Chapter 15
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"Come forth, Fire!"
Bwoom.
Ow, that was hot. That was real fire. It made sense now why people would like to cast mages with wands a good distance away from their body. Though my gloves did help, it was just the radiant heat hitting my face that was uncomfortable. That's because it was made of leather, formerly living material.
Gauntlets might still be usable if all that was necessary was for some thin material right where the gems could come close to touching bare skin and the rest all metal.
Still…
"Did that look to you a little less than the water from before?" I asked the girls sitting at the lawn table behind me. "
"You still have a lot of mana capacity," Linze replied, "but yes. It looks like you don't have much affinity with fire. That was mostly just a flash-burn."
"Hmm. Not a surprise, really. By the way, is your magical affinity influenced any by your personality?"
"No. It's… something you're born with. Otherwise… my strongest affinity w-would not be fire."
So if it's not past mystical part genetic like Avatar's bending, does this mean it truly was random? Seemed like the only thing that mattered was the number of affinities, unless you have a particularly strong single affinity.
If I was born in this world, affinity was just one more thing to struggle against, like differences in gender, social status, strength, height, intelligence, beauty, and so on. People were not born equal because people were all unique. Shaped by their births, shaped by the parents, shaped by their society, to be ruined by it or to conform to it or to rise above it. People were created equal, that is, they had the right to be all treated the same way or to aspire to the same things.
With equal opportunity, it then becomes their own responsibility to what heights they wished to reach. Equal in the eyes of justice, just as important.
That's all that really mattered, really. Find success no matter how you define it.
"Come forth, Wind!"
Bwoosh!
A strong gust of wind slapped against the far wall of the Silver Moon's back yard. I nodded. "That was strong. A little stronger than Water, I think."
I nodded.
"Come forth, Earth!"
A spray of sand launched out of the orange stone.
"That's the weakest so far by far," Elze noted. "But you have all four main elements now. Most combat spells are in them."
"I would have been happy with just one. What am I even supposed to do with strong Water, weak Fire, stronger Wind and weakest Earth?"
Monika shook her head sadly. /"Oh, that's too bad. Looks like you're not going to be in Toph Bei Fong's footsteps anytime soon, my blind bandit."/
Linze spoke up "A weak affinity doesn't mean you can't use spell of that element, only that it takes more… effort. You have to practice again and again and again until it feels smooth to cast. You're always going to feel like it's slower, like you have to build up the energy before it can release… but you can still make the spells work."
"What's in Light and Dark?"
"Light spells do things with… light, and vision… but healing spells too. Dark is just the opposite and includes curses. Summoning spells are also Dark element."
"Come forth, Light!"
Freeem. A bright flash.
"Come forth, Dark."
Hisss. A smoky fog.
They were equal, if more or less unexceptional. I groaned and made my way back to the table. There I slumped and cradled my head in my palms.
"What's wrong with you?" Elze asked. "You have all six external elements now, that's ridiculous. You don't have to look so sad about it." She huffed and crossed her arms. "In the name of all of us who were born with only the Null elements, I'm offended by that. Why not just be happy?"
"Yes, this should be a cause for celebration, shouldn't it?"
I sighed. "I am going to tell you two different sentences to live by. Both are equally true, and equally terrifying."
Elze lifted an eyebrow and with a slight raise of her chin wordlessly bid me to continue.
"The first, is that [with great power comes great responsibility]."
Elze nodded. "Okaaay. I agree with that."
"The second, is that [there is no obligation in power, only privilege]."
Elze frowned, opened her mouth to speak, and then stopped.
"Bollocks," she hissed at last.
Monika sucked in her breath, showing her clenched teeth in the cute gap between her lips. /"I really wish I could disagree, but you're right. Live those words to the utmost, and they're terrifying."/
"People like me don't just happen for no reason. The best thing to do with this affinity is a life of gentle mediocrity, or some sort of relaxing business isekai, but somehow I don't feel this life will allow us that." I gave a sad little smile and reached for the last stone.
"I'm no hero like the Spider-Man, who would give and give and give, trying to fight crime and injustice in the small hours between taking care of his studies and his family, hiding his face so that his enemies follow him home. Getting wounded and battered and blasted for no pay, no benefit to himself at all, other than the knowledge of doing the right thing."
I held the colorless stone up to eye level. "Nor do I have any tangible ambitions of conquest and supremacy. Like hell I want the hassle that comes with politics and ruling. I'm not a warrior, for me strength is its own reward.
