Chapter 6: Magnus

"I'm done, Carol. Wake up." Koakuma's voice called me back from my slumber. Her words were slightly slurred, however. A yawn confirmed my suspicions. "How do you feel?"

"I don't really feel anything, should I?" I took a look around the room, the candles appeared to have been burning for a significant amount of time, almost to the point of melting to the base. A few cups sat empty on the table next to the contract.

"I suppose not. I augmented you with magic force and accelerated cognition." She drank down another steaming cup of something.

"What's that?"

She held up the cup. "Hmm? This? Coffee. Want some?"

"That too, but no. I meant what is accelerated cognition?"

Another sip. "You basically have the ability think at a greatly increased speed when your adrenaline is high. This means that you can process thoughts and information extremely fast during fights. Which means you have an almost instantaneous reaction time. It also means you can break down and replicate spells and attacks.

"That sounds a little like cheating, doesn't it?"

"Well, yes. It is bad manners to steal techniques from others to the point where it's almost forbidden in the magician community, but you are a fairy so it shouldn't matter too much."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"As previously stated, fairies aren't as strong as most other beings. The fatal flaw is that you can only replicate things that your body and power allows, otherwise you could hurt yourself. Also, you most likely will not be able to copy the advanced spells with multiple elements and mechanics."

"Then what's the point in me, a fairy, having it?"

"You'll spar with the strongest fairy in each of the mansion's sections to learn. Later this afternoon, you'll fight Meiling's strongest." She frowned at her empty cup. "Ugh, out of coffee again. Let's just get the important things over with before I fall asleep. Analysis. You remember the drill."

I took my place in the middle of the circle and spread my arms out. The circle passed over me and Koakuma wrote out the results on a paper.

"Well, that's disappointing." She said looking over the notes. "You're still a greater fairy."

"I was that before, but you still haven't said anything about what that actually means for me."

"Nothing much more than a title. I was sure there'd be a change in that."

"A change in what?"

"Your classification. The experiment that we were using you for was to see if it was possible to get you from a greater fairy to at least a sprite, but it seems that we can't." Koakuma shrugged it off. "Anyway, we'll test your power now. Shoot directly at me." She held her hand out in front of her, palm facing me. A magic circle grew outwards from her palm, marking my target.

I concentrated, summoning all my strength into a single strike. When I felt that it was the strongest it could be, I fired a single bullet into the circle.

Koakuma simply absorbed the shot into the circle and wrote something down on the paper. "Good work Carol, H1."

"Wait, what is H1?"

"Our power ranking system. There's five tiers, each ten times as powerful as the last, with a sixth for anything stronger than that. Each tier has a number from one to six with one being the weakest. The tiers are E, N, H, L, X, and P, the story about how we got those letters is pretty long so I'll tell you later. Anyway, E1 would be the weakest and X6 is the strongest."

"Makes sense, but what does it exactly mean?"

"To put it into perspective, E would be your common variety of fairy, N would be stronger fairies and lesser youkai, spirits and stronger youkai are in H, I would be a low L, Miss Patchouli hovers around the high L, and the Mistress would be a low X. As for P, we're estimating that Yukari would be around there."

"Wow. That actually makes it sound like there's a way bigger difference." Since I'm in N, that would make me about a hundred times weaker than Patchouli and a thousand times comparing to the Mistress. Just the thought of that was depressing.

"It is, but remember that you started off at N2. For you to be in H now is an amazing improvement."

"But wait, that means I've gotten almost ten times stronger! Why am I not a sprite then?"

Koakuma sighed. "That's where the unfortunate problem is. While it is true that higher classified fairies are smarter and stronger, the true definition is the density of magic in your body. Fairies are made up of nature elements, which also happens to be magic. And considering the results of the last two experiments, I'd say that it's impossible to change that."

I thought about it for a second before realizing that there was a gap in what she said. "Two experiments? Does that mean there was one before me?"

"Correct. We tried to forcefully change a fairy's magic density by directly injecting her with magic, but that was a bust. It ended up giving her something like a flu."

I remembered the reason why I was in the library in the first place. "Then she's the one that I'm replacing? Why couldn't you just take the magic out?"

"We would, but as I previously stated, fairies are literally made up of magic. Taking magic away is like draining my blood. It's too risky to attempt so we just left her so the magic could naturally restabilize." She yawned loudly. "I can barely stay up. I think I'll go to sleep now. Go talk to Miss Patchouli so she can brief you on the fight. Oh yeah, give her this too." She folded the paper that she wrote all the notes on and tucked it into my pocket. With another yawn, she excused herself from the room.

I sat silently in the room, thinking about everything she had just said. The inability to become anything more than just garden variety fairy, the massive difference in power between me and non-fairies, the fact that I was just being used as an experiment. I suppose that I could be thankful for being created at least a greater fairy and not a normal fairy. I suppose I could be thankful that I'm at least I improved from N2 to H1. I suppose I could be thankful that I had the chance to work with Patchouli and Koakuma and even meet the Mistress. With a sigh and a shake of my head I dismissed all those thoughts and began making my way back up to the mansion.

