Nalia opened her eyes and looked at herself. The red shell parts of her torso had changed into a silver substance that was as hard as metal while being as malleable as flesh, while the rest became a slightly darker blue skin that wasn’t much weaker. Her arms and legs weren’t much different from before, other than seeming obviously stronger plus the legs and feet looking even sharper.

By far the biggest difference were the wings. Their number had doubled from four to eight, and the new wings overlapped slightly with the old ones, similar to the petals of a sunflower. The wings retained the appearance of being made of layers stacked on top of each other, but their appearance had become more ethereal, ending in corners so thin they appeared to vanish.

The color of the wings was bright silver, the patterns on them had become even more complex, and the patterns on each wing came together to create a bigger design even as they continuously changed. To someone looking from the outside, the existence of said design was undeniable, but its true appearance remained impossible to grasp due to the gaps in between wings, yet one could easily lose oneself in pondering what that design would be.

Nalia’s change was even more obvious to Elise, who triggered her ability as soon as she realized everything was done.

‘Thousand Spells Fairy. The vast majority of fairies in the world are content with the magic they learn naturally from their affinities, rather than trying to develop their magical skills further. However, some fairies end up learn much more over their lives, sometimes from experiencing things that change them and sometimes simply due to living in places like magic academies, where they end up learning from the countless spells they witness in those locations.

Regardless of the reason, it is said that a fairy who learns a thousand spells ends up changing on a deep level. Those fairies no longer simply know magic, instead magic becomes the core of their very being.’

Reading that, Elise smiled despite the pain. Nalia looked at her in concern, but the girl simply opened her mouth and spoke a few words:

“It’s fine. This isn’t gonna kill me. The others are in trouble, so you need to help them.” And then after a pause “Go there and show your big sister how cool you are.”

Nodding in response, Nalia teleported out of the stronghold, ending up floating several meters above it. Her new strength already showed itself even in that small thing, as said teleportation had been utterly effortless. The fairy felt like the weight of the sky had been removed from her back. Her magic flowed like a river which had just broken through a dam that previously contained it. A multitude of thoughts rushed through her mind at every moment, each one perfectly clear and coherent.

As such, even though her anger had reached a boiling point, Nalia still remained perfectly in control of herself as she decided on her next course of action. And that decision was reached faster than the blink of an eye, so she cast her first spell since evolving.

That spell was simply a pulse of magic, but one that carried power far beyond what she had previously been able to casually use. The pulse of magic spread through the entire area, marking the positions of every living being within it. And the enemies, so marked, instantly lost any chance of avoiding death on that day.

Her next spell was another casual one, as a wing of fire and one of wind manifested on her sides. That was her dual wing magic, but in her current state, said magic wasn’t worthy of a declaration, unlike the spell immediately following it.

“Death Artillery.” Nalia spoke in an utterly cold voice, and sixteen red circles manifested themselves around her.

One moment passed and the circles began to fire, and what they fired was a continuous barrage of powerful explosive shots that combined both fire and wind magic. Those shots flew at an extremely fast speed, and their target for the first few seconds was the transport helicopter that had brought the enemies there.

The pilot was still in it, but she had no chance. Before being able to do anything, the helicopter exploded into hellish flames and melted steel, killing her instantly. With no pause, Nalia’s bombardment switched targets to the three spellcasters on the outside of the stronghold, and even though they tried to erect barriers in order to protect themselves, none of them were defense experts, so it took even less time for the trio to be literally blown apart by the terrifying bombardment.

After that, Nalia’s bombardment momentarily stopped as she cast a spell to carry a message to Nina and Yura through the wind, said message being ‘I’m about to attack, get clear.’ Then the fairy gave the two of them a second to get some distance before firing again, spreading the shots around to target the three enemy groups inside the stronghold, breaking through the ceiling in order to do it.

The bombardment went on for five seconds until one of the circles around Nalia broke apart, ruining the balance of the spell and causing it to cancel itself due to the emergency countermeasures built into its design.