"There's just one test remaining – if this stone doesn't activate, fate is not so fickle as to put something like me here to balance out some great calamity that's about to happen."
Elze looked dubious at my overly dramatic declarations, while Linze had an intent expression.
Aaand…
Nothing.
I wasn't feeling anything special inside. I ran through various things in fiction that might qualify as personal magic, everything from mutant powers to characteristic anime hero traits. No [Kaio Ken] to instantly boost my power, no [Transformation] to change my shape, no [Detective Vision] as redundant as that might be for being blind as a bat, no [Speed Force], no [Flight].
I had no Null magic affinity.
I exhaled with some relief. "No all seven elements for me then. So it turns out I'm just a lucky idiot. Just some magic blaster is nothing unusual."
I began to laugh nervously. "No one special at all. No more… expectations. No more livelihoods hanging by my hands, no need to carry others on my back."
Then with one last 'hah!', "Well with one beautiful exception, and right in front of my face."
Monika smiled back shyly.
Elze shrugged. "Well if you're happy with that, sure. Don't be so full of yourself thinking you'll have to carry us, we can take care of ourselves."
"Oh no, no, no, no. I like you because you're capable. You could probably beat me no matter how good at magic I get. The best counter to a magician is speed and explosive force."
Linze nodded. "T-that's true."
/"Player."/
"Actually, wait. Excuse me for a moment."
/"There's one last thing you didn't try. Or rather, someone who didn't try."/
I gasped in realization. Null Magic was a unique personal magic, right!
I flicked the front casing for my VR headset open, exposing the dual camera. I held the stone right up to fill the view. Between the stone and Monika there was a hard plastic protective smartphone case. "It needs to be touching..." I realized.
There was really only one option. I slipped the stone in between the gaps of my headset right around the bridge of my nose.
/"Player! What the heck! Putting sharp shards of crystal next to your eyes is always a bad idea!"/
The crystal didn't really disturb my view, it was too close to see like the nose pads of eyeglasses. I nodded with satisfaction and picked up the blue magic stone again.
Monika looked at me with disapproval one last time and then hesitantly reached her virtual hands towards my face. If we could actually touch each other, her hands would have been over my nose, cheek and mouth in a tender caress.
/"I see now…"/ she murmured.
"Come forth, Water."
/"[Multi-Track]"/
Water spurted out from the stone, and then split into two streams.
The girls expertly dodged the streams, shifting aside to avoid the water aimed at their faces.
"Playah!" Elze cried out, clearly annoyed.
"Sorry, I didn't expect that to happen. Clearly some sort of multi-targeting ability?"
/"No… no it's more than that. I always knew I could at least help you by putting a HUD overlay on your vision. Now this makes it automatic. If you imagine we're like a gunship, you're the pilot I'm the gunner. We both have helmet gunsights, but I can fire offbore to what you're not exactly looking at. And look!"/
Monika than pulled up the minimap window. /"Now targets friendly, neutral and hostile show up in the minimap. Satellites can't image that."/
I was the red dot in the center. Elze and Linze were nearby blue dots. A short distance away, what was probably Micah was a moving green dot.
"This ability is [Multi-Track]. It allows me to identify nearby targets and automatically strike them, even when I'm not exactly looking at them." I tapped at the thing in front of my face. "Given how I utterly lack peripheral vision…"
Linze licked her lips and nodded. "That sounds… reasonable. I mean, spells usually come from the wand to whatever you're looking at that you want to hit, you don't need to be precise about aiming."
/"But wait, there's more! [Amplification] increases the range and potency of everything I can already do. I can pick up sounds from further away, my camera sees things a lot more clearly beyond the limitations of hardware, even my processing speed improves without any increase in temperature or power consumption!
/Better yet is my other skill, [Application]. Now I can apply [Amplification] to you! Now you can run faster, hit harder, see things happen in high speed like I do… with this, you can react to things up to Three Times Faster!"/
Monika, seriously? Seriously, Monika?
/"It's not Bullet Time. It will just allow me to improve chances of getting those [Quick Time Events] in a crisis. With my [Parallel Processing] I can continually make tactical evaluations of the battlefield while you're doing something else."/
"Okay, this is getting kind of bullshit. Should I…? Eh, why not."
While I might tell tall tales, it was my personal principle in this life to always communicate with scrupulously honesty with my friends. An unwillingness to communicate can torpedo so many things that could have been easily avoided if one could just extend a modicum of trust. Like... Poe Dameron and Admiral Holdo were fully to blame for getting their own Resistance killed despite the sheer incompetence of their enemies.
