Nia stepped off the platform with the delicacy of a young noblewoman that was attending her first ball. The dense magic in the air, layers upon layers of different Protected Spaces stacked on top of each other, was fragile. Without proper maintenance, this whole system would collapse like a card house in the decaying winds of time. The proper maintenance must have cost a fortune. Effectiveness sacrificed for spectacle.

A deep breath, the magic entered her body and vanished. The air that left her was devoid of all power. She hadn’t consumed it, had done nothing with it. Inside her it had simply vanished. Like all magic did unless she willed it not to. It was like acid met a base. The result was just plain, simple water.

Above the casters were chatting in a lively manner. One of them anyway. “Oh, so this is the contestant known as Nia Fae? I must say she looks… odd, wouldn’t you agree?” Jeff asked his co-host.

“She certainly has an air of weirdness about her. I mean, she is entering the ring in only a simple, non-enchanted dress.”

That was actually wrong; this dress was a gift from the other side. A little rascal had stolen it from the Great Empty One. It had reached Nia’s hands through chance, who then returned it. As thanks, the Great Empty One allowed her to keep it. The dress would survive whatever she could survive. It was her piece of the other side to keep. A layer of nothing covering her.

Although that choice of words may have led some to the wrong conclusion. She was not naked. It was a dress, just woven out of something that didn’t exist. Not in the sense that the material didn’t physically exist but in that it wasn’t a thing that was. Simple, really, if one just accepted that understanding was optional.

“I admit, I did not expect such beauty to enter the battlefield,” the king of the southern German city known as Vienna spoke, as the silver-haired lady of the moon put the barrier that was meant to save his life in place. “Too bad I will need to crush you, lady Fae,” Maximillian further boasted, “for it is I that shall reign Germany and lead it into a new golden age.”

“I thank you for your compliment,” Nia simply stated, drawing a circle into the sand with her naked toes; “I hope you get to do that.”

Maximillian raised an eyebrow, “So you give up?” he wanted to know.

“Lydia wouldn’t like that,” Nia spoke emptily, “therefore, no.”

She raised her eyes from the circles in the floor and looked into the ones of her adversary.

They were clear, crystal clear, blue. They were objectively beautiful, as were her high cheekbones and finely swung eyebrows. Nia had been often complimented on her features and the colour of her bright gold hair.

It was at this point that the king actually took a step backwards. Involuntarily, as if he was suddenly assaulted with a wave that crashed into him. His whole body was subject to a force he couldn’t understand. Mages reacted like this whenever they faced her, whenever she decided to eliminate all and everything of magic in her surroundings.

The whole colosseum went silent at the same moment, thousands of people checking her aura at the same dreadful moment as Luna herself was subjected to this weirdness and hesitated. The left hand of Romulus, the Apex of the Abyss, hesitated to approach this girl.

Nia understood. To them, she was the great annihilator.

“I… I cannot believe it,” Jeff whispered into his microphone as he realized what everyone else realized. “WE HAVE A BLANK, EVERYONE! Dra, can you do us the honour and explain to us what this means?”

“C-certainly,” the lizardman stuttered, then nodded at his co-host. He cleared his throat and regained his calm. “A blank is someone who is born with something we describe as an ‘empty’ soul. In the past these people had an incredibly high mortality rate, as they couldn’t be healed from natural diseases via magic, due to being natural born anti-mages. While this was largely reduced thanks to modern medicine, the mortality rate of blanks remains high due to several factors, the least gruesome of them being under the constant threat of Fading away.”

“Yes, yes,” Jeff nodded. “This fading is the act of a blank stepping over from this world onto the other side completely. See, blanks have a connection to a dimension separate from ours that constantly calls out to them. This process is also often referred to as ‘being spirited away’. The only person we know to ever return from the other side is a child named Alice, whose adventures became the basis for the popular children’s book later. Albeit, the Maiden of Null has not been seen for about fifty years.”

“Blanks are anathema to whatever is magic,” Dra said, “and as such, as a member of a magical race, I will sit way up here and keep my distance from her.”

“Now that is unusually narrow minded of you, Dra. You should know that blanks don’t just fire off at random,” Jeff told him.

