Fate belonged to the Asura, the Eighth Patrol Ship of the Time-Space Administration Bureau's Dimensional Navigation Force. She was a "nonpermanent" member because she had a history of triggering Dimensional Oscillations.
Although her mother had been the real culprit, Fate was still under observation.
Her observation period was almost over, though. In another month, she would become a full member of the Time-Space Administration Bureau.
What mattered to her was not the position. After losing her mother and the meaning behind her own birth, this was the place where she belonged.
Admiral Lindy was here, along with everyone else, and most importantly, Nanoha.
So to her, nothing mattered more than Nanoha's safety.
No one else paid much attention to the inexplicable Dimensional Oscillation three months earlier anymore, since nothing had happened afterward. But Fate had never stopped worrying about it. It had happened far too close to Nanoha's home—not only on the same planet, but in the same country, even the same city.
If anything happened, it could threaten Nanoha's safety.
Yuno had not forgotten to investigate, either.
"Fate, look! Is this the man?" When Yuno came running to her in excitement, Fate had a feeling he was talking about exactly what had been weighing on her mind.
Sure enough!
There was no evidence that he was the person who had caused the Dimensional Oscillation, but they had indeed encountered someone suspicious on the street that day: a mysterious figure with no magical elements anywhere around him.
Magical elements existed everywhere in nature, so a patch of emptiness appearing out of nowhere actually indicated a magical phenomenon.
But after that fleeting glimpse, the man had vanished without a trace. No matter how Yuno and Fate searched, even using wide-area search magic, they could not find a single clue.
Until now.
"Yes! That's him!"
It was not an investigative report from the magical side of things, just a photograph. A photograph of an advertisement.
[A major event is coming! Yusaku Kudo, author of "Baron of the Night," will be signing books in person. See you on September 11!]
"September 11? That was last Sunday!"
"Yes, the signing is already over. But I found a little information. Yusaku Kudo, age fifty-one, a contracted author for Tokyo Mystery, a magazine published by Futaba Publishing in Tokyo."
Yuno paused.
Fate waited for him to continue, but the boy stopped there.
"What else?"
"Nothing. That's everything. His mailing address is fake-the place doesn't even exist. The phone number is fake, too. Its actual user is an elementary school student, not the author himself."
A fake mailing address. As for faking a phone number, that was all too easy; some form of call forwarding would do the trick. Ordinary technology would have been one thing, but Yuno had found no sign of anything like that, so magic was probably involved.
A Mage hiding among ordinary people.
Fate looked at Admiral Lindy, who was beside them, also listening closely to their conversation.
The beautiful green-haired admiral gave her a helpless look.
"He hasn't actually done anything suspicious, so we can't resort to coercive measures like searches or wanted notices. We can only investigate through normal channels."
Fate knew the admiral was right.
Still, now that they had a lead, she believed following it should pose no problem. The publisher and editor were right there, after all. As a novelist, he had to submit a manuscript to his editor every month.
Yusaku Kudo was someone who did not exist in the first place, and Huo Lin had not paid much attention to whether that "alias" might be exposed. She had done nothing illegal, anyway. She was only earning money from her writing, without bothering anyone. So she had not put much effort into disguising that identity.
If someone traced the phone number she used to contact her editor, they would find the one she normally used herself.
Her magical research could finally come to a stopping point. After spending another week or so on it, she had at last mastered the advanced shielding spell called "Magic Shield" in the books.
But "Magic Shield" was no longer a particularly suitable name.
As long as it was supplied with magical power, it could distort the surrounding spacetime. The degree of curvature depended entirely on the amount of magical power.
An AAA-rank Mage could stretch an inch of space in front of them to ten kilometers. In other words, whether the enemy attacked with shells or energy, the attack would have to cross ten kilometers to reach them.
An S-Class Mage could stretch it to fifty kilometers.
Beyond that, however, the magical power required increased exponentially. So, generally speaking, that was the spell's limit.
A-rank Mages were highly skilled personnel qualified to join the Time-Space Administration Bureau's enforcement teams, while AAA-rank Mages were the elite among elites. Generally speaking, that was already the highest rank an ordinary Mage could attain.
A year earlier, when Nanoha and Fate had clashed over the Jewel Seeds, both had been A+ rank. Reaching A+ at the age of nine meant their potential was boundless, and they were very likely to break through to S-Class in the future.
Across the entire Time-Space Administration Bureau, an organization of such enormous size, fewer than twenty people had reached S-Class. They were its true top-tier combatants.
So there was no point considering anything beyond S-Class.
But Huo Lin had realized those "purely theoretical possibilities," because her magical power was infinite, without qualification. It was not "so vast that it was effectively infinite," but genuinely infinite in the conceptual sense.
How had that been achieved? It defied all common sense, but the fact remained that it had already happened.
There was no need to wonder why. Thinking about it would only be a waste of effort.
And so, this spell made her truly understand what infinity meant.
It meant that this "Magic Shield," supposedly capable of scaling without limit when supplied with infinite magical power, actually had an upper limit of its own.
Rather than stretching the inch in front of her to some vague distance like a hundred thousand kilometers or a light-year, it formed a "spacetime membrane."
In astronomical terms, collapsing spacetime to its limit produced a celestial body called a "black hole." It enclosed all of spacetime within an event horizon, leaving no direction called "outside" through which anything could escape.
This "spacetime membrane" was something similar. No attack could ever reach the direction beyond that one inch; spacetime had already closed off in that direction.
If she wrapped this "spacetime membrane" around her entire body, then absolutely nothing could penetrate it. But light and gravitational waves would be unable to enter, too, so she would not only be in absolute darkness, but even become weightless.
So, whenever possible, she should avoid sealing herself off completely and only block the side an attack was coming from.
This spell could never be inscribed into a Device, nor could a Device assist with it. The very phrase "infinite magical power" meant that no matter how sturdy a Device was or how high its energy-storage limit, its circuits would burn out.
So she would call it "limited magic."
Huo Lin had come up with the term herself, using it to name spells that could only be realized through her own infinite magical power and could never be replicated.
All right, the name was settled.
(Limited Magic) [First Form: Absolute Domain!]
The ultimate defense, which no attack could ever cross.
With absolute defense, there should, of course, also be absolute offense in theory.
But that was a matter for later. After working hard for another week or so, she could finally get some proper rest.
Before you continue