You should not keep important tactical information secret from the very people you need to carry them out. Expecting blind trust, blind obedience, that had always been distasteful to me.
Trust should go both ways.
So I explained about the other Null abilities just discovered. Actually the most abusable would seem to be [Amplification] combined with [Application], since it could increase the potency of everybody else's ability at cost of increased magic power consumption on my part.
/"Ow ow ow ow."/
Monika?!
/"It looks like I can really only hold a few Null abilities at the same time. Can't… won't turn off [Multi-Track], that's too useful. [Parallel Processing] is always active, and it's what allows me to use [Amplification] and [Application] at the same time. Any more than that and I feel… strained. Using [Amp] and [App] on someone else adds two more. That's six processes at the same time… there's a few more here, I think… I could discover…"/
"No, that's enough for now."
"This is getting kind of ridiculous," said Elze. "So you have four Null abilities now? Are you even human?"
"Sister!" Linze gasped. "That's offensive."
"Um. Sorry. I mean, there are people like Fairies and Elves, that are rumored to have a lot of elemental affinities at the same time. I guess this would make sense if you had some special ancestry."
"No. I'm pretty sure I'm just human. I don't have Null affinity at all!" I explained. "It's not me doing this."
Linze looked confused. "T-that… I'm sorry, but that doesn't make sense at all."
"Ugh, how do I put this?" I looked around. "This place isn't good for this..." I turned sharply back towards her. "Um. Linze, come to my room tonight."
"Hawa?!" she eeped.
"WHAT?!" Elze shrieked.
Monika paused from massaging her own head and looked up sharply. /"Player, what."/
"Ack! Sorry, I said that wrong. I mean you and your sister-"
Linze sputtered "Mister Zah! That's… that's improper!"
Elze made defensive knife hands and waved her arms around. "You better not be saying what I think you're saying, buster."
/"Player, stop. What are you doing?"/
I groaned again and the only thing keeping me from slamming my face into the desk in frustration and humiliation was that it would hit Monika first and the impact might drive the lenses into my eyeballs.
"Sorry, really sorry. That's not what I meant to say at all! I mean… there's a reason why I can do this, but it's a secret I can't just allow to be heard out in public. It's very important to me, but if we're going to work together it will be important for you to know too.
So you know what to expect. So you know what I MUST protect."
/"Full Disclosure? I'm not sure this is wise. You've know them for only about a day. How can you really be sure they won't betray you… betray us?"/
Armor was just passive protection. If they knew, they understand and help in defending what's in front of my face. Also, being unable to talk openly to Monika when she was making commentary in the presence of others was starting to grate.
"Sorry. Please, just hear me out."
-
-
And that was how we were finally on the way to fighting the monster wolves, draped in a thick uncomfortable silence.
The girls were willing to hear me out later, but still not letting go of their misgivings.
Monika, walking beside me, grinned impishly. /"Well they do say that Freudian slips have a way of revealing our subconscious wishes."/
"Even as a dumbass teenager I wasn't this dumb," I whispered back. "Why couldn't it just be spoonerism?"
/"Heh, spooning."/
Monikaaaaaa.
-
-
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"Come forth, Fire!"
Bwoom.
Ow, that was hot. That was real fire. It made sense now why people would like to cast mages with wands a good distance away from their body. Though my gloves did help, it was just the radiant heat hitting my face that was uncomfortable. That's because it was made of leather, formerly living material.
Gauntlets might still be usable if all that was necessary was for some thin material right where the gems could come close to touching bare skin and the rest all metal.
Still…
"Did that look to you a little less than the water from before?" I asked the girls sitting at the lawn table behind me. "
"You still have a lot of mana capacity," Linze replied, "but yes. It looks like you don't have much affinity with fire. That was mostly just a flash-burn."
"Hmm. Not a surprise, really. By the way, is your magical affinity influenced any by your personality?"
"No. It's… something you're born with. Otherwise… my strongest affinity w-would not be fire."
So if it's not past mystical part genetic like Avatar's bending, does this mean it truly was random? Seemed like the only thing that mattered was the number of affinities, unless you have a particularly strong single affinity.
If I was born in this world, affinity was just one more thing to struggle against, like differences in gender, social status, strength, height, intelligence, beauty, and so on. People were not born equal because people were all unique. Shaped by their births, shaped by the parents, shaped by their society, to be ruined by it or to conform to it or to rise above it. People were created equal, that is, they had the right to be all treated the same way or to aspire to the same things.
