Chapter 67 – Magical Girl Mika.

Chapter 67 – Magical Girl Mika. Announcement

Three chaps since I wanted to get chapter 69 out ASAP!

Thanks for 45k views and 300 readers! I'll keep trying not to disappoint!

A few days later, the girls came over to Akagi's house. It was early December, and the cold weather outside meant that Christmas was only a few weeks away. Kana, Mika, and Naomi were going to do their Christmas shopping the next day, and currently, they were sitting around the living room table drinking tea served by Mizumi. Akagi was busy elsewhere and told Kana she would return later, so Mizumi was left with them.

"Where is Akagi anyway?" Mika asked. Akagi hadn't been here when they arrived, so she was curious.

"I believe she's dealing with some magical testing," Mizumi said as she brought in a plate of cookies for the girls to eat. "Some members of her family are quite skilled in magic, and I think she wanted to start testing their abilities in this world." She'd been helping with magical training in addition to ferrying material and personnel into the pocket dimension for the construction of the Spirits new home.

"Must be nice to have magic," Mika complained. "I wish I could use it. That would be so cool!" There was no indication that magic spread into the world at large post-FWO, and Mizumi said nothing she did would cause a mass awakening of magical ability in random people.

"Hmmm." Mizumi scrunched up her face in thought. "I think it should be possible for you to use magic, maybe." Mizumi's words caused Mika to get excited.

"REALLY!" Mika yelled as she grabbed onto Mizumi's shoulders. "Tell me how!"

"Too close!" Mizumi tried to wriggle free of Mika's iron grip but found herself trapped.

"Mika, calm down. You're scaring the poor girl." Kana was trying really hard to hold in her laughter at Mizumi's plight.

"Ah! Sorry." She let Mizumi go and scratched her cheek in embarrassment. "But, can we really use magic?"

Mizumi sighed and dusted herself off. "I don't see why not, though it would take some external assistance first."

"External assistance?" Mika cocked her head in confusion. "What does that mean?"

Mizumi tapped her chin and thought for a moment. "So, basically, all living things have a flow of magic throughout their body. My kind calls them magic circuits. They're essentially an invisible pathway that flows throughout someone's body and channels magical energy." She continued. "In my world, these grew just like your bones do, and over time they would gradually get bigger and more robust, enabling larger overall pools of magic to be used."

"So it's like an organ?" Naomi asked.

"Kind of. That's actually not a bad way of thinking about it." Mizumi nodded in approval of the comparison. "These circuits allow one to channel magical energy that ones own body generates or from the natural environment around you. Though, this world lacks any real amount of magical energy, so you're almost entirely reliant on what your body generates itself." Mizumi shrugged.

"How does the body generate magic?" Naomi was quite interested in this topic, especially since she was considering going into medicine in the future.

"The circuits themselves generate magic. The best way I can explain it is to imagine that the magic is your blood while the circuits are your veins and heart combined in one." Mizumi sighed since she wasn't the greatest at explaining this to those with no magical knowledge. "Basically, the circuits circulate the magic and are also responsible for generating enough to fill the pathways. This means that you have a set limit to how much magical power you can use at one time. It is possible to exceed this via other means, but doing so could damage your body and the circuits." Mizumi's expression made it seem like she'd seen this happen before.

"Does the magic power come from food? Or does it just generate without the need for any input?" Naomi had started writing down notes.

"Yes, energy has to come from somewhere, after all." Mizumi smiled seeing Naomi so interested. "Without a proper diet, you can't generate the magic to fill the circuits, and your abilities will plummet. This does mean that your nutritional needs increase the more magic you expend." She knew most great mages had even greater appetites.

Kana let out a breath hearing that she was likely not affected. "That's good to hear, I guess. Not exactly sure how comfortable I would be changing into something like Onee-chan." Kana gave a wry smile.

"Yeah, kinda makes me feel bad for those who returned from FWO and had their bodies changed." Naomi put away her notes. "It would be kinda freaky to just wake up in a completely different body or even as a different race."

"Being in the game for as long as they were probably mitigated the issue." Mizumi speculated. "Most took to their new forms pretty well from what I've seen." Kana knew that Mizumi didn't really feel bad about what she did to the players, and her indifference to the plight of those transformed and the potential harm done to them kind of annoyed her.

"Yeah, but a few of them haven't," Naomi noted. "And there have been plenty driven out of their families and towns. Heck, that's why Libra exists, isn't it? Because so many had everything taken from them." Many, but not all, of Libra's members had lost their family, friends, and place in the world upon returning. Elna was one of the more famous examples since her family disowned her. Akagi's actions probably didn't help the perception that returnees were dangerous, but she couldn't care less if her actions impacted others.

"If we become able to use magic. I imagine we'd be treated no differently than the returnees. It might even be worse since we willingly became strange." Naomi continued. "We'd be a threat, and since we were just normal people, I guarantee more people would come after us. If we do decide to go through with this.... we need to be careful." Naomi looked up at Mizumi. "How many people can do this procedure?"

"I'm the only one in this world that can do it," Mizumi said. Other spirits could as well, but info on the other spirits was being restricted for the time being.

"Good, and how many people know about it?" Naomi asked.

Mizumi thought for a second, sticking her tongue out unconsciously. "Just the people around Akagi. I haven't told anyone else. Even Hishya doesn't know."

{That was kinda cute.} (Kana x Mika x Naomi)

"That's for the best," Kana added in. "For now, you should probably not tell anyone outside of Onee-chan's family unless she tells you. I imagine she's going to want to restrict this information."

Mizumi nodded in agreement. "My thoughts exactly." Akagi hadn't really said anything about this, but she figured that keeping it on the down low was for the best.

"Well, now that we've talked about magic. We should move onto our shopping list, we're heading to the Kyoto Mall tomorrow and we've got lots of things to get!" Kana decided to steer the conversation toward the impending Christmas shopping, she was also planning on getting things for Akagi's upcoming birthday in January.

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Inside a warehouse not too far from Kyoto stood a winged woman and a large green ogre man.

"Are you ready for tomorrow, Hijax? All those shoppers who think they can ignore us are in for a rude awakening." The harpy woman smiled as she asked. Her voice was cool and seductive, but the glare in her eye was terrifying.

"Your damn right! I never thought you and I would tear up Kyoto together, Sumeralia." His loud voice boomed, shaking the windows. "We've left Kyoto alone until today, and those idiots probably think we're too afraid of Akagi to attack the city." He gave a loud belly laugh. "If that idiot shows up to stop us, we can take her. She ain't so tough anyway, still don't understand why Herlex was so wary of her. I imagine he'll be quite annoyed we went off script. Oh well, we can hit Nara afterwards anyway."

The two broke into laughter, confident in their ability to deal with Akagi should the need arise. Completely unaware that their actions tomorrow would push the world closer to destruction.

Spoiler

Hijax!

Sumeralia!

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