Hope born of solitus

*

"... I know I said to support the main party fighting the crack in the sky, but do you have any idea of what we should do here?" (Lastia)

I twisted my waist and threw my left hand forward. It connected with white brittle mass, causing it to explode in chunks. At least I don't have to worry about the enemies being able to regenerate. They crumble very quickly, the problem was their numbers.

"... If I did, I wouldn't be stuck here on clean up duty. Perhaps we can reconvene with the main party and ask them? But our school area needs to be protected..." (Sariel)

"... I can handle this. You go on and join up with the main party, you're stronger so you'll take on the big boss while I deal with the small fry. " (Lastia)

Why did she point out our school area? Magical girls are distributed according to schools, but why...? Is it because we're all in high school? Then why are magical girls exclusively high schoolers?

Right... If I follow this train of thought, I might even find a lead on my curse. The exclusivity, I can only think of a simple reason for it. High schoolers having a higher adaptability to magical energy, and a sufficiently high amount of free time and availability. The highest balance of these 3 factors in the population... Magical adaptability likely put weighing the other 2. In other words, outliers likely exist. Even if they don't fit the age bracket, as long as their magic adaptability outweighs everything else...

Perhaps this train of thought was odd in itself, I was speaking as if someone was gleaning past the entire human population and selecting who to be magical girls, as if everyone had a resume of some sort for this selection. If I can find out how magical girls are selected, I might be able to understand why I was targeted for this curse...

There are many things to consider when talking about the curse. Whether it was intentionally inflicted upon me, when it was inflicted, how long more will it take effect...

When I finished pondering about these trivialities, Sariel was already gone and my wrists were deep in the flesh of another gazing corpse Trace. I threw a kick, which flung its corpse further away into the air. Speaking of which, how was I floating in the air? I... I just naturally came to use {Feed} to completely consume gravitational potential energy. Rather it is not something that my magic strictly absorbs, this phenomenon is nothing concrete, it was but a mere side effect of something vague.

A hazy mechanism at first glance, but following the law of absolute gravitational acceleration... {Feed} was ingesting my 'fall' before I could sink down any further into the earth. That's why I could float, my downwards momentum is absolute, an easy value to fixate and achieve, and to continuously negate. I was eating my 'fall' and it only made me stronger as time went on. This could be another method of training.

In a previous diary entry, it was stated that the constant replenishment of my own magic energy ensures that I will never run out by the inherent nature of my ability, {Feed}. Instead, there is the physical strain of fatigue and the mental strain of exertion. My mind is constantly boggled down by these efforts, akin to the continuous flexing of muscles without rest. However, this straining pressure is on the mind instead of the body, and... The more I use it, the more my mind adapts to it. It's like a ladder with no end, but there is progress.

For instance... I've been fighting these gazing corpses for half an hour. There is no end to them. The main subjugation party for the big boss of these enemies have shown no signals, nothing has happened thus far. Arin erected a barrier of sorts over the school, yet the monsters were not going into the rest of the town to consume other humans. They were primarily targeting the school. Magical girls being situated at schools was no mere coincidence from the selection of magical girls. We weren't grouped in schools because we were from them, or at least that was not the sole reason.

There was something more to it, something attracting these creatures to wreak havoc. Another Lastia was attacked on her way back home from school, even if it wasn't directly at school it was still in the vicinity. There's an unmistakable correlation there.

My body is tired and my skin was so drenched in sweat it constantly stuck to my dress... The high socks were quite uncomfortably wet, the only saving grace was the gap between my skirt and my socks... The cooling breeze chilled it down, spreading the coolness to other parts of my body. Thankfully my sleeves split into 2, so my arms were also plenty ventilated. My torso on the other hand couldn't share the same sentiment.

My physicality only increased and became stronger as time went by, at this point I might even be able to fight Sariel. It was 30 minutes worth of basking in an infinite source of energy, gravity. A light swing and one of the white corpses split into 2 before vanishing. A wide sweeping kick and multiple of these white creature were punctured and crumbled into powder on the spot.

It worries me that the hole hasn't stop producing these creatures, it makes me wonder if they were manufactured numerous times in a single second at some magical factory hidden by the crack. My imagination churned wildly with speculation, but it would never produce anything fruitful. While I was facing muscle fatigue, my body was gradually getting more enhanced by my own magical energy, so it took less effort to kill these Traces over time.

I had to punch with all of my strength at the start, but now a love tap was enough to cause a crater that could span the monster's entire body. Eventually there should be a limit, I don't think my body can grow stronger indefinitely. As a magical girl my body is good at adapting to magical energy, the energy itself enhances our physicality, that's why the degree of adaptation was so important in selecting a magical girl.

Or at least that was my guess, it still isn't confirmed if magical girls were selected by the factors I speculated, and whether they were intentionally selected by someone or naturally selected by a universal law. Ahh... Is being so suspicious of everything part of my curse?