With equal opportunity, it then becomes their own responsibility to what heights they wished to reach. Equal in the eyes of justice, just as important.
That's all that really mattered, really. Find success no matter how you define it.
"Come forth, Wind!"
Bwoosh!
A strong gust of wind slapped against the far wall of the Silver Moon's back yard. I nodded. "That was strong. A little stronger than Water, I think."
I nodded.
"Come forth, Earth!"
A spray of sand launched out of the orange stone.
"That's the weakest so far by far," Elze noted. "But you have all four main elements now. Most combat spells are in them."
"I would have been happy with just one. What am I even supposed to do with strong Water, weak Fire, stronger Wind and weakest Earth?"
Monika shook her head sadly. /"Oh, that's too bad. Looks like you're not going to be in Toph Bei Fong's footsteps anytime soon, my blind bandit."/
Linze spoke up "A weak affinity doesn't mean you can't use spell of that element, only that it takes more… effort. You have to practice again and again and again until it feels smooth to cast. You're always going to feel like it's slower, like you have to build up the energy before it can release… but you can still make the spells work."
"What's in Light and Dark?"
"Light spells do things with… light, and vision… but healing spells too. Dark is just the opposite and includes curses. Summoning spells are also Dark element."
"Come forth, Light!"
Freeem. A bright flash.
"Come forth, Dark."
Hisss. A smoky fog.
They were equal, if more or less unexceptional. I groaned and made my way back to the table. There I slumped and cradled my head in my palms.
"What's wrong with you?" Elze asked. "You have all six external elements now, that's ridiculous. You don't have to look so sad about it." She huffed and crossed her arms. "In the name of all of us who were born with only the Null elements, I'm offended by that. Why not just be happy?"
"Yes, this should be a cause for celebration, shouldn't it?"
I sighed. "I am going to tell you two different sentences to live by. Both are equally true, and equally terrifying."
Elze lifted an eyebrow and with a slight raise of her chin wordlessly bid me to continue.
"The first, is that [with great power comes great responsibility]."
Elze nodded. "Okaaay. I agree with that."
"The second, is that [there is no obligation in power, only privilege]."
Elze frowned, opened her mouth to speak, and then stopped.
"Bollocks," she hissed at last.
Monika sucked in her breath, showing her clenched teeth in the cute gap between her lips. /"I really wish I could disagree, but you're right. Live those words to the utmost, and they're terrifying."/
"People like me don't just happen for no reason. The best thing to do with this affinity is a life of gentle mediocrity, or some sort of relaxing business isekai, but somehow I don't feel this life will allow us that." I gave a sad little smile and reached for the last stone.
"I'm no hero like the Spider-Man, who would give and give and give, trying to fight crime and injustice in the small hours between taking care of his studies and his family, hiding his face so that his enemies follow him home. Getting wounded and battered and blasted for no pay, no benefit to himself at all, other than the knowledge of doing the right thing."
I held the colorless stone up to eye level. "Nor do I have any tangible ambitions of conquest and supremacy. Like hell I want the hassle that comes with politics and ruling. I'm not a warrior, for me strength is its own reward.
"There's just one test remaining – if this stone doesn't activate, fate is not so fickle as to put something like me here to balance out some great calamity that's about to happen."
Elze looked dubious at my overly dramatic declarations, while Linze had an intent expression.
Aaand…
Nothing.
I wasn't feeling anything special inside. I ran through various things in fiction that might qualify as personal magic, everything from mutant powers to characteristic anime hero traits. No [Kaio Ken] to instantly boost my power, no [Transformation] to change my shape, no [Detective Vision] as redundant as that might be for being blind as a bat, no [Speed Force], no [Flight].
I had no Null magic affinity.
I exhaled with some relief. "No all seven elements for me then. So it turns out I'm just a lucky idiot. Just some magic blaster is nothing unusual."
I began to laugh nervously. "No one special at all. No more… expectations. No more livelihoods hanging by my hands, no need to carry others on my back."
Then with one last 'hah!', "Well with one beautiful exception, and right in front of my face."
Monika smiled back shyly.
Elze shrugged. "Well if you're happy with that, sure. Don't be so full of yourself thinking you'll have to carry us, we can take care of ourselves."
"Oh no, no, no, no. I like you because you're capable. You could probably beat me no matter how good at magic I get. The best counter to a magician is speed and explosive force."
Linze nodded. "T-that's true."
/"Player."/
"Actually, wait. Excuse me for a moment."
