Chapter 108: 108 - Velvety prominence
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The old man sat meekly behind his desk, his aged wrinkled eyelids trembled as they lift up to reveal light pink irises. His thinning white hair was but a few strands that whip softly across his head. His skin shone under the ceiling light with countless spots of varying degrees of brown and randomly scattered hair strands growing out of his skin. His chin boasted a full white beard, contrary to his intimidating aura, his body was built like any other frail elderly.
"If I remembered correctly, his name is Beuxham Meng. He is one of the larger drug lords that target those in poverty, selling at lower prices before raising them bit by bit each time to the same customer. He also has a small prostitution service on the side. " (Gerald)
" Damn, Gerald why are you colleagues with such old people? "(Myuu)
Gerald recoiled in response to Myuu's inquisitiveness, her shoulders shook hard for a single moment before her heart rate returned to normal.
" I came from the facility, of course I'm young compared to these guys they pick up on the streets. They prioritised combat power over age you dolt." (Gerald)
"Ah... I'm sorry for that..." (Myuu)
While Myuu looked sheepishly to the side, a loud bellow echoed out from inside the room. His aura seeped out of the room too, as if it couldn't even contain by the entire confines of his office.
"Are you done!?" (Beuxham)
A deluge of light escapes through the door, the 2 girls crouch reflexively in case he was using the light to launch surprise attacks. The sound of a whip whisking through the air sharply lashed across the hallway that the 2 were in.
'Hwip!'
When the light was gone, the old man was nowhere to be found. In his place was a mature looking women with dark violet to blackish hair. She wore a large one piece dark navy blue dress with patterns of white stars across the dress and red runes in the bottom left corner. Unreadable green characters similar in pattern to the red runes floated around her body as 2 pieces of velvety dark crimson cloth stretch out from her dress and into the corridor.
"Tch?!" (Gerald)
"Kugh!?!" (Myuu)
"A shame, I missed your kidneys since you dodged. But I still hit." (Beuxham)
Her beauty gave off the aura of an adult, a rather rare occurrence among magical girls who tend to appear between late teenage years to young adult forms. It was a little bewitching to look at since it wasn't a usual sight to see well dressed older women anymore. Maybe in the future when the world is more okay and not struggling with recovering from a post apocalyptic scenario.
The cloth had struck into the corridor where the 2 were at. In fact it had impaled Gerald's cheek and grazed Myuu's neck. It flew at high velocities and its sharp edges enhanced by magic cut through their defences like butter. A faint green aura began to cover their wounds, it was Myuu's first skill at work. Forming a blade out of conceptual darkness, Gerald sliced at the writhing cloth.
"...?!" (Gerald)
She met unexpected resistance, there was more magic reinforcing that piece of cloth than there is in the blade she wielded. It was like swinging a wooden practice sword at a concrete wall, it was more likely for the sword to break than the wall. It meant that the enemy had ridiculous amounts of magic in her well, or that she expended a lot at the start of the battle just for a surprise attack. In this case the surprise attack failed, since it didn't contribute much to the fight.
"How about we both try to slice it at once?" (Myuu)
Without delay, Myuu thrusted a vine spear at the piece of cloth that lodged into Gerald's cheek and came out the other side. At the same time, Gerald changed her stance and twisted her elbows to slice from a different angle. They both concentrate their attacks at the exact same point, a coordination only capable of being pulled off by experienced partners. Fortunately the cloth finally snapped and Gerald quickly pulled out the cloth that had torn through her right cheek, it was heavily soaked with blood, but the blood was hardly visible due to the cloth's already dark crimson hue.
More straps of cloth flew at unbelievable speeds like living tentacles aiming to impale their targets. This time with their sight not robbed from them, they were able to make greater efforts in dodging the cloth straps. But they were too numerous for any progress to be made, at the moment they've just been wasting energy while the opponent sat back and toyed with them with the cloth.
"Looks like it's time, should I go on ahead?" (Gerald)
"Yeah." (Myuu)
Myuu gave her a nod after replying, Gerald returned the nod before fulfilling what she talked about. She released her grasp on the blade of conceptual darkness before relaxing her body, the blade itself faded into nothingness as she clenched her fist and brought her forearm down to her waist. Her elbows bent and her arms relaxed before she sent her left arm back and her right arm forward.
"OBLIVION MAGIA!" (Gerald)
Deep black sludge originating from her feet swallowed the underground in an instant. A seperate dimension born from magic, one of the most advance magical particle techniques only below the absurdity of skills. It could be said that it was the pinnacle of magic techniques as it was able to completely seperate time and space from the normal world. A self contained microcosm limited by the user's well quantity.
As usual, Gerald was in her all black combat dress, it looked like a body suit akin to those that a ninja would wear in cartoons, but it was also accompanied by jett black blouse and shorts with streaks of dark red accentuating the edges. Her head however was not covered at all, but she had her black gloves gripped tightly in her fist. A scarlet light exploded a small distance away before a familiar cloth filled her view.
"First skill [Dread kill knot] - refined technique, labyrinth of the savage." (Beuxham)
A vibrating, shaking, wriggling mass of cloth twisted and turned all over the place, it was globular when looked from afar but chaotic from near. It felt like her sense of distance was steadily crumbling just from watching its excessive and constant movements, burning her retinas as visual information overflowed her brain.
But she was still calm. Because the opponent had used a territory creating technique. As it stated in its name, it created a territory that generated advantageous conditions for its user. One could say it was the prelude to the Oblivion Magia, though it wasn't necessary to create a territory technique just to obtain Oblivion Magia. In other words, Gerald was still in the overwhelming advantage even if her mind was trembling from the sensory overload.