Patchouli sat silently, looking over the notes and occasionally scribbling something on her own sheet of paper. Once she finished, she turned to me. "Koakuma has told you about the duel you'll having today, correct?"

"Yes. If I remember correctly, I'm against Meiling's best."

"Indeed. Meiling's specialty is in hand-to-hand combat, you can expect your opponent to be aggressive and powerful at close range. Use your augmentations to your advantage and attack from afar while using your reaction time to dodge her strikes."

"Long range and dodge, got it."

Patchouli gave me a mysterious smirk. "Maybe you'll be able to learn her moves and turn them against her."

Right, the accelerated cognition. I might as well use this opportunity to learn things out of magic too.

"The battle begins in twelve minutes, head to the courtyard in front of the mansion. We'll be watching the fight." She stuffed her book under arm and floated her way to the mansion door.

I took a second to check the calendar on her desk before I left. Saturday. Looks like I'll be using earth today. I went over the spells that I knew in my head as I walked.

When I arrived at the courtyard, all the green-dressed fairies turned to look. A tall fairy with her arms crossed stood from the her seat on the edge of a fountain. She took her place facing me and cracked her knuckles.

"I have to fight you? Heh. This'll be easy." She said with a cocky grin. The fairies behind her began cheering her and telling her to kick my butt.

"Getting a little excited I see, do you really want to be beaten that badly?" I responded with my own banter. The fairies behind me started cheering, they all wore purple dresses. The ones in the back were less rowdy, probably the maids from Voile.

My opponent was clearly ticked. "Enough talk, this fight begins now." She rushed towards me at an astounding speed.

I raised a wall between us to buy me time to prepare my next spell. It didn't do much, she ran right through it as if it were nothing and was in front of me before I knew it. Suddenly, everything slowed down right as she pulled her fist back. This must be the accelerated cognition taking effect. I formed a glove of stone around my hand and punched her across her face before she could hit me.

She flew a short distance to the side before catching herself and standing up. She cackled loudly. "Not bad! I think I'll use this now." Her hands began burning with a blue fire. "Twin Dragons. Now you'll regret hitting me!"

I watched her every movement as she got herself into a fighting stance. I replicated it and drew up my own fire.

"You know the Twin Dragons too? Ha. No matter, it's a shame that I'm better." Her fighting style had changed completely, her movements had become more smooth and controlled. Her muscles tensed up right before she came at me.

The miniscule warning gave me a chance to prepare myself for her strike. I shifted my body slightly to dodge and countered with a flaming punch to her back. I jumped back to put more space between us while I began my next attack. Right as she stood, I dropped a large boulder on her.

The boulder exploded outward in a blue fireball, revealing a very pissed fairy. "Alright. Playtime's over." She again came at me except this time, she was throwing blue fireballs at me.

She got to me way quicker than before and began a blindingly fast barrage of attacks. A series of swift punches followed by a leg sweep to a shoulder slam. After barely avoiding all of them, I swung my leg around to kick her in the side but she grabbed my leg and tossed me to the ground.

I called a barrier of stone to protect my back mere moments before I heard it shatter. I used my wings to propel me away from her while leaving a cloud of dust to distract her. I brought myself back to my feet and retaliated with the exact same attacks that she did, sending her flying.

She stomped the ground, sending a shockwave that brought me to my knees. In that time that I couldn't move, she rushed in and punched me squarely in my stomach with all her force.

I could feel bones breaking as I was sent into the air. The pain was enough to make me black out momentarily. I soon realized that I was high in the sky, falling like a ragdoll. I looked over my shoulder at the ground and calculated the time I had. 2.79 seconds. And she's gathering her power to hit me when I get back down. Perfect.

With a quick observation of the surroundings, I identified all the tools that I needed: water from the fountain, earth and metal from the ground, wood from the hedges, and heat from the air. A quick glance showed me that she was concentrating so hard that she didn't even notice me start to manipulate the elements. Off to the side, I used the wood to create a flame and a ball of metal to absorb the heat. I brought water into the air above her and froze them into sharp spikes. I brought the stone around my body to protect myself.

When she opened her eyes, I was right in front of her. Before she could strike, however, I called the vines to hold her wrists and ankles and reinforced it with metal anchored to the ground. I positioned the ice spikes around her and sent them at her at different angles. She saw what I was doing and released all her stored energy in an burst, shattering the spikes, destroying her bindings, and breaking my stone armor. All a part of my plan.

She was panting from using up all her energy but I wasn't about to give her a break. I gathered all the stored heat in the metal chunks and created fireballs with them while shaping the metal into spikes. I rebuilt my armor and rushed her, landing a palm strike and staggering her backward, right into my trap.

I used the spikes to cage her in and launched the fireballs at her, which she managed to absorb into her twin dragons. I dumped water on her to extinguish her newly acquired flames then created electricity by combining elements and ran it through the metal.

She slumped over, completely defeated. As I dispelled all the magic that I was controlling, all the fairies watching started cheering and chanting my name. I blacked out mere moments later with barely any chance to enjoy my victory.