“Except for when they do,” Dra shot back. “Blanks are wildly varied in their skill level. Some can control what they want to eradicate, others create a magic-null zone several metres wide, without even thinking about it, around them. I would faint and literally dissolve if I were too close.”

“Fair enough,” Jeff admitted. “Anyway, blanks are the rarest kinds of souls, and most people don’t even get to see one in their lifetime. Having one in front of me, promised to be in action, is exciting!” The crowd agreed and shouted out as the caster raised his arm.

Nia in the meanwhile was looking quizzically at Luna. “What are you waiting for?” the blonde blank wondered in her eerily calm tone. The moon goddess still hadn’t walked up closer to her. “Don’t be afraid,” Nia suggested and extended her hand. If she could touch her, certainly the goddess would realize that Nia was of no threat.

Luna, with obvious struggle, took her hand. A terrible moment long, it looked like the silver-haired goddess would step backwards, but then her facial features relaxed. “You have remarkable control over your powers,” she complimented, and power, like small blades bent to form a shield, poured into Nia’s body.

The blank slowly blinked and asked out loud, “Why does a goddess of death erect barriers?”

“Your senses must be off,” Luna answered. “I am a goddess of life, like my sister.”

“Oh?” Nia lowered her head in apology. The mana felt hostile, but if the moon goddess assured her it was otherwise, surely that was how it was.

“Don’t accidentally destroy the barrier!” Luna warned the blank before walking off. That wasn’t a mindless warning. Nia could destroy the barrier with a single thought. It was like an itch on her nose that she wasn’t allowed to scratch. Naïve she may be, but undisciplined she was not.

She always arrived where she needed to be, when she needed to. Never earlier, never later.

The biome wheel landed on the standard arena. Their fight was set. Maximillian, in the meanwhile, looked furious. “A blank,” the king grumbled. “Lydia seriously sent a blank against me.”

“Let’s count down, folks!” Jeff shouted above.

“5!”

“I hope you will be having fun,” Nia honestly said, although her voice did as bad a job as always at conveying it. A dry laughter was the response.

“4!”

“Honestly, I might as well give up now… but I will be damned if I go down without a fight,” Maximillian pumped his fist.

“3!”

“Yes, indeed, there must be a way to overcome your power!” Maximillian turned heel and ran away from her. Honourless, maybe, but to him distance was most likely the best way to win.

“2!”

‘Nia,’ the blank heard the voice of her teacher, multi-layered, deep, and squeaky. ‘In a fight, always use the most effective method from the start. It is not about making a show...’

“1!”

The crowd broke into thunderous applause, but in her mind, Nia was elsewhere, standing on a large plaza. The only thing there was a giant arch, the city around her, distanced by several layers of security, one of the most important places in the Abyss, her home, which she never truly knew. The arc was one of magnificent beauty and craftsmanship, its name reflecting the lesson her teacher gave her that day.

‘…It is about being triumphant.’

Nia felt the pressure the moment the countdown reached zero. Gravity, several times what it should have naturally been, tried to weigh down on her. Instead, nothing happened whatsoever. The magical force, meant to bring her to her knees, simply disappeared the moment it touched her. Maximillian made a sour expression, looking over his shoulder, and tried to gain more distance.

‘Gravity mage, potential combat strategy will involve hurling objects at me instead of using direct magic,’ Nia analysed. The moment she finished that thought, the stream of magic reversed, from reinforcing the natural gravity to pulling everything upwards. The floor cracked and splintered. First small pebbles rose upwards, then fist sized rocks.

‘The way to triumph is knowing yourself and your enemy. Once you know the best way to take out your enemy, execute them in one swift strike. Time is a casualty you need not take,’ the voice of her teacher continued in her head.

She knew herself, and she knew that Maximillian needed time. The first boulder started to rise from the ground. All of this was an impressive display of muscle, but there was no way Maximillian would have been able to control all of these rocks’ paths individually. That amount of control would be reserved for actual earth mages. The idea was therefore to simply have everything collapse on her position once he had enough to hurl at her.

Then the strategy to win was to cancel his magic out completely.

Nia closed her eyes and pulled power from the Nirvana over to this side. A black liquid, the absence of light made manifest, seeped out of her. From the roots of her hair, it crept over the face and neck, forming whirly patterns, like colours intermixing, on her snow-white skin.