‘That was a new spell made on the spot, so I’m not surprised it has issues.’ A small part of Nalia thought while she released another pulse of magic to get a grasp of the situation.

‘Five enemies still standing.’ She discovered ‘The sword user who’s close to Yura, the slime user who’s close to Nina, the replacement member and his two companions.’ It seemed like that mage was good enough to protect not only himself but the other two as well. Seeing that, Nalia took a decision and sent another message to her fellow fighters.

‘I’ll go eliminate the other enemies and then come back to deal with those.’

+0+

As soon as Nina heard Nalia’s message, it felt like a bucket of cold water had been dropped onto her. The fairy’s words were a direct affront to the rabbit’s pride, but Nina did not get angry because she knew what Nalia was like.

‘She knows me enough to understand my feelings about this, so the only reason why she’d ignore them and say that anyway would be…’ Thinking up to that point, Nina’s face hardened in resolve. There was only one thing for her to do.

‘I’ll defeat this woman before she comes back!’

+0+

Meanwhile, Yura felt a small sense of relief upon hearing Nalia’s words, but that relief soon turned into an uncomfortable feeling. Her grudge against the Inishie was bone-deep, so a part of herself rebelled at the idea of simply letting the fairy deal with them for her.

Specially when the Inishie in question was someone who looked so much like her. And as she looked at the enemy in front, that one part of Yura grew and grew, until an idea took complete hold of her spirit.

‘I’ll defeat this bastard before she comes back!’

Without them realizing it, Nina and Yura’s thoughts had perfectly converged.

+0+

Her message given, Nalia teleported once again, this time a small distance away from the mage with long robes. And she didn’t waste time with banter, immediately declaring a new spell in order to attack:

“Triple Blaster.” Was the name, and a trio of red circles manifested on her right side (the same as her fire wing), said circles were similar to the previous ones, but they were thicker and redder.

The circles began firing large fireballs aimed at the enemy mage, but he reacted extremely quickly, firing a wide spread of magic shots and not only forcing the fireballs to detonate early but also requiring Nalia to create a quick shield to protect herself.

‘This guy is good at exploiting my current weakness.’ Nalia thought.

Her new power was a big help, but she hadn’t had time to properly adjust to it, so her spells were vulnerable to disruption in their current state. Given that, she decided on a change of plans.

“Flame Curtain.” She declared.

Her spell heated up the air around herself to extreme levels and then simply threw the boiling hot air in the direction of the enemies. Doing the magic in such a way left no spell structure to disrupt, but the enemy reacted quickly to that as well, casting a cold spell to deal with the dangerously heated gas, but Nalia was simply using that as a distraction so she could fly closer and cast a follow-up spell.

This time, her magic tore chunks of earth from the walls around and launched them into the enemy formation, flying closer at the same time. The enemy mage used three explosive spell to destroy the earth projectiles, but Nalia’s aura defense was more than enough to endure the shockwaves from such close range explosions as she flew forward, so the fairy finally reached right in front of the long robed mage.

What followed was the magical equivalent of a series of martial arts exchanges. Nalia used a piercing fireball spell but the enemy deflected it with an angled magical shield and retaliated with an explosive missile that the fairy crushed with a descending wall of force while manifesting six ice arrows and shooting them, only for the enemy to break them apart with a short-range sonic wave and manifest a magical hand around Nalia to try to crush her.

Said hand got torn apart by an omnidirectional magical shockwave and then the enemy had to deal with a lightning bolt shot by Nalia, which they did by redirecting it into a makeshift ‘lightning rod’ spell that was pretty much just a magical shell made to be as conductive as possible. Then he launched a magical slash that the fairy simply blocked with a quick shield before manifesting a jet of water that got frozen midway through its trajectory, turning into a spear of ice that got knocked away by an impact spell.

Then a spear stabbed towards Nalia from behind the mage.

