Yenna’s dash forward created a powerful wind-trail that radiated outward as a gust.

Sentra’s plants regrouped, creating an encirclement.

Neither combatant was willing to allow Jenn Karmiish to even approach his spear.

Within seconds, Yenna was on him, throwing in her usual punches and kicks. Before Jenn however, these attacks were a mere child flailing their fists around.

He was able to redirect Yenna’s attack, guiding her like a doll, and flung her towards Sentra.

Of course, Sentra was quite a distance from either of the two, and managed to catch Yenna mid-air with her flowing branches.

The two seemed to communicate something at a glance, and as if they had rehearsed the maneuver before, Sentra flung Yenna at full speed towards Jenn, using the branches as an arm. Jenn attempted to break the distance between himself and his spear, but Yenna’s high-speed approach was more than a little vexing to him.

With little other choice, Jenn caught the flying girl with his bare hands, using his superior reach and mobility to grasp Yenna’s shoulder, as he side-stepped out of her direct way, and redirected her forward-momentum by spinning her body around him in a movement that could be likened to a dance—and halted after a single rotation.

For a moment, it appeared there was some sort of vortex around Yenna’s body, but it vanished as soon as Jenn grabbed hold of her. If I had to guess, she put up a shroud similar to the one Jenn had earlier to shred through Sentra’s trees. However, it seems Jenn was able to disperse the technique, and caught her with relative ease.

However, he didn’t stop there—as he let go of Yenna in mid-air, he brought his knee up to her gut, sending my little Yenna flying to the side.

With that speed and direction, Sentra didn’t have time to help Yenna, so she ended up crashing through a tree in the distance. Luckily Yenna had erected a cushion around her own body, but I doubt it completely got rid of the pain.

Seeing the futility of their previous plan, Senra resorted to long-ranged bombardment.

Holding out her open palm towards Jenn, an array of Light Shards formed before her.

Light Shards.

Sentra is able to create these glass-like javelins, and propel them forward. They can be produced anywhere, and be fired at very high speeds, however they rely on Sentra’s own senses. That meant that they almost always fire towards the focus of her vision, and an enemy with a keen eye could potentially avoid them.

She can try to create a Light Shard out of her field of view, by she’s unable to properly aim them in that case—I’ve had her practice, but how easy is it to draw a circle on a sheet of paper behind you, and then make a dot in the center?

However, what baffles me about these javelins, is that I can’t tell what the hell they’re made out of. They seem to shatter and disperse quickly, and don’t leave a trace of ever existing.

An early hypothesis was that they were hot air held together by a magnatic field, but when put in a container, the container suddenly loses mass when they vanish—and of course, they’re not hot at all.

This is one of the two times that I have been unable to attribute the behavior of a magic to my knowledge of science.

According to Aniel’s brief explanation, there are three main qualities to magic.

The first is its ability to directly convert magical energy (mana) into physical energy.

The second is for mana to communicate with mana.

And the third is mana’s retention of information.

Aniel’s healing magic uses these three concepts. Mana seems to be gathering information at all times, so mana that circulates within the body retains information on how certain cells are meant to operate and repair themselves. Using that, the magic communicates with the mana it uses as power, and instructs it on what cells to move about, converting that mana into the proper energy.

Without the ability to convert into Physical Energy, then there would be no use for us humans who live in the physical world.

Without the ability for mana to communicate, the magic would have no way to know when and where to be.

And without the ability to retain information, not only would the healing magic not work at all to begin with, it’s also likely that mana would forget its instructions immediately.

The same logic can be applied to Aniel’s fire magic. He has the mana search for oxygen, nitrogen and carbon, instructs it to gather these ingredients through kinetic energy, and produce fuel through applying the necessary energy, and then ignites it.

Because it takes no energy for mana to simply communicate and move about, the only time mana is “used up”, is when it converts into some form of physical energy.

In fact, Humans in this world are able to use magic, because all creatures in this world have a passively active magic throughout their bodies, that reacts to our mental state.

How did it get there?

Who knows?

But in the end, that means there is a logic to all magic, and it’s just the natural laws being manipulated by a force of nature that wasn’t known in my old world—Mana.

So, that leaves me with two questions…

—What are Sentra’s Light Shards made out of?

—How does my time-manipulation power work?

The Light Shards have mass, until they no longer want to. Nothing I know of in science can explain this phenomena.

On the other hand, my own ability to manipulate time around me, is even more baffling.