It formed a visor, sharply triangular in shape, over the upper half of her face. Solid as it was, it still allowed Nia to see through. Indeed, one could say that through this visor she only really saw this world as it was. A spectrum of lights, magic interferences layering on top of each other, barely able to be made sense of. Only years of training made it so that Nia could make sense out of its cacophony of colour; solid objects were still blocking her view, but now she could trace the magic back to its source.

All she needed was a clear thread, and with all of those rocks flying around, it wasn’t hard to find one.

The liquified nothing seeped into her shoulder-less dress, giving it the appearance as if the black swirls were meant to hold it up. As they were made from similar materials, the dress absorbed the liquid without a problem, turning pitch black at the chest area.

Her right hand outstretched, Nia called for her weapon, and the weapon answered. A long-bladed spear, carved from some type of coal-shade stone. It was of a simple, sleek shape. No extraordinary designs or colours, just a simple black spear with a lean handle.

In her left appeared a long, curved dagger of the same design.

“Hey, Dra, isn’t that against the rules?” Jeff wondered from above.

“Apparently not,” the lizardman answered. “Romulus would have intervened if that were the case. It seems that this is a conjured weapon, not one she hid in some pocket-dimension.”

“Oh, so because she made it during the fight, instead of smuggling it in after the official check-up, it’s okay?”

“That is correct.”

The words passed her by. Her focus was absolute. The path to victory lay ahead.

Setting her sights on the thread again, she turned the dagger in her hand, wielding it in a reverse grip. Then she ran. Not incredibly fast. As far as physical prowess went, she was far enough above the mages to make it an easy victory but not quite as dominant as to be a challenge for major physical fighters. It was her ability to destroy magic that made her this dangerous.

She jumped up. To everyone else it looked like a useless motion. The reality was that she had now hooked her dagger into the magical thread that connected the magic to Maximillian. All she needed to do now was follow it.

She landed, and her blade cut the magic in twain like a hair that was put on a freshly sharpened knife. It created ripples, weakening the complete network of magic. Soft, with gravity slowly losing its influence, the stones settled back on the ground. Nia wove through the debris, always following the deep purple thread.

Violently, the rocks around started to fly in chaotic motions, trying to obstruct her path. The gravity king must have realized that his overall control was slipping, so he concentrated on using what influence he had to create chaos.

With unnatural grace, she predicted and dodged every single one of them. A giant boulder was hurled at her from above, but Nia simply stopped running for a second, and it crashed uselessly into the ground in front of her.

A cloud of small pebbles flew at her. A single cut of her lance in full motion, followed by a spiralling jump, and she made it through with only a few of them harmlessly hitting her shoulders. She could see all of them; every single ripple his magic caused a flaring signal to her vision.

Nia could see him now, smiling at the edge of the arena surrounded by rock. The intent was obvious: if she came close, he would crush her between the protective layer he had created. No magic resistance in the world would protect her against straight up getting turned into a pancake.

Maximillian had a winning strategy here. All he needed to do was bombard her with rocks until something connected. Too bad Nia had means to take care of this as well. Too bad he was refusing to call upon his aid.

A boon in her favour.

The spear in her right hand ate away at the light that surrounded it. Turning from merely black into a spot in the world where light couldn’t reach, a seemingly badly cropped-out black spot. Nia continued to run at Maximillian, his smile broadening. Sure of his victory, he bowed down a bit, his kingly cape fluttering impressively. “This has been fun!” he said in the tone of someone who only found enjoyment in winning.

The fizzy outline of her spear became volatile until it was more of a borderless staff. Then it exploded in a wave that washed the world clear of colour. There was nothing but shades of grey, everything but the most basic shadows were eliminated and with it all of the magic that surrounded them. Only Nia’s vision remained clear. Through the visor, all shapes were clearer than ever.

She had eliminated whatever magic she could, and now Maximillian was defenceless. His smile vanished the moment he realized his trap was gone. He tried to dodge somewhere, but the wall he had put up in defence was now limiting his movements; behind him was the edge of the arena, to his sides the boulders he had put in place and now was powerless to remove.