“Don’t!” He shouted, but it was already too late.

The spear got stopped by the fairy’s aura defense, and then she touched it and channeled a lightning spell through the weapon, fatally shocking one of the mage’s two companions. Then Nalia had to cast a quick shield to block the mage’s retaliatory fireball and was pushed backwards from the force, but she decided to take advantage of it, shooting a trio of fire arrows into the enemy as a distraction and trying to teleport behind him to deal with his other companion.

It didn’t work. Despite her attack, the enemy was still aware enough to notice her preparing a teleport and use his magic to interfere. So she shot five more fire arrows at him, then another ten, then twenty more.

That did it. The absolute mass of offensive spells leveled at the enemy forced him to focus entirely into defending himself, so she managed to teleport close to the sword and shield user who had no way to defend himself when she used a wind slash to separate his head from his body. The mage was now alone.

Nalia was almost done.

+0+

After making her decision Nina got moving immediately, dashing towards the woman as she got up from having thrown herself to the ground and covered herself in a slime dome for protection. Despite that, she still managed to shape the slime into a wall to block the rabbit’s approach before shaping another section into a thrusting spike that Nina knocked away with a backfist before using another instant movement dash to move diagonally behind the enemy.

Nalia’s bombardment had broken down all walls in the area, so the surroundings were pretty open if you could easily move on top of the unstable earth debris (which she could). From there, Nina faked another dash straight at the enemy (who had already turned around to face her), instead doing a diagonal movement away while the enemy made another instant wall in front, followed by another diagonal back in, but the woman still managed to shape the slime into a round shield to block her punch at the last moment.

The shield then snapped shut like a mouth, but Nina pulled her fist back to avoid being caught and tried a low kick, but another section of the slime extended into a square tendril to caught her blow.

‘I need to be faster. Shorter movements.’ Nina thought to herself.

Then she did another instant movement step, but this time controlled enough to take her barely more than a step forward, ending on the right side of the enemy and instantly going for an elbow strike without turning around. She was able to feel the slime reaching out to catch her strike, but it was looser than before, allowing her elbow to move a little bit further before stopping.

‘That’s it. Just… More.’ Nina thought.

Then, as the woman was turning her body towards the threat, Nina did an instant backstep that put her on the woman’s other side, vanishing from her view despite being technically still in front of her and unleashing a punch that reached about a finger from the woman’s skin before the loose slime that threw itself in her path managed to stop it.

Another step and Nina reversed her movement as the woman was turning her sight to where she had just been, vanishing from her sight once again. That series of movements was so quick the slime that had been used to block her elbow was still mostly in the same place, so she did a low kick to target an uncovered spot and said slime managed to flow downwards fast enough to catch that blow.

Another movement reversal and it was the same story as before, except Nina tried a high hook to avoid the previous block instead. And it repeated over and over, with the slime being hard-pressed to flow fast enough to catch the rabbit’s attacks, leaving the woman unable to even think of counter-attacking.

Nina thought of trying to go behind the enemy, but that would be too slow, given she would need to move around her body, rather than the extremely quick straight line movements she was currently performing. So she just went even faster, even managing to make contact with the woman’s leg with a kick, but one that lost all of its momentum to the defending slime, turning into more of a touch.

That was still enough for the rabbit to realize that her opponent was on her last legs, so she went for the kill, unleashing two more low blows to force the slime down as much as possible before jumping in the air and twisting her body to deliver a brutal elbow strike to the side of the enemy’s head.

The head went horizontal without the rest of the body doing the same, then the woman fell over dead.

Nina landed into a crouch and put her hands on her legs, which were burning like she went through two consecutive marathons while running full-tilt the entire time. She panted in exhaustion for a few seconds before opening her mouth:

“Done. No help needed.”

+0+

The elf swordsman had dashed away to avoid most of the bombardment and managed to slice through the bits that came too close, so he was a good bit away from Yura.

