An Insufferable Human
So yesterday Lily and Vlack had their 1v1 Grand General decider, and holy shit, it was insane.
First, right at the start, Vlack casts Dark Field and moves in. The skill itself is already enhanced to Transcendence level and attribute-boosted on top of that, so the moment it touches you, you might as well consider more than half the fight already lost. Factor in the stat drops and any extra buffs, and the stat gap between him and his opponent sits at a good three to four times.
And then, out of nowhere, her eyes flash — I have no idea what that was, but it looked so goddamn cool — and a storm starts howling.
Just like that, the Dark Field is torn clean apart, and Vlack takes a wound and falls back.
(short clip)
That's the scene right there. I'm pretty sure this is what Lily's always going on about — her "cheap tricks" or whatever.
Lily says she does it by sensing mana. I am BEGGING you to just teach us already.
But knowing how it's done and actually doing it? lol No. Watching this makes my blood boil.
After that they trade blows, and she blocks Multi Blade with nothing worse than a scratch or two. And this is where the real problem starts.
(short clip)
Vlack casts the Grand Magic Swordsman's ultimate, Moon Cleaver — and somehow, somehow, she counters it. And then absorbs it. As-is.
(gif of the black energy being sucked inward)
Look closely and you can see the Dark Field generated mid-cast by Moon Cleaver being drawn into her spear like it's drinking it.
My best guess is she's absorbing the mana scattered through the air and replicating the skill with it.
And then she reproduces Moon Cleaver, perfectly. Exactly the same.
(image of Lily carving a black line through the air)
Just. Insane.
The aura is unreal.
The Grand Magic Swordsman ultimate was already cool, but with a spear? Even cooler lmaooo
It's probably the same principle as the magic swordsmen in ranked matches absorbing the Sword's Path and spitting fire back — so hurry up and turn your stream on and teach us already.
One-line summary:
1. Turn on the damn stream.
"I suppose... I really should give something back."
Donations had been pouring in lately to a frankly alarming degree. People practically dying to throw money at the stream were backed up in droves on Twitch, and on NewTube her average view count had long since sailed past the three-million mark.
It was a video with a perfectly honest title, no clickbait whatsoever, yet it had become such a sensation that it hit seven million views in just seven days. And it wasn't as if only that one video had taken off — every other upload was breaking two million as a baseline. Her subscriber count, too, had quietly climbed past a million and a half.
Twitch and NewTube. Both were thriving. If nothing else, she owed her viewers something in return.
So what was it they wanted most?
Lily sank into her chair and turned the question over for a while.
The charity work she'd been mulling over would probably take the form of donations, but that wasn't the direction her viewers actually wanted. From their point of view, the money they'd sent her came from a place of caring about her — handing it straight off to total strangers would be missing the point entirely.
In the old days it had been different. The money she'd received from nobles and lords belonged to their domain, so redistributing it to the poor beneath them had raised no questions. But her viewers in this era were neither the rulers of the destitute nor anything like it. And splitting the money back out among the viewers themselves... no, that wouldn't do either.
Giving was important, but handled carelessly it could blur the very essence of the stream. Someone might start watching not to see her, but for the payout.
Which means it has to be content, then.
At the end of the day, one of the biggest reasons people watched a stream was simple: fun. They watched, they enjoyed themselves, they walked away satisfied.
Come to think of it, that broadcast where she'd taught Leo and the others something had gone over remarkably well.
"...I'll teach them."
She closed her eyes.
The divinity she'd first poured into her body so long ago, and the countless techniques she had mastered since, flowed back through her memory one after another.
The first time anyone had ever passed a technique down to her.
The days when life as a saint had worn her down to the bone.
When Lily — living half out of her mind — had begun to ache for something real, set down every burden she carried, and left the village behind.
And then, not long after, when the news from that village reached her.
She had found him, nearly dead.
...A price must be paid.
Why? Because that is the way of the Celestials.
You are no different, are you.
"I don't take repayment," you say. Then why, in the name of everything, did you save me?