“I am glad you had fun,” Nia said and tried her best at a smile. From the shocked way he looked back at her, Nia guessed that it had failed to look friendly. The dagger phased through his throat. No bloodshed, no physical wound, she simply cut right through his spirit, a wound on his soul instead of his body. A spasm, a locking of all of his muscles, and froth at his lips, the typical reactions.

The king sank down, unconscious.

Nia stepped off the platform with the delicacy of a young noblewoman that was attending her first ball. The dense magic in the air, layers upon layers of different Protected Spaces stacked on top of each other, was fragile. Without proper maintenance, this whole system would collapse like a card house in the decaying winds of time. The proper maintenance must have cost a fortune. Effectiveness sacrificed for spectacle. A deep breath, the magic entered her body and vanished. The air that left her was devoid of all power. She hadn't consumed it, had done nothing with it. Inside her it had simply vanished. Like all magic did unless she willed it not to. It was like acid met a base. The result was just plain, simple water. Above the casters were chatting in a lively manner. One of them anyway. Oh, so this is the contestant known as Nia Fae? I must say she looks odd, wouldn't you agree? Jeff asked his co-host. She certainly has an air of weirdness about her. I mean, she is entering the ring in only a simple, non-enchanted dress. That was actually wrong; this dress was a gift from the other side. A little rascal had stolen it from the Great Empty One. It had reached Nia's hands through chance, who then returned it. As thanks, the Great Empty One allowed her to keep it. The dress would survive whatever she could survive. It was her piece of the other side to keep. A layer of nothing covering her. Although that choice of words may have led some to the wrong conclusion. She was not naked. It was a dress, just woven out of something that didn't exist. Not in the sense that the material didn't physically exist but in that it wasn't a thing that was. Simple, really, if one just accepted that understanding was optional. I admit, I did not expect such beauty to enter the battlefield, the king of the southern German city known as Vienna spoke, as the silver-haired lady of the moon put the barrier that was meant to save his life in place. Too bad I will need to crush you, lady Fae, Maximillian further boasted, for it is I that shall reign Germany and lead it into a new golden age. I thank you for your compliment, Nia simply stated, drawing a circle into the sand with her naked toes; I hope you get to do that. Maximillian raised an eyebrow, So you give up? he wanted to know. Lydia wouldn't like that, Nia spoke emptily, therefore, no. She raised her eyes from the circles in the floor and looked into the ones of her adversary. They were clear, crystal clear, blue. They were objectively beautiful, as were her high cheekbones and finely swung eyebrows. Nia had been often complimented on her features and the colour of her bright gold hair. It was at this point that the king actually took a step backwards. Involuntarily, as if he was suddenly assaulted with a wave that crashed into him. His whole body was subject to a force he couldn't understand. Mages reacted like this whenever they faced her, whenever she decided to eliminate all and everything of magic in her surroundings. The whole colosseum went silent at the same moment, thousands of people checking her aura at the same dreadful moment as Luna herself was subjected to this weirdness and hesitated. The left hand of Romulus, the Apex of the Abyss, hesitated to approach this girl. Nia understood. To them, she was the great annihilator. I I cannot believe it, Jeff whispered into his microphone as he realized what everyone else realized. WE HAVE A BLANK, EVERYONE! Dra, can you do us the honour and explain to us what this means? C-certainly, the lizardman stuttered, then nodded at his co-host. He cleared his throat and regained his calm. A blank is someone who is born with something we describe as an empty' soul. In the past these people had an incredibly high mortality rate, as they couldn't be healed from natural diseases via magic, due to being natural born anti-mages. While this was largely reduced thanks to modern medicine, the mortality rate of blanks remains high due to several factors, the least gruesome of them being under the constant threat of Fading away. Yes, yes, Jeff nodded. This fading is the act of a blank stepping over from this world onto the other side completely. See, blanks have a connection to a dimension separate from ours that constantly calls out to them. This process is also often referred to as being spirited away'. The only person we know to ever return from the other side is a child named Alice, whose adventures became the basis for the popular children's book later. Albeit, the Maiden of Null has not been seen for about fifty years. Blanks are anathema to whatever is magic, Dra said, and as such, as a member of a magical race, I will sit way up here and keep my distance from her. Now that is unusually narrow minded of you, Dra. You