How can I move? If time is stopped, the air around me should be absolutely solid. On top of that, the signals in my body shouldn’t even be able to create chemical reactions in my muscles to move.

How can I fall? Shouldn’t the Earth not be applying any force on my body?

Most of all, how does my brain even operate like that? If I’m thinking at over a million times normal time, then doesn’t that mean I would need a million times more oxygen to fuel my brain?

Aniel would probably have some idea of how our abilities might work, or maybe having that Violet girl examine it in action would be a good idea. She was able to sense magic directly, right?

As I watch Jenn dodge and block the rain of white light, I wonder about what he said earlier.

My body is certainly underdeveloped. It’s as though my growth was stunted at some point.

There are plenty of reasons this might happen.

Undereating, a muscular disease, inactivity, and so on.

However, the main suspect is my time-stop ability, just as Jenn suggested.

I already know that for some reason, I don’t seem to burn up oxygen when accelerated to an impossible rate. In fact, I rarely feel physical fatigue as a result of my ability—just some pain from stomping on the ground a lot.

Somehow, my power is completely circumventing my own body’s energy supply, which means I could run a marathon without any fatigue, and at worst just experience some soreness in my feet.

On the other hand, my muscles aren’t developing at all, because my ability alleviates all the strain from my body.

—Ah, Yenna’s back up. Doesn’t look like Uncle Jenn has noticed yet.

This inconvenience means my physique will continue to grow at a very slow rate. On the other hand, I think my ass has been growing out quite a bit. Am I getting fat?

How pathetic. I’ve grown far to use to this ability.

But how can I fix this, I wonder?

Well, I could go on a journey. Yeah, something like a vacation sounds nice.

Plus, it’ll get me and Yenna acquainted with the surrounding world.

—Ah, looks like Yenna’s sneak attack failed.

She tried to circle around Uncle Jenn, and strike him between the gap in his guard, just as he was dodging one of Sentra’s javelins, but he easily caught her and redirected her into the ground.

Interesting—Jenn hasn’t directly attacked Yenna, and has mostly avoided being hit by her at all. Instead he’s relied on redirecting her, destroying her balance wherever possible. He did give her a knee to the gut, but the force behind that seemed spread out, and deliberately slowed to allow her time to defend herself.

Ah, Yenna grabbed onto Jenn’s arm before he could separate from her.

With a tenacity of a beast Yenna uses the opportunity to wail on Jenn, as she brings her fist up to Jenn’s face.

However, even with a monster attached to his arm, Jenn remains calm as he tries to block and resist her assault. Yenna’s first punch lands on Jenn’s crossed arms, but as Yenna pulls back her fist for successive hits, Jenn attempts to obstruct her, reaching toward her pulled back arm, attempting to rob her of any leverage.

The idea seemed sound. Stop a punch before it has any momentum in it. Without the leverage to move one’s arm, they should be unable to punch.

—But what caught me by surprise was that Yenna was able to land a clean punch across Jenn’s face, even as he tried to restrain her.

—Is Yenna physically stronger than Jenn?

However, Jenn only briefly faltered. Even as he had to defend himself against the monstrous girl attached to his arm, he managed to swiftly evade Sentra’s long ranged attacks.

Even though her barrage of Light Shards were able to keep Jenn in place momentarily, Sentra ceased her aggression as soon as Yenna entered the fray. As such, she shifted to using her plants, attempting to restrain Uncle Jenn—but his agile movements evaded capture, even as he struggled with Yenna.

Honestly, it was amazing how he could shift his focus between two enemies at once.

—However…

He fell for her trap.

For much of the battle, Jenn was moving towards the path with the fewest plants. He correctly assumed that Sentra’s plants could only stretch so far, and that Sentra herself must have some sort of range of control—but as a result he slowly was distanced away from his spear.

On top of that, he never considered the threat of roots below the ground.

A person can only split their focus so much…

He was too occupied trying to free himself from the stubborn Yenna’s grip.

So, as he stepped onto a bare patch of dirt, he had no time to react when an encirclement of tree roots shot inwards from around him, binding him in a split second.

He attempted to shred his restraints to pieces, but the loss of momentum allowed more plants to coil themselves around both himself and Yenna.

Sentra didn’t waste a single moment, focusing on the surrounding plants and encasing Jenn with bark and wood, while skillfully prying Yenna away.

—Jenn Karmiish was thoroughly captured.

I dropped to the ground seeing that the fight was pretty much over.

