There are two main power sources in this world...
The power of reality and the power of fiction.
Thrum is derived from fiction. It is the source that allows weavers to create what this world calls magic. Fiction magic is the most common and most studied type of magic. It defies the natural rules and physics of this current world, so it is incredibly creative and powerful.
If the world were a painting in an analogy, then fiction would be the colors. This is also why the primordial colors belong to the side of fiction.
The power of reality, concepts, however, would be the paper or canvas of that painting. It is the static, absolute, and original. The natural state of the world before Genesis began.
And both of these powers have huge drawbacks. Fiction is never permanent. Anything built with thrum eventually erodes or, more accurately, reverts back into environmental thrum. The weaver does not suffer the drawback directly. Their power construct does.
Concepts, however, are entirely different.
Concepts are physical manifestations and alterations of this world's original state. The world line cannot erase the power itself. So, how does the world restore balance if it cannot remove the anomaly?
It removes the anomaly's creator.
Conceptual weavers are both revered and feared because of this. The power they touch is permanent. And right now, one of those waiting disasters is standing right in front of me.
I let out a long sigh as I pushed myself up from the dirt. My clothes were smeared with soil, torn in a few places from our earlier scuffle, and I patted myself down.
The girl across from me remained silent. Her black hair with white streaks hung over her shoulders, still glowing faintly. A leftover echo of her concept activating.
Seriously. This idiot.
I wondered what I should say here. Should I tell her to stop using her concept so recklessly? Should I tell her that the fight had already been decided and that she lost? Or maybe something incredibly brazen, like telling her she smells nice and has a really well-developed body?
No. Definitely not the last one. My head would roll before my mouth finished saying that.
I drew in a slow breath to compose myself.
There was one thing I needed to say before this encounter spiraled into another conflict.
"I am sorry for accidentally attacking you. I hope you can forgive me."
The words felt awkward leaving my mouth. I apologized far too late for it to be meaningful, but oh well. You cannot really blame me. When you are face-to-face with a girl whose hobby is bending time like it is a toy and who has absolutely zero restraint, the normal reaction is self-preservation, caution, and the urge to sprint in the opposite direction. I was definitely not in the wrong.
Probably....
She did not answer. She simply continued staring at my face.
Not knowing what to do, I stared back. The silence between us stretched. My fingers twitched, and I unconsciously shifted my weight from one foot to the other.
Her gaze dropped to my battered hands. The bruises were obvious. My knuckles' skin was split open. Even the back of my hand was swollen.
Then she finally spoke.
"You suck at guiding your thrum."
I blinked. "I suck at everything right now."Emphasizing the right now part.
She shook her head. "No. You were trying to expel thrum outside your body. I am saying you suck at that."
Oh,... I thought she meant my enhancement technique was bad because of the state of my hands. But she was referring to my training before we fought.
I scratched my cheek. "Well, I cannot help it. I am still a baby with thrum. I awakened a week and a half ago."
She ignored the excuse without even blinking. She walked closer. Her steps were soft but precise, like she moved according to a rhythm only she could hear.
"Do you know what you did just now in the air?" she asked.
I gave a small shrug. "My exclusive skill. An explosive thrum discharge."
"Do not play dumb." She scowled. Her stoic face tightened.
Her eyes moved to my hair. Then to my eyes.
A cold prickle crawled across my spine.
There was no way she knew. I never told her anything. I never hinted. Nothing.
Could it be a woman's intuition? That mysterious and terrifying superpower all female novel characters seem to have?
She tapped her bracelet, and another wooden sword materialized in her hand. Her hair brightened. Her eyes glowed with that eerie silver light.
"Are you serious?" I muttered. "Not again."
But she did not swing.
She simply tossed the wooden sword upward.
The sword rose. Then it remained suspended at the peak of its arc.
Perfectly still.
Completely frozen.
Time had stopped.
The sword hung there as if mocking gravity itself.
My expression froze just like the sword.
So that was that. The cat was out of the bag. She was showing me intentionally.
After a moment, her hair dimmed, and her eyes returned to normal. The sword dropped to the ground with a louder sound than it should have.
God damn it. In anime series, there is always some dramatic cue when time stops. The world turns gray or blue or purple. Sometimes there is a humming sound or a distorted echo. Even in the novel version of this world, whenever she activated her concept, she would perceive everything in monochrome. But apparently that visual filter is something only she sees.
Meaning to everyone else, time stop looks painfully normal.
"You know what I am trying to say, right?" she asked quietly.
I raised my hand in surrender.
"Yeah. Yeah. I get it."
I understood completely. Conceptual weavers were terrifying for one reason. Their abilities were absolute against the normal world. They could bend reality to their will. They could overpower any ordinary weaver because fiction magic could not override reality itself.
But concepts do not work on other conceptual weavers. They cannot overwrite another conceptual foundation. They cancel each other out.
And that meant one thing.
I exposed myself by moving.
I let out a long exhale. "What a drag. This is what I get for trusting the descriptions in that novel too much."
She tilted her head. "What?"
"Nothing. Just talking to myself."
Tasora's expression shifted the moment I raised my hand in surrender. There was a flicker in her eyes, something close to excitement. Her lips curved ever so slightly as if she were waiting, expecting, almost urging the words out of me.
She wanted me to admit it.
Fine. No point dragging it out.
"I am a conceptual weaver," I finally said.
Her eyes widened, shining as if someone lit a lantern behind them. She leaned a bit closer, anticipation radiating off her like a child.
"But," I added quickly, "I do not know my concept. I do not know how to activate it. I do not know how to control it. I meant it when I said I awakened recently. That is the truth."
Her excitement did not dim. Instead, it brightened even more.
"Oh. So there are others like me," she said. She looked upward, pointing at the ceiling of the training hall. "You really need to remove that downward force, you know."
"What downward force?"
"The one you created," she replied casually. "It might be the concept of momentum or inertia or something close to that. But whatever it is, you need to get rid of it. If you let a concept linger without controlling it, bad things will start happening to you."
"Huh? I did not do that, though?"
She crossed her arms. "You used something during our fight. Something like a downward force that kept pushing you back toward the ground. I tried stopping you with time. Naturally, it did not work. So instead, I stopped the time of the ground itself."
I felt my brain pause for a full moment.
She continued her explanation while I stared.
"Since nothing can happen in stopped time, there was no possibility of a collision. But the force you created was still active. So we just kept falling toward the frozen ground while the ground refused to acknowledge our impact in stopped time."
I blinked several times.
Then it hit me.
"Oh. I get it. Because you isolated the location of the concept in the ground instead of hitting me directly, it did not cancel out."
"Yes, and luckily, your downward force was directed behind you, so it was easier to isolate," she said.
"Well, if you cannot control it right now, I will just inform some higher-ups about not using this facility room for a while. They usually let me do whatever I want, but they will want a demonstration for study purposes. And the world line will take about a year to notice the anomaly. Once it does, it is instant termination for whoever caused it, and everything will return to normal."
"Yeah, yeah, I know," I replied.
She crossed her arms. "I helped you, so you need to do something for me."
I countered quickly. "I can lock this facility on my own. I am close with the headmaster of this academy. A weird kind of close, but close nonetheless."
"Aw, come on. You also accidentally hit me, you know!"
"And you were completely fine."
"It is not something unreasonable, I promise!"
I sighed. "I will at least hear you out..."
She took a breath, squared her shoulders, and asked,
"Can you be my friend?"
I facepalmed.
"That is the line you should say to Finster, not me."