should know that blanks don't just fire off at random, Jeff told him. Except for when they do, Dra shot back. Blanks are wildly varied in their skill level. Some can control what they want to eradicate, others create a magic-null zone several metres wide, without even thinking about it, around them. I would faint and literally dissolve if I were too close. Fair enough, Jeff admitted. Anyway, blanks are the rarest kinds of souls, and most people don't even get to see one in their lifetime. Having one in front of me, promised to be in action, is exciting! The crowd agreed and shouted out as the caster raised his arm. Nia in the meanwhile was looking quizzically at Luna. What are you waiting for? the blonde blank wondered in her eerily calm tone. The moon goddess still hadn't walked up closer to her. Don't be afraid, Nia suggested and extended her hand. If she could touch her, certainly the goddess would realize that Nia was of no threat. Luna, with obvious struggle, took her hand. A terrible moment long, it looked like the silver-haired goddess would step backwards, but then her facial features relaxed. You have remarkable control over your powers, she complimented, and power, like small blades bent to form a shield, poured into Nia's body. The blank slowly blinked and asked out loud, Why does a goddess of death erect barriers? Your senses must be off, Luna answered. I am a goddess of life, like my sister. Oh? Nia lowered her head in apology. The mana felt hostile, but if the moon goddess assured her it was otherwise, surely that was how it was. Don't accidentally destroy the barrier! Luna warned the blank before walking off. That wasn't a mindless warning. Nia could destroy the barrier with a single thought. It was like an itch on her nose that she wasn't allowed to scratch. Nave she may be, but undisciplined she was not. She always arrived where she needed to be, when she needed to. Never earlier, never later. The biome wheel landed on the standard arena. Their fight was set. Maximillian, in the meanwhile, looked furious. A blank, the king grumbled. Lydia seriously sent a blank against me. Let's count down, folks! Jeff shouted above. 5! I hope you will be having fun, Nia honestly said, although her voice did as bad a job as always at conveying it. A dry laughter was the response. 4! Honestly, I might as well give up now but I will be damned if I go down without a fight, Maximillian pumped his fist. 3! Yes, indeed, there must be a way to overcome your power! Maximillian turned heel and ran away from her. Honourless, maybe, but to him distance was most likely the best way to win. 2! Nia,' the blank heard the voice of her teacher, multi-layered, deep, and squeaky. In a fight, always use the most effective method from the start. It is not about making a show...' 1! The crowd broke into thunderous applause, but in her mind, Nia was elsewhere, standing on a large plaza. The only thing there was a giant arch, the city around her, distanced by several layers of security, one of the most important places in the Abyss, her home, which she never truly knew. The arc was one of magnificent beauty and craftsmanship, its name reflecting the lesson her teacher gave her that day. It is about being triumphant.' Nia felt the pressure the moment the countdown reached zero. Gravity, several times what it should have naturally been, tried to weigh down on her. Instead, nothing happened whatsoever. The magical force, meant to bring her to her knees, simply disappeared the moment it touched her. Maximillian made a sour expression, looking over his shoulder, and tried to gain more distance. Gravity mage, potential combat strategy will involve hurling objects at me instead of using direct magic,' Nia analysed. The moment she finished that thought, the stream of magic reversed, from reinforcing the natural gravity to pulling everything upwards. The floor cracked and splintered. First small pebbles rose upwards, then fist sized rocks. The way to triumph is knowing yourself and your enemy. Once you know the best way to take out your enemy, execute them in one swift strike. Time is a casualty you need not take,' the voice of her teacher continued in her head. She knew herself, and she knew that Maximillian needed time. The first boulder started to rise from the ground. All of this was an impressive display of muscle, but there was no way Maximillian would have been able to control all of these rocks' paths individually. That amount of control would be reserved for actual earth mages. The idea was therefore to simply have everything collapse on her position once he had enough to hurl at her. Then the strategy to win was to cancel his magic out completely. Nia closed her eyes and pulled power from the Nirvana over to this side. A black liquid, the absence of light made manifest, seeped out of her. From the roots of her hair, it crept over the face and neck, forming whirly patterns, like colours intermixing, on her snow-white skin. It formed a visor, sharply triangular in shape, over the upper half of her face. Solid as it was, it still allowed Nia to see through. Indeed, one could say that through this visor she only really saw this world as it was. A