“Good job! Good job!” I shout out enthusiastically, giving a light clap. “That was a very entertaining fight to watch, and it gave me an idea of your various styles,” I said.

However, just as Jenn was about to reply, I raised my hand to silence him, “However, it’s no good if you are all timidly holding back.”

—Neither of them were fighting at full power. Well, it’s understandable that they wouldn’t be trying to kill each other.

Yenna was pretty ferocious in her attacks on Jenn, but even she held back her strength by a considerable degree.

Jenn? I don’t know the full extent of his power, but I can’t imagine that I witnessed it just now. Maybe I should have let him retrieve his spear?

And Sentra… Well, her control over plant-life has gotten better in the last couple years, but she could have done better. There’s not much more she could do with her Light Shards either, seeing how specialized that ability was. She probably could have ended the fight sooner with her Charm magic—but she seems to have developed an unexplained trauma regarding that.

“Well… going into a serious fight… wasn’t really what you wanted… was it?” Uncle Jenn struggled in his bindings, trying to adjust his weight as he talked.

“If you hold back too much, Yenna will never learn,” I said, as I walked over towards the person in question, and gave her a knock on the head.

“Oww!” She complained, as she grabbed her head in a pout, but didn’t retaliate.

“Gotta give her some negative reinforcement, so she’ll know not to be reckless,” I explained to Jenn Karmiish.

“And if I injure her?”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” I assured, as I pulled Yenna’s hand into mine.

“Anyways, I think I’m gonna go on a vacation,” I declared.

“A vacation?”

“Right, like a journey! Gotta familiarize myself with the locals!” I claimed.

Of course, there was also fact that I needed some exercise. Traveling a bit around Senilea before the war breaks out sounds like a nice idea.

“Sentra. I’ll be taking Yenna. While I’m gone, take care of the garden, and watch over the villages,” I said, turning towards her shocked expression.

“B-but M-ma-mistress!” She stammered in a panic. “You’re leaving me… alone?” She said with anxious eyes, a deep seated fear rising up.

That right. Sentra can’t be left alone for long, can she? Otherwise she’ll break out into an anxiety attack, and eventually a fit of deranged paranoid crying.

Should I take her instead of Yenna? No, then Yenna will be the one that’s troubled about my well being. Take both of them?

Hmm…

“Sentra, how about staying with Mr. Karmiish here? He’s a married gentleman, so he wouldn’t do anything scary, right Uncle?” I said, throwing a glare over at Uncle Jenn.

Uncle Jenn noticed my piercing glare, probably offended, but said nothing about my wording. “She can stay at my home. We have room, and it would be an honor to shelter an Esteemed Spirit,” He claimed, before adding, “Could you get me out of this now?”

“See? He’s a reliable guy,” I said, ignoring the entrapped Jenn.

Sentra seemed to process the information for a while, as she looked towards Uncle Jenn, who was still trapped in many layers of wooden shells that hugged his body and restricted all motion.

After a moment, she seemed to accept the situation, and gave a nod.

“When can I expect your return?” She asked.

“Who knows? A couple weeks?”

“Hey? Are you two ignoring me?”

“I see. Then I will be sure to take care of everything on this side,” She assured me.

“That’s great. Anyways, take Lin home, and let Ellen know I’ll be gone for a while,” I said, as I turned away from the group, and began pulling Yenna along with me.

—“H-hold on, don’t I get a say?” Yenna complained after finally catching up with the conversation, confused as I carelessly dragged her along my journey.

—“H-hey, Seriously, are you going to let me out?”

Author Notes:

Anyways, 5 chapters into the arc, and I think we're headed in the direction I had in mind for it. Where will it go? Wait and see!

So I had the idea of releasing chapters on Patreon first, and then pushing them out on RRL after a week. I realized that'd be a stupid idea, because of how inactive I am with writing (due to fluctuating motivation), and I doubt anyone wants to pay $2 a month for my crummy story. So I'm just posting this chapter now, and I figure forcing people to pay for an incomplete story is just silly. I may end up compiling an ebook after a certain point is reached, though. But that depends on whether or not my motivation lasts.

That being said, what did people think of the chapter? I didn't really focus too much on the fight, despite what was going on, and a lot of it was actually exposition on magic, based on what Aniel has told Toyaru (either in person, or through letters)

But now, Toya will have a chance to go out and explore a bit, instead of being cooped up in Ohen village.

Anyways, as always, feedback and suggestions are both appreciated and encouraged.

If you like this story, or even if you don't, be sure to rate the story!