She had a vision—something she couldn’t distinguish as memory or fantasy. In order to make time eternal, the First Mage had conducted a ceremony. They harnessed the power extracted from a “seed.”
And then the ceremony failed. The survivors had been the three apprentices, and Caspar had been one of them, but she had not survived out of excellence. It had been a coincidence.
The world had changed. The people there had been caught up in it. Faces twisted, bodies twisted, existences twisted, hearts dyed in fear and despair.
The apprentices, left behind, had acquired an incomplete eternity. They could ensure their own continuation by taking over new bodies. But their egos were influenced quite a lot by their bodies, and repeating the process over and over again made that influence even stronger. None of the incarnations of the Three Sages had their original personalities, and it wasn’t clear if they kept all their memories. The girl’s personality—Caspar Vim Hop Seuk’s personality—had continued to change until she became Kana and was robbed of her memories.
✦ ✦ ✦
In midair, Kana continued to slam Frederica with back-to-back punches. She thrust out her right hand, and Frederica grabbed it, but Kana had already seen that coming.
What she had been continuing to mutter under her breath so that Frederica couldn’t hear had not been a question. It was a spell. Unlike Puk and Grim, she had restricted abilities as a magical girl, but she was made so that she could also function as a mage. In the school, all she’d been able to use that for was to tell what Halna’s magic was, but if she distanced herself from the school, there were many ways to use it.
She completed her spell, and destruction was unleashed from her fingers. This was not energy for the sake of destruction, it was the result called destruction itself. It couldn’t be seen. There was no scent or sound. Neither could it be evaded with martial skills. She unleashed it soundlessly at Frederica’s face.
But right before it could reach its target, a crystal ball materialized suddenly right in front of Frederica’s face and blocked it. Kana’s spell did not destroy the crystal ball and was sucked into it to vanish.
Kana didn’t even have the time to think, Ah. She felt an unbearable pain in her back, and that spread through her whole body. Frederica laughed soundlessly. Her right arm, her left side, her left thigh, all the parts of her body were torn up and gushed blood. Her uniform was torn from the shoulder, her chain was shredded, and released from her restraints, Frederica kicked Kana in the pit of the stomach with her toe.
She fell. The back of her hand spurted blood. Next, her right shoulder and her left calf skin tore. Frederica bounded off the crystal ball at her feet, leaping toward Kana as she fell. Another crystal ball was floating around Frederica’s shoulders.
While falling, Kana’s body was split apart. Frederica was approaching her faster than the speed she fell.
Sending up dirt and rubble, Kana collided with the ground back-first.