/"There's one last thing you didn't try. Or rather, someone who didn't try."/
I gasped in realization. Null Magic was a unique personal magic, right!
I flicked the front casing for my VR headset open, exposing the dual camera. I held the stone right up to fill the view. Between the stone and Monika there was a hard plastic protective smartphone case. "It needs to be touching..." I realized.
There was really only one option. I slipped the stone in between the gaps of my headset right around the bridge of my nose.
/"Player! What the heck! Putting sharp shards of crystal next to your eyes is always a bad idea!"/
The crystal didn't really disturb my view, it was too close to see like the nose pads of eyeglasses. I nodded with satisfaction and picked up the blue magic stone again.
Monika looked at me with disapproval one last time and then hesitantly reached her virtual hands towards my face. If we could actually touch each other, her hands would have been over my nose, cheek and mouth in a tender caress.
/"I see now…"/ she murmured.
"Come forth, Water."
/"[Multi-Track]"/
Water spurted out from the stone, and then split into two streams.
The girls expertly dodged the streams, shifting aside to avoid the water aimed at their faces.
"Playah!" Elze cried out, clearly annoyed.
"Sorry, I didn't expect that to happen. Clearly some sort of multi-targeting ability?"
/"No… no it's more than that. I always knew I could at least help you by putting a HUD overlay on your vision. Now this makes it automatic. If you imagine we're like a gunship, you're the pilot I'm the gunner. We both have helmet gunsights, but I can fire offbore to what you're not exactly looking at. And look!"/
Monika than pulled up the minimap window. /"Now targets friendly, neutral and hostile show up in the minimap. Satellites can't image that."/
I was the red dot in the center. Elze and Linze were nearby blue dots. A short distance away, what was probably Micah was a moving green dot.
"This ability is [Multi-Track]. It allows me to identify nearby targets and automatically strike them, even when I'm not exactly looking at them." I tapped at the thing in front of my face. "Given how I utterly lack peripheral vision…"
Linze licked her lips and nodded. "That sounds… reasonable. I mean, spells usually come from the wand to whatever you're looking at that you want to hit, you don't need to be precise about aiming."
/"But wait, there's more! [Amplification] increases the range and potency of everything I can already do. I can pick up sounds from further away, my camera sees things a lot more clearly beyond the limitations of hardware, even my processing speed improves without any increase in temperature or power consumption!
/Better yet is my other skill, [Application]. Now I can apply [Amplification] to you! Now you can run faster, hit harder, see things happen in high speed like I do… with this, you can react to things up to Three Times Faster!"/
Monika, seriously? Seriously, Monika?
/"It's not Bullet Time. It will just allow me to improve chances of getting those [Quick Time Events] in a crisis. With my [Parallel Processing] I can continually make tactical evaluations of the battlefield while you're doing something else."/
"Okay, this is getting kind of bullshit. Should I…? Eh, why not."
While I might tell tall tales, it was my personal principle in this life to always communicate with scrupulously honesty with my friends. An unwillingness to communicate can torpedo so many things that could have been easily avoided if one could just extend a modicum of trust. Like... Poe Dameron and Admiral Holdo were fully to blame for getting their own Resistance killed despite the sheer incompetence of their enemies.
You should not keep important tactical information secret from the very people you need to carry them out. Expecting blind trust, blind obedience, that had always been distasteful to me.
Trust should go both ways.
So I explained about the other Null abilities just discovered. Actually the most abusable would seem to be [Amplification] combined with [Application], since it could increase the potency of everybody else's ability at cost of increased magic power consumption on my part.
/"Ow ow ow ow."/
Monika?!
/"It looks like I can really only hold a few Null abilities at the same time. Can't… won't turn off [Multi-Track], that's too useful. [Parallel Processing] is always active, and it's what allows me to use [Amplification] and [Application] at the same time. Any more than that and I feel… strained. Using [Amp] and [App] on someone else adds two more. That's six processes at the same time… there's a few more here, I think… I could discover…"/
"No, that's enough for now."
"This is getting kind of ridiculous," said Elze. "So you have four Null abilities now? Are you even human?"
"Sister!" Linze gasped. "That's offensive."
"Um. Sorry. I mean, there are people like Fairies and Elves, that are rumored to have a lot of elemental affinities at the same time. I guess this would make sense if you had some special ancestry."
"No. I'm pretty sure I'm just human. I don't have Null affinity at all!" I explained. "It's not me doing this."