That doesn't sound like the Celestial way to me.
Creeeak...
"...Insufferable human."
She really did hate the Celestials.
"Lily~!"
"Welcome, Yena."
Lily logged into DeoEn and called for Yena. From what she'd heard, the girl was supposed to be busy with something of her own, but the moment Lily summoned her, Yena came scrambling online like an overexcited puppy, all but tripping over herself to say hello.
"You're really not in the middle of anything urgent, right?"
"Nope! No problemo!"
Yena puffed out her chest with a shoulder-shrug that suggested her schedule was completely, absolutely empty.
Well, in that case.
"Thank you. The thing is, I've got a plan worked out, but my knowledge of the inside of DeoEn is still pretty thin."
"You've only been playing a little while, so that makes sense. Besides, I'm getting these lectures for free anyway."
"Which is basically the same as watching the stream, you know."
She had the plan; what she lacked was any idea of where to actually gather the materials. Wandering around scrounging was an option, but when you had someone who knew the world inside and out, you asked for help.
"So you want me to get you Mana Stones and Magic Tools, then?"
"Yes. Expensive or cheap, whatever you can get your hands on."
What Lily was planning was a lecture on the flow of mana. Her viewers, and lately what felt like half the world besides, were clamoring to be taught how to actually handle the stuff.
The problem was that there was no fixed method. Mana was something you simply learned to feel — there was no procedure to follow. That was why, even in the old days, being able to sense mana at all was enough to earn you the title of a brilliant mage. It had taken Lily herself an extraordinarily long time to first feel her own divinity, after all.
And there was a bigger problem still: most users had already absorbed mana through the system, by force. Once mana had settled into a body, it moved exactly the way the system dictated — and loosening those imposed constraints, teaching it to move on its own, was anything but easy. That was probably why so many people considered wielding mana outright impossible.
"There are two ways to wield mana. One is to set the flow of the mana inside your body going entirely on your own. The other is to borrow the help of a Magic Tool."
What Lily would use was the second — the Magic Tool method. It was the approach favored by academy students under royal patronage, back in the day.
I gave a few lectures myself, once upon a time.
Back in her saint days, she'd been touring the academy when the headmaster had begged her to teach a class, and she'd reluctantly agreed. For something she'd been swept into, it had turned out to be rather fun.
Though a few years later the academy itself was wiped away by the demonkin, and she never saw it again.
"And with that, we'd be able to use the things you use, Lily?"
"Not perfectly, but some of it? Think of it as a stimulant, really. Once you've got the trick of it, everything after comes easy."
"Ooh. Well, I've got one thing on me right now — wanna try it with this?"
Yena held out a blue jewel. It looked for all the world like an artisan's craftwork.
"It's a rare gem that comes from the Paradox Scorpions living in the volcanic zone. It's often used as a magic reagent. Goes for about ten Gold."
"That's around $150. I'll send you the full payment all at once later."
Yena nodded. Ordinarily she'd have kicked up a fuss about covering something this small herself, but Lily had refused so many times that the girl had apparently just given in.
Lily took the blue jewel in hand. Even at a touch, she could feel the remarkably pure mana sealed inside it — a gem with real resistance of its own.
Slowly, carefully, she began to feed her mana into it, a little pressure at a time.
Fwoooaaah...
Crack!
"Oh."
The jewel shattered. The palm-sized stone broke apart, its essence collapsing and recondensing over and over, until what dropped into Lily's hand was a bead no larger than a ping-pong ball.
Shrunken to a fraction of its former size.
Yena's eyes went perfectly round, and she bent in close, examining the transformed gem with the wonder of someone seeing something for the very first time in her life.
"Whoa. What the— that's insane. The item name changed!"
"That's because the structure itself is different now. I broke apart the mana links that made up the gem and reassembled them."
"...Lily. What on earth are you?"
"A mage...?"
I do dabble in magic, I suppose.
And if she'd been born with the blood of the demonkin in her veins — who knew? She might have cleared more than half of the World Quests by now.