Yo again! This chap is shorter, not quite reaching 4k, but it had a good cut off point so I ended it here.
This chap will give a wee hint as to the level of power the mc here is carrying around. Like in Overlord when Ainz killed 134,000 soldiers or something thereabouts.
Except my spell is way cooler and more impressive than ia-shub niggurath or however tf that crap is spelt
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Stepping through the swirling portal, Kierra squints her eyes at the change in lighting from gloomy throne room to bright sunny day. Though, she realises a moment later that she only squinted out of habit, as her eyes are actually fine, even if she stares right at the sun.
Almost immediately, she feels someone bump into her and she turns over to see a human man knocked on his butt rubbing at a rib and staring vaguely in her direction with a face full of confusion.
Right. She's invisible right now, and one of her preparation Spells made her portal invisible too.
Oops.
[Fly]
Kierra rises into the air, once more marvelling at just how easy and natural it feels to cast Magic. If she was a more expressive person, she would probably be bouncing this way and that and laughing hysterically to express what she is feeling actually flying under her own power.
But she is not very expressive, so all of that joy and excitement and freedom expresses itself only with a simple, meaningful smile.
However, the moment she stops rising, roughly a hundred metres into the air, Kierra's smile is wiped off of her face and replaced by a look of slight surprise—which may as well be jaw dropping shock for her avatar.
This is not Laptilla, she finds herself thinking as she looks at the busy crowd bustling in the city centre below her. Then, further out she observes the rest of the city.
Absently, she raises a hand out to her side and with a thought, a small orb of white light appears in her palm and rapidly stretches out before disappearing and leaving a simple staff in her waiting hand.
It is not special looking at all. Just a simple staff of gnarled wood, ending in a soft point at the bottom and a twisted spiral on the top like the most classic mage staff there is. Staff in hand, she drops her hand back down and sits herself down on the wood, swinging her legs slightly as she loses herself in thought.
Free World Online is the classic swords and magic type of fantasy. Set in a time with medieval level non-magical technology and full of monarchies instead of oligarchies wearing a trench coat pretending to be republics pretending to be democracies.
Multiculturalism was a big thing in most places, though the various Races tended to keep a degree of separation. Close but separate. Neighbours but not intermixed. She can see down below plenty of diversity. Most of them are Humans of course, followed in number by Beastmen. She even spies a couple of Demons and Dwarves walking by, even an Orc. Not any Elves though, which is understandable since they're pretty underpopulated as a species.
What she is looking at now can't be Laptilla because not only is it some seven times larger than she remembers it being, but the architecture is very clearly renaissance style.
Lame. Medieval gothic architecture is way better, she grumbles to herself. It's not a big deal though. It still looks good. Just not as good as cool towers full of spikes and tall stained glass windows.
What truly has her scowling is when she notices a certain building in the distance. One that looks like a warehouse except with long parallel tracks extending out from it and beyond the horizon.
Is that a damn train!?
To understand Kierra's displeasure at the sight of what seems to be a train station, one must understand one simple thing about her.
Kierra hates technology.
That's why she's always played high fantasy games, even before she got obsessed with this one. The only technology that gives her mixed feelings is the VR tech that let her play Free World Online. Because on one hand, she doesn't like it, but on the other, it let her play in this world and pretend tech doesn't exist.
As for why? Like most things with Kierra, the answer isn't too complicated.
Technology just confuses her and she doesn't like the aesthetic. High fantasy with gothic architecture is the best aesthetic.
Whatever. It's not like she's going to go slaughter everyone who wants to advance technology. She's not insane. She just thinks guns are lame and magic is cool.
That being said, unless some new Bosses have shown up, then she is the closest thing to a God on this planet now. So she could probably invent a Spell to go to a different world eventually, if this one turns lame
She quickly moves on before she can get any ideas about trying to go home, lest she cause a paradox and ruin this chance at true happiness that she has fallen upon.
So instead of letting her thoughts run rampant, Kierra returns to observing the familiar, but unfamiliar city below. Spinning in a slow circle until eventually her eyes land on the fountain at the centre of town. The fountain she arrived next to.
The fountain with a very large statue on it. A very large statue depicting 6 individuals. 6 familiar individuals.
She floats back down to be eye level with the statue. She stares at the statue. It does not respond. Because it is a statue.
A statue of her Party.
Her friends.
"....Hm." She doesn't really know how to feel about this. The sight of her friends reminds her that she won't see them again, but at the same time, it's nice to see them here in stone. Where they won't be forgotten.