spectrum of lights, magic interferences layering on top of each other, barely able to be made sense of. Only years of training made it so that Nia could make sense out of its cacophony of colour; solid objects were still blocking her view, but now she could trace the magic back to its source. All she needed was a clear thread, and with all of those rocks flying around, it wasn't hard to find one. The liquified nothing seeped into her shoulder-less dress, giving it the appearance as if the black swirls were meant to hold it up. As they were made from similar materials, the dress absorbed the liquid without a problem, turning pitch black at the chest area. Her right hand outstretched, Nia called for her weapon, and the weapon answered. A long-bladed spear, carved from some type of coal-shade stone. It was of a simple, sleek shape. No extraordinary designs or colours, just a simple black spear with a lean handle. In her left appeared a long, curved dagger of the same design. Hey, Dra, isn't that against the rules? Jeff wondered from above. Apparently not, the lizardman answered. Romulus would have intervened if that were the case. It seems that this is a conjured weapon, not one she hid in some pocket-dimension. Oh, so because she made it during the fight, instead of smuggling it in after the official check-up, it's okay? That is correct. The words passed her by. Her focus was absolute. The path to victory lay ahead. Setting her sights on the thread again, she turned the dagger in her hand, wielding it in a reverse grip. Then she ran. Not incredibly fast. As far as physical prowess went, she was far enough above the mages to make it an easy victory but not quite as dominant as to be a challenge for major physical fighters. It was her ability to destroy magic that made her this dangerous. She jumped up. To everyone else it looked like a useless motion. The reality was that she had now hooked her dagger into the magical thread that connected the magic to Maximillian. All she needed to do now was follow it. She landed, and her blade cut the magic in twain like a hair that was put on a freshly sharpened knife. It created ripples, weakening the complete network of magic. Soft, with gravity slowly losing its influence, the stones settled back on the ground. Nia wove through the debris, always following the deep purple thread. Violently, the rocks around started to fly in chaotic motions, trying to obstruct her path. The gravity king must have realized that his overall control was slipping, so he concentrated on using what influence he had to create chaos. With unnatural grace, she predicted and dodged every single one of them. A giant boulder was hurled at her from above, but Nia simply stopped running for a second, and it crashed uselessly into the ground in front of her. A cloud of small pebbles flew at her. A single cut of her lance in full motion, followed by a spiralling jump, and she made it through with only a few of them harmlessly hitting her shoulders. She could see all of them; every single ripple his magic caused a flaring signal to her vision. Nia could see him now, smiling at the edge of the arena surrounded by rock. The intent was obvious: if she came close, he would crush her between the protective layer he had created. No magic resistance in the world would protect her against straight up getting turned into a pancake. Maximillian had a winning strategy here. All he needed to do was bombard her with rocks until something connected. Too bad Nia had means to take care of this as well. Too bad he was refusing to call upon his aid. A boon in her favour. The spear in her right hand ate away at the light that surrounded it. Turning from merely black into a spot in the world where light couldn't reach, a seemingly badly cropped-out black spot. Nia continued to run at Maximillian, his smile broadening. Sure of his victory, he bowed down a bit, his kingly cape fluttering impressively. This has been fun! he said in the tone of someone who only found enjoyment in winning. The fizzy outline of her spear became volatile until it was more of a borderless staff. Then it exploded in a wave that washed the world clear of colour. There was nothing but shades of grey, everything but the most basic shadows were eliminated and with it all of the magic that surrounded them. Only Nia's vision remained clear. Through the visor, all shapes were clearer than ever. She had eliminated whatever magic she could, and now Maximillian was defenceless. His smile vanished the moment he realized his trap was gone. He tried to dodge somewhere, but the wall he had put up in defence was now limiting his movements; behind him was the edge of the arena, to his sides the boulders he had put in place and now was powerless to remove. I am glad you had fun, Nia said and tried her best at a smile. From the shocked way he looked back at her, Nia guessed that it had failed to look friendly. The dagger phased through his throat. No bloodshed, no physical wound, she simply cut right through his spirit, a wound on his soul instead of his body. A spasm, a locking of all of his muscles, and froth at his lips, the typical reactions. The king sank down, unconscious.