Claws of wind tore ruthlessly through the monsters’ thick hides, leaving them no time to flee. The savage gale ended them with a single touch.
“Wow, that’s brutal...” Petra breathed, staring from behind Liliana. There was no hesitation in the wind magic. Stories spoke of warriors carving through a swathe of monsters with a single strike—but this had covered the entire area.
Normally, magic couldn’t be used to attack enemies you couldn’t see or sense, and the miasma enveloping the monsters made it exceptionally difficult to track their individual movements and positions. Liliana had targeted them as a whole, simultaneously neutralizing the miasma’s effects. She could perceive in every direction at once and wield dozens of weapons on reflex—a feat that would have been impossible without her extraordinary mental discipline, vast mana reserves, and lightning-fast reactions.
Petra had been astonished when Liliana used the highest level of light magic to repel the swarm, but this was even more impressive. Faced with such superhuman power, she was left speechless.
“How have you not lost your mind...?” the mage finally asked, her voice hoarse even to her own ears as she unconsciously wiped sweat from her forehead.
Monsters roared and drooled. Some already lay in pools of blood, slain before they could even process what was happening. Still, the tougher ones lurched toward their doom-bringer. Even without seeing her, they seemed able to pinpoint the source of her mana.
But when they reached it, Liliana was already gone.
Whirl.
The six monsters that had charged toward her concentrated mana were yanked into the air and torn to shreds. Liliana dispelled the localized whirlwind immediately after. Within minutes, roughly thirty monsters had been neutralized.
Purge.
All that remained was to purify the miasma with light magic. Unlike the expert-level spell she had used before, this one didn’t erase the corpses. The quick performance left Tania stunned; though she’d gone pale, it was impressive that a six-year-old hadn’t fainted at the sight.
“Wow... Guess I shouldn’t have expected anything less,” Petra said, caught between shock and awe. After checking that the area was clear, she dispelled her barrier.
“How did you end up here at this time of day?”
“I was investigating a report that monsters appeared here yesterday.”
Petra glanced at the girl clinging to her hip, at a loss for what to do. Tania, meanwhile, could only stare in confusion at what she perceived to be a one-sided conversation.
“So, what brought you here?” Petra asked the green-haired girl after a moment of thought.
“Um... I started studying magic,” Tania replied, her eyes proud and willful.
“I know that much,” Petra said. Being in a forest at dusk was another matter. “There has to be more to it.”
Tania puffed out her cheeks. “Don’t you get it? During today’s class, my teacher said you can increase your mana with safflowers, junipers, and burdock.” She clearly expected that to be explanation enough; when Petra only frowned harder, her irritation flared, as though she were on the verge of a tantrum. “So I came here to get them!”
“In the dark?” Petra asked.
“Well...”
Tania looked ready to cry.
Her teacher had probably mentioned the plants without much thought. Tania’s body and mind were still developing, so it wasn’t advisable for her to increase her mana. Textbooks also warned that the plants used for the procedure mustn’t be consumed in large quantities.
If I remember correctly, safflowers promote blood circulation, while junipers and burdock act as diuretics and purify the blood.
They were chosen to smooth the flow of mana through the body. But juniper, in particular, affected the kidneys, even risking death if the strain placed on them was great enough. Trace amounts in herbal teas or perfumes weren’t dangerous, but who knew what damage might be done if the effects were amplified with magic?
Petra looked horrified, doubtless having reached the same conclusion as Liliana. “You’re gonna kill yourself doing things like that.”
“B-But...!”
“No buts. I’ll tell Ben you’re too young to have a magic tutor.”
“Why?! Y-You’re not my sister, you know!”
Even as Tania finally snapped, she didn’t pull away from Petra. The fear from their run-in with the monsters had yet to fade. The mage tilted her head toward the sky, visibly fed up, and clicked her tongue too softly for the girl to notice.
Having observed the exchange, Liliana offered a solution.
“How about teleporting this young lady home, if you have the time?”
“‘Young lady’? Should you really...” Petra began, then wisely cut herself off. She seemed to think Liliana’s phrasing was strange, considering that the two girls were the same age. “Okay. I’ll take her home. What will you do?”
“I’ll investigate here, then return to my estate. Will you come back once she’s safely home?”
“Yeah. That’s the plan.”
“Then I shall wait for you.”
Petra took a sigil from her pocket, and she and Tania vanished.
Liliana undid her illusion spell and set about studying the area. It still wasn’t clear where miasma came from. The most promising theory was that its particles already existed in the air, and what people called “miasma” was simply their gathering into a dense concentration.
That does leave a question, though...
Did the miasma itself give form to monsters, or did the animals it poisoned turn into them?
“Today’s monsters seemed particularly intelligent,” Liliana murmured. “If the animal theory is correct, then smarter creatures must have fallen to the miasma this time.”
