Hope born of solitus

*

Entry on {Feed}: A core component of my identity as a magical girl. Even without my memories, my body and my muscles remember every sensation. From pulling in magic energy from the air to changing that energy into {Feed} in my heart. I draw up a mental image and put my strength into it, it felt similar to flexing my biceps but this time my whole body is partaking in that flexing. It was ridiculously exhausting but... It was magic.

For lack of a better word, it felt mystical. A phenomenon beyond common sense, activated at my will and conscious decision. It was amazing, for a short moment I felt like I could do anything.

Entry on Sariel(Update) : Sariel's ability was {Swap}, its name was self explanatory. Traces are mostly composed of magical energy, energy that seemed to be arranged in complex arrays. If magic energy was coding, Traces would be that very coding utilised in the third dimension, with every end connected together in a closed loop like blood vessels. Therefore they are so dense with magical energy that Sariel's ability cannot intrude and set up a swapping target inside of the Trace. She cannot switch out part of the Trace's body with some random object to kill them.

That's why she has honed her physicality to the extreme and relies on {Swap} to ambush opponents, her primary form of fighting was still her fists and legs. She's a reliable classmate who had saved 'my' life multiple times in the past.

Entry on {Anxiety}: The staple magic of the Ogre Trace. The power of vibrations and the like, it allows the Trace to hide its presence in another vibrational frequency, creating or entering a separate dimension that exists at a different frequency. This dimension can also be used to entrap prey, but it will retreat upon realising its prey is too difficult for it to subdue. It could send slices of super concentrated vibrations and cause earthquakes. The vibrations vary not only in quantity, but also in size and intensity. It is inferred that the ogre Trace is able to control all of this with its will.

Normally it shouldn't be a tough opponent, it actually has a comparable toughness to the bat Trace if not for its vibrational armour. I was just too weak, allowing it to escape and cause an earthquake somewhere far away. At that point, pursuing it was akin to looking for a needle in a haystack.

Entry on??? : With the Bat Trace's presence, I realised after all these days and after the recorded experiences of all the other 'me's, we tend to encounter a lot of Trace's as they mainly target those with high amounts of magical energy. Even when I am not transformed, I serve as the ultimate bait. The role of these Traces is to' consume' humanity and harvest their magic.

In other words, if we were to assume that these Trace's were intentionally designed... Someone is treating humanity like crops to be harvested. If there was no intentional design... That leaves about two possibilities left. A super high tech organisation creating these monsters, or nature was doing it. Some sort of sustained mass production that makes sure there is always monsters no matter how many are killed by magical girls.

Magical girls are a form of resistance, perhaps normal people are the producers, monsters are the primary consumers, and we are the secondary consumers in this food web. What worries me is the possibility of tertiary consumers, lending credence to the fact that this might be a purposefully designed system by some higher beings intending to prey on us.

Entry on {High} : I realised that the naming convention for the ability of Traces is usually a sort of emotion or feeling. The bat Trace's is no exception. A manipulation of natural wind... Might be too simplistic of an assumption. Likely, there is some degree of control over altitude and velocity as well. Physics control beyond just wind speed and resistance, it was dense too. It held a lot of weight, but... My physical strength grew everytime I used {Feed}.

Right... At the moment there's no sense of growth due to the lack of any reference material. If there is no comparison, it'd be hard to tell how much change there actually is. At the moment it's incredibly difficult to piece up some sort of ranking or measurement system as every Trace I've encountered so far... Has been weak enough for me to kill on the first encounter, save for the ogre.

Let's classify with a simple ranking system. C rank, for Trace's I could kill on the first try, the lowest level of danger. The bat Trace is in C rank, yet I almost died if not for {Feed}. Traces within the same rank might vary vastly in power, and the 'lowest' level of danger did not mean that there was no chance of dying. Lethality rate: 20%. If I fight too many in one day, I'll die for sure.

Next will be B rank, the ogre Trace. Lethality rate: 50%. The ogre Trace is intelligent, it couldn't be underestimated. I must put my all into battle and strategy if I want to best it. Next is A rank. No encounters so far. I would imagine if a B rank like the ogre Trace could cause a wide scale earthquake and kill countless, an A rank could cause destruction on the size of a city.

As for magical girls. Ranking will be very difficult as there are multiple aspects that could vary so drastically that all sense of scale stops making sense. The only viable method is to use the Traces themselves as references, and to split a magical girl's ability into various factors.

Strength. The physical ability to dish out a heavy blow

Speed. Includes both reaction speed and movement speed. Dexterity matters such as weapon handling, juggling and throwing will vary based on the individual, so it is not considered in this data.

Sufferance. An individual's ability to tolerate damage and continue to fight. To resist physical and mental exhaustion as well as sleep or fainting will be in factored.

Sorcery. There is storage of magical energy, input efficiency and output efficiency. There are many values involved in all of these data points, that's why Trace rankings have been used as a form of reference rather than absolute values.

As for myself... Every single one my data points would be unfortunately a C rank. Bottom of the barrel. That's why future Lastia, if you're reading this, don't ever get too cocky!