Linze looked confused. "T-that… I'm sorry, but that doesn't make sense at all."
"Ugh, how do I put this?" I looked around. "This place isn't good for this..." I turned sharply back towards her. "Um. Linze, come to my room tonight."
"Hawa?!" she eeped.
"WHAT?!" Elze shrieked.
Monika paused from massaging her own head and looked up sharply. /"Player, what."/
"Ack! Sorry, I said that wrong. I mean you and your sister-"
Linze sputtered "Mister Zah! That's… that's improper!"
Elze made defensive knife hands and waved her arms around. "You better not be saying what I think you're saying, buster."
/"Player, stop. What are you doing?"/
I groaned again and the only thing keeping me from slamming my face into the desk in frustration and humiliation was that it would hit Monika first and the impact might drive the lenses into my eyeballs.
"Sorry, really sorry. That's not what I meant to say at all! I mean… there's a reason why I can do this, but it's a secret I can't just allow to be heard out in public. It's very important to me, but if we're going to work together it will be important for you to know too.
So you know what to expect. So you know what I MUST protect."
/"Full Disclosure? I'm not sure this is wise. You've know them for only about a day. How can you really be sure they won't betray you… betray us?"/
Armor was just passive protection. If they knew, they understand and help in defending what's in front of my face. Also, being unable to talk openly to Monika when she was making commentary in the presence of others was starting to grate.
"Sorry. Please, just hear me out."
-
-
And that was how we were finally on the way to fighting the monster wolves, draped in a thick uncomfortable silence.
The girls were willing to hear me out later, but still not letting go of their misgivings.
Monika, walking beside me, grinned impishly. /"Well they do say that Freudian slips have a way of revealing our subconscious wishes."/
"Even as a dumbass teenager I wasn't this dumb," I whispered back. "Why couldn't it just be spoonerism?"
/"Heh, spooning."/
Monikaaaaaa.
-
-
"Come forth, Fire!"Bwoom.Ow, that was hot. That was real fire. It made sense now why people would like to cast mages with wands a good distance away from their body. Though my gloves did help, it was just the radiant heat hitting my face that was uncomfortable. That's because it was made of leather, formerly living material.Gauntlets might still be usable if all that was necessary was for some thin material right where the gems could come close to touching bare skin and the rest all metal.Still"Did that look to you a little less than the water from before?" I asked the girls sitting at the lawn table behind me. ""You still have a lot of mana capacity," Linze replied, "but yes. It looks like you don't have much affinity with fire. That was mostly just a flash-burn.""Hmm. Not a surprise, really. By the way, is your magical affinity influenced any by your personality?""No. It's something you're born with. Otherwise my strongest affinity w-would not be fire."So if it's not past mystical part genetic like Avatar's bending, does this mean it truly was random? Seemed like the only thing that mattered was the number of affinities, unless you have a particularly strong single affinity.If I was born in this world, affinity was just one more thing to struggle against, like differences in gender, social status, strength, height, intelligence, beauty, and so on. People were not born equal because people were all unique. Shaped by their births, shaped by the parents, shaped by their society, to be ruined by it or to conform to it or to rise above it. People were created equal, that is, they had the right to be all treated the same way or to aspire to the same things.With equal opportunity, it then becomes their own responsibility to what heights they wished to reach. Equal in the eyes of justice, just as important.That's all that really mattered, really. Find success no matter how you define it."Come forth, Wind!"Bwoosh!A strong gust of wind slapped against the far wall of the Silver Moon's back yard. I nodded. "That was strong. A little stronger than Water, I think."I nodded."Come forth, Earth!"A spray of sand launched out of the orange stone."That's the weakest so far by far," Elze noted. "But you have all four main elements now. Most combat spells are in them.""I would have been happy with just one. What am I even supposed to do with strong Water, weak Fire, stronger Wind and weakest Earth?"Monika shook her head sadly. /"Oh, that's too bad. Looks like you're not going to be in Toph Bei Fong's footsteps anytime soon, my blind bandit."