It's bittersweet, she decid—wait a damn minute! Why the hell am I so busty!?
Her Party's composition was pretty basic. An Orcish Tank, a Human Warrior, Rogue and Ranger, an Elf Druid and finally, her, the Demon Mage.
The rest of the statues are done accurately. Depicting her friends' avatars as they were. All except for her. They aged her up and made her hella curvaceous.
Do I not look impressive enough? Kierra sulks in her mind before looking down and remembering that that is indeed the case. That thought just makes her scoff though. Don't they understand that a small girl walking around with a nuclear bomb in her pocket is way scarier than a grown woman?
Uncultured swines.
Plus, the giant horns are cute on my tiny body. Though.. Hm, they do look pretty good on adult me too. God I hope I do end up looking like that in the future.
At least they got her equipment right. The statue is wearing her main set, which is a simple toga-style robe with minimal golden adornments. That robe is the single highest level piece of Legacy equipment in the game.
Legacy equipment basically just being stuff that has a lot of Lore to them, generally they are equipment that was very important to some NPC or other. Like an ancient Mage's staff or something.
However, that robe is not the Legacy of any NPCs. It is the robe she wore in the closed alpha. She found it again after the official release by chance, because the Devs were awesome like that about continuity. Then, purely because of sentimental value, she upgraded it over and over again as she got stronger so that it was always the best thing around.
Well whatever. She clearly needs to do some information gathering. Two priorities being why Laptilla, if this even is Laptilla, has changed so much and why the hell her Party has a statue in the middle of the city.
It's not like she didn't know they were a part of the Lore. As the top Party in the game, they were at the forefront of everything, always getting the fist clear of every major Boss. But none of them had statues.
Most of the time, when a Player got added to the Lore it was just in official in-game documents and in the knowledge databases of the NPCs. As far as she knew, the only Player to have ever made enough of an impact on the game as to get statues and stuff was her.
That thought has Kierra sparing a surreptitious glance to the tall, pure white building shining further off in the city. It's a building that fits her aesthetics, being fully gothic and with a giant stained glass window at the front. But she can't enjoy it.
It's just too embarrassing~. She'd rather die.
That's an exaggeration of course, but those are her feelings on the matter.
Moving on, she considers how to go about gathering information.
She doesn't want to draw attention to herself right now. Not out of shyness or anything, but one of her friends spent a very long time drilling some reasonable caution into her head. One of the things he would often tell her is how it is important to understand the situation you are in before acting.
Like, what if there are a bunch of super powerful Dragons waiting to ambush anyone who stands out by asking obvious questions? It's a stupid example, but the point stands.
With that all being said, she doesn't think it'll be too hard to gather information without seeming suspicious.
After all, she is not a Human. She is a Demon. That gives her options for her lies that she wouldn't have as a Human.
With a plan now in mind, Kierra turns away from the bustle of the city and heads North. She doesn't know why she instinctively knows which direction is North, but at this point she is beyond questioning such things.
[Blink]
Between one moment and the next, Kierra travels nearly 3 miles. A little bit father than usual, but she did get a few levels from Vielduine so that's no shocker.
[Blink] is technically not really a Spell for travelling. It's only 8th Tier and is meant to be a short distance teleport for gaining distance in a fight. But with her insane INT stat, there is no such thing as a weak Spell in her hands.
It helps that she has a Highest Tier Class. Not that that is an official name, but that's what everyone called those few Classes that truly stood at the peak. Including herself and her friends, there were maybe 30-something Players with Classes at their level. And less than a quarter of those were unique Classes like hers.
Relevantly, one of the benefits her Class gives her is a flat 40% bonus to her INT. It's busted as all hell and she loves it. She's earned it too.
[Blink]
[Blink]
[Blink]
Normally she would use something like [Greater Teleportation] to get where she is going, but she wants to take some time to enjoy the scenery.
This far North, it's basically always cold, but it still takes a couple [Blinks] before she starts seeing snow.
She's never seen snow before. Not in real life, with her real body on her real skin.
"Is this the part where I poetically swoon about how beautiful it is?" Kierra mutters to herself alone in the sky. "It's pretty and all, but it's just snow."
She shrugs. It's still a pleasant view, and she wouldn't mind just hanging around and enjoying the sight for a while. But it really is just a random snowy forest, it's nothing special. She can think of a few places that she believes would be truly breath-taking to observe in reality. This isn't one of them
Giving one last look around, she continues [Blinking] off into the distance, only stopping now and then to observe the world.