That just meant she had time to built up speed as she rode the earth in his direction. Her advance was anything but quiet so the enemy had time to prepare himself, but she wasn’t planning on tackling him or anything like that. Instead she forcefully stopped herself while just outside the range of his swords (even if he took a step forward) but used the momentum of her earth platform to throw a punch of heavy earth projectiles at the enemy.

He swung his swords at high speed in a curving pattern and managed to break the projectiles apart, then took a step forward to try to get into range, but Yura hadn’t survived dozens of fights against Inishie by allowing them to do what they wanted, she moved backwards to maintain her distance and reached over to touch the wall on the right (as the one on the left had collapsed, along with most of the ceiling on that area), using her magic to make it collapse onto the enemy.

But the swordsman was quick enough to dash away from the impact site, and easily able to keep steady footing despite having to move over debris. Yura hadn’t expected for it to end so easily, so her next attack came immediately afterwards, as she channeled her magic through the ground and made sharp spikes sprout from beneath the enemy.

He was perceptive enough to notice her magic flow, though, so that attack was avoided by him dashing towards her, trying to close the distance again. Yura’s magic was already flowing through the ground, so she responded to that by erecting a quick barrier in front that he slashed through to get past, but that slowed him down enough for her to create a bunch of diagonal spikes pointed towards him to block his path.

The swordsman decided to go around them with a dash to the left, but that gave Yura time to extend their distance once again, before unleashing a new wave of earth projectiles followed by spikes piercing from below. The enemy slashed through the projectiles and dashed away from the spikes once again, forcing Yura to create another barrier, but she had been prepared that time, so this one was tougher than the last, forcing him to go around when his first two slashes failed to bring it down.

‘So that’s enough to block his attacks.’ Yura thought.

Then she did the opposite of what was expected and rushed at the enemy, carried by her platform, and brought up a bunch of earth to surround her hands and forearms with huge earthly gauntlets, which she kept ahead of herself as she approached. The gauntlets were large and she was small, so the entire top half of her body was covered by them like a makeshift shield.

The enemy was smart enough to realize what that meant, so in the moments before the two made contact, he stopped in place and slashed at her legs with both swords.

Which failed to do more than cut her skin.

“Wha-” He uttered in complete disbelief.

And Yura’s right gauntlet reached around his neck and squeezed, completely crushing it.

The small elf took a moment to make sure he was really dead before letting her gauntlets fall to the floor and touching her legs to check the damage.

‘I’m gonna have a big bruise here later, but otherwise it’s fine.’ She thought.

Shoving earth underneath her skin to act as inner armor was quite painful, but one couldn’t argue with its effectiveness. She had won several fights because of it. She couldn’t use it to protect her whole body yet, though, so making sure the enemy hit the part that was protected was essential.

And of course, she wouldn’t have done that if she hadn’t taken the time to figure out her defense could take it.

The end result was that the enemy was dead and she was alive. Once again she had been victorious.

+0+

The enemy mage knew that the situation was bad, so he made a quick decision and grabbed something from within his robe which he then ate.

The effect was immediate. A burst of magic erupted from his body and he cast a spell that created five large magical arrows and shot them towards Nalia. The fairy dealt with that by creating ten fireballs, using two to intercept each arrow. Initially she wanted to use only one fireball per arrow (using the remaining five to counter attack, but they were harder to blow apart than she expected.

‘Another person with a way to boost their magic power? This isn’t as strong a boost as that forbidden magic Aura was using, but his control is far better than hers, and it didn’t seem to get any worse after the boost.’ Nalia considered.

Despite her surprise, the fairy’s actions didn’t slow down, casting a trio of large flying wind slashes at the same time as the enemy performed a follow-up attack, unleashing a powerful magical missile that broke through one of the slashes as it shot at Nalia, while the other two were redirected to the ground by a powerful cold spell. She countered the missile with a trio of large fireballs that broke it apart and continued her offense with a barrage of dozens of stone bullets that were blocked by the enemy’s shield.