Countless black spikes penetrate the globular mass of moving cloths. It was honestly a revolting sight as it quite resembled a certain white mess that had flagellums. Countless barrages of black spears fire over and over like an opague dirty sludge rain, impaling it constantly through the gaps in the openings of the cloth ball.
In her Oblivion Magia, her magical particles were being expended at a high rate. In exchange she could fire stronger attacks than normal or fire attacks from inside the opponent. This time a row of spears exploded outwards from inside the cloth ball. The cloth stopped moving.
It slowly uncoiled and some of the cloth began to fade into nothingness. It was all too good to be true, the old man had a larger well than they did. Even if her attacks had been strengthened in her own Oblivion Magia, they shouldn't be able to penetrate the cloth yet, but only graze and make small cuts. She formed a dense black sword out of thin air, packing in as much magical particles as possible.
Leaping in with maximum speed, she held her blade in a defensive position in preparation for the worst case scenario. Cloth straps fly out from the shrunken mess at ridiculously high speeds, they approach her face and her vitals. Since she had leaped towards it and it was rushing towards her at maximum speed, it was travelling faster towards her than she could dodge.
Changing the mass of darkness that was her sword into another form, thick jett black armour, she attempted to tilt her body so it would only graze her as it would pose more danger if she pressed into it straightforwardly. Sadly the world wasn't so merciful.
She had been impaled. She managed to shift slightly so it wouldn't pierce her heart and brain, but it had shattered her skull and send its fragments into her brain, while also gouging out a chunk of her waist. Blood leaked onto the floor excessively. Fatal wounds to humans are not fatal to magical girls. Unless they were talking about the vitals like the heart and brain. The heart could be substituted by magical particles, keeping the blood flowing at a reasonable pace with a refined enough technique of manipulating magical particles. But the brain could not be recreated.
Why do magical girls tend to protect the brain the most? Like everything and everyone else, the brain is vital to its operation. Without the brain, a magical girl cannot think and cannot manipulate magical particles, without magical particle manipulation she cannot regenerate any of her body parts. She inevitably dies like any other organism who lose their brain. Magical particles allow the acceleration of cell regrowth, repositioning, readhesion, recalibration.
But brain cells are basically the person themself. If new brain cells are used to replace the old ones, could we say that they are the same person? Other than memory related parts, they usually never get replaced. Even if hypothetically someone was to replace lose brain cells, are they still the same person? And if memories make who we are, what if we lose that too. Disintegrating the brain is the surefire way to kill magical girls. But magical girls are such tough beings who are nearly godlike, often resembling the legend of old Greek demigods. Some even ascend to godhood as the God magical girls that govern the old continents.
So Gerald concentrated more armour onto her head, though some skull fragments got lodged into it.
"Ugh!" (Gerald)
A burst of magical particles conjured to selectively push out the skull fragments. Her head had become a bleeding mess with many holes in her skin. If she wasn't here, this could have been it. Gerald releases her Oblivion Magia. A wide grin manifesting on Beuxham's face. But this, though disastrously unfortunate, was still within the confines of the plan. As Beuxham lept closer to Gerald to finish her off, forest green rods rose from the ground in the opposite direction. It was the exact same trick that Beuxham used on Gerald.
Look vulnerable and make use of the opponent's speed against them to launch projectiles. Only this time, the green spear like object had come from the ground and through the center of Beuxham. She was impaled completely, half the spear was on each side of her body. It wasnt an attack to kill her, but to entrap her. Gerald throws something at her the moment she was caught by the vine spear.
It flashed in an ominous manner with black fog surrounding it and a loud boom following its launch. It had broken through the sound barrier, and in turn the recoil caused by its launch slcied through the ground in a circle around Gerald. The circle of flooring sunk into the ground turning into rubble as the black object landed on its target. A large spear penetrated Beuxham's forehead from the front. Before 3 more spears of forest green skewered her from the back. Pink matter spilled all over the ground, the stench of death permeating their nose.
The reason why Myuu was able to launch such a surprise attack was planned from the start. A preconceived plan that took advantage of everything they had. Gerald would go first and get their enemy into a vulnerable position before finishing them off, or Gerald gets into a vulnerable position and releases her Oblivion Magia as a trick to show she was weakening. But before all of that, Myuu deploys her Oblivion Magia outside Gerald's.
A double layer dimensional seperation, the second would be the surprise attack as Myuu impales the opponent from their insides. Her spears materialise from inside the opponent's body and locks them in place for Gerald or Myuu to send the finishing blow. A plan only possible if devised by 2 Oblivion Magia users. Beuxham must have survived Gerald's impalment from the inside by using magic. It was the only thing they could come up with. Beuxham had either used a skill or a Stick to have survived the first wave of spears sent by Gerald. It was an absurdity only capable of being pulled off by such a leading figure in the underground world.
A thick green aura wraps around Gerald warmly. Myuu kept her silence feeling it wouldn't be appropriate. A fever was welling up not to mention a seizure acting up from Gerald. She was putting all of her focus into recovering. They had their Wells drained considerably when they decided to kill all the underlings of the drug lord. Since Myuu did the majority of the killing, she was tasked to be in the backline to deploy the outer Oblivion Magia. Usually it would be the other way due to Myuu's amazing regenerative ability and healing skill. But since she was low on her well, Gerald took over the role.
"..." (Myuu)
"... Don't... feel... responsible..." (Gerald)
Weekly Power Status
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