Of course, that depended on how intelligence was defined. If measured by the capacity for abstract thought, one possible indicator was a high brain-to-body-mass ratio. Humans, elephants, dolphins, gorillas, crows, wolves, and bats were prime examples—with humans, crows, wolves, and bats being the most likely candidates in Slivegrandia. The corpses before her, however, suggested nonhuman origins.
“Magis rekke.”
After uttering an incantation to reduce the burden on her mana, Liliana checked the area for lingering traces of magic or hexes. The spell’s usual purpose was to detect mana and magic, but she had modified it to react to hexes cast using mana as well.
Doesn’t seem like there’s anything relevant around. I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.
With a short sigh, Liliana spoke the incantation for a spell that would gather the scattered corpses in one place. She raised a barrier around them to be safe.
“Struct.”
She envisioned the spell as an AI algorithm. First, she grouped proteins sharing the same genetic arrangement, then subdivided them based on mana. From the structure of cells and tissue—and even the attached microorganisms—she drew what inferences she could, then set about recreating the monsters.
The spell demanded not only an inhuman amount of mana but also exceptional expertise in spell design. If anyone had seen her now, they might have fainted in terror, convinced she was the Demon King in disguise.
Liliana, however, was oblivious to the impression she made. She wasn’t pursuing a taboo like immortality; to her, what she was doing was closer to recreating dinosaurs from fossils. With the remains of nearly thirty monsters before her, sorting through and rebuilding them all was madness—yet she had always been fond of precise work.
“Some parts remain unclear, but this will have to do. I’ll re-create them from what I understand,” Liliana said. There were still gaps in her knowledge. During the fight, the miasma had made it impossible to see the monsters clearly.
The reconstruction took only minutes. The results were lifeless copies, much to her relief; the last thing she wanted was another outbreak of miasma.
“A lot of these are shaped like wolves. Others resemble crows, hawks, and rabbits.”
Liliana was checking them one by one when she felt the air vibrate. She tensed—then relaxed as she recognized the familiar mana.
“That was quick,” she said.
Petra had returned. She stared from Liliana to the reconstructed monsters, needing a moment to process what she was seeing. It took all of the talented mage’s brainpower to comprehend it.
“Are you even human anymore?” she finally asked, looking worn down.
Liliana’s smile widened without her realizing it. “I don’t recall abandoning my humanity.”
“My mistake was expecting you to act human in the first place...” Petra muttered. Evidently, she was getting used to Liliana’s flagrant disregard for common sense. “Was there a particular reason you re-created these monsters?”
“When they were alive, there was too much miasma to see their shape.”
With that, Petra understood. The goal was to determine what monsters truly were. She approached the barrier and examined the reconstructions closely.
“I see. They look like ordinary animals. No idea what’s up with this spell, though.” Having caught only fragments of Liliana’s magic, she gave up on trying to make sense of it.
“They look like animals to me too,” Liliana said, neatly sidestepping the matter of her spell. “I wonder how they end up with such abnormal physical ability and mana.”
“Hmm... No idea. We don’t have enough samples, and even reconstructions like these don’t prove anything.”
Liliana brought a finger to her chin. The monsters really were close to animals. Their bone structures and musculature, as well as their proteins, hormones, and organ proportions, were largely the same.
I don’t see much change in their body composition or blood circulation. Too bad. If there were clearer differences, they might point us somewhere.
Her shoulders sagged. Even with her memories from her past life—knowledge that let her infer far more than Petra could—her only conclusion was that she still knew almost nothing.
“We might have to take one alive next time,” Liliana said.
“Huh...?”
“It would be much easier to understand them with a live specimen. Don’t you agree?”
Petra turned to stare at her, thinking she must have misheard. Instead, she met Liliana’s blank gaze, far too adorable for what she had just proposed.
“How would we even capture one?” the mage asked. “They use mana, so we’d need a mana-suppressing cage. But then we couldn’t study it with magic.”
“We’d be hard-pressed to analyze a conscious one, then...” Liliana said matter-of-factly.
Petra’s eyes widened. “You mean we’d have to knock it unconscious? Are you serious?”
It was generally believed that monsters never lost consciousness—that they sowed destruction until the moment they died. They wouldn’t relent as long as they retained their form.
“I think it’s possible,” Liliana said, as casually as if she were discussing breakfast. Her plain expression spoke to her complete lack of regard for common sense.
Petra’s eyes narrowed. She studied Liliana closely, trying to judge just how serious she was.
“I would need to test the spell first, of course,” Liliana added, “so please wait until it’s ready.”
“I don’t know whether I should hope that chance comes or not.”
Liliana would only be able to test her spell when more monsters appeared. Petra was curious about it, but she didn’t want her student putting herself in danger.
“Evanesse.”
After lowering her barrier, Liliana whispered a single word as though it were a prayer. The monsters’ remains crumbled into dust, drifting upward before fading away. White specks glittered like the Milky Way as they caught the moonlight filtering through the trees.