The mage retaliated by finally using the energy he had been slowly accumulating throughout the fight to double two of his previous attacks, unleashing ten large magical arrows and two powerful missiles, forcing Nalia to begin quickly casting bunches of fire missiles to intercept those attacks.

Then he tried to teleport away.

“No.” Nalia declared coldly, casting a field spell around the area.

Right before the teleport could trigger, the field spell entered into effect and the enemy realized that following through would result in being shattered into hundreds of pieces, so he hastily canceled his attempt.

Nalia had seen the barrier woman run away via teleport twice, so she had spent some time researching ways to avoid such things happening again. Her current field spell was the result of her research up to that point. It wouldn’t be able to stop all methods of teleportation, but because this mage’s method was the same as the barrier woman’s (which made sense given their connection), it was one of the ones that her field spell would stop.

Of course, taking the time to prevent the enemy’s escape meant Nalia wasn’t focusing on dealing with the remaining projectiles, which managed to reach a couple feet from her position before she turned her attention back and destroyed them, but her aura defenses were strong enough that the after effects of said spell collisions hardly affected her at all, despite being so close.

That gave Nalia an idea. With a flap of her wind wing, the fairy launched herself through the air at high speed, closing the distance to the enemy mage. He shot a quick magical arrow as she came, but Nalia easily intercepted it with a mini-fireball, quickly reaching almost close enough to touch the enemy before stopping and launching a trio of wind blades.

The enemy rushed through a magic missile spell and managed to intercept them, but Nalia remained on the attack, throwing a fireball at his face that was knocked away by a force shield before the enemy countered with a cold spell. What followed was like a repeat of the earlier series of close range exchanges between the combatants, only taken an entire level higher.

The spells of the opponent had been enhanced by his magic boost, but Nalia didn’t need to put much extra power on her own defensive magic because she could simply allow her aura to resist the rest of the damage. It felt like a nightmare for the Inishie mage. He could not run away. He was struggling to defend against the relentless attacks of the fairy and his counter-attacks were incapable of breaking through her defenses. Finally, his boost would eventually run out, while the enemy was far from tiring out.

He wouldn’t need to worry about that last one, though, because only half a minute after those exchanges started, Nalia was finally ready.

She had been slowly getting a grasp on her new capabilities while fighting, and after understanding enough she made adjustments to one of her higher level spells in order to essentially customize it for her current state.

And once it was ready, Nalia immediately began casting it, manifesting a blood red ring of magic in front of her right hand. That ring wasn’t the spell, but just the initial preparation, after which a white sphere of power slowly grew inside the ring, until it became almost big enough to fully fill out the space.

Then the white sphere stretched forward slightly and was enveloped in flame. Nalia’s spell was basically an evolution of the common fireball, a shell of power surrounded by flames that would explode, unleashing the energy inside and channeling it through the flames.

And the power inside the fairy’s spell was about the same amount as what she used in her Annihilation Flame.

Death. That was what the enemy felt from the magic Nalia was doing. He didn’t want to let her use it, so he attacked desperately with everything he had, but the fairy simply kept casting spells with her left hand to counter his attempts while she prepared her finishing move.

Seeing that was useless, the enemy cast an acceleration spell on himself and dashed away, trying to outrun the approaching footsteps of death that sounded louder and louder, but Nalia flapped her wind wing again and flew right on his tail, making his attempt feel as futile as trying to outrun one’s own shadow.

Then the spell was ready.

“Destruction Flare!” Nalia declared, launching her attack.

The enemy stopped in place, turned around and called upon all his power, throwing up a barrier spell on the way and pouring magic into it for reinforcement. Nalia’s spell made contact, and it felt like he was trying to stop a volcanic eruption. Even with his reinforcement the barrier broke, but he cast another one in its place, and then another, harnessing all of his skill and unleashing magic beyond what he thought he was capable of to endure the veritable tsunami of destructive power that crashed into him.

