the procedure by now and already running her fingers through Grace's hair in the way she apparently liked. "It's over for now, and you did great."

"... Yes..." agreed Mystery. "... Reminded me... important point... Need talk..."

With her increasing level of [Telepathy], her speech was growing smoother, but she still had some way to go before it became completely natural.

Not that there was any reason to stop there. [Telepathy] wasn't limited by such biological weaknesses as lung capacity, the dynamics of vocal cords, or the reaction times of tongues. As the level went up, it could easily grow beyond the capabilities of conventional speech.

Hayedalf, who was himself looking mildly horrified as he recalled the previous half hour, assumed the worst. "Please don't tell me you're about to introduce another insane behaviour we need to follow?" he pleaded.

"... Maybe...?" admitted Mystery. "... Can't kill... demon lord..."

It was the sort of statement that would normally cause everyone to turn and stare. Alas, Kellela was the only one capable of seeing Mystery clearly. Hayedalf and Rrillandral could at least point their disbelieving faces in approximately the correct direction, but Grace and Rose were left with nowhere to direct their incredulity.

"... What?" asked Grace flatly.

"... Magical girls... don't kill... cold blood..."

"This is hardly cold blood," pointed out Rrillandral, recalling the depravities of the demons and their master in previous cycles.

"Are you seriously telling me there's nothing we can do about the demon lord until after it's hatched and personally trying to kill us?" demanded Grace.

Kellela opened her mouth to agree with Grace, then paused and looked consideringly at the sulking elven guard who'd been roped into the role of evil queen. "No... That can't possibly work..." she muttered.

"What?" asked Hayedalf, before following her gaze. "Oh... Are you seriously thinking...?"

"... Yes..." agreed Mystery. "... We're going... to purify... demon lord..."

And so the magical girl squad discovered that despite their increasing tolerance of Mystery's antics, she could still occasionally come out with things capable of shocking them senseless.

Melody desperately chugged her mana potion, Platus doing his best to buy her a few seconds by stabbing his sword deeply into the knee of an ogre that was trying to crush the pair of them into paste. His ranged attacks lacked the stopping power that Melody could wield, but up close, his pure strength was enough to compensate.

The sword snapped, leaving the tip embedded in the monster's flesh, but he simply formed another. The ogre's damaged leg crumpled, bring its head down into Platus's reach, where he stabbed his new sword through its eye.

In front of him, the moat was filled with corpses and the abatis burnt or crushed, but the same corpses had formed a new barrier of their own, a fleshy rampart getting in the way of the incoming monster tide. Nevertheless, the invaders had numbers on their side. However small the mana cost of forming swords, it wasn't zero, and the defenders were beginning to run out. Similarly, as the monsters pushed forward, injuries were piling up.

Thankfully, that wasn't something that caught them by surprise. A horn blew, and the sound spread up and down the line.

"Looks like it's finally time to fall back," sighed Platus, sounding somewhat relieved.

The sky caught alight as the mages unleashed powerful ritual magic, purging thousands of monsters in a single blast, and with the time bought by the strike, the defenders retreated. Thousands of little girls in blue dresses crossed a second moat a kilometre behind the front lines, piling over makeshift bridges and destroying them once everyone had passed. Messengers ran up and down the lines, passing out more potions. Combatants that had suffered injuries but since been healed rejoined their colleagues.

"Looks like it'll be a while before we can relax," said Melody with an equally large sigh as the next wave of monsters charged towards the second line of defence. "Time for round two. Sword rain!"

Spoiler

Mystery (Human)
Age: -9 months
Occupation: Hero (L)
Skills:
- Soul's Eye (U) (37/100)
>> 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) (23/60)
>> Sure Navigation (U)
>> Uncontainable (U)
>> Tether of Will (L)
- Robust (C) (23/50)
>> Hardened Soul (R)
>> Secured Mana (U)
>> Pain Tolerance (C)
>> Strengthened Will (U)
- Stealth (C) (3/20)
>> Camouflage Vitality (R)
- Magical Girl Transformation (R) (22/30)
>> 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) (4/20)
>> Drain Mana (U)
- Translate (U) (10/20)
>> Two Way (U)
- Telepathy (U) (15/40)
>> Reciprocity (U)
>> Empathy (U)
>> Guarded Mind (U)
- Lightning Bolt (U) (3/10)
- Fireball (U) (4/20)
>> Multishot (U)
- Wall of Light (U) (1/10)
- Energy Resistance (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)
- 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)

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