She is heading towards a High Yeti spawn field. It's a place that she spent a while grinding at around the level 900 range, so she's familiar with the location. She could probably navigate herself to anywhere on the planet with just the [Fly] Spell to give her a bird's eye view.
As for why she is going to hunt High Yeti, that is simple. They are roughly in the range of level 1000, and one of the main things that the strategist of her Party imprinted on her was all about estimation and assumptions.
Always assume that your enemies are 50% more powerful than they appear and if you're facing a group, then multiply their number by 1.5 and assume that that is the actual number of enemies and you just can't see them.
Naturally, the inverse of this is that if you must expose yourself in an unfamiliar location, you should only present yourself to have half of your actual ability. So since she is over level 2000, hunting High Yeti will keep her safe from scrutiny. At least in the sense that anyone trying to cause her trouble will very poorly misestimate her power.
Soon enough, she arrives at her destination.
[Detect Presence]
Her mind's awareness spreads out in an instant, covering miles of land and filling her brain with the knowledge of every living creature and their locations.
Magic is so cool~.
[Blink]
Hovering in the air above a small group of High Yeti, Kierra swings her legs back and forth from her seat on her staff as she thinks about how to go about this.
A big part of her wants to use her favourite Spell, but doing so would definitely damage the amount of loot she could get.
...She really wants to though.
It wouldn't have 19 Mastery levels if she didn't love casting it.
I'll use it on one, she eventually decides, pulling one of her legs up to rest on her staff as she thinks so that se can lean her cheek on her knee. But what about the others?
She has so many options available to her. She could kill these Yetis in literally a thousand different ways. Depending on how strict your definition of 'different' is. Plus, this will be her first combat Spell cast. It's got to be a good one.
Most of the 'good ones' wouldn't leave anything left to loot though...
Alright, she's decided. She's going to use a cool Spell.
Floating her staff down, Kierra comes to a stop only an arm's length above the group of Yeti. There are only four of them standing around together on a small hill in this snowy field, but she can sense a bunch more with her detection Spell, so she isn't worried about running out of targets.
Her decision made, Kierra tilts her staff to be pointed at the Yeti without bothering to get off of it and starts channelling.
Normally they probably would have noticed her channelling a Spell right next to them, especially one this powerful. But she still has her suite of Buffs up, which includes plenty enough concealment.
It's an interesting feeling to be casting the Spell. As a Tier 22 Spell, one of her strongest, it feels different to all the other ones she's cast so far. She has to actually think about the Spell to draw it into reality, and it is just fascinating to watch the expanding Spell circle appear in front of her, rapidly growing in complexity before her very eyes.
But she isn't the best for nothing, and it only takes her a dozen seconds to finish drawing out the Spell circle. It is a rather large, multi ringed Spell circle, tinged a slight green and all but oozing majesty. What isn't quite clear upon casual observation however is that each and every rune drawn on the circles is actually made up of hundreds of tiny runes.
The complexity of this single Spell surpasses the combined complexity of every single Spell she knows below Tier 17 combined. It is one of her greatest prides, and definitely worthy of being the first true Spell to be cast by her hands in truth.
Ahh~, this is going to be so cool~, she thinks as she opens her moth to speak the final incantation, even if she doesn't really need to. But high level Magic should be incanted out loud! It's all about the aesthetic.
"[Original Spell - Advent of Theoretical Demise]."
The Spell activates and she watches with wide eyes of awe as it takes effect. A portion of reality around the Yetis flickers and then she watches, and feels through her Magical senses, as reality shifts.
One moment, she is looking at 4 panicking Yetis on a snowy hill, the next, the hill is replaced by a lake of molten lava, emanating so much heat that the surrounding snow starts to melt. The Yeti all sink into the bubbling liquid, filling the air with desperate cries of agony.
But a moment later, reality shifts again, leaving all the Yeti bar one untouched by the lava that was just melting them. Only one is charred black as coal, though it stands as if it is healthy as the rest.
The Yeti are all clearly confused and panicked when they then notice that the abrupt lava lake has been replaced by a barren patch of cracked black earth. But they have no time to consider the situation before a vile, ink black pallor starts climbing up their legs like infected veins.
The screams restart a moment later, a pain much more primal this time as their bodies are decayed from the inside out, Necrotic energy filling their veins like blood.
Once more, right as they should have died, reality shifts again. This time, they are back on their snowy hill and two are still unharmed. One is still charred and another has retained the sickly black veins spreading through its body.