And, miraculously, it was enough. The magic ran its course and he was still standing afterwards, almost unable to believe in his own survival. However, a corner of his mind took note of something that made chills run down his spine.

Nalia’s red ring was still there. And before he could even fully register that fact, she began casting the spell again. Not only that, but while the first time had taken several seconds, the fairy’s second cast of that magic brought the time down to slightly over one second.

The enemy got only a single second to recover from his exertion, then he threw his all into the barrier magic again, screaming out as casting the magic felt like his everything was burning, shoving every single drop of energy he could muster into his defense and forcing out even more when there was nothing left, like drawing blood from a stone.

The barrier broke and he replaced it, then it broke again and he cast the shield spell once more… Only to get a far smaller and weaker shield as his will finally ran dry.

The remnants of Nalia’s spell broke through that final defense and hit him full on.

Miraculously, that did not kill him immediately as a lot of the force had been blocked, but his condition was terrible. Chunks of his arms were missing, and a good portion of his robes had been destroyed, showing large sections of his torso were burned almost to the point one would be able to see the bones.

It was truly a pitiful condition, but Nalia wasn’t thinking about his condition. The only thing in her mind was ‘enemy still alive, therefore attack again’.

So she cast the spell again, managing to do it in less than a second this time. Her attack shot at the enemy. He tried to scream, he tried to cast something, anything. He tried to jump out of the way.

He could not do any of that. He was completely and utterly spent, body and spirit. He could only watch as Nalia’s flare hit his body and blew him into a million pieces.

+0+

Nalia’s only reaction to her victory was merely looking around to check the situation regarding the other enemies, and once she confirmed that Nina and Yura had eliminated their opponents, the fairy turned around and teleported back to Elise’s side.

She was immediately hit by a sound she would rather never have heard in her life: Her contractor softly crying in pain.

Elise was sitting down with her back to the wall and her right arm lying on her lap. Just looking at that arm was enough to understand what the problem was, because it looked like the whole thing was melting while also breaking apart from the inside out.

Blood oozed from countless cracks and one could see patches of exposed bone and veins all over. Nalia suppressed her horror and began casting spells, first trying to suppress the flesh decay and blood loss Elise was suffering from, then trying to fix whatever damage she could.

It had a visible effect. Elise’s arm soon looked much better, and her pain was reduced enough for the girl to stop crying and even thank Nalia for the help (as well as telling her ‘good job’ for the victory). However, the fairy soon hit the limits of her healing skills. While the arm was no longer falling apart and a lot of the visible damage was fixed, the interior part was still in terrible shape, to the point Nalia was sure Elise couldn’t even move her fingers anymore.

While she had been working on that, Nina and Yura had arrived and were watching her work while talking quietly to each other. Nalia had mostly ignored them, until the elf said something that caught her attention.

“We should take her back to Danmin. They have some really advanced medical tech there.”

Well, that sounded like exactly the sort of thing they needed, and Nalia knew that medicine wasn’t her specialty, so it was better to hand over the issue to actual experts. For a moment, she thought about teleporting Elise all the way there (after having the other two go into the mindscape), but while she was confident in her skills for teleporting herself short distances, she was far less confident about teleporting along with someone else or teleporting a long distance, let alone both of those things at once.

She would try it if absolutely necessary, but Elise’s condition was relatively stable, so she didn’t want to do something that dangerous.

“Then let’s go.” She turned to the duo and spoke, having taken her decision.

Soon enough, the group was rushing back to the city of Danmin on one of Yura’s platforms, accelerated by Nalia’s magic (Nina had gone back into the mindscape). It was similar to how they had moved before, except this time Elise was lying down on the platform instead of riding on her feet.

They left behind the destroyed battlefield, along with the remains of the slain enemies. Those were the greatest proof of the struggle they had gone through, but were also something that ultimately did not matter to them.

Just one more step in the road to transcendence.