*
Red sparks fly from her feet, like fresh lightning arcs blooming in the shape of spreading petals. Lastia used {Feed}, even her mastery was better than Yggdrasil's. Was this how it would eventually develop if the real Lastia was still alive? It tracks, Yggdrasil felt useless just thinking about it.
Her own magic power collides with Lastia's, preventing her tantrum from reaching the outside. C grade, each of these individual sparks could instantly kill a C grade magical girl, but beyond that they don't amount to much. She's keeping within the limits of her vessel, a mere provocation. Yggdrasil summons a revolver with {Barter} and begins firing. Lastia jumped to cover right away, hiding behind the couch. Magical girls don't usually use cover, since magic is so destructive it would blow through any normal protective shielding.
Yet at this moment, her furniture seemed invincible under the assault of her revolver. In a flash of light, the revolver disappears and an assault rifle takes its place. Laying low, she shoots underneath the couch with a barrage, launching bullets of mana in a storm. {Barter} works by exchanging something of personal value to the skill user for something else, what the resulting item will achieve depends on the value sacrificed. If the same item, say, a finger nail were to be exchanged for a revolver or a rifle, the efficacy would be the same thanks to the value.
Thankfully, magical girls can grow back their nails in a second or less. The value to efficacy ratio depends on the perceived value of the sacrificed item. If it was something invaluable like memories of a loved one or their own life, even a miracle like bringing back the dead was possible. Arin exchanged her soul for Yggdrasil's, that's how we got here. It was one of her last resorts. I see. How many miracles does this make? Even for a magical girl, beings meant to bring hope to the world, it's too absurd.
Yggdrasil this, Primordial existence that. God of this, demon king of that. Countless titles exist, all trying to one up each other and intimidate the other. There's no end to this struggle, however there is someone here who has reached that fateful end. An existence that transcends mere miracles with beauty and grace. A shadow, a silhouette, a reflection without a single feature borrowed from the original. The trailing light, the tailing shadow, this is who she is.
"Ho? Have you learned something? What use is understanding my secrets or my weakness if you can never reach them?" (Lastia)
Yggdrasil returned some cover fire, the floor boards have been utterly pulverised, and her bullets ricochet in the crater formed under the couch to reach Lastia.
"Don't joke around, you have no weaknesses. That's why it's so vexing. Even perfection isn't enough to describe you, you are so much more that description is futile. It might even weaken you." (Arin)
"Your description will do nothing unless you attack the subject of the description itself. In this case I am all of existence, all you have to do is kill Yggdrasil, the magic continent, the quantum sea, the akashic library, divine concepts harbouring all things that are. Once you snuff everything out, then I'll be as weak as you are. " (Lastia)
" Kghh!! Damn monster!" (Arin)
Throwing the rifle aside, it bursts into a shower of white fading sparkles as it clattered against the ground. Yggdrasil gets close to the couch, swinging her fist around the corner, the air pressure blows a chunk out of the floor as her knuckles meet the air. Lastia had gone around the other side of the couch, like playing merry gold round. With her left hand on the couch, Yggdrasil leaps over the couch to reach her target, right fist poised at ready.
Trading her knuckles, a gauntlet artifact forms around her forearm, smashing into a thin line. Lastia's arms are both held far in front of her, colliding against the gauntlet with the sharp edge of her great sword. Before sparks could fly out and bisect the house in two, a barrier expands with Yggdrasil at the centre. The environmental damage is reverted as the furniture repaired itself, and the two tacitly agreed to stop fighting. Lastia might just be curious, what else will this shameless person get up to?
"Alright, alright! You win. In the end I needed reality alteration to fix up the mess we made.
I get it, this world isn't meant to be..." (Arin)
"... What the heck? Changed your mind? I'm glad you understand the sheer absurdity, that I'm not gonna play house with you. " (Lastia)
" I think I already know how this will end... Whatever, let's carry on with the program then. I'll keep showing you how human life is like.
First, we have to get rid of the government's high alert status, and make sure the terrorist incidents never occurred...
....!? " (Arin)
Her face went pale as she processed the information, she needed comprehensive depth in all the details so that she can remove things from reality without loose ends. That includes the identity of those terrorists...
" Wha-" (Lastia)
Just as Lastia wanted to inquire, Yggdrasil blurted out what she came across in a stupor.
"Politicians...? Why would they throw their lives away? " (Arin)
They exerted such vigour, manipulated connections to access lethal weapons. Yet they weren't breathing when they met, no heartbeat or blood pressure. All life signs came out negative. Yggdrasil could access all the information of this world, after all she was the creator, all of reality's processing came from her computational power first. Then the subsequent incident too, it flagged out numerous sources of anomaly. When she looked inside the blackout zone, since the area was no longer under divine consciousness cognitive inhibition, she could trace information from the pass and inquire what happened back then.
It came up blank. Nothing was going on, and the explosives were whisked into reality spontaneously before exploding. Not only that, there were identical signals of other anomalous blackout zones all over the earth, that she hadn't sensed then. They were decoys, as fortunately, she could process all the information at once and simultaneously investigate the situation of every blackout zone at the time of the incident.
She grit her teeth and squeezed her fist shut, whitening her knuckles before releasing her grip. Relaxing her focus, she turned her gaze to Lastia.
"I've reversed all the damage. Let's send this devil off to the next world. Then... I'll abandon it and fight you properly." (Arin)