Their small minds don't get enough time to try and understand their situation before a meteor falls from the sky like a bullet and crashes into them. Reality shifts again immediately after the impact, barely leaving a flash of light from the explosion, leaving the 4 Yetis standing on a dune of coarse red sand.
The only unchanged Yeti visibly panics at the sight of the other previously unchanged Yeti's current lack of skin.
Alas, it doesn't even manage to scream before all four of them rapidly start to age, their hair growing out like curtains and skin wrinkling and back bending and then, right before Time would have turned them to dust, reality shifts one final time.
Four unharmed Yetis stand on a small hill in a snowy field.
She watches with expectant eyes as the four of them stand stock still, unmoving like statues of flesh and bone.
A gust of wind blows over the hill and all four Yetis tumble and collapse. Puppets with cut strings.
In the silence that follows, only filled with the howling of arctic winds, Kierra starts to giggle.
"Hoho~! That was so cool~!" She all but squeals as she flies her broom down and hops off, boots crunching snow underfoot.
As expected of one of her highest level original Spells. She even feels a little bit short of breath. That Spell isn't easy to cast, not even for her.
[Advent of Theoretical Demise] is easily the most complex of her original Spells. It combines Probability Magic with Dimensional Magic and Time Magic. Three branches of Magic that are each considered 'forbidden' for the potential world ending ruin they could bring about if misused. All combined together into a single killing Spell.
What it does is actually fairly simple, even if the way it actually works is as insanely complex as should be expected of her Magnum Opus. It honestly fills her with so much excitement just tracing her mind over the Spell formulae. It truly is a work of art.
As for how it works? It's quite simple.
First, the Spell locks a bubble of reality at about a football stadium in length.
Second, the Spell uses a mix of Dimensional Magic and Probability Magic to effectively 'search' for a 'potential death' that someone within the AoE could have theoretically experienced. Then the Dimensional Magic constructs a temporary Dimension that manifests that formally potential future into reality.
Third, once the target dies, the Spell picks another target within the AoE at random and restarts the process, using Time Magic to reverse the experienced death and some other Magics to keep the affected party alive and healthy, with only cosmetic consequences of their death.
Fourth, after the previous process has repeated for every target inside and they have all experienced a potential death, reality shifts back to normal, Time in the area returning to the moment the Spell was cast. Only, every 'potential death' that was experience is shifted from 'potential' into 'certain', and everyone affected drops dead without a single wound on their body.
In other words.. It's freakin' awesome~!
God, she loves Magic so much.
With a light feeling in her chest, Kierra hums happily as she hovers over each corpse and activates [Loot] one after the other. The Skill is incredibly convenient, stripping all the loot from the corpses in mere moments.
[Loot: High Yeti ]
[+ 2 High Yeti Fang ]
[+8 High Yeti Claw ]
[+1 Advanced Ice Core ]
[+12 High Yeti Leather ]
[+34 High Tier Monster Meat ]
[+1 Primordial Essence (Ice) ]
"Ooh~ Primordial Essence~, that's a rare drop~."
Now, to an outside observer the sight of such a young-looking girl, dressed in exquisite robes and wearing such a large, frumpy hat, cheerfully humming a tune as she strips the corpses of her enemies of everything useful might raise some questions.
Answering them is actually rather simple.
See, to understand, one just needs to know a single thing about Kierra Kalashnikova. The reason why she loves Magic.
Like all things involving Kierra, the answer is very simple.
You see, as far as she is concerned, Magic is a tool for killing.
That is the whole point of learning Magic. So you can have cool, awesome duels against fellow Mages. Magic against Magic. Violence against Violence. That is what she loves about Magic.
The combat.
She was a bit of a delinquent as a kid.
The rest of it is nice and all. It's not like there are any aspects of Magic that she doesn't love. It is just that her main motivation for mastering so much Magic has always been so that she could fight other Mages. For it is only through combat that they can learn who is the better Mage, and she was determined to hold that Title.
And indeed she did. She has bested every prominent Mage in the game. All of the top level NPCs that she could get away with duelling, she would. Those she couldn't she would fight under a disguise. Similarly, any Player that both managed to reach within 100 levels of her and was a Mage, she would duel.
Over and over, constantly feeling the joy of fighting people with just as much variety as her. People who could throw Spells at her that she'd never seen before.
Over and over again. Until eventually, not even that long ago, she ran out of opponents.
That is why there is no doubt. Why no one will ever contest the claim.
That Kierra Kalashnikova is The Mage.