/Linze spoke up "A weak affinity doesn't mean you can't use spell of that element, only that it takes more effort. You have to practice again and again and again until it feels smooth to cast. You're always going to feel like it's slower, like you have to build up the energy before it can release but you can still make the spells work.""What's in Light and Dark?""Light spells do things with light, and vision but healing spells too. Dark is just the opposite and includes curses. Summoning spells are also Dark element.""Come forth, Light!"Freeem. A bright flash."Come forth, Dark."Hisss. A smoky fog.They were equal, if more or less unexceptional. I groaned and made my way back to the table. There I slumped and cradled my head in my palms."What's wrong with you?" Elze asked. "You have all six external elements now, that's ridiculous. You don't have to look so sad about it." She huffed and crossed her arms. "In the name of all of us who were born with only the Null elements, I'm offended by that. Why not just be happy?""Yes, this should be a cause for celebration, shouldn't it?"I sighed. "I am going to tell you two different sentences to live by. Both are equally true, and equally terrifying."Elze lifted an eyebrow and with a slight raise of her chin wordlessly bid me to continue."The first, is that with great power comes great responsibility."Elze nodded. "Okaaay. I agree with that.""The second, is that there is no obligation in power, only privilege."Elze frowned, opened her mouth to speak, and then stopped."Bollocks," she hissed at last.Monika sucked in her breath, showing her clenched teeth in the cute gap between her lips. /"I really wish I could disagree, but you're right. Live those words to the utmost, and they're terrifying."/"People like me don't just happen for no reason. The best thing to do with this affinity is a life of gentle mediocrity, or some sort of relaxing business isekai, but somehow I don't feel this life will allow us that." I gave a sad little smile and reached for the last stone."I'm no hero like the Spider-Man, who would give and give and give, trying to fight crime and injustice in the small hours between taking care of his studies and his family, hiding his face so that his enemies follow him home. Getting wounded and battered and blasted for no pay, no benefit to himself at all, other than the knowledge of doing the right thing."I held the colorless stone up to eye level. "Nor do I have any tangible ambitions of conquest and supremacy. Like hell I want the hassle that comes with politics and ruling. I'm not a warrior, for me strength is its own reward."There's just one test remaining if this stone doesn't activate, fate is not so fickle as to put something like me here to balance out some great calamity that's about to happen."Elze looked dubious at my overly dramatic declarations, while Linze had an intent expression.AaandNothing.I wasn't feeling anything special inside. I ran through various things in fiction that might qualify as personal magic, everything from mutant powers to characteristic anime hero traits. No Kaio Ken to instantly boost my power, no Transformation to change my shape, no Detective Vision as redundant as that might be for being blind as a bat, no Speed Force, no Flight.I had no Null magic affinity.I exhaled with some relief. "No all seven elements for me then. So it turns out I'm just a lucky idiot. Just some magic blaster is nothing unusual."I began to laugh nervously. "No one special at all. No more expectations. No more livelihoods hanging by my hands, no need to carry others on my back."Then with one last 'hah!', "Well with one beautiful exception, and right in front of my face."Monika smiled back shyly.Elze shrugged. "Well if you're happy with that, sure. Don't be so full of yourself thinking you'll have to carry us, we can take care of ourselves.""Oh no, no, no, no. I like you because you're capable. You could probably beat me no matter how good at magic I get. The best counter to a magician is speed and explosive force."Linze nodded. "T-that's true."/"Player."/"Actually, wait. Excuse me for a moment."/"There's one last thing you didn't try. Or rather, someone who didn't try."/I gasped in realization. Null Magic was a unique personal magic, right!I flicked the front casing for my VR headset open, exposing the dual camera. I held the stone right up to fill the view. Between the stone and Monika there was a hard plastic protective smartphone case. "It needs to be touching..." I realized.There was really only one option. I slipped the stone in between the gaps of my headset right around the bridge of my nose./"Player! What the heck! Putting sharp shards of crystal next to your eyes is always a bad idea!"/The crystal didn't really disturb my view, it was too close to see like the nose pads of eyeglasses. I nodded with satisfaction and picked up the blue magic stone again.Monika looked at me with disapproval one last time and then hesitantly reached her virtual hands towards my face. If we could actually touch each other, her hands would have been over my nose, cheek and mouth in a tender caress./"I see now"/ she murmured."Come forth, Water."/"Multi-Track"/Water spurted out from the stone, and then split into two streams.The girls expertly dodged the streams, shifting aside to avoid the water aimed at their faces."Playah!" Elze cried out, clearly annoyed."Sorry, I didn't expect that to happen. Clearly some sort of multi-targeting ability?"/"No no it's more than that. I always knew I could at least help you by putting a HUD overlay on your vision. Now this makes it automatic. If you imagine we're like a gunship, you're the pilot I'm the gunner. We both have helmet gunsights, but I can fire offbore to what you're not exactly looking at. And look!"/Monika than pulled up the minimap window. /"Now targets friendly, neutral and hostile show up in the minimap. Satellites can't image that."/I was the red dot in the center. Elze and Linze were nearby blue dots. A short distance away, what was probably Micah was a moving green dot."This ability is Multi-Track. It allows me to identify nearby targets and automatically strike them, even when I'm not exactly looking at them." I tapped at the thing in front of my face. "Given how I utterly lack peripheral vision"Linze licked her lips and nodded. "That sounds reasonable. I mean, spells usually come from the wand to whatever you're looking at that you want to hit, you don't need to be precise about aiming."/"But wait, there's more! Amplification increases the range and potency of everything I can already do. I can pick up sounds from further away, my camera sees things a lot more clearly beyond the limitations of hardware, even my processing speed improves without any increase in temperature or power consumption!/Better yet is my other skill, Application. Now I can apply Amplification to you! Now you can run faster, hit harder, see things happen in high speed like I do with this, you can react to things up to Three Times Faster!"/Monika, seriously? Seriously, Monika?/"It's not Bullet Time. It will just allow me to improve chances of getting those Quick Time Events in a crisis. With my Parallel Processing I can continually make tactical evaluations of the battlefield while you're doing something else."/"Okay, this is getting kind of bullshit. Should I? Eh, why not."While I might tell tall tales, it was my personal principle in this life to always communicate with scrupulously honesty with my friends. An unwillingness to communicate can torpedo so many things that could have been easily avoided if one could just extend a modicum of trust. Like... Poe Dameron and Admiral Holdo were fully to blame for getting their own Resistance killed despite the sheer incompetence of their enemies.You should not keep important tactical information secret from the very people you need to carry them out. Expecting blind trust, blind obedience, that had always been distasteful to me.Trust should go both ways.So I explained about the other Null abilities just discovered. Actually the most abusable would seem to be Amplification combined with Application, since it could increase the potency of everybody else's ability at cost of increased magic power consumption on my part./"Ow ow ow ow."/Monika?!/"It looks like I can really only hold a few Null abilities at the same time. Can't won't turn off Multi-Track, that's too useful. Parallel Processing is always active, and it's what allows me to use Amplification and Application at the same time. Any more than that and I feel strained. Using Amp and App on someone else adds two more. That's six processes at the same time there's a few more here, I think I could discover"/"No, that's enough for now.""This is getting kind of ridiculous," said Elze. "So you have four Null abilities now? Are you even human?""Sister!" Linze gasped. "That's offensive.""Um. Sorry. I mean, there are people like Fairies and Elves, that are rumored to have a lot of elemental affinities at the same time. I guess this would make sense if you had some special ancestry.""No. I'm pretty sure I'm just human. I don't have Null affinity at all!" I explained. "It's not me doing this."Linze looked confused. "T-that I'm sorry, but that doesn't make sense at all.""Ugh, how do I put this?" I looked around. "This place isn't good for this..." I turned sharply back towards her. "Um. Linze, come to my room tonight.""Hawa?!" she eeped."WHAT?!" Elze shrieked.Monika paused from massaging her own head and looked up sharply. /"Player, what."/"Ack! Sorry, I said that wrong. I mean you and your sister-"Linze sputtered "Mister Zah! That's that's improper!"Elze made defensive knife hands and waved her arms around. "You better not be saying what I think you're saying, buster."/"Player, stop. What are you doing?"/I groaned again and the only thing keeping me from slamming my face into the desk in frustration and humiliation was that it would hit Monika first and the impact might drive the lenses into my eyeballs."Sorry, really sorry. That's not what I meant to say at all! I mean there's a reason why I can do this, but it's a secret I can't just allow to be heard out in public. It's very important to me, but if we're going to work together it will be important for you to know too.So you know what to expect. So you know what I MUST protect."/"Full Disclosure? I'm not sure this is wise. You've know them for only about a day. How can you really be sure they won't betray you betray us?"/Armor was just passive protection. If they knew, they understand and help in defending what's in front of my face. Also, being unable to talk openly to Monika when she was making commentary in the presence of others was starting to grate."Sorry. Please, just hear me out."--And that was how we were finally on the way to fighting the monster wolves, draped in a thick uncomfortable silence.The girls were willing to hear me out later, but still not letting go of their misgivings.Monika, walking beside me, grinned impishly. /"Well they do say that Freudian slips have a way of revealing our subconscious wishes."/"Even as a dumbass teenager I wasn't this dumb," I whispered back. "Why couldn't it just be spoonerism?"/"Heh, spooning."/Monikaaaaaa.--
